Posts tagged with interview

A subcommittee of the Library Diversity Council was charged to evaluate and interrogate the role of policing in the University of Michigan Library. This post explores the evaluation and decision-making processes, while identifying the labor that goes into projects dealing with anti-racist culture change. The group’s research resulted in several recommendations shared with library leadership.

The findings from a qualitative study on users of open access (OA) books reveal a wide range of needs and impacts. The data comes from two collections: one of OA books published by Lever Press (https://www.leverpress.org/) and the other of backlist books turned OA by the Big Ten Open Books project (https://bigtenopenbooks.org/). While the samples are small, the findings highlight the importance of qualitative approaches to capturing the variety of reader and, more broadly, user experiences.

We know very little about how authors and readers experience the impact of open-access (OA) books. Usage metrics and citations obscure their humanity. In Fall 2023, we interviewed authors and readers of monographs published as OA by the University of Michigan Press. Our qualitative research project documented their experiences, used AI to discover patterns in their responses, and provided evidence-based recommendations for improving OA book publishing.

We are excited to share the publication of "Archaeological Investigations in a Northern Albanian Province: Results of the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (PASH)" Volumes 1 & 2, edited by Michael L. Galaty and Lorenc Bejko, along with the associated data set on Deep Blue Data Repository. See the UM Press blog (https://press.umich.edu/Blog/2023/10/An-Interview-with-Michael-L.-Galaty) for the whole interview!

In Fall 2022, the Library Environments department began a pilot of two designated “zoned” spaces in response to user feedback asking for more information about what to expect from a study space. We conducted focus groups and integrated participatory design to learn about how users are perceiving and experiencing these labeled spaces.

As students, we all know the struggle of trying to find the perfect study space on campus. The Library Environments UX Research Team and the Library Information Technology Design and Discovery (D&D) Team worked together to improve the user experience of the Library’s study spaces booking website.

In this interview, Dr. Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales (U-M alum; PhD in Linguistics 2022) describes why he decided to share the data set entitled "The Lannang Corpus (LanCorp): A POS-tagged, sociolinguistic corpus containing recordings and transcriptions of Lannang speech collected from the metropolitan Manila Lannangs between 2016 and 2020" in Deep Blue Data.

The University of Michigan Library’s efforts to develop our digital preservation program created an opportunity to request additional support during the annual budget cycle. With only a few months to draft recommendations, the Digital Preservation Steering Committee performed an assessment survey to gather feedback from stakeholders across the library.

A redesign of the library blogs platform kicked off last fall with time dedicated to understanding the current site and its usage, reviewing what other libraries do, and conducting a needs assessment survey with stakeholders. This approach has allowed efficient decision making and informed requirements, while engaging stakeholders early in the redesign process.

The University of Michigan Library is home to a vast collection of materials representing dozens of languages. U-M Library Catalog Search, however, can cause difficulties for users searching for materials in languages other than English. In Summer 2021 we conducted an exploratory study on the experience of searching for non-English materials within U-M Library Catalog Search in order to better understand challenges users face, how they overcome them, and what we can do to mitigate the problem.