Explore Magazine: Spring 2022

On the Cover

Photo of the newly named Sally T. WongAvery Library captured by local photographer Katie Gardner. In February 2022, UC San Diego renamed what was formerly known as the Biomedical Library in recognition of a significant philanthropic gift by UC San Diego Foundation trustee and alumna Sally T. WongAvery ’75. Left: A closeup view of “CONCORDANCE,” an art installation created by internationally-acclaimed artist Ann Hamilton, which is the newest addition to UC San Diego’s renowned Stuart Collection.

PHOTOGRAPHY

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Explore magazine is the signature publication of the University of California San Diego Library, published for a broad readership of patrons and supporters both on and off campus.

A NOTE FROM THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN

This spring was an exciting time for all of us at the UC San Diego Library as we celebrated the dedication of the newly named Sally T. WongAvery Library (formerly the Biomedical Library). Located on the south end of Library Walk in the School of Medicine complex, the WongAvery Library serves close to 355,000 students annually and is a vital space for student support and scholarship. In recognition of a significant philanthropic gift from alumna Sally T. WongAvery ’75 through the Avery-Tsui Foundation in February 2022, UC San Diego renamed the Library in her honor. We dedicate this issue of Explore to Sally WongAvery and her daughter Natasha Wong out of immense gratitude for their support. More information about the transformational gift and the dedication event can be found on Page 6.

As I write this letter, we are wrapping up another successful academic year. It was refreshing to have so many students back on campus during spring quarter. For the first time in a few years, it felt like our Library buildings were once again abuzz with a flurry of activity as students, faculty and other

scholars flocked to our spaces. I am grateful for all our Library employees who consistently pivot with the everchanging needs of academia as we continue the transition out of the remote-only pandemic mode.

One of the recurring themes I noticed on my daily walks around Geisel and WongAvery this spring was collaboration. Students working with other students; faculty collaborating with Library employees; Library employees helping patrons and colleagues. The Library is most effective when we work in close partnership with students, faculty and staff—both oncampus and UC-wide—something you will see evidence of in this issue.

As we head into the summer months, we are already working on preparations for the fall. We are currently wrapping up our strategic planning process which was launched in September 2021. The Strategic Plan Steering Committee— comprised of employees from across the Library’s organizational structure as well as students, faculty and campus representatives—has been hard at work over the last nine months

synthesizing the feedback we received from stakeholders and developing a new vision and priorities for the Library over the next five years. I am grateful for all the work they have contributed throughout this process, and I appreciate the time our students, faculty, staff and other stakeholders dedicated to providing input on how the Library can better serve campus. I look forward to sharing the complete plan with you in the coming months.

I’d like to conclude by sharing that the renovations of Geisel Library’s 2nd (main) Floor continue to progress smoothly (see images below). The work is still on track to be completed by the start of fall quarter and we plan to introduce the new spaces to our users at a fun-filled reopening celebration in late September or early October. Stay tuned for more details.

Wishing you all a safe and healthy summer, Erik T. Mitchell

The Audrey Geisel University Librarian

RENDERING OF ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOM ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOM UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Celebrating Five Successful of UC San Diego’s Race and Oral

Born from a collaborative partnership between the UC San Diego Institute of Arts and Humanities and the Library, the Race and Oral History Project (ROHP) was created in 2017 in an effort to document and share stories of understudied racial and ethnic communities in the Greater San Diego region. Now in its fifth year, the ROHP team, which is comprised of various constituents across campus, is proud to celebrate more than 100 oral histories garnered as a result of the project.

During the project’s inception, the Library’s former Digital Humanities Librarian Erin Glass; Sociology, Ethnic Studies and Critical Gender Studies Librarian Alanna Aiko Moore; and Digital Initiatives Librarian Cristela Garcia Spitz led the charge on the Library front.

