In collaboration with Student Success Outreach, the UMass Amherst Libraries announce the launch of Trajectory: a Student Success Podcast.

Trajectory is a bi-weekly podcast that focuses on the voices and narratives of UMass Amherst students as they share their journeys defining and achieving their own college success.

The goal is giving students space to tell their stories while allowing others to listen, learn, and become inspired, while honoring that there are many paths to success.

Bi-weekly episodes of Trajectory are hosted in ScholarWorks, the digital repository for the research and scholarly output of the UMass Amherst community.

“Trajectory is a real labor of love for us,” says Hannah Bernhard, Student Success Program Manager for Communications. “We’re excited to keep showcasing student voices and stories to show our community how many different routes there are to success.”

Follow Student Success on Instagram at @successumass for announcements about new episodes and additional collaborative projects with the Libraries in support of successful student pathways for students at UMass Amherst.

October 2020

As I write this, we are five weeks into the fall semester. The nights in Amherst have taken a decidedly chilly turn, and Library staff continue to work diligently both on-site and remotely to support our students and faculty as I noted in my earlier message to you. 

Spending as much time in Zoom meetings as I do, I’ve noticed the seasonal shift most dramatically as I see colleagues switch from iced coffee to hot coffee to fuel their work. It’s a fitting change, as we begin planning for the extended winter semester that was recently announced. Our course reserves staff and our subject liaison librarians are collaborating with faculty to identify resources that can be accessed remotely by students to support their studies. And of course, the Libraries continue to assist students conducting their own research, with librarians being reachable through email, telephone, and chat to answer both quick questions and in-depth inquiries.

On the topic of research, our Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) is a vital component of the Libraries’ contribution to teaching and research, and we recently celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the acquisition of the papers of W. E. B. Du Bois. This collection is an extraordinary resource for students, faculty, and others who strive to understand Du Bois’ legacy of social justice and social change, and how his work continues to this day. In celebration, the W. E. B. Du Bois Center, housed in the Libraries, has put together a brief video featuring reflections from members of our campus community on the importance of this collection; I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch it, and to join in our campus celebration.

Simon Neame
Dean of Libraries
There is no better time than now to support the UMass Amherst Libraries.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression – W. E. B. Du Bois

FY21 Acquisitions Budget Reductions

The global pandemic has impacted budgets across campus, the Commonwealth, and the world. For the Libraries, the immediate need to reduce our budget comes on top of years of inflationary increases by scholarly publishers. Their practices have made it increasingly challenging for libraries and universities worldwide to provide needed resources for our faculty and students.

Budget Reductions

In order to meet our budget for FY21, the Libraries must reduce the amount we spend on scholarly resources by $445,000. Our annual budget for strategic investments—one-time purchases of e-book collections, databases, and special collections materials—has also been suspended for at least this academic year. 

Despite these cost-saving measures, the Libraries remain committed to purchasing information resources most needed by faculty and students within our budgetary constraints, and we value your input as we consider these difficult decisions. 

For those resources that we must discontinue, we will make every attempt to provide timely access to alternative resources to support the teaching and research mission of the campus. We are prepared to offer support for a number of options, including resource sharing (e.g., interlibrary loan), document delivery services, Open Access platforms, and more.

Scholarly Publishing Environment

We as an institution are operating in an unsustainable scholarly publishing environment. Despite our longstanding commitment to Open Access, scholarly communication systems continue to prioritize consolidated publisher profit, prestige and control over scholarly works and the platforms that deliver and preserve them. Many researchers, funders, libraries and other allies are developing financial models and infrastructure systems that support a wide variety of peer-reviewed, scholar-controlled works and equitable access to them. 

For example, the Big Deal, initially an incentive for libraries to invest in a broad range of scholarly journals, in practice encumbers over 80% of academic libraries’ acquisition budgets. Costs for these packages have risen by 3-9% annually for years, and are expected to increase again in 2021. (See Library Journal's Periodicals Price Survey 2020.) Costs of electronic books are 3 to 4 times that of print, with more access restrictions.

Even with modest cost-of-inflation increases to acquisition budgets, libraries cannot both maintain these agreements and support more diverse scholarship ecosystems. Now with financial hardship and budget reductions induced by the pandemic, the Libraries are hamstrung in our ability to invest intentionally in alternatives to limited, for-profit publisher systems. 

