Providing information on a service offered by the library: details or interesting insights, modifications to previous service, new tool or utitlity…and informing how it affects the user.
*Please note: Fine amnesty for library items ended on January 31, 2019. Current Library fine and fee policies are now in effect.*
Healey Library is sponsoring a fine amnesty program until further notice. What does this mean for students?
All fines on regular items from Healey Library’s circulating collections (books and DVDs) will be forgiven upon the return of the item(s) to the library!
The removal of fines will also result in the removal of any holds from a student’s WISER account.
Please note the EXCEPTIONS to this amnesty:
Late fines on course reserve items, item recalls, or laptop fines The Library’s system of Course Reserves and recalls, as well as its circulating laptop collection, is set up to provide equitable access of Library materials and resources to all of our patrons. Late returns create difficulties for other students, faculty, or staff and so are not eligible for amnesty. Fines and holds on accounts will continue to be applied to late course reserve items, recalls, or laptops.
Late fines and fees on Interlibrary loan (ILL) items These fines and fees cannot be waived.
In Spring 2016, Healey Library and the English department collaborated to design an assessment study focusing on students enrolled in ENGL 102. Librarians and faculty worked together to develop learning outcomes, instructional materials, and data collection instruments (pre-test, post-test, rubric). Our learning outcomes were that after research instruction, students would be able to:
explain the difference between Googling and academic research
apply subject-appropriate vocabulary to brainstorm keywords and find books and articles
revise their research questions and search strategies according to what they discover and synthesize across multiple sources of information
In January, English department chair Cheryl Nixon described our study in a meeting with Composition faculty. Ultimately, we had 10 participating faculty and 24 ENGL 102 sections:
320 students attended research instruction delivered by their professor and/or librarians
281 pre-tests were collected
222 booklets were collected from students that attended research instruction sessions
250 post-tests were collected
There are no results to report yet, as we are just beginning to analyze the data we gathered. However, I can share some lessons learned:
Put together a large team with diverse strengths, and delegate accordingly.
Collaborating is time- and labor-intensive, but an extremely fruitful endeavor. Getting buy-in from participating ENGL 102 professors was probably made easier because we worked so closely together. In fact, we heard from more than one professor that they were impressed with how much reflection was built into the lesson!
While your study may change drastically over time, it still helps to have a research design document that is updated as needed.
Don’t try to assess too many learning outcomes at once! We only had 3, which still resulted in a lesson plan that packed too many things into too little time and a booklet that the majority of students had difficulty completing in class.
If you show students how to email articles to themselves, they will not necessarily want to write down the articles’ bibliographic information.
Don’t be afraid to deviate from the original plan to address more immediate needs, if that’s what’s needed.
Recruit more participants than you think you’ll need; also, try to recruit participants even if they didn’t initially indicate interest in the study – at worst, you’ll hear “no.”
Just remind yourself if you feel like you’re lost, that you’re not making a mess of things and to keep going, and that your hard work and frustration will pay off! Remember, you put together a good team with diverse strengths. Lean on your team and trust that you’ll learn something useful that you can use to make improvements to your program and/or your teaching.
Word cloud of student responses collected in the post-test when asked “In the database(s) you searched, what features did you find the most helpful/useful?”
UMass Boston’s archival storage space. The University holds more than 200 archival collections across a variety of research areas.
Developing a successful research strategy involves identifying and locating relevant resources including both secondary and primary source materials. It may turn out that UMass Boston’s Archives hold archival collections that are of direct use to you in your research. UMass Boston’s collections encompass a variety of subject disciplines. We preserve archival materials related to the University’s history as well as records and documents that reflect the university’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social action, alternative movements, community organizations and local history related to our neighboring communities including the Boston Harbor Islands. A couple of examples:
A single MCOF Record. Source: University Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston.
UMass Boston holds than 28,000 mortuary records from the Mass. Catholic Association of Foresters, a fraternal organization begun in Boston in 1879 by Irish immigrants. These records include extensive data about the health, social networks, occupations and immigration patterns of thousands of people over many decades. We also hold the records of the international organization “Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research”, the papers of Judge David Mazzone, who presided over the cleanup of Boston Harbor, the chambers papers of W. Arthur Garrity, who presided over the desegregation of Boston Public Schools, records of the League of American Wheelmen and many, many more organizations and individuals.
Columbia Point before the construction of the UMass Boston campus; photo taken in 1968. The building in the center is the Calf Pasture Pumping Station. Source: University Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston.Bicycling postcard, “You Can Count On US, Solider ! We’ll Keep ‘Em Rolling!”, circa 1920-1950. Source: Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston.