They worked in lockstep with UC San Diego Department of History and Department of Ethnic Studies faculty and graduate students to create a new course, Race and Oral History in San Diego (HIUS/ETHN 120D). The librarians taught workshops on best practices for oral history and ethical transcription, launched an informational website about the project and are currently reviewing the collected oral histories to prepare them for placement in our Digital Collections. In addition to outlining the goals of the project, the new website also features the community-based organizations partnering in the course and detailed course instructions to guide students through the oral history collection process.

“It’s been a true pleasure to collaborate with our faculty, students and community partners to bring the Race and Oral History Project to fruition,” said Garcia Spitz. “I feel honored to have had the opportunity to be in the classroom teaching oral history methodology and the value of personal narratives in the historic record. Creating these oral histories not only shines light on the important work of our community partners, but also provides the world with increased understanding of the lives of refugees and immigrants in San Diego–how and when they came to be here and what their experience has been like since.”

In a recent information session, Simeon Man, Ph.D., a UC San Diego

Refugee Health Unit, a ROHP community partner, is a part of the UC San Diego Center for Community Health launched in 2017 in response to the growing number of refugees in San Diego.

Years History Project

history professor who taught Race and Oral History in San Diego in Spring 2022, explained the course is intended to fill two different gaps. The first is a knowledge gap of San Diego’s complex histories with respect to militarization, migration and social activism. The second is a curriculum gap in terms of community engagement in the larger San Diego area beyond La Jolla.

As the ROHP website notes, San Diego is home to continually growing migrant and refugee populations displaced by wars in Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Central America, and more recently by wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and other countries. Our region’s vast defense industries and military training facilities, along with its proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border and colonization of the Kumeyaay nation, have intensified the displacement and criminalization of indigenous and racialized populations. The Race and Oral History Project seeks to tell the stories of immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and the organizations and community builders empowering their communities through the arts, education, mutual aid and advocacy.

“During my time in the course, I had the opportunity to interact with students from various backgrounds, majors and interests,” shared Isabel Nguyen, a UC San Diego pre-med student minoring in Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies. “My group interviewed community members from the Refugee Health Unit, Somali Bantu Community of San Diego and License to Freedom, and in doing so, fostered strong relationships and learned a great deal about these specific communities. Overall, it was wonderful to be able to meet new people and bolster the strong communities we were collaborating with as a part of our work during the quarter.”

At the end of each quarter, the ROHP students share oral histories, the value of building relationships with the San Diego community and the lessons learned with their peers, professors and community partners at a capstone event.

For more information on the Race and Oral History project, visit knit.ucsd.edu/rohp.

Librarians play integral role in building and sustaining an innovative program aimed at sharing stories of understudied racial and ethnic communities

Top photo: The Barrio Logan College Institute has been a part of the ROHP the last several years.

Middle photos: Students showcase their work at an end-of-the-course community event at the East African Community and Cultural Center in June 2019.

Bottom photo: UC San Diego students participating in a workshop at the East African Community and Cultural Center in City Heights in April 2018.

Helping Shape Share Piece Stuart Collection Masses

and the newest with the

Big news in the art world: UC San Diego welcomed its newest piece, “CONCORDANCE,” to its famed Stuart Collection, one of the nation’s foremost site-specific, contemporary art collections. Created by artist Ann Hamilton and currently under construction, “CONCORDANCE” is an 800-foot long stone pathway of words that extends from the new Blue Line trolley station entrance into campus along Rupertus Walk.

To source the walkway’s phrases and quotes from prominent UC San Diego authors and scholars, Hamilton asked Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) for help conducting research of the university’s archives. SC&A Director Lynda Claassen and colleague Nina Mamikunian—Archive for New Poetry curator and Literature, Theatre and Dance Librarian—quickly got to work identifying and reviewing several materials in the Library’s manuscript collections. Together, they provided useful information to the artist, which ultimately shaped the final product.

Soon thereafter, creating a website to virtually showcase and articulate the artwork was brought into the discussion. The site would provide people walking on the path—as well as those unable to visit campus in person—the ability to readily source the 1,300 quotes in the piece.

