The Fall 2021 edition of the Research Support Newsletter is here! In the report, you’ll find details on tools to assist with research and support available at every stage of the research and publication process. These resources are available to faculty, clinicians, students, and staff through a site-wide license paid for by the Thomas Jefferson University Libraries.
Ever wonder who makes sure that your InterLibrary Loan requests for books and articles get fulfilled so quickly? You can thank Rhonda in the Access Services department for that!
We sat down with Rhonda to learn a little bit about her past experience before joining the world of libraries, why she enjoys working at Gutman, and what she likes to do in her free time.
What is your title and can you tell us a little bit about your role at the Gutman Library? Hello Everyone! I am the Access Services Assistant here at Gutman Library. Basically, I am the person who gets the books for you through Interlibrary Loan and the person you usually see running around the library like a chicken with my head cut off! I am mostly at the circulation desk answering any questions or concerns you may have. Whether that’s letting you know how long we are open, clearing printer jams if needed, or doing whatever else is needed to be of service!
When did you start working here? I started in February 2020.
Wow, so you began right before the pandemic! What was that experience like, and are you happy now that students and staff are back on campus? It was a little scary since I was only in the building for about five weeks before everything was shut down. It was a bit daunting learning at home about my job but I feel like I gained a stronger mental fortitude because of it. I am so incredibly happy that students and staff are back on campus! I developed a rapport with so many people during quarantine that it was the best experience ever when I could start placing faces to these names I interacted with on a daily basis.
Can you tell us a little bit about your previous job before getting into the library field? What did you do and what made you interested in working in the library setting? I have my bachelors in Social Work and a Masters in Counseling Psychology. I previously worked in the Social Services field, mostly providing support to survivors of Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault, working with families in the Philadelphia Housing Authority, and counseling High schoolers. However, social services takes a heavy toll on your mental health and I felt myself burning out. I did not feel it was ethical to provide support to someone if I was not there to fully give myself to them. I decided to take a break and begin volunteering at my local library. I also enjoyed going to the library as a child and it was not until I was older that I realized you could have a career working in libraries. I decided to continue volunteering until I was hired there and eventually found myself at Thomas Jefferson University!
What’s your favorite part about working in the library and Thomas Jefferson University? Honestly, and this may sound cheesy, I really enjoy interacting with students, faculty, and staff on campus. It does my heart good when I am able to answer a question or help someone in any way, no matter how small it is. Seeing the gratitude and smiles on everyone’s face really keeps me going because I know that just that small act of kindness from me can really make a person’s day. Also, I love the books. Books are just so magical since they hold so much knowledge and history, especially our older bound journals downstairs. You can just see how much they’ve been through and seen so much over the years. I enjoy being able to interact with the older items since I am taken back to that time, and it’s the coolest thing to know that I am touching something that is decades, sometimes a century, older than I am. So, if you ever see me talking to them, simply pay me no mind. Ha!
When you’re not working at Gutman, how do you like to spend your time? I am a huge nerd, so I will either spend my time playing video games, watching anime or Star Trek, or reading comics. I also thoroughly enjoy to cook so when I have some down time, I like to try different recipes. When I am not doing any of those things, then I engage in my guilty pleasure of watching trashy reality TV.
Our Learning Resources team is growing! Get to know Abby, our new Learning Resources Technician, who can help with library access services questions and assist with software and tech issues. Keep reading to learn about what brings Abby to Jefferson and how she can help you.
Welcome to the team, Abby!
Tell us a little bit about yourself: I work for both Access Services and Learning Resources covering our two desks at Scott Memorial Library and Jeff Alumni Hall, respectively.
What are your responsibilities in the Learning Resources department? How can you assist students/staff? You can find me at the front desk of the library to check out resources or to help with network access issues. I’ve also been known to solve some particularly annoying Microsoft Office formatting problems.
How long have you been working at Thomas Jefferson University? As of writing this, I’m on my third week at Jefferson.
What do you like about it so far? I get to explore a lot of different locations on campus, tinkering with computers and peeking into classrooms. I like being able to move around on the job.
When not working in the Learning Resources department, how do you like to spend your free time? What’s something you’d like your Academic Commons teammates to know about you? If I’m not here, you will find me reading old fantasy books, taking embarrassing photos of my cat, or playing video games. Lately I’ve gotten into cocktail-making too, so please share if you know any interesting recipes!
Did you know that the average undergraduate student spends $1,240 on textbooks and learning materials per year? Or that 65% of students do NOT purchase a textbook because of the cost?
