Enable inclusive excellence for students, faculty and staff
This goal focuses on enhancing equity in opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for our people.
Strengthen the Pack
Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) helped save students money on textbooks. OER are any textbooks and other educational materials that are both free to use and licensed for adaptation. The OER Faculty Professional Development Grant was established in partnership with the Libraries, the Office of the Provost, Office of Digital Learning, and Office of Advancements in Teaching Excellence to support faculty interested in adapting course materials away from high-cost textbooks and toward OER.
Librarians helped to strengthen the Pack and promote student success through a variety of instruction-based outreach initiatives such as: planning, coordinating and executing Manuscript Accepted!, leading Graduate Student Association Professional and Personal Development Workshops, teaching Wolf Pack Discoveries Symposiums for student researchers and guiding research skills sessions during NevadaFIT, TransferFIT and TahoeFIT programs.
Additionally, RIS curated physical and digital book displays celebrating Hispanic Heritage and Native American Heritage Months and hosted an Open Access-themed Escape Room outreach event designed to teach students about free access to scholarly articles.
Training the makers
DeLaMare (DLM) Makerspace rolled out a new training program and increased outreach efforts allowing users to learn more, on their own schedule, facilitating better and safer access to the space.
Surpassing pre-pandemic levels, DLM offered regular and often “sold out” workshops, as well as continued to improve and develop new outreach collaborations with the University’s Office of the President and University Events.
Streamlining interlibrary loan
Access Services introduced new, streamlined interlibrary loan service within Library Search, resulting in a significant increase in access to information across all University user groups.
Notably, almost double the number of items were requested and provided to undergraduate students in 2022 (800 items) from 2021 (499 items).
Using e-books to reduce costs for students
The Libraries licensed and placed on electronic reserves 465 e-books in the last academic year. By making these required texts available to 10,986 enrolled students, those students realized a combined savings of $1.2 million over the cost of purchasing individual print copies. In calendar year 2022, the Libraries placed 497 e-books on e-reserves, so the expected cost savings to students will be even greater in the future.
Lendable technology
The library digital media checkout service provided students access to 174 iPads.
The @One team led virtual reality-centered workshops and programming for the first week of the pilot National Science Foundation-funded GAIN Program. This outreach effort was an extension of GradFIT, focusing on underrepresented graduate students where Libraries experts provided more than 20 hours of instruction over a week-long period of time.
Development
The Jonathan and Darla Garey-Sage Internship, an annual 10-week-long undergraduate focused, donor-sponsored internship, provided a qualified liberal arts student with the opportunity to build professional experience to strengthen their resume toward employment after graduation while working with library collections and exhibits, and outreach activities
The Mary Sue Ferrell and Irene Paulin Endowed University Libraries Student Worker gift supported a student worker in the Libraries over the spring and fall 2022 semesters. During their time with the Libraries, the student gained valuable experience and skills needed to strengthen their application for graduate school and/or Library and Information Science (MLIS) school.
Prim Library
Prim Library hosted the inaugural TahoeFIT program for the Digital Wolf Pack Initiative distribution, coding and orientation sessions.
Talks@Tahoe took place at Prim Library and featured Libraries’ materials related to the presenter(s) and their subject area(s) of expertise.
Special Collections and University Archives
The Libraries' Special Collections and University Archives department collaborated with classes through planned activities and visits to the archives, where students received an introduction to the department and learned how to use the archives and primary sources more broadly.
In 2022 SCUA pulled 95 items (or boxes) for use by classes and worked with 298 students in 19 different classes from eight academic programs. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of students visiting SCUA for classes increased by 159 percent. The number of classes including SCUA in the curriculum increased by 325 percent.
University Libraries Outreach Committee
Banned Books Week
The University Libraries actively participated in National Banned Books Week during the fall 2022 semester. Banned Books Week is an annual celebration of the freedom to read. The Libraries offered activities including, but not limited to: button making, faculty panels and book displays. Activities were offered to raise awareness regarding books that have been banned and/or challenged currently, or in the past
Fall 2022 Graduation Celebration
Each semester the Libraries thanks, honors and celebrates its graduating student assistants. In May and December, each graduate received a complimentary, professional headshot captured by the Libraries multimedia production specialist to use in their digital portfolio, as well as lemon yellow cords to wear with their graduation gown, Libraries swag and more. A webpage was built and shared on the University Libraries homepage and across Libraries social media outlets highlighting and thanking all of the organization's talented student assistants.