Recent uclalib_researchforum items

The Library of Architecture and Allied Arts of Los Angeles (LAAALA)

Tue, 7 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Arts Library collections are supported by an endowed fund called The Library of Architecture and Allied Arts of Los Angeles (LAAALA). The LAAALA fund was created in 1986 when the Allied Architects Association (1921-1944) donated their institutional records, library and funds to UCLA Library and dissolved their organization. The Allied Architects Association was responsible for designing the Los Angeles Civic Center, the Hollywood Bowl, and LA County Hospital. They did not take private projects for individuals. After meeting a donor who was a member of the Allied Architects Association, I became interested in the work of this organization and it's legacy. Although it was an influential organization that worked on a number of large projects, there is very little written about the Allied Architects Association. Following up on traces of history from the Allied Architects Association records in UCLA Library Special Collections to the Bibliography of their library held at...

UCLA Library Research Forum 2026 Detailed Schedule

Tue, 7 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The LAUC-LA R&PD Committee presented the 6^th annual UCLA Library Research Forum via Zoom on Tuesday, May 5^th from 10 AM to 3:30 PM. The UCLA Library Research Forum is an annual event providing opportunities for library staff to share original research and innovative products and services from across the UCLA Library. 2026 Forum presenters included: Diane Mizrachi, Lane Goldszer, Abigail Connick, Eileen Keegan, Maggie Tarmey, Elizabeth Gost, Azad Namazie, Gissel Rios, Daniel Contreras, Monalisa Ruiz, Maya Montañez Smukler, Jackie Forsyte

2026 Planning Committee Members:

Michelle Brasseur – lead

Angela Horne

Mei-Chen Chen

Kelsey Brown

Fran Marineo Munk

Casey Winkleman - LAUC-LA R&PD Committee Chair

Eli Edwards

UCLA Library Research Forum 2025 Presentations - All

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

2025 UCLA Library Research Forum Presenters (time stamps are approximate):

Introductions - Nina Schneider + Casey Winkleman (0:00-1:20)

Openng Remarks - Athena Jackson (1:21 - 4:05)

Disinformation in the Digital Age: How Academic Libraries Can Lead the Fight for Information Literacy - Alena Aissing (5:30 - 39:40)

Enhancing Subject-Based Instruction with Critical Information Literacy: Collaborative Teaching in an Interdisciplinary Freshmen Class - Mohsin Ali + Salma Abumeeiz (40:00 - 1:33:00)

Templates Save Time: Reference and Outreach Models for Communicating with Patrons - Michelle Li, Maggie Tarmey, + Kelsey Brown (1:33:30 - 2:33:30)

Students Bridge the Gap: Moving Image Collections and Archival Research - Maya Smukler + Staci Hogsett (2:35:00 - 3:00:00)

GeoConnect: Centralizing Geospatial Resources Across the UC System - Maggie Tarmey (3:00:10 - 3:30:20)

Hebrew Print Collection at Terezin...

2023 Library Research Forum Program

Fri, 8 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

2023 Library Research Forum Program

Nazi-Looted Books in the UCLA Library Collection

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

By using HathiTrust, curators from a European museum library located several books in our university collection that had been looted by the Nazis during World War II. We did not find any discussion of similar experiences among North American libraries, nor any professional guidelines for repatriating material. I will share some historical background of Nazi book policies, how these books reached our library, the repatriation process we developed, and why and how we are publicizing this case as broadly as possible.

The Rise of Chinese Studies in the Research University: An Oral History Project

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This presentation shares why and how a group of Chinese/East Asian studies librarians started a multi-institutional project to undertake a Chinese Studies Scholars Oral History Project and describes the current status of the project and plans for its future development.

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

University Librarian Ginny Steel welcomes attendees to the third annual Library Research Forum and provides brief opening remarks.

Introduction to Leganto, Usage and Adoption Strategy Discussion

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Demonstration of the Bruin Learn tool, Leganto, which helps faculty create and organize their own course reading lists, including materials on Course Reserves, Library resources, as well as open web content. Please attend if you work closely with UCLA instructors in any way that incorporates access to materials and/or Bruin Learn. After a short demonstration, we will discuss ways we can support Leganto's adoption and continued use at UCLA.

Grants Process: The Quick of it!