Open Educational Resources (OER) help solve the problems of inequity and inaccessibility in education. OER are open access educational materials, including textbooks, videos, etc., that instructors can use at no cost. OER makes courses more accessible to all students and offers faculty more flexibility and control over their course content.
Learn about how you can use OER in your curriculum at our upcoming workshop:
Leveraging Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Pedagogy to Support Students & Promote Educational Equity Tuesday, October 26, 12-1pm REGISTER NOW
At this workshop, led by Daniel Verbit, MLIS, and Larissa Gordon, MSLIS, M.ED, M.A., of the Thomas Jefferson University Libraries, you’ll learn how to search for OER and how the library can help you find the right materials for your courses.
Read the complete workshop description and register here and learn more about OER here.
As Jefferson faculty, researchers, and staff, we know that you are busy. That’s why we recently created four (and more to come!) video recordings so that you can enjoy the Academic Commons and Thomas Jefferson University Libraries workshops at a convenient time.
These four videos make up a workshop series called Information Literacy Starter Pack, which highlights databases and resources to assist in your clinical and teaching practice. Resources discussed in the video series include ClinicalKey, DynaMed, Draw it to Know it, Statista, JoVE, and more.
Click a workshop title below to watch the videos or scroll down to read workshop descriptions and learning objectives.
Clinical: Evidence Based Practice (ClinicalKey) The tools of evidence-based medicine are continually evolving. It is vital for those working with patients and in the healthcare field to keep up to date on how to interact with the current evidence-based tools. One of the newest resources to Jefferson Health is ClinicalKey, which provides an array of literature, tools, and resources.
After completing the session, participants will be able to:
Search and access information in ClinicalKey for Nursing
Understand what resources are available
Successfully create a personal account in the platform
Clinical: Evidence Based Practice (DynaMed) The tools of evidence-based medicine are continually evolving. It is vital for those working with patients and in the healthcare field to keep up to date on how to interact with the current evidence-based tools. One of the newest resources to Jefferson Health is DynaMed, a point of care resource. DynaMed is implemented within the EHR system EPIC at Jefferson Health and has a mobile app available.
After completing the session, participants will be able to:
Search and access information in DynaMed
Understand what resources are available
Successfully create a personal account in the platform
Sciences: New Databases to Enhance Your Curriculum (Draw it to Know it, Statista) Are you frustrated with curriculum planning or looking for new ways to get students engaged in learning? Want to know more about what resources are available to you at Jefferson? This portion of our series will take you on a detailed tour of the Draw It to Know It andStatista resources. Draw it to Know it: Medical & Biological Sciences is a multimodal database for interacting with biological science materials with illustrated and narrated tutorials. Statista is a resource with data on over 80,000 topics from over 18,000 sources onto a single professional platform that you can use for a variety of subjects.
After completing this session, participants will be able to:
Access and utilize Draw it to know it and Statista resources
Effectively implement these resources into their course instruction
We Have a Video for That Did you know that there are a variety of resources that can help enhance your curriculum? Found easily on our library database menu are all the resources needed to help your students learn in a variety of ways. Let’s take a deeper dive into how FA Davis and JoVE can make a difference in your courses.
FA Davisis a comprehensive resource with searchable texts and in-depth multimedia materials that covers a variety of topics from athletic injuries to rehabilitation techniques. JoVE is a scientific and peer-reviewed journal with publications in video format.
At the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Access and utilize FA Davis and JoVE resources
Effectively implement these resources into their course instruction
Check out our other workshops, including live sessions on professional writing, instructional design and educational technologies, and open educational resources.
LabArchives will be holding their popular Virtual User Group for researchers on Monday, October 25, 2 PM ET. Ask questions and hear from researchers at other institutions on how they use the electronic research notebook.
During LabArchives Research Edition Bootcamp, pick and choose from several topics offered multiple times to learn how you can organize your research, control access to your data, and get Notebook fit in one week!
Can’t make it? Regularly scheduled trainings and recordings of past sessions are available. Would you like to present at a future user group event? Contact LAsupport@jefferson.edu.
Every October, people worldwide celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month as a chance to show their support for those affected by breast cancer and bring awareness to breast cancer symptoms, care, and research.
To honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month, check out these five resources available via the University Libraries.
Another quarter has passed, which means it is time to look back at what we accomplished this summer. Check out the latest quarterly report to view the work of your colleagues.
