Sarah Sagmoen EOM (February)

Sarah Sagmoen – February Employee of the Month at the University of Illinois Springfield

We are so proud to share the news that our very own Sarah Sagmoen was selected as the University of Illinois Springfield February Employee of the Month! Many of you may already know her; she works tirelessly to be accessible to students, faculty and staff on campus. Since joining UIS in 2009 Sarah has made many important relationships on campus, making her an invaluable part of our staff.

The University wrote an excellent blog post on the Employee of the Month Blog you might enjoy reading. We also featured Sarah in our Know A Librarian Series on the What’s New at Brookens Blog. There you can learn more about Sarah’s unique interests and get a sense of her dynamic personality.

Spring Library Tours

Faculty: Do your students need a refresher on what Brookens Library offers? If so, send them on a Library Tour! We’ve scheduled both on-campus Tours and online Virtual Tours for Spring semester. The Tour covers where to find books and articles, how to access resources from off-campus, where to get research help, and more!

See the links below for dates, times, and registration. Registration is encouraged but not required for individual students; they can just drop-in! No need to worry about verifying attendance: we will send you an email with the names of your students who attended.

If you would like a tour or other library instruction during class time, contact your Library Liaison to schedule. (We do online instruction, too.)

Tues, January 29, 2013 – 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm  Virtual Library Tour

Wed, January 30, 2013 – 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm  On-Campus Library Tour

Thurs, January 31, 2013 – 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Virtual Library Tour

Tues, February 5, 2013 – 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm  On-Campus Library Tour

Wed, February 6, 2013 – 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm  Virtual Library Tour

Thurs, February 7, 2013 – 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm  On-Campus Library Tour

- Dorothy Hemmo -

Aaron Swartz – Information Activist

Have you ever heard of Aaron Swartz?  If  you’ve heard of Reddit, you are at least familiar with his work.  Aaron Swartz had done many newsworthy things in his short career. He worked on the early architecture of Creative Commons, co-authored RSS and even co-founded Reddit.  More amazingly, he did it all before he was 21.

In 2011, Swartz was arrested after downloading almost 5 million articles from JSTOR. Most recently, Swartz has been in the news after taking his life on January 11th, 2013.    Discussion about whether or not overzealous federal prosecutors had anything to do with Swartz’s decision to end his life followed closely behind.  The federal prosecutors held that Swartz had violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 and deserved jail time. Aaron Swartz was 26.

But there’s a much bigger picture to consider beyond the alleged theft of the JSTOR articles that led to all of this.  The case pursued against Swartz - pursued entirely by the United States Attorney’s Office rather than by the wronged parties (MIT and JSTOR – both took no action) - raises some serious doubts about the laws that govern intellectual property in America.  Or at least additional doubts as we face down an academic publishing crisis complete with hyperinflation of access costs and increasingly aggressive litigation by publishers.

Aaron Swartz was instrumental in shutting down 2012′s SOPA bill, but there’s still a long way to go before our 20th century intellectual property laws actually reflect the realities of technology and information in the 21st century.

Why is Information Literacy Important?

Information literacy, which encompasses the skills used to access, evaluate, integrate and communicate information, is about empowering individuals to become self-sufficient lifelong learners. This truly interdisciplinary endeavor is expressed in the UIS Goals and Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education.

Information literacy is the foundation of research ability. From identifying and locating the resources you need, to evaluating the quality of those resources, information literacy instruction gives the individual the tools to be successful in the classroom and the workplace.

Contact your Librarian Liaison for ways to improve the information literacy of your students: http://libguides.uis.edu/librarians

Faculty Open House 9/11 (2-4pm)

You are invited to the Brookens Library Faculty Open House! This is a great opportunity to meet your library liaison and learn about the many  resources and services we provide to you and the UIS community. Archives, CINRC (Central Illinois Nonprofit Resource Center), the Media Lab, CTL (Center for Teaching and Learning), & COLRS (Center for Online Learning, Research & Service) will also be at the open house. We’d love to see you there.

Congratulations Jan Waterhouse

Brookens’ own Jan Waterhouse has been selected as one of the newest members of the WorldCat Local User Group leadership team. WorldCat Local is the University of Illinois Springfield – Brookens Library’s Quick Search.

What is WorldCat Local:

WorldCat Local delivers single-search-box access to more than 969 million items from your library and the world’s library collections. You’ll find:

• 674+ million articles with one-click access to full text
• 29+ million digital items from trusted sources like Google Books, OAIster and HathiTrust
• 13+ million eBooks from leading aggregators and publishers
• 44+ million pieces of evaluative content (Tables of Contents, cover art, summaries, etc.) included at no additional charge
• 221+ million books in libraries worldwide

Your WorldCat Local service gets users the results they’re looking for and then connects them right to local, group and global resources through the services you already provide. It also gives your library visibility on the Web through the cooperative’s partnerships with leading search engines, social networking services and other popular sites.