Electronic Resources and Digital Projects Coordinator Matt Peters spearheaded the creation of the site

with the help of Library Web Manager Jenn Dandle. Collectively, the team logged approximately 60 hours on the project. The end result: a virtual experience that allows visitors to take a dive deep into the contents of the pathway.

The text in “CONCORDANCE” is organized along a central spine of words and woven throughout is the Kumeyaay poem “Yeechesh Cha’alk” (“A Woman’s Heart”), the story of the first woman composed by Kumeyaay scholars Alexandria Hunter and Eva Trujillo. It can be read in both directions, whether one is entering or leaving campus, and brings together seemingly separate disciplines (social justice and revolution, environmental activism, technological advancement and cultural mythology), which are punctuated by the words of poets affiliated with UC San Diego’s Archive for New Poetry, a special collection housed at and curated by the Library.

Just as one can read the physical artwork from several directions, one can navigate the website in several ways: orienting by spine word, by individual lines of “Yeechesh Cha’alk” that are interspersed throughout the piece, or by the index of works used in the piece arranged alphabetically by author. Online visitors can also read the complete uninterrupted text of “Yeechesh Cha’alk.”

By arranging the quotes not by subject matter but by word-in-common, Hamilton achieves a fluidity as one thought flows to the next in an almost stream of consciousness manner. She plays with the idea of linearity; the text of each line is uniform in size and shape to its neighbor, but the sheer size and scale of the piece prohibits one from reading it left to right. Instead, as one walks the path, the reader picks up fragments from each quote allowing them to compose their own poem and make new connections.

Linearity is also reflected in the website. One can read a full quote or just as easily the reader can click a link and be taken to the full work that the quote is pulled from. Each quote is accompanied

At its heart, “CONCORDANCE” and the accompanying website capture the spirit of the university and the work that students and scholars do here. It invites participants into a realm of exploration and invention. It piques interest and dangles a thread, those fragments of thought that ask to be pulled, researched and examined so that new discoveries can be made and new ground can be broken.

by the citation with a direct link to the work in the Library’s catalog.

Described as an “ocean of words” by Stuart Collection director emerita Mary Beebe, “CONCORDANCE” celebrates the artistic, scientific, activist and political contributions made by UC San Diego faculty, graduates, scholars and others connected to the university.

At its heart, “CONCORDANCE” and the accompanying website capture the spirit of the university and the work that students and scholars do here.

It invites participants into a realm of exploration and invention. It piques interest and dangles a thread, those fragments of thought that ask to be pulled, researched and examined so that new discoveries can be made and new ground can be broken.

“The Library’s collaboration with the artist on this piece, both in physical and digital format, is impressive to say the least. I am so pleased to see this type of partnership take place between a Stuart Collection artist and UC San Diego’s Special Collections & Archives and look forward to seeing how this work helps engage our students and the wider community with the arts on campus,” said Jessica Berlanga Taylor, newly appointed Stuart Collection director.

The Stuart Collection team plans to unveil the finished work in early 2023. While the pathway is under construction we invite you to explore the website at concordance.ucsd.edu

Ann Hamilton “CONCORDANCE,” 2022 Stuart Collection, UC San Diego Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann

Introducing the Sally T. WongAvery Library

How an alumna’s passion for UC San Diego, books and Chinese culture led to the renaming of the Biomedical Library

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon in April, more than 250 guests gathered together to celebrate one of the most notable people in the region; a prolific leader in San Diego’s Asian American community and proud Triton, Sally T. WongAvery ’75. The day not only marked a milestone birthday for the guest of honor, but also provided an opportunity for the university to express gratitude for the generous gift she bestowed upon the UC San Diego Library.

Alongside her closest friends, family and acquaintances, WongAvery was recognized by university and community leaders for her support of the Library. The university formally celebrated her philanthropy through the renaming of the Biomedical Library to Sally T. WongAvery Library.

[ THE GIFT ]

On February 24, 2022, the Library proudly announced the WongAvery family’s transformative $10 million gift that will ensure East Asian scholarship and collections remain a key part of the Library in perpetuity. This donation is among the largest dedicated library endowments to East Asian scholarship in North America.