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Come see a shortened version of the grants presentation! We will go over the who and the what! Come by to hear all about how grants work here at the Library!

Scrolling Canvas: Bruin Learn & Information LiteratI

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This presentation considers the historical Chinese precedent of shū huà (classical 書畫; simplified 書画) “text/image” to describe and explain an innovative instructional design concept using the new UCLA learning management system Bruin Learn. The scholar-official social class or “literati” communicated in calligraphic image and text hybrids of ink on paper. Chien-Ling Liu Zeleny (history of science and medicine) and I will demonstrate live UCLA curriculum comprised of image and text inscribed digitally in long-scrolling Canvas pages with embedded digital content and tools supported by the Digital Library Program. The approach allows for immediacy of perception and embodied knowledge production.

Improving access: adding non-Latin script via automation

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Completion of UCLA Cyrillic Project to Add Non-Latin Parallel Script to Bibliographic Records via Batch-Process Automation in OCLC.

Use of Derogatory Subjects in UC Library Search

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Using previous research on derogatory terms in LCSH, we investigate their prevalence and use in UC Library Search at UCLA. We discover how users, cataloging practices, and system behavior work in real life

2022 Library Research Forum Program

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

2022 Library Research Forum Program

Welcome to Leganto

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Leganto allows course instructors to create lists and collections of materials and monitor student use in the new campus learning management system, Bruin Learn. Materials added to lists in Leganto can include articles, books, videos and other media, and can consist of Library resources, other online materials, items for purchase from the campus bookstore, original work by faculty, and more. Michelle will demonstrate how course instructors can get started with Leganto and discuss how Library staff can support its adoption and use.

2021 Library Research Forum Program

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

2021 Library Research Forum Program

Audiovisual Preservation and Access (During a Pandemic)

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Implementing a secure streaming server for audiovisual materials at UCLA is an outgrowth of an ad hoc A/V Preservation Task Force started in 2016. The taskforce included Yasmin Dessem, Allie Whalen, Callie Holmes, Matthew Vest and a representative from the Ethnomusicology Archive. Yasmin Dessem will share the stakes of preserving audiovisual materials and the high risk of loss. Christopher Brennan and Matthew Vest will share efforts to implement a secure streaming server, Avalon. Primarily during remote work, the UCLA Music Library digitized over 2,500 audiovisual recordings from the Music Library and other UCLA Library units and made them available online via Avalon. Avalon has received over 37,000 media views since September 2020, allowing significantly greater access to streaming media collections than previously possible at UCLA. The presenters will give a tour of Avalon and share technical aspects, integration with existing services and programs, advocational efforts, and...

The Limits of Inclusion in Open Access: Accessible Access, Universal Design, and Open Educational Resources

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The impacts of open educational resources (OERs) are both well-documented and far-reaching. However, open educational practices should not be evangelized or held beyond critique. Approaching OERs as an inherent good, and evangelizing open access and open education in general, limits our ability to improve our approaches and practices. Without mitigating the positive outcomes of OERs - including reduced textbook costs, readily available knowledge platforms, and open research - we problematize the commonly held assumption that open resources are necessarily more accessible and equitable. Drawing on writing from disability scholars and disability justice advocates, we explore the relationship between access and accessibility as it applies to open educational resources. By critically examining UCLA Library’s own open educational resource initiative, Writing Instruction + Research Education (WI+RE), we mobilize a disability justice framework to consider how open access (OA) and accessibility...

Discovery and Recovery: Uncovering Nazi Looted Books in the UCLA Library and Repatriation Efforts

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This presentation will discuss the story of five books looted by Nazis from the Jewish Community Library in Prague during World War II that were recently discovered in the UCLA Library. Curators in Prague found four of these volumes using the HathiTrust database, after which UCLA began a repatriation process. A brief overview of the historical context of the confiscation and destruction of millions of books and other cultural items by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945 is explored, as are the post-war efforts for restitution and repatriation by the victorious allies. As the digitization of academic library holdings progresses, the probability of more looted material being uncovered in academic libraries worldwide increases. But how did they end up there and what should libraries do with them once discovered? Scholarly literature describing similar experiences of academic libraries was not found. This case study is one example that can open a dialog to address the issue.