UMass Amherst is not alone in its struggle with these inequities. The SPARC Big Deal Cancellation Tracking project documents libraries’ efforts across the globe to extricate themselves from expensive and restrictive licensing agreements. We encourage you to explore how others have pushed back, and assure you that as we move through this current budget reduction, we are also looking ahead to implementing principle-based practices that will help us to reclaim control over our investments while we partner with you to build the infrastructures that support the works you produce, as well as improve access to and use of a wide variety of scholarship. 

Cancellations

Department liaison librarians carefully and thoughtfully reviewed lists of materials for possible cancellation using different criteria for each format type:

• Databases: Content overlap with other resources, low usage, cost per use
• E-journals: Cost per use (# of articles requested divided by the cost of the journal). We still have access to these titles via aggregator databases and Google Scholar. E-journals with a cost per use higher than what we would pay to receive the articles via interlibrary loan are the titles proposed for cancellation.
• Print Journals and Serials: Electronic availability in our databases, low usage. The majority of these items have had no usage since January 2019 and are available electronically through our databases or available open access.

We're asking your assistance to achieve this necessary reduction. Please review the spreadsheet of proposed cancellations and send us your feedback no later than Oct. 3 at libraries-reduction-feedback@library.umass.edu. 

Cancellations List

Faculty Town Hall Presentation

We look forward to working with you.

Sally Krash
Associate Dean for Content and Discovery
UMass Amherst Libraries
krash@umass.edu

Interlibrary Loan has released updated request pages on Tuesday, September 8th. Our new pages are much more user friendly (including being mobile responsive, meeting ADA accessibility standards, and being easier to navigate). 

Additionally, Interlibrary Loan has temporarily expanded Library Express services, and will mail items from UMass Amherst AND other libraries to off campus patrons anywhere in the United States. Our new request pages allow you to choose whether you want loans held for contactless pickup at your preferred location (the W. E. B. Du Bois Library or Science and Engineering Library at the Amherst campus, or the Wadsworth Library at the Mount Ida campus) or to have your interlibrary loan materials mailed to your home address. These services are available to current UMass Amherst students and current and retired UMass Amherst faculty and staff.

To make sure we know your preference, when you first log in to your Interlibrary Loan account after September 8^th, you will be prompted to confirm your loan delivery preference and mailing address. You can change this information in your account at any time.

Interlibrary Loan (also abbreviated ILL) is a free service that allows patrons of the UMass Amherst Libraries to borrow materials and to receive copies of documents from libraries beyond the Five Colleges. This service is available to current UMass Amherst students and current and retired UMass Amherst faculty and staff.

Library Express is a service where Interlibrary Loan mails regularly circulating books from the University Libraries to the home address of current students and current or retired faculty and staff. There is no charge for this service.

The opening of the academic year brings a mix of anticipation and anxiety for parents and students. Ordinarily, anticipation far outweighs anxiety, with students eager to return to campus and resume studies. This year has been anything from ordinary, and the effects of the pandemic on all aspects of life, work, and education have been inescapable. 

The UMass Amherst Libraries have been able to quickly shift focus to supporting students and faculty at a distance because we’ve long been leaders in the adoption and promotion of digital resources for teaching, learning, and research. Not only are the Libraries the most visited place on campus, library.umass.edu is also the most visited UMass website. In person and online, Library staff pair deep knowledge of academic subject areas with a keen awareness of forward-thinking library initiatives, including digital scholarship and publishing, the creation of digital media, including 3D printed materials, and open educational resources. A growing number of faculty are working with the library to integrate open education content as an alternative to expensive textbooks, lowering the amount a student must spend on materials.

The Libraries can help your student with what they need to be successful, regardless of their physical location.
For example, we provide:

• Access to the Libraries’ extensive collection of online resources, including journals, e-books and streaming media
• Online course reserves
• Online consultations and contactless pick-up of 3D printed objects from the Digital Media Lab
• Online access to librarians for student research questions via our chat services, as well as through email
• Contactless pick-up for library materials (for students located in the Amherst area)

In addition, librarians are also teaching in online classes and helping students identify materials for their classes, as well as introducing students to the vast collection of digitized materials through our Special Collections and University Archives. 

I hope this information helps alleviate some of the worries you and your family may feel about the challenges you are facing this semester, and demonstrates our commitment to you, even from a distance. We look forward to the day when we’ll once again see the Libraries filled with students. Until then, please be safe and well, and know that the Libraries are available to help.

