The Library has improved our online research database holdings for fiscal year 2023 with new offerings that enhance the materials available to students and faculty and can be used as course resources. The new databases are located in the Library’s A-Z list of databases and in subject guides for relevant disciplines.
Since implementing a proactive chat widget on the library web pages in August 2021, the library has seen an overall increase of 112% in the number of questions received. Currently 85% of the questions are coming in through the Library's chat service, and most of the rest through email. This has allowed librarians to help more students with their research than ever before. Please see the Library's Ask a Librarian page for more information on our reference services.
Neal Pomea, Reference and Instruction Librarian, retired from his position in April, 2022. Neal was one of the Library's longest-serving employees, beginning his career at UMGC (then UMUC) in 1999. His dedication to student success, professionalism, and consummate librarianship were noted by faculty, students, and everyone who worked with him.
In addition to his contributions to UMGC and the library profession, Neal is also remembered by his colleagues for his inimitable sense of humor and his vast knowledge of American roots music. He is still in touch with library staff and sometimes makes a virtual appearance at informal staff events.
We all wish Neal a long and happy retirement!
Librarians and library staff have been involved in a variety of Student Affairs projects over the past year and are actively working on current projects. These include or have included:
The physical storage and workspace for the UMGC Archives has moved from the old Academic Center at Largo to a new space at the Adelphi headquarters. The new space features an advanced fire suppression system, backup power generators, secured access, and archival-standard climate control. It is the ideal environment to house the various kinds of materials in the Archives collections, from paper to photographs, audiotape, and film. While the move took place over several days, the work to prepare, plan, and work through all the details was a months-long process. Archivist Renee Brown was instrumental in planning and overseeing the move and was assisted by several of the Library staff including Peter Burslem, Ed O'Donnell, Yu-Hsiu Wang, Cynthia Thomes, and Mariette Largess. Over the next several months, work will take place to arrange and organize the collections within the new space. We thank UMGC Facilities for working with us to devise this ideal solution to the long-term housing of UMGC's unique and irreplaceable physical archives collection.
This spring, the library conducted a personnel time study to evaluate how team members’ time is spent to inform changes in services and staffing for greater efficiency. This has been useful for making decisions on work allocation and showed the wide variety of activities that all the librarians and staff engage in during a typical week. With the retirement of Reference Librarian Neal Pomea, the data was instrumental in determining how to best re-allocate time to ensure that his reference and liaison duties could be covered without hiring a new librarian.
The Library's Reference & Instruction Librarians serve as library liaisons to academic departments within the Schools and serve as a contact for Department Chairs, Program Directors, Academic Coordinators, or faculty to assist with Library resources used as classroom learning resources, classroom learning activities and modules related to library & information literacy topics, and other Library-related topics. With the recent retirement of long time Librarian Neal Pomea, the assignments of liaisons to academic departments has been updated. See the complete list of library liaisons.
Since Fall 2021 the Library has been offering large group webinars teaching students how to cite their sources and how to search in the databases. Have an idea for a webinar? Contact your library liaison with ideas.
Business Research Webinar
The Library’s liaisons to the School of Business, Ed O’Donnell, Ryan Shepard, and Cynthia Thomes, have been offering online webinars via Zoom each term to present some of the Library’s databases that are useful for business research. The webinars demonstrate how the library’s main business databases can be used to find company information and profiles, financial information (including business ratios), SWOT analyses, industry profiles and trends, country profiles, and more.
The next webinars will be offered on Wednesday, October 12, from noon to 1 PM and from 7 to 8 PM Eastern time. Registration is not required to attend a presentation; faculty and students can use the following link to attend either presentation:
http://umgc-edu.zoom.us/j/93826422356
A recording of a previous presentation is also available.
An increasing number faculty and staff are finding it helpful to use the Library's Program Directors Database, which provides that single piece of information that so many eventually need: The name of the program director of a particular course. The database also contains all of the courses managed by an individual program director, the program directors within a school, and the faculty who are teaching all sections of a particular course.
The Database is available under Important Resources on the Faculty Hub page of The Source.
Please contact the library if you have any questions regarding this useful tool.
Research assignments may prove difficult for students who have limited experience with conducting college-level research. Based on UMGC librarians’ extensive work helping students with research assignments, we offer Research Assignment Guidelines for faculty for effective assignment design.
As part of a team effort, the Library provides the interface that allows faculty to see a list of their graduating students prior to a commencement, while AccelerEd provides the data!