Waterloo Library

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 20 of 67
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    Transcending Academic Power Structures: Navigating STEM Misinformation for Undergraduate Learning
    (Ontario Library Association, 2022-02) Mutch, Stephanie; Mercer, Kathryn; Weaver, Kari D.
    When students enter university, they learn that there are two types of information: information that can be found using library resources and the information that is found using Google. Sources are often framed in opposition to one another, with the library’s resources representing good and authoritative information, while other sources are considered risky and inferior. Librarians have started to question the usefulness of privileging certain types of information over others, acknowledging that highly useful and reliable information does exist outside of the confines of library resources. Specifically, by inherently devaluing sources found outside of the traditional academic context, how are we unintentionally perpetuating a power system that devalues non-academic voices, experiences, and contexts. Further, individuals with alternative viewpoints must first learn to act, think, and excel on academia’s terms before their worldviews and the information they have to share will be granted legitimacy by the academy. This poster uses critical theory to help position information as an element within the broader academic power structure. We are advocating for a more inclusive approach used in library instruction that encourages students to critically evaluate information on an individual basis.
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    Report on Transformative Agreements
    (Waterloo Library Collection Strategy Committee's Transformative Agreements Working Group, 2022) Byl, Lauren; Chee, Mike; Davies, Marian; Hale, Jordan; Harding, Tom; Hutchinson, Rebecca; Mancia, Cynthia
    This report was prepared for the University of Waterloo Library's Collection Strategy Committee to describe the current landscape of non-traditional publishing agreements between academic libraries and publishers. In addition to identifying and defining these types of agreements, this report provides criteria to use when deciding to sign a non-traditional agreement and suggests recommendations for moving forward with open access initiatives at Waterloo.
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    White Paper on OER: Seven Recommendations to Improve OER Uptake in Higher Education Institutions
    (University of Waterloo Library, 2022) Chee, Michael; Weaver, Kari D.
    A qualitative study conducted with 13 faculty instructors at Waterloo on their interest, motivation, and use of OER informed seven recommendations made in this white paper. Recommendations are grouped in three categories: new framings for the OER conversation, new practices for institutions, and new supports for institutions. Each recommendation represents a concrete direction for higher education institutions looking to improve local OER uptake.
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    PDF Accessibility: Considerations and Best Practices for Learning Objects and Other Library Materials
    (University of Waterloo Library, 2022-03-30) Voichita, Stefaniada; Kholodova, Janna; Chee, Mike; Weaver, Kari D.
    Despite concerns raised about accessibility compliance, libraries and vendors still commonly create and use PDFs for information sharing and information literacy instruction, a trend heightened by the recent increase in online learning. Like other formats, PDF’s require remediation, specifically in the form of tagging, to be transformed into an accessible instructional format. Academic librarians are increasingly looking to enhance the inclusivity of services and support, drawing on established work from domains such as Universal Design for Learning. What remains challenging is making the transition from theory to practice. Appropriately tagging PDFs for accessibility represents a concrete step for practitioners keen to enact inclusive instructional practice. This poster shares the best practices, training, and decision making framework a collaborative library instructional design team has developed, tested, and implemented to effectively tag PDFs for accessibility, including lessons learned and still open questions for debate. This presentation is of particular importance, both because of the wide use of the PDF format, but also the need for libraries to develop tagging practices that reflect some of our unique content needs like citations and database screenshots often used in library-created PDFs.
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    Best Practices for Library Exhibitions
    (Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA), 2021-11) Cannon, Caley; Comrie, Allison; Covert, Claudia; Kohl, Kristi; Meinke, Elizabeth; Ng-He, Carol; Peters, Carmen; Van Heukelem, Malia
    Best Practices for Library Exhibitions provides a comprehensive framework and recommended practices for developing and managing exhibitions in art libraries and similar types of information environments. It offers real-world insights complementing library and information science program curricula enriching students’ learning about exhibition development, which is a growing expectation for librarians. The document is organized by three main areas: Creation, Operation and Logistics, and Management, reflecting the actual cycle of exhibitions. Specific best practices include Curation and Policies, Digital Exhibits, Diversity/Equity/Inclusion/Accessibility, Loaning, Conservation Care, Facilities, Engagement, Marketing and Outreach, Documentation, Evaluation, and Financial Management. The initiative for this project was endeavored by the Exhibitions Special Interest Group with contributions from library professionals representing a variety of institutions and specialties.