The contribution added to previous gifts from the Avery-Tsui Foundation to enhance the Sally T. WongAvery Collection and establish the Natasha Wong Endowment for East Asian Collections and Sally T. WongAvery Librarian for Chinese Studies position. The Library plans to use the funds to further grow the Sally T. WongAvery Collection through the acquisition of

new materials and digitization of rare and unique content donated by the alumna.

“I am very fortunate and proud to have the opportunity to give back to my alma mater. I believe it is paramount that children and young adults are given a good academic foundation in order to instill a lifelong love of learning,” said WongAvery. “Providing a premiere academic research library, like the UC San Diego Library, with this kind of support to foster its East Asian collections is of great importance to students and scholars around the world. It is my hope that resources made available and possible by this endowment will allow researchers from various fields to glean information about the multicultural history and contributions of East Asian people.”

As an engaged alumna and dedicated UC San Diego Foundation trustee, Sally is a celebrated member of our Triton community. Her generosity and commitment extend to the broader San Diego community as well, where she improves the lives of others, advocates for the region’s Chinese American community and works to preserve Chinese American culture. We are pleased to recognize her many contributions by naming our Biomedical Library in her honor. Sally T. WongAvery Library will remain a lasting legacy for Sally and her family for decades to come.

CHANCELLOR

PRADEEP K. KHOSLA

[ THE DEDICATION ]

The dedication event was held on April 23, 2022, two months after the initial announcement, outside the newly-minted Sally T. WongAvery Library. Guests were welcomed with a performance by the San Diego Lucky Lion Dancers, the oldest traditional lion dance group in the Greater San Diego area. In addition to WongAvery’s family and friends in attendance, she was joined by Avery-Tsui Foundation board members as well as UC San Diego leaders and trustees, all of whom thanked the alumna for her generosity and support of the university.

“My mother has come full circle,” noted Natasha Wong during the ceremony. “Her passion for books, Chinese culture and education, and UC San Diego has

led to one of the biggest achievements for her and our family.”

Many of the state and region’s elected officials also attended and gave remarks at the celebration, including Congressman Scott Peters, Congresswoman Sara Jacobs, County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, District Attorney Summer Stephan, Councilmember Joe LaCava and Deputy Director General of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles Richard Lin.

“With this donation to UC San Diego, Sally is continuing to expand her amazing legacy of service. Her philanthropy will ensure that East Asian scholarship and collections are a key part of UC San Diego Library for generations to come,” said Congresswoman Sara Jacobs. “This

is so important because the Chinese American community has always been so integral to our community here in San Diego, and now I am so excited for the thousands of young people who are going to come to UC San Diego and see their heritage represented here and learn about all the great things they have to be proud of, which is even more important than ever.”

To conclude the program, the crowd joined together to wish WongAvery a year of good health, happiness and prosperity as she cut into her birthday cake. Afterwards, guests had the opportunity to congratulate her and her daughter Natasha and take an informal tour of the Library. A special exhibit inside the building’s breezeway had been curated for the occasion by Exhibits Coordinator Scott Paulson ‘84 and

Sally’s endowment will play a vital role in augmenting the Library’s work with students and researchers who focus on art, science and society in China and across Asia. This is critical as the Library enhances its support of wide-ranging scholarship including within the themes of our undergraduate colleges, especially the proposed Eighth College’s theme of community and engagement. Given these connections it is very appropriate for the campus to have an important space that bears her name.

EXECUTIVE VICE CHANCELLOR ELIZABETH H. SIMMONS

WongAvery Library is one of two libraries on UC San Diego’s campus that support the university’s teaching, research and public service mission. With nearly 2.65 million annual visitors, Geisel Library and WongAvery Library are part of the essential backbone of student support and scholarship.

Sally T. WongAvery, Natasha Wong and a number of their family members in front of the newly dedicated WongAvery Library.

Sally T. WongAvery and her mother King Tsui together with family and friends.

More than 250 guests gathered for the Sally T. WongAvery Library dedication on April 23, 2022.

