LRC Update: News Blog for the James A. Zimble Learning Resource Center

The Chronicle of Higher education has produced a series of articles around the topic of AI in higher education learning and teaching. This is the latest article in the series and highlights how different professors are embracing (or not) using AI in their classes and the dilemmas they are facing. To access the full article, use this link. 

The Learning Resource Center (LRC) is excited to introduce our first Academic Writing Specialist, Dr. Elizabeth Steinbach, Ph.D, who will begin work in early February. Dr. Steinbach will provide academic and scientific writing instruction and guidance to students with supplemental support for USU faculty and staff as resources permit. She will be available both on-site, in the LRC, and online each week.

During her first month, Dr. Steinbach will meet with faculty, staff, and students across the University to become oriented with USU’s current resources and requirements. In early March, a limited number of weekly writing consultation appointments will be available through the LRC homepage (a website for an Academic Writing Center will be launched in late February).  Additional services, including the development of brownbag classes and modules to support USU faculty and curriculum, will be developed in upcoming months and deployed over the course of this one-year pilot program.

Dr. Steinbach has 17 years of experience in teaching, and is coming to USU from Austin Community College where she has served as an adjunct ESOL professor. Dr. Steinbach has experience creating, designing, and teaching courses both online and in-person; serving as a writing tutor and assessment specialist; and acting as a student advisor and mentor. Previously, Dr. Steinbach has worked for the University of Texas at Austin and for the U.S. State Department and Peace Corps as a teacher trainer and English language specialist in Armenia and South Africa.

If you have questions about the Academic Writing Specialist position, or would like to meet with Dr. Steinbach during her orientation period, please contact the LRC director, Alison Rollins at alison.rollins@usuhs.edu.

Preparing for the USMLE Step 1 or 2? Studying for a shelf exam (e.g. Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, OBGYN, Psychiatry, Surgery, Pediatrics, Neurology, or Family Medicine)?

Board Vitals is a question bank service available through the LRC Website. To get started, search for "Board Vitals" in the LRC's PowerSearch search box. A link will take you to the launch page for Board Vitals.

Board Vitals Launch Page

You will need to register to use Board Vitals, and then select which exams you are studying for.

In addition to providing a multiple choice list of answers, Board Vitals will provide an explanation for each question.

You'll be able to mark-up questions by highlighting text, striking out incorrect answers, and flagging records for follow-up.

The LRC has retired our Bridge Article Request form after nearly 14 months of service and 4,664 requests. The Bridge Article request form was, for a while, the LRC's sole mechanism of connecting off-campus patrons to full-text, electronic access. Patrons could complete the form, providing the citation and their best contact information, and LRC staff on-site would retrieve and deliver the article, placing an ILL request when a requested article was not owned. At its peak, LRC staff will fill 100-300 article requests per week.

The form was critical in helping patrons connect to full-text electronic content over the past year, due to: 

1. the old ER LRC website becoming unavailable off-campus in December 2019;
2. the new LRC website not coming online until April 2020; and
3. the pandemic forcing most patrons to work remotely.

While the Bridge Article request form, built with a Google Form, was not an elegant solution (every request had to be individually resolved and tracked), it allowed the LRC to continue to provide essential services during a catastrophic website outage. LRC Staff members Daniel, Dakota, Arthur, Linda, Rhonda, Alison, and Raji worked to fill requests.

The LRC FY2020 Factsheet is now available on our webpage.

FY2020 was marked by two significant, disruptive events: the LRC website outage and the global COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the FY2020 LRC Factsheet will deviate dramatically in format and substance from those delivered over the past decade. Whenever possible, this Factsheet will provide more granular data, showing the impact of these events on usage, in addition to an annual summation. Due to the nature of one of these events, the LRC has developed new reporting protocols mid-year as the library transitioned abruptly to a new service platform. As a result, readers should hesitate to draw direct comparisons between values reported in years prior to FY20 to those reported after. 