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    Author Addendum Conundrum: Reconciling Author Use of Addenda With Publisher Acceptance
    (Partnership Association, 2022-01-28) Byl, Lauren
    The purpose of this paper is simultaneously to investigate researcher use and awareness of author addenda (e.g., the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [SPARC] author addendum) and publisher awareness and acceptance of the same. Researchers at U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities institutions were targeted, and a survey was sent to faculty, graduate, and postdoctoral associations to share with their members. Following a low response rate, the survey was sent to a listserv of copyright librarians in Canada with a message that encouraged them to share it with researchers at their institutions. Eighty-one researchers responded to the survey. Eighty-six percent of researchers (n = 70) indicated that they were unaware of author addenda. Researchers were asked to identify how often they negotiate their publishing agreements, and of those who answered the question, 84.2% (n = 64) responded that they never negotiate. Thirteen publishers or publishing organizations were contacted and asked if they would participate in phone interviews about copyright practices and author addenda. Two large multinational publishers agreed to participate. Both publishers indicated that very few authors attempt to negotiate their agreements and that of those who choose to negotiate, even fewer use addenda. Both indicated that they do not accept the SPARC author addendum. This study’s small sample sizes mean that more information needs to be collected before firm conclusions can be drawn. Based on the responses from the two large publishers, the best way to help Tri-Agency-funded researchers may be for libraries and the Tri-Agency to negotiate with publishers for funder-based exceptions.
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    Are machine learning corpora “fair dealing” under Canadian law?
    (Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Creativity, 2021-09) Brown, Dan; Byl, Lauren; Grossman, Maura R.
    We consider the use of large corpora for training compuationally creative systems, particularly those that write new text based on the style of an existing author or genre. Under Canadian copyright law, a key concern for whether this is “fair dealing” is whether this usage will result in new creations that compete with those in the corpus. While recent law review articles in the United States suggest that training models on such corpora would be “fair use” in the United States, we argue that Canadian law may, in fact, forbid this use when the new products compete with works in the original corpus
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    The Proof is in the Pudding: Building a Local Repository for Online Learning Objects
    (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2021) Hale, Jordan; Weaver, Kari D.
    Libraries are increasingly building collections of learning materials in electronic formats. As the availability grows, it becomes necessary to consider the long-term discovery, access, management, and local ownership issues inherent in the development and distribution of such collections. To address these issues, the University of Waterloo Library slow-simmered a localized repository meant to house and make discoverable library-created online learning objects for broad distribution, discovery, and reuse.
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    Library Impact Practice Brief: Supporting Bibliometric Data Needs at Academic Institutions.
    (Association of Research Libraries, 2020-10-28) Gordon, Shannon; Hitchens, Alison
    This practice brief presents research conducted by staff at the University of Waterloo Library as part of the library’s participation in ARL’s Research Library Impact Framework initiative. The research addressed the question, “How can research libraries support their campus community in accessing needed bibliometric data for institutional-level purposes?” The brief explores: service background, partners, service providers and users, how bibliometric data are used, data sources, key lessons learned, and recommended resources
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    Integrating Equity and Reconciliation Work into Archival Descriptive Practice at the University of Waterloo
    (Archivaria, 2021-06) Robichaud, Danielle
    Despite sustained calls for a critical review of harmful content within archival descriptive records, there remains much to be explored by way of implications for Canadian academic archives. This article addresses the absence of Canadian archival practitioners in broader discussions about the revision and remediation of descriptive records by exploring how staff in Special Collections & Archives at the University of Waterloo Library are working to integrate equity and reconciliation-informed thinking into the department’s archival practice by revising their approach to language in archival descriptions. Beginning with an overview of the department and the landscape in which it operates, this article provides a brief review of guidance available in the Rules for Archival Description. It then provides the rationale behind the recent changes to descriptive practice before exploring a series of examples of how and where this work is newly underway. The article concludes with a consideration of current identified challenges and the related work ahead.
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    Academic Status Institutional Comparisons Report
    (Librarians' and Archivists' Association of the University of Waterloo, 2020-03) Hale, Jordan; Hutchinson, Rebecca; Weaver, Kari D.
    This report was distributed to Librarians' and Archivists' Association of the University of Waterloo members in advance of consultations pertaining to a potential change in employment status.
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    Migrating Archival Descriptive Records to AtoM: The Good, the Bad and the Yikes
    (Archives Association of Ontario, 2020-10) Robichaud, Danielle
    Special Collections & Archives at the University of Waterloo Library began migrating from a series of internal descriptive databases to a public facing instance of AtoM in 2016. This article provides an overview of the related and on-going work with particular attention paid to challenges and notable milestones along the way.
