Scholarly Work - Library
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/320
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Item Data-Driven Improvement to Institutional Repository Discoverability and Use(Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2018-09) Arlitsch, Kenning; Kahanda, Indika; OBrien, Patrick; Shanks, Justin D.; Wheeler, JonathanThe Montana State University (MSU) Library, in partnership with the MSU School of Computing, the University of New Mexico Library and DuraSpace, seeks a $49,998 Planning Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services through its National Leadership Grant program under its National Digital Platform project category to develop a sustainability plan for the Repositories Analytics & Metrics Portal that will keep its dataset open and available to all researchers. The proposal also includes developing a preliminary institutional repositories (IR) reporting model; a search engine optimization (SEO) audit and remediation plan for IR; and exploring whether machine learning can improve the quality of IR content metadata.The project team expects work conducted in this planning grant to make the case for advanced research projects that will be high-impact and worthy of funding.Item A National Forum on Web Privacy and Web Analytics: Action Handbook(Montana State University, May 2019) Young, Scott W. H.; Clark, Jason A.; Mannheimer, Sara; Hinchliffe, Lisa JanickeThis is a practice-oriented action handbook that provides background, resources, and good practices to guide libraries in ethically implementing web analytics with a view towards privacy.This guide contains two main parts, followed by a references section. In Part 1, we detail technical strategies for implementing privacy-aware web analytics. In Part 2, we focus on communication strategies for building support for privacy-aware analytics practices.Item A Roadmap for Achieving Privacy in the Age of Analytics: A White Paper from A National Forum on Web Privacy and Web Analytics(Montana State University, May 2019) Young, Scott W. H.; Mannheimer, Sara; Clark, Jason A.; Hinchliffe, Lisa JanickeA National Forum on Web Privacy and Web Analytics is an IMLS-funded, community-fueled effort to shape a better analytics practice that protects our users’ privacy from unwanted third-party tracking and targeting. The main Forum event was held September 2018 in Bozeman, Montana, where 40 librarians, technologists, and privacy researchers collaborated in producing a practical roadmap for enhancing our analytics practice in support of privacy. Forum participants co-created eight Pathways to Action for enhancing web privacy. Forum activities also informed the development of an Action Handbook that contains practical skills and strategies for implementing privacy-oriented, ethical web analytics in libraries. This white paper provides an overview of the project, with a summary of the Pathways to Action and the Action Handbook. We present these resources to the wider community to remix, reuse, and apply towards action.Item Infographic Assignment for the Health Sciences(2017) Shanks, Justin D.; Izumi, Betty; Sun, Christina; Martin, Allea; Byker Shanks, CarmenThe infographic assignment was developed and pilot tested in summer 2016 and revised and retested in fall 2016. Students create an infographic focused on a health issue. The assignment objectives are to (1) understand the purposes of and potential uses for infographics, (2) cultivate creative visual communication skills, and (3) disseminate information about a complex health topic to diverse audiences. The assignment is divided into four steps: (1) brainstorming, (2) developing, (3) designing, and (4) finalizing. In the brainstorming step, students familiarize themselves with the infographic genre, selected a topic, used research skills to identify professional sources of information about their topic, and began drawing their infographic. In the developing step, students use software to develop their infographic. In the designing step, students select fonts and colors for their infographic. As part of the finalizing step, students market test their infographic with friends, family, peers, and faculty.Item Establishing Managment under the Taylor Grazing Act(1981-06) Carpenter, F.R.Editor's Note: In this historical issue of Rangelands we thought it appropriate to publish verbatim and in its entirety a talk the author gave in 1962 telling of his early work with the U.S. Grazing Service. It is in Ferry 'sown words and style. Those who knew him will recognize that it sounds just like him.Item Montana State University Research Data Census Instrument, Version 2(Montana State University ScholarWorks, 2016-04) Clark, Jason A.; Llovet, Pol; Mannheimer, Sara; Sheehan, JerryMontana State University developed the Research Data Census (RDC) to engage our local research community in an interactive dialogue about their data. The research team was particularly interested in learning more about the following issues at Montana State: the size of research data; data storage needs; data sharing and publication behaviors; and interest in existing services that assist with the curation. Version 1 of the RDC (http://doi.org/10.15788/m2h59m) was distributed in January 2015. Version 2 was distributed in spring 2016.Item Montana State University (MSU) Library Social Media Survey(2015-12) Young, Scott W. H.; Rossmann, Doralyn; Shanks, Justin