The crowd reacts with excitement as the new building signage is unveiled.

From left to right: Audrey Geisel University Librarian Erik Mitchell, Natasha Wong, Sally T. WongAvery, UC San Diego Clinical Librarian Jeffery Loo, and Xi Chen, the inaugural holder of the Sally T. WongAvery Librarian for Chinese Studies position.

Ever since she was a little girl, my mom has collected books and transported them with her wherever she lived. They are irreplaceable and make up a special part of her, which is why her gift to the UC San Diego Library is so meaningful to her and our family as a whole. It bridges my mom’s passion for books with the great respect and admiration she has for her alma mater and the world-class education UC San Diego provides.

NATASHA WONG

Xi Chen, the Sally T. WongAvery Librarian for Chinese Studies. The display included items from WongAvery’s personal library and a few of her favorite collectibles.

“My mother’s first love was books and she deeply treasures the personal library she has built over the years with materials from all around the globe. It’s like nothing you will find anywhere else,” said Wong. “Ever since she was a little girl, my mom has collected books and transported them with her wherever she lived. They are irreplaceable and make up a special part of her, which is why her gift to the UC San Diego Library is so meaningful to her and our family as a whole. It bridges my mom’s passion for books with the great respect and admiration she has for her alma mater and the world-class education UC San Diego provides.”

Sally T. WongAvery and Natasha Wong thank guests for attending and share what this gift and the Library naming means to them personally.

WongAvery Library is one of two libraries on the UC San Diego campus that support the university’s teaching, research and public service mission. With nearly 2.65 million annual visitors, Geisel Library and the WongAvery Library are part of the essential backbone of student support and scholarship.

The Library’s original East Asian Collection was established in 1987. It now includes more than 200,000 print volumes and access to over 1.2 million digital titles. Thanks to the WongAvery gift, the collection will continue to grow and be an important resource for researchers and scholars around the globe.

Sally T. WongAvery cutting into her birthday cake.

Councilmember Joe LaCava, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, Natasha Wong, Congresswoman Sara Jacobs, Congressman Scott Peters and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.

Sally T. WongAvery with the San Diego Lucky Lion Dancers, the oldest traditional lion dance group in the Greater San Diego area.

Natasha Wong with her mother Sally T. WongAvery.

Understanding the “Where” of

It all started with a simple question posed by two UC San Diego faculty members in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (USP): Can we make a map of the homeless encampments reported to the San Diego 311 app? The simple answer to this question was ‘yes,’ but it led to broader conversations about the availability and accessibility of data related to housing and homelessness in San Diego County. What became clear is that there was no central source of data, and almost no geo-spatially visualized data, that researchers could use to understand the “where” of housing and homelessness.

Having supported a number of USP faculty in their use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geospatial technologies for courses and research, the faculty members knew to inquire with GIS Librarian Amy Work about geospatial platforms that would support such an endeavor. With the wheels in motion and external seed funding secured, the Homelessness Hub Data Bank (H-Hub Data Bank) was created using GIS as the underlying platform. In addition to helping launch the program, the Library continues to provide technical and software support as well as insights into analysis, visualization and data collection and organization.

The H-Hub Data Bank enables researchers to understand the spatial relationships between individuals who are experiencing homelessness

and the region’s various systems of transportation, social and human services, open space, health, hygiene and housing. The H-Hub Data Bank staff researchers, as well as undergraduate and graduate students, organize existing datasets, create new datasets from various formats, and develop data collection tools for field workers to use to fill gaps where spatial data does not yet exist. Oftentimes, the Library will assist researchers in leveraging tools for efficient locationbased data collection, formatting the data or identifying datasets that may be of interest.

Much of this work is informed by collaborative relationships with organizations in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. For example, through conversations with colleagues at the San Diego Housing Federation and staff for the county Board of Supervisors, the H-Hub Data Bank identified a need for visualizations and analyses of affordable housing locations and potential sites for new housing in the county. Students and faculty working on the effort converted location and other information from PDF files into workable data points to create the “Affordable Housing Inventory” and “Inventory of Potential Sites for Future Affordable Housing Development,” which allows for identification of affordable housing locations and ideal locations for future construction.

