RSS 1.0Produced at Temple
ABOUT THE COLLECTIONS
The Produced at Temple collections focus on books, working papers, reports and more from centers and other organizations on the Temple University campus.
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Goodbye, Paley… Hello, Charles!: Marketing a Library MoveHow do you prepare a campus for the closure of one main library and the opening of a brand-new building? Temple University Libraries faced this question in 2019. Their marketing team answered the call by creating a campaign that honored their original Paley Library while building excitement for the new Charles Library. As part of this campaign, library staff worked together to create their own “Mean Tweets” video, reading real tweets patrons had posted about Paley over the years. In this column, the team's director reflects on the process and how it changed the tone of their overall campaign.
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Building and Maintaining Metadata Aggregation Workflows Using Apache AirflowPA Digital is a Pennsylvania network that serves as the state’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The group developed a homegrown aggregation system in 2014, used to harvest digital collection records from contributing institutions, validate and transform their metadata, and deliver aggregated records to the DPLA. Since our initial launch, PA Digital has expanded significantly, harvesting from an increasing number of contributors with a variety of repository systems. With each new system, our highly customized aggregator software became more complex and difficult to maintain. By 2018, PA Digital staff had determined that a new solution was needed. From 2019 to 2021, a cross-functional team implemented a more flexible and scalable approach to metadata aggregation for PA Digital, using Apache Airflow for workflow management and Solr/Blacklight for internal metadata review. In this article, we will outline how we use this group of applications and the new workflows adopted, which afford our metadata specialists more autonomy to contribute directly to the ongoing development of the aggregator. We will discuss how this work fits into our broader sustainability planning as a network and how the team leveraged shared expertise to build a more stable approach to maintenance.
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#RealCollege 2021: Basic Needs Insecurity During the Ongoing PandemicEntering the fall 2020 term, higher education was reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. Enrollment was down—particularly among students most at risk of basic needs insecurity; fewer students had completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA); and college retention rates had dropped. Students and faculty were stressed and anxious. By the end of the term, more than 267,000 Americans died. At the same time, the federal government pumped an unprecedented $6 billion into student emergency aid via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. This report examines the pandemic’s impact on #RealCollege students who were able to continue their education in this challenging environment. Using our sixth annual #RealCollege Survey, fielded in fall 2020, we assessed students’ basic needs security and their well-being, as indicated by employment status, academic engagement, and mental health. In total, over 195,000 students from 130 two-year colleges and 72 four-year colleges and universities responded to the 2020 #RealCollege Survey.
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Securing the Basic Needs of College Students in Greater Philadelphia During a Pandemic: A #RealCollegePHL ReportPhiladelphia-area colleges and universities were reeling from the coronavirus pandemic as they entered fall 2020. Mirroring national trends, enrollment was down, particularly among those students most at risk of basic needs insecurity; fewer students completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA); and college retention rates dropped. Students and faculty were stressed and anxious. By the end of the term, local hospitals spent weeks caring for almost a thousand Philadelphians suffering with and often dying from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. This report examines how Philadelphia-area students and institutions fared during that exceptionally challenging time. The data come from our sixth-annual #RealCollege Survey, which assessed students’ experiences of food and housing insecurity, homelessness, employment, mental health, and academic engagement. While past work by The Hope Center indicates that more than half of area two-year students and about one-third of area four-year students experience food and/or housing insecurity, and more than one in 10 experience homelessness, this report sheds light on the unique challenges faced in 2020 during the pandemic. The report is part of our #RealCollegePHL project, which aims to document basic needs insecurity among area college students and to bolster institutional and community efforts to address those needs. In the Philadelphia region, the survey was distributed to more than 82,700 students attending 13 colleges and universities, and taken by 8,953 students, yielding an estimated response rate of 11%.
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A First Look at Impacts of the College Housing Assistance Program at Tacoma Community CollegeAffording living expenses presents a major barrier to degree completion for many community college students. Food, affordable housing, transportation, and childcare are central conditions for learning. Yet with stagnant incomes, rising tuition and living costs, and insufficient support from financial aid and the social safety net, approximately one in two community college students struggle to afford these basic needs. Additionally, as many as one in five experience homelessness. The College Housing Assistance Program (CHAP), operated by the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) and Tacoma Community College (TCC), is at the forefront of the nationwide fight to ameliorate homelessness among college students. CHAP is one of the country’s first partnerships between a housing authority and a community college and offers a unique model. In contrast to other programs such as student-run shelters, rapid-rehousing, and college-owned affordable apartments, CHAP utilizes government-subsidized housing assistance to provide housing to homeless and near-homeless community college students. This report offers the initial lessons learned from the first external evaluation of CHAP. Successful program implementation is crucial to providing benefits for students, and can be especially challenging in housing programs. We therefore focus on how students experienced the program, where they faced barriers, and where they found support. It is too early in the evaluation process to draw conclusions about the program’s efficacy; these are short-term insights.
