LARPS: Scholarship & Service


Scholarship and Service are main sections in LARPS -a local system established for librarians who seek promotion and continuing contract.  This week, as I worked on this section for the first draft of my Third Year Report, I found one interesting surprise: the Re-Indexing CONTENTdm metadata page -I created in 2008- has been mentioned/cited in a book chapter “Collaborative Digitization Goes Local” by Ken Middleton and Mayo Taylor.  I knew that some CONTENTdm users have regularly used this page; one way to know it is by checking the web stats or by replying to some of those emails!  Anyway, it’s always good to know that the work we’ve done here at Miami has helped someone else.  And speaking of CONTENTdm/DSpace customization, last month I was also happy to learn that a manuscript about this work has been accepted for publication -more details about it soon!

Going back to the report, it was also gratifying to write about two recent grant projects: Digitizing Freedom Summer funded by the Ohio Humanities Council and the Migration of a Newspaper Collection funded by the State Library of Ohio.  Grant projects can be fun and they definitely give some flexibility for purchasing new equipment and help undertake new risks/projects :) … perhaps my only concern is with the writing component –but that’s just me and my foreign language issues :(

I also enjoyed writing about the Creative Activity sub-section of my report, especially now as I’m working on the new DSpace Customization page; creating an online tutorial for documenting what works for us and providing access to the source code seems to support the idea of collaboration –maybe someone out there can help us improve our own code!  A second component of the DSpace page will be a Theme Gallery, which is already scheduled for a presentation/workshop with OhioLINK members by the end of January.

Last, since Service is also part of the LARPS puzzle, it was good to have some on-going activities such as: ALA Discovering Librarianship, TEDSIG of ALAO, MN Institute & the Open Access Journal project, 2012 JCLC, 2011 OVGTSL, MidWest CONTENTdm User Group, Accessibility Forum and Expo working group, and IFLA Special Interest Group on Indigenous Matters.

Alright, enough writing for now, time for a short break and nos vemos pronto!

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