“It’s a significant time investment to aggregate and summarize these data into a clean and understandable dataset,” said H-Hub Data Bank Research Assistant Andrew Nguyen ‘20. “This experience of converting and combining different PDFs for each municipality in the county only emphasized the utility of the H-Hub Data Bank, which can both be a discussion space for data needs among service providers, researchers, and policymakers and also provide capacity and resources to address those needs.”

Serving as a continuous partner throughout the various phases of the H-Hub Data Bank’s efforts, the Library aims to be a resource for the research teams, and in effect, streamline their research needs based on tools and platforms available to them. “Without the support of Amy and the Library, we would be spending a lot more time learning methods, finding resources and figuring out Esri’s Hub and related tools,” said USP Continuing Lecturer and Staff Research Associate Julie Wartell.

In another project, UC San Diego researchers are quantifying the impact of human fecal contamination in the San Diego River bed from homeless encampments with the Southern California Coastal Water Resource Project. Agencies in the region have assumed encampments are a significant polluter in regional watersheds but have never proven this to be the case or conducted a study to identify viable alternatives for toileting habits that protect the health of individuals and the

2021 AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY 2002-2020 SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCY BY ZIP CODE

Housing and Homelessness

environment. With technical support from the Library, the H-Hub Data Bank designed a survey to assess defecation practices and preferred alternatives of individuals living in the San Diego River bed.

With San Diego’s longstanding and prevalent housing crisis, there is no shortage of work for the H-Hub Data Bank and its partners. In addition to the aforementioned projects, they are actively working with the University of San Diego and People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) to map downtown San Diego’s single-room occupancy hotels and with the Eviction Prevention Collaborative to collect, manage and analyze data related to evictions and outreach.

The group is working to become the regional hub for data needs and program analysis around housing and housing loss with advocates committed to reducing homelessness. According to the program’s faculty co-directors, Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell and Leslie Lewis, “Our goal is to be proactive rather than reactive. We want to work with our community partners and research team members to identify compelling current challenges and opportunities and co-design approaches to evaluate them in order to inform policy and program development.”

Recent philanthropic support from campus friends Phyllis and Dan Epstein and Hanna and Mark Gleiberman is helping this vision become a reality through the establishment of the Homelessness Hub at UC San Diego, which incorporates the Data Bank into a more expansive effort to collect and analyze data in order to evaluate programs and identify ways to increase affordable housing and reduce and prevent homelessness.

For additional information on the project, visit homelessnesshub.ucsd.edu. If you are a student, researcher or faculty member with questions about how to integrate location or geospatial information into your research, schedule a consultation with Amy Work at awork@ucsd.edu

MIRLE RABINOWITZ BUSSELL AND LESLIE LEWIS, HOMELESSNESS HUB CO-DIRECTORS

Right: Volunteers conduct surveys of unsheltered people and encampments in the San Diego River floodplain zone to contribute to evaluations of environmental and human health risks in the watershed.

Our goal is to be proactive rather than reactive. We want to work with our community partners and research team members to identify compelling current challenges and opportunities and co-design approaches to evaluate them in order to inform policy and program development.

Here to Help

Meet Allegra Swift and George Tiong. UC San Diego’s first scholarly communications librarian and a customer experience specialist who help our students, researchers and faculty with everything from publishing their work to navigating the Library and its vast resources and services. Both exemplify what it means to be a dedicated library professional eager to help our users achieve academic success.

Allegra Swift Scholarly Communications Librarian

Describe your role at the Library. I provide services and resources for UC San Diego researchers and scholars across all disciplines to improve access, reach, impact and sustainability of their scholarship and research. For example, an author can ask about funds for article publication charges (APCs); seek help translating their author/publisher agreements; request copyright or author rights guidance; inquire about best platforms and best practices for publishing a journal or course material; or ask how to enhance their reputation and communicate the impact of their research.