D.This survey is designed to produce demographic and usage data for a community of social media users.Item Montana State University Research Data Census Instrument, Version 1(2015-01) Arlitsch, Kenning; Clark, Jason A.; Hager, Ben; Heetderks, Thomas; Llovet, Pol; Mannheimer, Sara; Mazurie, Aurélien J.; Sheehan, Jerry; Sterman, Leila B.Montana State University developed the Research Data Census (RDC) to engage our local research community in an interactive dialogue about their data. The research team was particularly interested in learning more about the following issues at Montana State: the size of research data; the role the local and wide area network play in accessing and sharing resources; data sharing behaviors; interest in existing services that assist with the curation, storage, and publication of scientific data discoveries.Item Measuring Up: Assessing Accuracy of Reported Use and Impact of Digital Repositories(2014-02) Arlitsch, Kenning; OBrien, Patrick; Kyrillidou, Martha; Clark, Jason A.; Young, Scott W. H.; Mixter, Jeff; Chao, Zoe; Freels-Stendel, Brian; Stewart, CameronWe propose a research and outreach partnership that will address two issues related to more accurate assessment of digital collections and institutional repositories (IR). 1. Improve the accuracy and privacy of web analytics reporting on digital library use 2. Recommend an assessment framework and web metrics that will help evaluate digital library performance to eventually enable impact studies of IR on author citation rates and university rankings. Libraries routinely collect and report website and digital collection use statistics as part of their assessment and evaluation efforts. The numbers they collect are reported to the libraries’ own institutions, professional organizations, and/or funding agencies. Initial research by the proposed research team suggests the statistics in these reports can be grossly inaccurate, leading to a variance in numbers across the profession that makes it difficult to draw conclusions, build business cases, or engender trust. The inaccuracy runs in both directions, with under reporting numbers as much a problem as over reporting. The team is also concerned with the privacy issues inherent in the use of web analytics software and will recommend best practices to assure that user privacy is protected as much as possible while libraries gather data about use of digital repositories. Institutional Repositories have been in development for well over a decade, and many have accumulated significant mass. The business case for institutional repositories (IR) is built in part on the number of downloads of publications sustained by any individual IR. Yet, preliminary evidence demonstrates that PDF and other non-HTML file downloads in IR are often not counted because search engines like Google Scholar bypass the web analytics code that is supposed to record the download transaction. It has been theorized that Open Access IR can help increase author citation rates, which in turn may affect university rankings. However, no comprehensive studies currently exist to prove or disprove this theory. This may be due to the fact that such a study could take years to produce results due to the publication citation lifecycle and because few libraries have an assessment model in place that will help them to gather data over the long term. We plan to recommend an assessment framework that will help libraries collect data and understand root causes of unexplained errors in their web metrics. The recommendations will provide a foundation for reporting metrics relevant to outcomes based analysis and performance evaluation of digital collections and IR.Item Final Performance Report Narrative: Getting Found(2014-11) Arlitsch, Kenning; OBrien, Patrick; Godby, Jean; Mixter, Jeff; Clark, Jason A.; Young, Scott W. H.; Smith, Devon; Rossmann, Doralyn; Sterman, Leila B.; Tate, Angela; Hansen, Mary AnneThe research we proposed to IMLS in 2011 was prompted by a realization that the digital library at the University of Utah was suffering from low visitation and use. We knew that we had a problem with low visibility on the Web because search engines such as Google were not harvesting and indexing our digitized objects, but we had only a limited understanding of the reasons. We had also done enough quantitative surveys of other digital libraries to know that many libraries were suffering from this problem. IMLS funding helped us understand the reasons why library digital repositories weren’t being harvested and indexed. Thanks to IMLS funding of considerable research and application of better practices we were able to dramatically improve the indexing ratios of Utah’s digital objects in Google, and consequently the numbers of visitors to the digital collections increased. In presentations and publications we shared the practices that led to our accomplishments at Utah. The first year of the grant focused on what the research team has come to call “traditional search engine optimization,” and most of this work was carried out at the University of Utah. The final two years of the grant were conducted at Montana State University after the PI was appointed as dean of the library there. These latter two years moved more toward “Semantic Web optimization,” which includes areas of research in semantic identity, data modeling, analytics and social media optimization