Of course, no single archival institution can hold everything. Around the world, different institutions have committed to taking responsibility for storing and preserving different chunks of the historic record, usually based on that institution’s own mission and goals. There are many other archival institutions in the area and around the world, and Healey Library’s Archives staff can help you to find out what they hold and how to access them. There are also several fine, online directories of archival holdings – “ArchiveGrid” from OCLC is a good one. Another is WorldCat, where you may limit search results to “Archival Material” using the faceting options in the left-hand column.
Duty roster card for a patrolman involved in the 1919 Police Strike in Boston. Source: Boston Police Department Archives; digital copies of the full set held at University Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston.
So if your research can make use of archival materials in any format, please do contact us. The staff here in the University Archives and Special Collections is enthusiastically committed to assisting you in reaching your academic and research goals. The best way to take advantage of the Archives department’s services is simply to email library.archives@umb.edu and tell us what you need or are hoping to accomplish. And you are welcome to stop by any weekday between 10 am and 4 pm to say hello and see our Reading Room and speak to an archivist. The University Archives and Special Collections are located on the 5th Floor of the Healey Library.
I would like to introduce myself as the liaison for the Art and Performing Arts Departments. As a liaison and resource for the departments, I facilitate access to the growing list of library resources, and communicate the various library services for faculty and students and much more.
I work in the University Archives and Special Collections within the Healey Library and have a background in fine arts and specialize in painting. From this perspective, I’d like to share some of the resources the library has that faculty and students in Art, Music and Performing Arts can use for their classes and art making.
There are a lot of resources available to faculty and students and can be overwhelming and often hidden in plain sight. To help navigate this landscape, the library has available a list of research guides by subject. Several research guides exist for Art, Music, and Theatre Arts. Each contains links to images, faculty publications, videos and film, music, primary sources, books, articles and content for student assignments or faculty preparation for class assignments. Clicking on “Help” in the left column provides a list of options such as citation assistance, email, chat or call a librarian for further assistance.
The Art Research Guide contain links for images, such as ARTstor, Art Full Text and Oxford Art Online to name a few, faculty publications, and videos and film through VAST: Academic Video Online.
More videos are available by clicking “Find Videos”. I particularly like Kanopy Streaming Video and Films on Demand for its large selection of films in a variety of subjects.
The Music Research Guide found under Arts & Music also offers the same access to films alongside several great databases such as Naxos Music Library and RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967 to Present only)
which includes a wide range of resources from articles to concert review and recording notes.
The Cambridge Companions Online provides a rich resource of literature, essays, and the classics.
These guides can help you get started. If you need research assistance schedule an appointment with a Reference Librarian. If you are faculty and interested in resources and databases that aren’t available, contact liaison Meghan.bailey@umb.edu, there is a chance these resources are available elsewhere or the library may consider a trial. If you would like to schedule a librarian to conduct an instruction session for your class contact us. Visit our web page for more detailed information about our instruction services.
Did you know that in October 2012, Faculty Council at UMass Boston approved a campus-wide open access policy? The policy, the full text of which is available here, demonstrates the faculty’s and university’s commitment to expanding the reach of scholarship and research out of UMass Boston.
The open access policy requires faculty members to provide an electronic copy of the author’s final version of an article (the pre-published, non-branded version), unless an exemption is requested, to a ScholarWorks administrator in the Healey Library by the date of publication. Copies of articles should be submitted to library.uasc@umb.edu.
To assist faculty members with informing publishers about UMass Boston’s open access policy, we’ve put together a range of materials outlining these policies and have drafted templates for amending contracts with publishers. These materials are available on the For Authors page on ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. To view the policy and to learn more about negotiating agreements with publishers, visit scholarworks.umb.edu/for_authors.html.
ScholarWorks at UMass Boston is a hosted, open access, institutional repository that makes faculty publications openly searchable and accessible, raising your college’s visibility and reach throughout the world. ScholarWorks can include preprints, author’s accepted manuscripts (post-prints), and final copies of journal articles, as well as working papers, dissertations and theses, conference proceedings, posters, presentations, video and audio, data sets (with some limitations), and a variety of formats and content types. A service of the Joseph P. Healey Library, content on ScholarWorks is indexed and accessible via search engines like Google. Learn more and explore the existing collection of materials at scholarworks.umb.edu.
To arrange an appointment with me to discuss ScholarWorks and open access, email andrew.elder@umb.edu or call 617-287-5944. I’m happy to meet one-on-one or with small groups, or even to attend department meetings.