How can scholarly communications help students and faculty achieve their academic goals? The publishing landscape is rapidly evolving. Expanding our understanding of who gets to publish and what is considered

a publication benefits everyone from undergraduate students to the most senior researcher, and in turn, benefits the university and the public. The Library facilitates open access publication of a variety of research and scholarly outputs. When barriers to access are removed, authors can make an impact on a global scale.

Tell us about a collaboration you are proud to have worked on. It’s hard to choose, but author referrals from our librarians and colleagues at the Teaching + Learning Commons often result in the most innovative and interesting collaborations. I have assisted several authors who wanted to publish textbooks without the commercial publisher constraints or high costs to students. We found openly licensed content to include, I guided them on publication best

practices, and ensured the work is discoverable on the internet. It’s gratifying to help authors publish the way they want to and help students access the material without cost.

What was the outcome of that collaboration and what impact did it have? Open access textbooks have been favorably reviewed and used by educators and students beyond this campus. Student learning has improved and they are thankful they don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for a textbook. One success story is that of astrophysicist and UC San Diego physics professor Tom Murphy. His textbook “Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet” has been downloaded by more than 10,000 individuals across the globe in one year! The book was featured in the university’s signature newsmagazine which is distributed weekly to nearly 110,000 readers, and it has been widely promoted on Twitter by internationally known scientists, educators, journalists, students and the public.

What is one thing about your role that might surprise users? Everyone knows that you can find books and journals in a library; not many people know that there are people here who can help you publish.

What else would you like users to know about the Library’s scholarly communications offerings? Scholarly communications is not just about books and journals. You can publish data, digital collections, technical reports, educational materials in a wide variety of formats, or really anything that contributes to the scholarly conversation.

Contact Allegra: akswift@ucsd.edu

Tiong Customer Experience Specialist

Describe your role at the Library. I provide frontline customer service, in-person and virtually, at both Geisel Library and WongAvery Library. I am one of the first people users see when they walk in and I am always ready to assist. Whether it be helping with wayfinding, checking out materials, or troubleshooting library account or tech issues, I take great pride in being able to help students and other visitors find what they need and enjoy their experience at the Library.

How do you help students and faculty achieve their academic goals? By helping our users navigate the Library and the resources available to them and connecting them with the appropriate experts. Assisting a user who is pressed for time with printing, for example, really goes a long way. It may not seem significant, but the relief on a person’s face when I guide them is priceless. Each day, I go home feeling good about playing a small part in helping others achieve their academic goals.

Tell us about a collaboration you are proud to have worked on. Since the pandemic, I have put together a few short how-to videos to help users understand the in-person and virtual assistance available to them. I collaborated with various colleagues at the Library and I am most proud of the first video that I created in partnership with a reference librarian, “How to Access Hathi ETAS (Emergency Temporary Access Services) Materials.”

What was the outcome of that collaboration and what impact did it have? The reference librarian I collaborated with put together the script and I edited the video and provided a voiceover. I think the video really helped many of our users understand what and how to access Hathi ETAS materials, especially during a time when in-person services were suspended due to the pandemic.

If you could tell students and faculty one thing about the Library’s resources, services and spaces, what would that be? Take advantage of the resources

available to you. It always shocks me whenever a student, faculty or university employee seems surprised about the vast resources and services available to them. For example, our resource sharing across the University of California (UC) system. Surprisingly, many are not aware they can access materials from all 10 UC libraries. What’s great about it is that, aside from being free, the user does not need a separate library card to request an item from a different UC library. After signing-in to their online account in UC Library Search, they simply select “Request through Interlibrary Loan” and the item will be sent to UC San Diego for checkout.

What is a surprising fact about you personally? When walking into Geisel Library or WongAvery Library, I am the guy many people usually notice right away because of my business suit. My appreciation for suits came at a very young age watching mob movies like “The Godfather” with my dad.

