UMGC Library

Library Newsletter - 2022

Electronic Resources News

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.

Additions

  • Business Source Ultimate 
    An upgrade from the previous Business Source Complete, Business Source Ultimate contains even more journals and other materials, including 2,660 additional active, full-text, non-open access journals and magazines, 1,527 active, full-text, peer-reviewed, non-open access journals, AND 27,000+ videos for course use from industry leaders, including Harvard Business Publishing, IGI Global, Kiplinger Washington Editors, the Academy of Management and other top providers that can be used as course materials in courses. 
  • Statista  
    The new Statista database replaces the Mergent database and contains multi-disciplinary statistics and market data from 22,500 data sources, with hundreds added each day, plus 20,000 custom forecasts on 400 industries in 42 countries, over 20,000 third-party studies, 1,500 infographics, and 150 country reports. Statista provides the information previously provided by Mergent, plus much more, and has an easier to use interface.

Discontinuations

  • Mergent Online

Library Assistance Statistics Reach Record Highs!

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.

UMGC Library Staff News

Presentations and Publications 

  • Horvath, O. and Largess, M. (2022, May). The accessible virtual library. Presented at MLA/DLA 2022 Conference. Cambridge, MD 
  • O’Donnell, E. (2021). My Money.gov. [Review of the Web site mymoney.gov]. Public  Services Quarterly, 17(4), 256-261. https://doi.org/10.1080/15228959.2021.1975606  
  • Shepard, R., Quinn, C., & Harding, J. (2022, March). The pop-up chat box: How a small change made a big difference. Presented at Computers in Libraries. Washington, DC. March 2022.
  • Shepard, R., Quinn, C., & Harding, J. (2022). The pop-up chat box: How a small change made a big difference. Computers in Libraries Magazine, Fall/Winter edition.
  • Thomes, C. (2021, July 28). Pivoting... to a new way to work with doctoral students [Conference session]Towson Conference for Academic Libraries, Towson, MD, United States. https://wp.towson.edu/tcal/past-events/tcal-2021/session-descriptions/tcal-talks/ 
  • Thomes, C. (2022, January 26). ICPSR database [Webinar]University of Maryland Global Campus Faculty Development. 

Staff Promotions

  • John Coogan, Systems & Electronic Resources Librarian, was promoted to Librarian III. He has served as a Systems Librarian at UMGC from 2000-2018, and Systems & Electronic Resources Librarian since 2018. He holds a BA from Catholic University and received his MSLS from Catholic University in 2000.
  • Mariette Largess, Digital Asset Services Librarian, has been promoted to Librarian II. She has been with UMGC since 2019. Mariette received her undergraduate degree in History from Trinity University (then College) in Washington DC. She then attended The Catholic University of America for her graduate degree in Information and Library Science. She began working at the National Agricultural Library through a cooperative agreement with the University of Maryland in 2008, where she spent nearly 10 years.
  • Colleen Quinn, Reference and Instruction Librarian, has been promoted to Librarian II. She received her MLIS from Rutgers University in May 2017, with a concentration in Digital Librarianship. She previously worked as a Reference & Instruction Librarian for Harrisburg Area Community College at their Lancaster and Lebanon campuses. She is a member of the Student Affairs Rising Star Program - Inaugural Class 2022, and is completing a Masters in Learning Design & Technology at UMGC.

Retirement

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!    

Library Involvement in Student Affairs Projects

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:

  • Collaborating on the updating and management of widely used Salesforce Knowledgebase articles
  • Conducting regular webinars for students on citation and other topics
  • Documenting and collecting standard operating procedures for a central repository
  • Library website usability study and planning for its evolution to maximize the user experience
  • Developing a new library vision statement
  • Devising a new process for PDs from Academic Affairs to make resource requests
  • Developing a new Archives collections process to systematically collect records from UMGC departments on a recurring schedule
  • Investigating the potential use of PowerNotes product (it was decided not to pursue at this time)
  • Reviewing and reducing the legacy physical library collection
  • Developing a student voting plan required by USM
  • Assisting with Covid vaccination card validation processes
  • Assisting with student calling projects to ensure students get started early in their courses
  • Work with the Diversity office on Beanstack monthly diversity book recommendations
  • Assisting with a competitor data research project

UMGC Archives Moves!

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.

Library Time Study

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. 

For Our Faculty

Recent Library Liaison Updates

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.

Library Webinars

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. 

Program Directors Database Managed by the Library

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 Assignment Guidelines

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.

Did You Know?

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!

Ask a Librarian