Over the last three months the JDC had:
330 works posted
247,436 downloads
4,808 streams
197 countries visit the site
6,628 institutions access content
This quarterly report includes:
Articles
Data Sets
Dissertations
Grand Rounds and Lectures
JCPH Capstone Presentations
Jefferson Research Newsletter
Journals and Newsletters
Posters
What People are Saying About the Jefferson Digital Commons
New collection alert! Check out the new additions to the Gutman Library’s Textile Industry Historical Collection – the Point Papers. The Point Papers collection includes over 1,000 swatches of hand-drawn, hand-painted point papers, croquis, and design repeats from the 1930s-1970s. The materials were donated by the Northampton Textile Company, a textile manufacturer once located in Mount Holly, New Jersey.
“Point papers” refer to a type of design painted by textile designers on graph paper or hand-drawn grids and translated into woven fabric by textile manufacturers before the advent of computer assisted design. The items fall into the two main categories of “point papers” (on graph paper) and design croquis (painted sketches), and all have been executed by hand, often with penciled-in notes about weave patterns, pattern repeats, or other instructions. Learn more about point papers and Edna Leonhardt, one of the designers featured in the collection, on the Follow the Thread blog.
Browse the collection to view the point papers and, when available, learn information about a point paper’s creation date (estimates), designer’s name, and a brief description. We encourage you to check back often as we’ll continue to upload more point papers in the future.
Join Jefferson Humanities on Tuesday, October 12, for a special event with author Yaa Gyasi:
Jefferson Humanities Forum “Origins” presents Yaa Gyasi Tuesday, October 12, 7-8 p.m., via Zoom Register at yaa-gyasi.eventbrite.com
Yaa Gyasi is the author of Homegoing, one of the most celebrated debuts of 2016. A riveting, kaleidoscopic novel, Homegoing is a story of race, history, ancestry, love, and time that traces the descendants of two sisters torn apart in eighteenth-century Africa across three hundred years in Ghana and America. Her follow-up novel, Transcendent Kingdom, is a raw and intimate novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama that layers themes of loss, mental illness, and representation in STEM fields––challenging our notions of who or what a scientist is, and how they might look or think. Born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, Gyasi is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and lives in Berkeley, California. She is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.
Happy October! This month we added 25 eBooks to our electronic collection and the new additions span a range of topics, including climate change and the impact of the environment on social justice, midwifery and nursing care, public health administration, and more.
Browse the additions below or check out our complete eBook collection online here (Gutman/East Falls) and here (Scott/Center City).
It’s National Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month! The goal of the month-long celebration is to honor the respective cultures and histories of the Latinx/Hispanic community and appreciate the positive impact and influence that Hispanic Americans have on our country. It’s a time to recognize, educate, and celebrate Latinx culture. At the library, we’re highlighting resources to educate our community around Latinx authors and issues.
It’s National Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month! The goal of the month-long celebration is to honor the respective cultures and histories of the Latinx/Hispanic community and appreciate the positive impact and influence that Hispanic Americans have on our country. It’s a time to recognize, educate, and celebrate Latinx culture. At the library, we’re highlighting resources to educate our community around Latinx authors and issues.
“Society and democracy are ever threatened by the fall of fact. Rigorous analysis of facts, the hard boundary between truth and opinion, and fidelity to reputable sources of factual information are all in alarming decline.”
– Andrew Hoffman, The Engaged Scholar: Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World, 2021
How do we fix this and bring your scholarship to the masses?
Join Daniel Verbit of the Academic Commons and Gutman Library and Chris Pastore of the Center for Faculty Development and Nexus Learning as we continue our scholarly reading group. This fall, we’ll be reading and discussing The Engaged Scholar: Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World (Andrew Hoffman, Stanford University Press, 2021) on Thursdays from 1:30-2:15 p.m. via Zoom. Each week, starting October 7, we will discuss a chapter and how to be a more engaged scholar. The book club will run consecutively until Thursday, November 18.
Taking the lead from the book, we will discuss ways to bring your area of research outside the silos of your discipline. Other topics will focus on the limitations of the academic reward system and the scholarly uses of social media. We anticipate book club discussions will facilitate critical self-reflection and promote professional vitality.
All are welcome to join, but limited slots will be available to facilitate small group discussions. After capacity is reached, the sessions will be locked, so please register in advance by emailing Daniel.Verbit@jefferson.eduto save your spot. If you are committed to attending, we will have a limited number of copies of the book available to pick up in East Falls in October. Participants may also purchase a copy on their own from any bookseller.