Contact George: gtiong@ucsd.edu

George

LEADING Librarians to Success One Mentorship at a Time

In October 2020, the Metadata Research Center and Drexel College of Computing & Informatics — in partnership with UC San Diego Library, Montana State University Library and Online Computer Library Center — was awarded nearly $900,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The funding launched the nationwide Library Information Science Education and Data Science-Integrated Network Group (LEADING). As part of this initiative, UC San Diego is serving as a home for data science fellows as well as a hub for fellows to concentrate on big data and data mining.

LEADING is a three-year project that provides fellowships for graduate students in library and information science and early- to mid-career librarians. Each year, the Library will host multiple fellows who will implement newly acquired data science skills through applied projects. In the first year, three fellows focused on two projects — applying data science techniques to improve metadata quality in the Farmworker Movement Documentation Archive, and evaluating the factors that influence building a community of practice in information and data science.

[ FARMWORKER MOVEMENT DOCUMENTATION ARCHIVE ]

How can data science be applied to communitycreated collections of historical material? Fellows Ateanna Uriri (right), metadata librarian at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and Hiva Kadivar (center), assistant to the Middle East Studies Librarian at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, worked with mentors at the Library to search for the answer.

UC San Diego’s Data Science Librarian Stephanie Labou; Assistant Program Director for Scholarship Tools and Methods Annelise Sklar; and Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Services Roger Smith provided the fellows access to the Library’s Farmworker Movement Documentation Archive, a rich digital archive documenting the United Farm Workers (UFW) Movement in Central California from 1962 to 1993. The archive, which was developed by LeRoy Chatfield and acquired by the Library in 2014, includes a wide variety of information on the activities, accomplishments, challenges and work of Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers who participated in the movement.

Content from this archive is regularly used in classrooms and cited in scholarship, news articles and online exhibits. However, because it retains its original organizational structure and coding, it is difficult to grasp the extent of the history and connections between people involved in the movement without reading every document and viewing every photo.

Learning

Learning Loops Between the Five Types of Value of the Value Creation Framework

The fellows were tasked with identifying ways to make the site more accessible for research and learning purposes through the strategic application of data science approaches, such as text mining, web scraping, topic modeling and interactive visualization.

Ultimately, this effort would yield a template for how “legacy” digital collections can be reimagined using efficient and transformative methods and tools.

[ EVALUATING A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE ]

In this study, UC San Diego’s General Instruction Coordinator Librarian Crystal Goldman (far left) and University Librarian Erik Mitchell (the “researchers”) used a survey paired with interviews to examine participants’ engagement with and their perceived value of a community of practice (CoP) created to build data science expertise in the library and information science field.

Goldman and Mitchell used a social learning theory-based conceptual framework for assessing the value created in CoPs. The main form of data collected as part of this framework are “value creation stories,” which include five specific types of value: immediate value, potential value, applied value, realized value and transformative value. The framework also stresses the importance of “learning loops” that provide feedback to community members about how what was learned in the CoP worked or did not work in individual practice, thus creating further opportunities for social learning and value creation (see diagram above).

For the first phase of this study, the researchers created an online survey designed to collect value creation stories, demographic data and experiences with diversity, equity and inclusion in the CoP. For the second phase, the researchers conducted interviews with survey respondents who were willing to participate in a follow up interview about their experiences as CoP members. With both phases of the study complete, Goldman and Mitchell are now in the process of analyzing the data and compiling their findings into a scholarly journal article.

In the second year of the LEADING Program (beginning July 2022), new

fellows will be engaged in projects focused on data publishing as well as continued work on the development of CoP in data and information science.

“It is my hope that this program builds on the commitment our Library has for mentoring students and early career professionals. I am excited to see our fellows’ work and have our Library learn from their expertise. We would like to thank the IMLS for their generous funding to support this program,” said Mitchell.

To learn more about the LEADING program and fellowship projects, visit cci.drexel.edu/mrc/leading.

An image captured by Jon Lewis from the Library’s Farmworker Movement Documentation Archive. Fellows Ateanna Uriri and Hiva Kadivar were tasked with identifying ways to make the site more accessible for research and learning purposes.

Interactions Immediate Value Potential Value Applied Value Realized Value Transformational Value