WorldCat Local lets people explore the full breadth of resources your library provides in a single, streamlined search experience. Once they identify the items they need, integration with your library’s delivery options lets users get to those resources quickly and easily.

Learn more about Jan!

Janetta (Jan) Waterhouse is the Director of Library Information Systems and Technical Services at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS). She worked in IT for over a decade before completing a MA in Library and Information Science at The University of Iowa. She has been working in the area of library technology for nearly ten years and has been at UIS since December 2010. UIS was an early adopter of WorldCat Local and has been easing its way into making it the single search, recently branded Quick Search, for the campus since 2008. This summer each subject- and course-specific Research Guide will include database-specific WorldCat Local searches and WorldCat Knowledge Base will become the primary OpenURL resolver and knowledge base for link resolution and journal/citation searches. Jan’s upcoming focus is training UIS librarians and staff with WorldCat Local and WorldCat Knowledge Base to be able to use them to the fullest extent possible with user assistance and operational workflows. She has recently completed a year-long IT Leadership Program with the University of Illinois and is excited to put these skills to use in this new role with the WorldCat Local User Group.

Contact Jan

Jan Waterhouse
Director of Library Information Systems & Technical Services
University of Illinois – Springfield
Springfield, IL 62703
Office: 217-206-7114 Fax: 217-206-6757
waterhouse.jan@uis.edu

Summer Research Support

Do you have plans for your research this summer? Don’t forget about the Brookens Library. We, librarians, are here throughout the summer to assist you with all of your research needs. If you fancy yourself a DIY researcher we have created a set of short video tutorials made with you in mind. Are you teaching a summer course? If so, be sure to let your students know we are here to ensure their academic success. Encourage your students to contact their librarian or direct them to the video tutorials.

Embedded Librarians

Kvenild, C., & Calkins, K. (2011). Embedded librarians: Moving beyond one-shot instruction. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.

Are you looking for new, innovative ways to integrate information literacy into your courses?  Consider embedding a librarian.  “Embedded Librarians” refers to a model of integrating librarians and information literacy instruction into courses that moves beyond one-shot instruction. You can add a librarian to your Blackboard course and create a discussion board forum for students to communicate directly with him/her as they work on their research projects. Librarians can also create course-specific library instructional videos with built-in quizzes to embed into Blackboard. For on-campus courses, a librarian could visit your class several times throughout the semester to present information literacy concepts and partner with you to provide feedback to students as they work on a research assignment.  Each library session could take up the entire class period or simply last for 20-30 minutes.  If you would like to discuss options for embedding a librarian into one of your courses, please contact your library liaison.

Know A Librarian – Sarah

Spring has sprung and we are happy to introduce you to yet another one of our fantastic librarians – Sarah!

She came to Springfield in Nov. 2009 after getting her Masters in Library and Information Science from Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. At Brookens, she does the typical librarian stuff: library instruction, research consultations and orders books.  She also manages the Information and Reference Desk, gets her geek on with the library’s iPads, and is 1 of the 3 people behind the tweets and Facebook posts for the library.  If you’re in the library, chances are you’ll see her at the Information and Reference Desk.  When out and about on campus, she can typically be found volunteering at a Student Life event.

There are lots of things Sarah loves about being a librarian.  But one of her favorite parts of the job is buying books for the Curriculum Collection.  With a background in High School English Education, she has always been an avid reader of Young Adult literature.  Books like The Hunger Games, Feed, and The City of Ember are among some of her favorites with Harry Potter at the top of the list.  A huge fan of both the Harry Potter books and the movies, Sarah has read and watched them more times than she can count.  In case you’re wondering, she’s a Hufflepuff and yes, she’s been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, FL.

Outside of the Library, Sarah spends most of her time hanging out with friends here in Springfield or visiting friends in Chicago and Madison, WI. She enjoys cooking and hosting parties. Other than that, she watches LOTS of movies, both in the theater and at home on her couch.

Snapshot Day 2012

Snapshot Day: A Day in the Life of Brookens Library is Wednesday, April 18th. Snapshot Day documents the ins and outs of the library through photos. We also use it as an opportunity to ask those using our facility a few simple questions via a survey so we can provide better resources and services. If you participate by taking a survey you will receive a FREE Brookens Library bag – and an entry to win one of 3 $5 value cards that can be used toward food or printing! Feel free to participate yourself or send your students over! We encourage any and all feedback!