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    Wikipedia as an arena for public scholarship
    (Centre for Career Action, 2020-10-14) Robichaud, Danielle
    Wikipedia provides scholars with an avenue for meaningfully contributing to the widely used public knowledge platform despite contribution guidelines that restrict the use of original research. This slide-based learning module explores how Wikipedia can be used as an arena for public scholarship by exploring three themes: Putting expertise into action where it counts; Developing plain language communication skills; Boosting the representation of colleagues from underrepresented communities.
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    Physician and Pharmacist Medication Decision-Making in the Time of Electronic Health Records: Mixed-Methods Study
    (JMIR, 2018-07) Mercer, Kathryn; Burns, Catherine; Guirguis, Lisa; Chin, Jessie; Dogba, Maman Joyce; Dolovich, Lisa; Guénette, Line; Jenkins, Laurie; Légaré, France; McKinnon, Annette; McMurray, Josephine; Waked, Khrystine; Grindrod, Kelly
    Background: Primary care needs to be patient-centered, integrated, and interprofessional to help patients with complex needs manage the burden of medication-related problems. Considering the growing problem of polypharmacy, increasing attention has been paid to how and when medication-related decisions should be coordinated across multidisciplinary care teams. Improved knowledge on how integrated electronic health records (EHRs) can support interprofessional shared decision-making for medication therapy management is necessary to continue improving patient care. Objective: The objective of our study was to examine how physicians and pharmacists understand and communicate patient-focused medication information with each other and how this knowledge can influence the design of EHRs. Methods: This study is part of a broader cross-Canada study between patients and health care providers around how medication-related decisions are made and communicated. We visited community pharmacies, team-based primary care clinics, and independent-practice family physician clinics throughout Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, and Quebec. Research assistants conducted semistructured interviews with physicians and pharmacists. A modified version of the Multidisciplinary Framework Method was used to analyze the data. Results: We collected data from 19 pharmacies and 9 medical clinics and identified 6 main themes from 34 health care professionals. First, Interprofessional Shared Decision-Making was not occurring and clinicians made decisions based on their understanding of the patient. Physicians and pharmacists reported indirect Communication, incomplete Information specifically missing insight into indication and adherence, and misaligned Processes of Care that were further compounded by EHRs that are not designed to facilitate collaboration. Scope of Practice examined professional and workplace boundaries for pharmacists and physicians that were internally and externally imposed. Physicians decided on the degree of the Physician-Pharmacist Relationship, often predicated by colocation. Conclusions: We observed limited communication and collaboration between primary care providers and pharmacists when managing medications. Pharmacists were missing key information around reason for use, and physicians required accurate information around adherence. EHRs are a potential tool to help clinicians communicate information to resolve this issue. EHRs need to be designed to facilitate interprofessional medication management so that pharmacists and physicians can move beyond task-based work toward a collaborative approach.
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    Walking the Talk: Editing Wikipedia with Purpose
    (2020-03-10) Robichaud, Danielle
    Started nineteen years ago Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites on the Internet, but its popularity is not without issue. Editors are predominantly males from the global north which has led to documented systemic bias and a chronic underrepresentation of pages related to equity seeking communities. Drawing on her experience editing Wikipedia through an archival lens, this talk challenges the assumption that anyone being able to edit Wikipedia makes it a dubious information resource by positioning the site’s openness as an opportunity to put stated commitments to equity, inclusion, diversity and reconciliation into action through purposeful editing.
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    “My pharmacist”: Creating and maintaining relationship between physicians and pharmacists in primary care settings
    (Elsevier, 2020-01) Mercer, Kathryn; Neiterman, Elena; Guirguis, Lisa; Burns, Catherine; Grindrod, Kelly
    Background Pharmacists and physicians are being increasingly encouraged to adopt a collaborative approach to patient care, and delivery of health services. Strong collaboration between pharmacists and physicians is known to improve patient safety, however pharmacists have expressed difficulty in developing interprofessional working relationships. There is not a significant body of knowledge around how relationships influence how and when pharmacists and physicians communicate about patient care. Objectives This paper examines how pharmacists and primary care physicians communicate with each other, specifically when they have or do not have an established relationship. Methods Thematic analysis of data from semi-structured interviews with nine primary care physicians and 25 pharmacists, we examined how pharmacists and physicians talk about their roles and responsibilities in primary care and how they build relationships with each other. Results We found that both groups of professionals communicated with each other in relation to the perceived scope of their practice and roles. Three emerging themes emerged in the data focusing on (1) the different ways physicians communicate with pharmacists; (2) insights into barriers discussed by pharmacists; and (3) how relationships shape collaboration and interactions. Pharmacists were also responsible for initiating the relationship as they relied on it more than the physicians. The presence or absence of a personal connection dramatically impacts how comfortable healthcare professionals are with collaboration around care. Conclusion The findings support and extend the existing literature on pharmacist-physician collaboration, as it relates to trust, relationship, and role. The importance of strong communication is noted, as is the necessity of improving ways to build relationships to ensure strong interprofessional collaboration.