First, the LRC experienced a catastrophic website security breach on 4 December, 2019. As a result, direct access to the LRC’s electronic resources were unavailable to off-campus users without a VPN until 17 April, 2020. It rapidly became clear that the LRC’s legacy website, “ER,” could not be patched to come into compliance with USU and DoD network security guidelines. Without a dedicated programmer, the LRC examined off-the-shelf tools for hosting the library’s web content. Three major components were identified in order to fully restore operations. The first, a content platform called LibGuides was already in use to host the library’s instruction and research guides. By supplementing the LRC’s existing LibGuide CM tool with a suite of related products produced by LibGuides’ producer, Springshare, the LRC was able to replace our scheduling, chat, and reference transaction tools. The other two tools however - a proxy server and a replacement for the library’s aging catalog - had to be vetted by the University’s IT team, then funded and acquired through a lengthy contracting process. 

To minimize patron disruption using the tools on hand, on 13 December, the LRC launched a “Bridge” website using a collection of Google Suite tools that allowed the LRC’s staff to hand-process patron requests and deliver results generally through direct emails.  The Bridge website allowed patrons to submit citations that were required. LRC staff would directly supply articles when licensed by the University, borrow them through interlibrary loan, or purchase them as needed. In addition, LRC staff worked closely with our largest vendors to find work-around solutions for LRC patrons to access content on dispersed publisher and vendor platforms.

While most LRC services were restored by the end of FY2020, a few systems remain offline in part or in whole. The Faculty Publications database could not be replicated by off the shelf services. Likewise, the LRC’s patron management system relies upon nightly manual updates and file transfers to compensate for automated systems that no longer operate. 

The LRC’s main website was launched on the LibGuides platform on 17 April, 2020. Over the following weeks, the website resumed most patron-facing services. A complete conversion, mainly serving LRC staff for patron and content management  will not be realized until FY2021. 

The second major event was one shared globally. The Coronavirus epidemic closed the LRC’s physical doors from 1 April - 21 June. The LRC re-opened with a limited capacity of 50 users served by a skeletal staff. Seating was carefully measured and labeled, and reserved using an online reservation system provided by Springshare. On 13 July the LRC increased seating to 100 guests. Throughout, the LRC worked closely with USU’s Occupational Health & Safety team to ensure seating was sufficiently spaced, cleaning supplies were provided, and library rules conformed with safety guidelines. Through the conclusion of FY2020, most LRC services are delivered by a teleworking staff. These services include instruction, reference, online archives management, interlibrary loan, and most budgetary and administrative services.  

In addition to launching a new website, the LRC also introduced other new services and products during FY2020. The LRC introduced a new wellness initiative, WELLrc, in partnership with the Office of Student Affairs. The WELLrc program hosted a variety of events in the LRC and also remotely once the pandemic began. These wellness events included meetings with military therapy dogs, demonstrations of hobbies such as soapmaking, beekeeping, paper marbling, book clubs, and children’s lunchtime story hours. The LRC’s Covidence class became a regularly scheduled, recurring event. Four study rooms were released to circulation. And the LRC introduced VisualDx, a clinical decision making tool; the BRS (Board Review Series) collection of ebooks; IMAIOS, an anatomy tool; and the Swank video streaming platform to support videos used in USU’s curriculum. 

While FY20 can not be consistently compared to previous years due to disruptions in our underlaying software, there are a few trends in metrics that are telling, even with the understanding that collection methods are imperfect. The number of questions received electronically more than tripled. It's difficult to tease apart the causes of this, be they the shift of patron activities online, increased patron engagement with the LRC staff, or improved compliance in recording transactions enabled by the new LibAnswers system. 

A few notable observations come from our ILL activities. First, the shift to an almost entirely remote work environment for our ILL team did not have a devastating impact on the delivery of ILLs to our lending partners. This suggests the LRC may be able to support majority tele-work work schedules for the majority of our ILL team after the pandemic ends.  Second, the LRC did not experience a surge in the number of ILL requests from our patrons, as we had anticipated.

HSTalks (formerly known as Henry Stewart Talks) Biomedical & Life Sciences collection is now available through the LRC's website (https://usuhs.libguides.com/main) from an icon on the featured resources column or the A-Z Collections tab.

HSTalks features over 2,800 recorded lectures on topics from basic sciences to therapeutic interventions. Content can be integrated into online instructional materials or assignments and CME credits can be earned by completing a quiz associated with each lecture. 

We hope you enjoy this resource. Please reach out to the LRC if you have any questions about HSTalks.