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Impact of Transportation Supports on Students’ Academic Outcomes: A Quasi-Experimental Study of the U-Pass at Rio Hondo CollegeFor many students, transportation presents a barrier to college completion. In 2020–21, the average commuter student could expect to spend nearly one-fifth of their total living expenses on transportation costs. Transportation programs have the potential to offer students some relief—and help them reach college graduation—yet more rigorous research on these programs’ benefits is needed. This brief provides results from a quasi-experimental study on the impact of transportation supports on short- and longer-term academic outcomes for community college students at Rio Hondo College. Established in 2016 as a partnership between the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Agency (LA Metro) and participating area colleges and universities, including Rio Hondo College, the Universal College Student Transit Pass (U-Pass) provides college students with deeply discounted transit fares. Findings from this study suggest that transportation supports like U-Pass offer a promising strategy for increasing the likelihood that students will: remain enrolled one semester and one year later; complete a greater number of credits; and, earn a credential. While more research on similar programs is needed, these findings suggest that free- and reduced-cost transit fares could play a critical role in helping students earn college credentials.
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Attitudes and Perceptions toward Design Thinking in Graduate-Level Library EducationThis study aims to understand educators’—specifically those in positions of authority in graduate-level library education programs—perceptions of and attitudes toward design thinking and methods in graduate-level library curricula by investigating the following research questions: What is the current landscape for the integration of design into the LIS curriculum, from the program director’s perspective? What do these directors think about the competencies required for future librarians, and where does design fit into those competencies? What are the possibilities for a future degree focused on reconceptualizing the field from a design perspective rather than the traditional library science? Thirteen MLIS program directors and people in equivalent positions at ALA-accredited programs in the United States and Canada were interviewed to investigate these queries. The conversations suggest there is a growing openness to design education that may contribute to the diversification of the curriculum so that graduates’ competencies more closely reflect recommendations in the literature and address the needs of employers. They also reveal dichotomies in how LIS program directors define and integrate design education into LIS curricula, such as barriers of bureaucratic concerns versus interest in experimenting with design courses available elsewhere in their universities, or even the potential for a dual library science/library design degree option. The article concludes with recommendations for next steps in advancing design in library education so as to prepare graduates for the growing number of user experience, public programming, or even more traditional teaching librarian positions where a design thinking approach leads to effective practice.
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Rights Statement Selection Tool (Accessible, Screenreader-Optimized Version)RightsStatements.org, through the standardized rights statements it provides, allows institutions to clearly communicate the copyright status of digitized cultural heritage works, promoting their reuse. However, it can be tricky for institutions to determine correct statement usage through the site without additional context. The Rights Statement Selection Tool is an interactive infographic that serves to visually explain the statement selection workflow, allowing a copyright novice to identify the correct statement through decision tree alone. This legal tool lets cultural heritage institutions assign rights statement review work to non-experts, potentially increasing the number of items that can be evaluated. It’s meant to be integrated into cataloging workflows: clickable links lead to each statement’s URI page, and it can be viewed in a browser alongside the RightsStatements.org site. The Tool serves as a complete visual reference to the statements: each is covered and explained. It aggregates relevant resources and serves as a structural bridge between related copyright status determination charts and Creative Commons charts. Donation agreements–often a source of confusion for rights statements reviewers–are covered as well. The Tool is, by design, as agnostic to national law as possible. The US-centered copyright status determination charts that feed into it (such as the Hirtle and Sunstein charts) could easily be swapped for resources reflecting other countries’ national law; the RightsStatements.org logic that it covers would remain unchanged, and so would the chart. As the RightsStatements.org standard goes global, this tool can be translated, adapted, and re-used beyond the US.
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Rights Statements Selection Tool (Web Version)RightsStatements.org, through the standardized rights statements it provides, allows institutions to clearly communicate the copyright status of digitized cultural heritage works, promoting their reuse. However, it can be tricky for institutions to determine correct statement usage through the site without additional context. The Rights Statement Selection Tool is an interactive infographic that serves to visually explain the statement selection workflow, allowing a copyright novice to identify the correct statement through decision tree alone. This legal tool lets cultural heritage institutions assign rights statement review work to non-experts, potentially increasing the number of items that can be evaluated. It’s meant to be integrated into cataloging workflows: clickable links lead to each statement’s URI page, and it can be viewed in a browser alongside the RightsStatements.org site. The Tool serves as a complete visual reference to the statements: each is covered and explained. It aggregates relevant resources and serves as a structural bridge between related copyright status determination charts and Creative Commons charts. Donation agreements–often a source of confusion for rights statements reviewers–are covered as well. The Tool is, by design, as agnostic to national law as possible. The US-centered copyright status determination charts that feed into it (such as the Hirtle and Sunstein charts) could easily be swapped for resources reflecting other countries’ national law; the RightsStatements.org logic that it covers would remain unchanged, and so would the chart. As the RightsStatements.org standard goes global, this tool can be translated, adapted, and re-used beyond the US.
