Copyright Solutions for Institutional Repositories: A Collaboration with Subject Librarians
Â  This work investigates using subject librarians to conduct copyright clearance in an institutional repository (IR). At Utah State University, the library assures copyright clearance for faculty scholarship, thereby garnering input of faculty scholarship into the IR. Currently, subject librarians are not widely participating in routine IR work; however, the in-volvement of subject librarians with the IR offers benefits to the subject librarians and the institution as a whole. This article provides a model for institutions needing new solutions for copyright clearance using subject librarians and discusses the rationale, benefits and challenges of adopting this model.
Bridging the Gap Between Digital Measures and Digital Commons in Support of Open Access: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Human Mediation
Utah State University is home to a Digital Commons repository and an instance of the Digital Measures activity-reporting tool. The prospect of linking these two systems, such that content is automatically harvested from Digital Measures for upload into the Digital Commons, is alluring. Our initial efforts were abandoned due to lack of faculty permissions and low-quality metadata. However, with the passage of an Institutional Open Access Policy, we resumed investigation. We found that the process of harvesting from Digital Measures and uploading to Digital Commons could be streamlined, if not fully automated. Our initial harvest revealed that human-mediation is desirable.
Science fairs as learning tool for teaching excellence
Science fairs are usually considered to be a pedagogical and cultural activity that involves the students actively. Gifted students need challenges to further develop their skills while maintaining the motivation level. Science fairs may provide the informal environment that will request and allow these students of excellence to challenge themselves by developing a scientific research project. Despite being well known in different countries, in Portugal first steps are being made on the use and implementation of science fairs as effective pedagogical tool. In this work, we will present a 4 years study that was developed on a Portuguese school with the main goal of evaluating the advantages of this informal way of teaching. The study includes an analysis of the evolution of the students’ knowledge that have participated, or visited, the different science fairs. Some advices for the implementation of these projects will be given. The motivation of the students was monitored as well as the knowledge and skills effectively improved by this activity.