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    Predatory Publishing: Hidden Pitfalls with High Costs
    (2018) Bredahl, Laura; Holland, Leslie; Johnson, Scott
    What is a Predatory Publisher: With little or no actual services or scholarly review being performed the sole purpose of these publishers is to make money through fraudulently charging authors fees, often guised as processing or open access fees. However, most publishers that charge fees are not predatory therefore this can not be the sole characteristic of a predatory publisher.
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    Selection and Influence: A Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Peer and Personal Offending
    (Springer, 2019-06) Gallupe, Owen; McLevey, John; Brown, Sarah
    Objectives Whether people are affected by the criminal behavior of peers (the “influence” perspective) or simply prefer to associate with others who are similar in their offending (the “selection” perspective) is a long-standing criminological debate. The relatively recent development of stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs—also called SIENA models) for longitudinal social network data has allowed for the examination of selection and influence effects in more comprehensive ways than was previously possible. This article reports the results of a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that use SAOMs to test for peer selection and influence effects. Methods A systematic review and 3-level random effects meta-analysis of studies that have used SAOMs to test selection and influence dynamics for offending behavior. Results There is support for both influence (mean log odds ratio = 1.23, p < 0.01, 21 effects, pooled n = 21,193) and selection dynamics (mean log odds ratio = 0.31, p < 0.01, 28 effects, pooled n = 21,269). Type of behavior, country, and the year of the first wave of data collection are found to moderate the influence effect; no significant moderation effects are found for peer selection on offending. Conclusions People are both influenced by the offending of their peers and select into friendships based on similarity in offending.
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    Inevitably Wikipedia
    (2019-10-24) Robichaud, Danielle
    Broad overview of editing Wikipedia through an archival lens, including contributing to the Wikimedia Commons.
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    Understanding Undergraduate Engineering Student Information Access and Needs: Results from a Scoping Review
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2019-06-16) Mercer, Kathryn; Weaver, Kari; Stables-Kennedy, Ariel
    To the authors knowledge this is the first review to examine the current body of research on how engineering students access, use, and understand information; identify gaps in the literature, and how this can be used to support information literacy education in the engineering disciplines. Engineering students are required to create, problem solve, and improve, using engineering principles to develop their skills in technical, environmental, socioeconomic and political aspects of the engineering process. They are increasingly faced with the availability of rapidly shifting information types, which are gathered from sources like Google and Reddit. Finding and interpreting such information, even when found correctly through sources outside traditional research boundaries (technical documents found online vs. peer review articles through a library catalog), creates a disconnect between students and the desire of librarians or faculty to teach traditional research and information seeking skills. A scoping review was conducted using the Arksey and O’Malley modified framework. Six databases focusing on information, education, and engineering research were searched (LISA, ERIC full-text, ASEE, ScienceDirect, EducationSource, and Scopus). Papers were included if they addressed engineering student information seeking behaviors or needs. Studies that focused on social science or humanities students were excluded. The data were examined to find methodological trends, research areas, gaps in knowledge, and key findings. This review included 44 articles in the final review. Analysis grouped research into four emerging themes: Student information behavior mirrors that of professionals; Design thinking as a guiding force for information behavior; Design work requires the use of a specialized information sources; Methodological and Theoretical approaches. Results demonstrate a significant gap in knowledge around information seeking behavior specific to engineering students. Research into this area should be developed to be more inclusive and diverse, which will help increase recruitment and support of underrepresented groups, and overall will improve student success in engineering. Additional research should be conducted to validate or confirm previous findings, build on existing assessment protocols, develop new protocols and methodologies, and explore the application of new theoretical frameworks. There should be a focus in engaging cross-disciplinary stakeholders in the research process.