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The Rights Portal: Tools and Resources Supporting Standardized Rights Statement ImplementationThe Rights Portal is a project of the Digital Public Library of America, created and maintained by the DPLA Rights Statements Working Group. You will find a collection of tools and resources supporting implementation of RightsStatements.org and Creative Commons at libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions primarily in the United States.
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Rights Statements Selection ToolThrough the standardized rights statements it provides, RightsStatements.org allows institutions to clearly communicate the copyright status of digitized cultural heritage works, promoting their reuse. However, it can be tricky for institutions to determine correct statement usage through the site without additional context. The Rights Statement Selection Tool [bit.ly/RSSTOOL] is an interactive infographic that serves to visually explain the statement selection workflow, allowing a copyright novice to identify the correct statement through decision tree alone. This legal tool lets cultural heritage institutions assign rights statement review work to non-experts, potentially increasing the number of items that can be evaluated. It’s meant to be integrated into cataloging workflows: clickable links lead to each statement’s URI page, and it can be viewed in a browser alongside the RightsStatements.org site. The Tool serves as a complete visual reference to the statements: each is covered and explained. It aggregates relevant resources and serves as a structural bridge between related copyright status determination charts and Creative Commons charts. Donation agreements–often a source of confusion for rights statements reviewers–are covered as well. The Tool is, by design, as agnostic to national law as possible. The US-centered copyright status determination charts that feed into it (such as the Hirtle and Sunstein charts) could easily be swapped for resources reflecting other countries’ national law; the RightsStatements.org logic that it covers would remain unchanged, and so would the chart. As the RightsStatements.org standard goes global, this tool can be translated, adapted, and re-used beyond the US.
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Taking OER to the LIS: Designing and Developing an Open Education Course for Library Science StudentsOne often overlooked member of the open education community is the aspiring librarian. Students currently pursuing their Master in Library Science (MLS) degree are potential future leaders for a sustainable open education movement. The lack of formal course options in existing library science education programs, for learning about open education, is a potential barrier to an open movement that is inclusive of library science graduate students. This article describes the design, development, and implementation of what is believed to be the first formal, dedicated course in open education librarianship offered by an American Library Association accredited library and information science (LIS) program. The nature of the course content, learning outcomes, assignments and student reactions to and reflections of the course are discussed, along with the potential implications for both LIS programs and the open education community. Expanding the number of LIS programs that offer formal open education courses has the potential to contribute to the sustainability of the open education movement through the preparation of a future generation of advocates and leaders.
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Metadata Requirements for 3D DataThe “Metadata Requirements for 3D Data” chapter provides recommendations for metadatai based on the five-stage digital asset lifecycleii. The “Create” section covers some of the principal ways 3D models are created and discusses what metadata can be captured during the creation process. This section looks at not only what metadata could be captured during model creation, but also why capturing that information is important. The “Manage” section covers the metadata needs for organizing, verifying, and providing accessiii to 3D data. Recommendations include grouping files together as much as possible (by 3D object, by collection of objects, and by project) in order to apply organizational metadata that can be used for access and reuse purposes. The Distribution and Publication section discusses the need for a variety of distribution platforms that support the broadly varying metadata needs of different disciplines. Examples include the need for more granular metadata to support reproducibility and privacy in certain fields, as well as concerns around metadata requirements for accessibility for disability more broadly. Though the circulation and access norms for 3D data are still evolving, the Access and Reuse section posits key metadata anticipated to be useful in the discoveryiv and access of 3D data and models for research or reuse. The “Archive” section utilizes PREMIS as a basis for its recommendations. The rapid changes in the tools and platforms that support the creation and utilization of 3D data results in heavier emphasis on metadata that provides context to data that is often no longer supported by the latest technologies. Additional portions of PREMIS that may be of interest to readers are also specified. The chapter ends with an overall table of recommended metadata fields along with future work needed, naming annotation metadata and metadata for accessibility needs as top priorities for standardization and best practice recommendations.
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Barriers to Supporting Accessible VR in Academic LibrariesVirtual reality (VR) shows great promise for enhancing the learning experience of students in higher education and academic libraries are at the forefront of efforts to bring VR into the curriculum as an innovative learning tool. This paper reviews some of the growing applications and benefits of VR technologies for supporting pedagogy in academic libraries and outlines the challenges of making VR accessible for disabled students. It defines existing regulations and guidelines for designing accessible digital technologies and offers two case studies drawn from each of the authors’ own academic libraries, at Temple University and at the University of Oklahoma, in order to provide insight into the challenges and benefits of making VR more accessible for students. The paper argues that to continue to serve their mission of equitable access to information for the entire student population, academic libraries that implement VR programs need to balance innovation with inclusion by allocating sufficient staff time and technical resources and bringing accessibility thinking into VR projects from the beginning. To accomplish this, libraries will need the assistance of software developers and accessibility experts, and librarians will need to act as strong advocates for better support from commercial software and hardware vendors and to promote change in their institutions.
