26 · Survey Results: Survey Questions and Responses
One of our main innovative activities is the development of a gematic software which allow to integrate reference base
for visulisation.
Open Access Author’s Fund for funding OA fees for journal article submission to open access journals.
Our Alternative Textbook Project. Using annual operating funds we created an allocation so that up to ten faculty could
receive a supporting grant from the University Libraries to create an alternate textbook or collection of learning objects
that would be free to students and would thus enable the faculty member(s) to stop requiring that students purchase a
commercial textbook.
Our example—Enhancing Learning &Student Success Initiative—has included a series of “component innovations”
that build on one another over time. These included (listed in chronology sequence):
Development of process to use “affinity string data” (institutional codes for type and level of user and program area)
to develop custom presentations of Libraries’ webpage through university portal with domain/level specific resources.
Assessment of student success (GPA, retention) based on affinity string data and any use of library collections,
programs, services.
Development of tailored coursepages (webpages) for every one of 5000+ courses, customizable by faculty.
Dedicated eLearning initiative team to work with faculty and to develop innovations to enable learning—including
collaboration with bookstore and Copyright Permissions Center to create “digital coursepacks,” seamlessly integrating
licensed, open, fair use, and royalty/permission digital course readings into course management system.
Our office delivery service delivers requested library materials to faculty and graduate student offices. The service was
instituted to respond to a long-standing desire and to make eventual closure of small branch libraries more acceptable.
Our Special Collections &Archives department applied for and received an internal Libraries Innovation grant to
implement a project to digitize select historical films, video, and audio related to the history of the campus. The goal of
the project was to show potential donors and funders about the potential for the online archive and to attract further
support.
ScholarSphere is a secure repository service enabling the Penn State community to share its research and scholarly work
with a worldwide audience. Faculty, staff, and students can use ScholarSphere to collect their work in one location and
create a durable and citable record of their papers, presentations, publications, data sets, or other scholarly creations.
Through this service, Penn State researchers can also comply with grant-funding-agency requirements for sharing and
managing research data.
Set up “Innovation Fund” that staff can draw on to fund innovation projects or “buy” release time.
The Analytic is a web-based tool for annotating videos that have been deposited in RUcore -Rutgers Institutional
Repository. The Analytic allows a user to capture various segments of many videos and bind them into an object
that focuses on a specific subject. This tool has been used very successfully applied in doing research to improve
mathematical instruction. See: http://videomosaic.org/.
The Libraries developed a discovery team process (based on IDEO Deep Dive) that explored learning environments in the
library, on campus, and around our community. Nearly 50 library employees as well as students, faculty, and campus
staff participated in this ethnographic-inspired process. Teams explored environments looking at different themes
(group work, technology, media production, etc.) They wrote a brief review of results. We hosted several internal and
external focus groups and validation sessions around this data. Many of the concepts were built into renovation plans.
This process was a mix of product development R&D with the need for discontinuous and disruptive innovation. We
needed to rethink our spaces and services, not just upgrade them.
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