Sincerely,

Simon Neame
Dean of Libraries

There is no better time than now to support the UMass Amherst Libraries.  

During the first 48-hour Sciathon hosted by the Council for the Nobel Laureate Meetings, Steve Acquah, the UMass Amherst Libraries Digital Media Lab Coordinator and Associate Research Professor of Chemistry, worked as part of a team (Group Clifton) to develop a science news verification tool, authentiSci (authentisci.com). The Clifton group became finalists at the end of June and were recently awarded second place in the category of ‘Lindau Guidelines’ and a shared prize of 1,000 Euros. AuthentiSci can be accessed through the website authentisci.com and will primarily be used through a Google Chrome Extension, which is now available at the Chrome Web Store. The extension is one of the first of its kind that gives scientists the ability to score science news stories, providing a measure of confidence for the reader.

The section of the Lindau Guidelines had the highest amount of competition, with 23 out of the 48 groups working on Lindau Guideline based projects. The other project sections focused on the topics Communicating Climate Change and Capitalism After Corona.

The extension was produced in response to the Lindau Guidelines introduced by Elizabeth Blackburn during the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting held in Lindau, Germany, in June 2018. To use the extension, scientists would authenticate through their ORCID account, insert a URL from a news story, and follow the prompts to evaluate the story on authentisci.com. With the extension now available, people from around the world will be able to see verified news stories.

Acquah produced a video during the 48-hour event highlighting the work of the team.

 “I thank the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and the judges for the opportunity to present our work,” says Acquah. “Our team will continue to develop authentiSci and support the communication of science news.”

Fifteen jurors decided on the finalists and winning project groups that presented their work during the Online Science Days to an audience of Nobel Laureates, Lindau Alumni, young scientists, young economists, and guests. The jury was comprised of scientific chairpersons of the Council, scientists, journalists, and friends of Lindau including:

Wolfgang Lubitz - Scientific Chairperson Chemistry, Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Professor Emeritus, MPI CEC, Germany

Klaus Schmidt, Scientific Chairperson Economic Sciences, Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Professor, LMU Munich, Germany

Hans Bachor, Secretary for Education & Public Awareness, Australian Academy of Science

Jürgen Kluge, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Foundation Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings

Andrew B Holmes, Melbourne Laureate Professor Emeritus, University of Melbourne, Australia

Himla Soodyall, Chief Executive Officer, Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

Andrew B Holmes, Melbourne Laureate Professor Emeritus, University of Melbourne, Australia

Adeline Lim, Deputy Head, National Research Foundation, Singapore

The UMass Amherst Libraries announce the publication of a chapter, "Sharing the End of the World: Students’ Perceptions of Their Self-Efficacy in the Creation of Open Access Digital Learning Objects," co-authored by Lisa Di Valentino, Law and Public Policy Librarian, Sarah Hutton, Head of Student Success & Engagement, and Paul Musgrave, Assistant Professor of Political Science, as a part of the Rebus Community's Open Pedagogy Approaches, released at the end of June 2020.

The chapter presents their study on the impact of student-authored, open, creative scholarship on student confidence in understanding content and conceptualization of ideas as part of the final examination for Musgrave’s course, “The Politics of the End of the World.” The students were required to research, record, and release podcasts that explored major changes in Massachusetts history.

For this study, Di Valentino, Hutton, and Erin Jerome, Open Access and Institutional Repository Librarian, have been working closely with Musgrave to build out a course content site for his students' podcasts, hosted on ScholarWorks, the digital repository for the research and scholarly output of the UMass Amherst community.

Research results from this course were encouraging; basing questions on Bandura's model of self-efficacy and previous studies on open content created in courses using open educational resources (OER), the study asked students about their perception regarding how well they had learned the content, how confident they were sharing that content with a global audience, and how an open pedagogical model changed their approach to research and project management. Student feedback included that the course model made them seek out high-quality and accurate details for their podcasts, knowing that others could listen to them and they didn’t want to mislead anyone. Students said they conducted in-depth research in historiography, and also applied modern social science theory, allowing them to see the broader application of content. The findings have implications for more engaging course designs for undergraduate student learners.

The intent of this open pedagogical model is to teach students about Creative Commons licensing, open scholarship, and how they themselves become scholars over the course of producing, and openly publishing, these informative podcasts as a part of a renewable assignment model. By hosting these podcasts openly, future iterations of the course can build on previous research.

“We intend to work with students to help them develop and upload content, learning how repositories and open scholarship work,” says Hutton. “Learning about Creative Commons licenses, copyright, and fair use in their undergraduate career, these students will be better prepared to engage in global communications and scholarship in their professional careers beyond UMass Amherst.”

Krishna Poudel from the Department of Health Promotion and Policy received a Faculty Research Grant to help provide a video-based smoking cessation intervention for people living with HIV. Collaborating on the grant are Dr. Steve Acquah, Research Professor of Chemistry and Digital Media Lab Coordinator at the UMass Amherst Libraries, Dr. Damon Vidrine at the Florida Moffitt Cancer Center, and K. C. Prawchan at SPARSHA in Nepal.

As part of the feasibility testing for the faculty research grant, the team will evaluate the response to the videos from people living with HIV that attend an HIV clinic ‘SPARSHA Nepal’ in Kathmandu. The clinic already provides various services to including HIV testing and counseling, in-house crisis management, and community and home-based care. Previous work by the Principal Investigators in 2019 established the feasibility of cellphones as an effective delivery mechanism for videos in Nepal.

The UMass Amherst Libraries Digital Media Lab (DML) will develop a system to allow the participants to read messages and respond to questions. The participants will also receive text messages, including a link to video clips. During the pre-quit period, the participants will receive standardized motivational messages focusing on preparing them to quit smoking, highlighting the benefits of quitting. After the set quit date, the group will be asked if they have quit smoking. Those who quit smoking will receive a link to watch a subsequent video clip, while those who have not yet quit smoking will receive additional motivational messages for setting a new quit date.

“This project is the first step in creating better outcomes for smokers living with HIV,” Acquah says. “The media production team at the Digital Media Lab, including Yuntian Hu and Adam Quirós, are also supporting the development of the videos and the App. The DML is positioned to provide direct collaborative assistance on research projects, from the development of prototypes, audio/video production, and the drafting of proposals that address the research and broader impacts of federally funded grants.”

The Digital Media Lab has increasingly been involved in research projects supporting faculty and students, aligning with the strategic goals of the Libraries and UMass Amherst as well as reflecting the changing nature of the services it provides.

The UMass Amherst Libraries recently announced the recipients of their 2020 Open Education Initiative (OEI) grants. Six UMass Amherst instructors received funding to adopt, adapt, or create open educational resources (OER). OER are teaching materials released with an open license which allows for their free revision and redistribution.

The Open Education Initiative at UMass Amherst aims to:

• Encourage the development of alternatives to high-cost textbooks by supporting the adoption, adaptation, or creation of OER
• Provide support to faculty to implement these approaches
• Lower the cost of college for students in order to contribute to their retention, progression, and graduation
• Encourage faculty to engage in new pedagogical models for classroom instruction

Thanks to generous funding from the UMass Amherst Libraries and Provost’s office, this year’s winners represent a broad range of disciplines across campus, including:

• Stacy Guifre and Melina Anne Masterson who plan to create an openly-licensed Italian textbook for Italian 110, 120, and 126
• Matthew Sherwood, an Accounting instructor who is adapting software packages and instructional materials to integrate with original instructional videos, assignments, case studies, and quizzes into one centralized resource
• Wayne Xu and Martha Fuentes-Bautista from Communication who plan to update and integrate existing mini-lecture podcasts and student blog entries on key class topics into "interactive lecture notes”

View the full list of winners here.

“We are thrilled to receive these funds so that we will be able to create two updated, more diverse Italian OER textbooks that will not only make Italian a more inclusive course offering for UMass Amherst students, but can be shared with other Italian programs in the US and abroad,” says Melina Masterson.

“We are seeing more and more faculty wanting to create customizable teaching tools that are not only free for students, but can also improve how students learn,” says Jeremy Smith, the Libraries’ Open Education and Research Services Librarian. “By utilizing or creating openly licensed teaching materials, instructors are removing a barrier to student success that high-cost textbooks often create. OER are not appropriate for every class, but as the number of newly-created OER has drastically increased over the past three years in a wide range of topics, it has become easier to find and customize material for college courses.”

Now in its eleventh cycle, the Open Education Initiative has generated a total savings of more than $1.8 million for students in UMass Amherst classes that utilize OER or existing Library materials. The Libraries partner with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), Instructional Design, Engagement and Support (IDEAS) group, and Provost's Office to support these efforts.