Screenplays and Television Scripts: Libraries, Collection Management, and Access

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This presentation will provide an overview of a longer-term research project I'm working on, examining the history and complexities of script collections in U.S. libraries and archives. The talk will include a brief history of screenplay writing and publishing, historic and ongoing collection management considerations, the creative and research uses of scripts, and the challenges of classification, rights, and access in library, archival, and online environments.

Filling in the History of the Blank Book

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Books bound to be written in by their owners have their own history, and believe it or not, many patents filed in the US patent office. Take a look at the material culture of bound structures in a whole new way.

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

University Librarian Ginny Steel welcomes attendees to the second annual Library Research Forum and provides brief opening remarks.

A 3-Unit Canvas Course Template for Integrating Digital Collections in the Curriculum

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Presenter from the UCLA Library Digital Library Program (DLP) will share examples from his collaboration with a faculty member in a pilot to increase and deepen student engagement with holdings from the UCLA Library’s Digital Collections in curricular contexts, leveraging the concurrent adoption by the University of the new learning management system (LMS), Canvas/BruinLearn. Digital collections overseen by the DLP are presented predominantly in the IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), which enables reliable vertical integration of linked media content flows for students’ accessing, viewing, processing, and presenting high quality resources sustainably without file downloads, or uploads. Collaborating with administrators and staff from technical and instructional support units outside of the library, particularly the Canvas Transformation instructional design team, the DLP has designed, developed, and piloted a 3-unit modular template in the LMS to facilitate...

Reading Format Attitudes in the Time of COVID

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Preliminary findings from a new study of UCLA students' reading format attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic will be presented. A study of UCLA's study of students' remote learning attitudes in spring 2020 did not include one question related to reading electronically or the library, and this study fills that gap to reveal that most students’ attitudes towards reading in e-format did not improve during COVID. It is possible that the increased amount of time spent on their computers during remote learning in general caused a screen fatigue that lowered their ability and desire to read their course readings online.

Building and Using a Collection: Personal Narratives of the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic—Lessons Learned and Next Steps

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

UCLA Library Special Collections’ “Collection of Personal Narratives, Manuscripts, and Ephemera about the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic” (Manuscript Collection no. 509, or Biomed.0509) was built from scratch beginning a decade before the pandemic’s centenary. In years BCE (Before COVID Era), the collection was used by researchers and classes. During the COVID-19 Era, we shared content with newspapers and developed a public lecture for audiences ranging from UCLA’s Powell Society to the New York Academy of Medicine. This talk will profile the collection’s development, share lessons learned from its use, and consider and seek suggestions on next steps in exhibition, digitization, and curriculum integration.

Understanding Misinformation: A Lesson Plan Toolkit Demonstration

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Misinformation Toolkit, built collaboratively by a team of librarians and library student staff, gives anyone interested in designing a lesson on misinformation the tools to do so. The core principles of the toolkit are that misinformation is a systemic issue and the best way to combat it is through a collaborative learning environment that gives participants many opportunities to reflect, share, and explore together. This session will present some background on the creation of the toolkit and then demonstrate using the toolkit. After this presentation we hope that participants will feel empowered to use the toolkit to build their own lesson on misinformation!

Library Instruction Training, Winter 2021

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Alex Solodkaya, Michelle Brasseur and Chris Lopez will represent a group of instructors from the Teaching and Learning Functional Team and WI&RE to discuss a series of workshops piloted in Winter, 2021. Current Library Student Research Assistants as well as students in the UCLA Master of Library and Information Science program participated in this series of workshops which aimed to provide library instruction training by means of active learning experiences in a peer-to-peer setting. The training explored a variety of learner needs and environments, teaching pedagogies, and more. This presentation will discuss the origins of this project, what information was covered, what went well, and what changes could be made for future offerings of this training.

Towards an Ethics of Care in Representing Minoritized Voices through Transcription

Fri, 14 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The paper reports on transcription as a means to increase usability and access to specialized audio collections in the library. We discuss the complexity of transcriptions as a both a political and linguistic process rather than a neutral one. Two audiovisual collections are discussed: The Older Recordings of Belizean varieties of Spanish (Fuller Medina 2018) and the Chinese-Cuban oral histories (UCLA library’s International Digital Ephemera project). The first collection consists of sociolinguistic interviews collected by Timothy W. Hagerty in Belizean Mestizo-Maya communities for his linguistic analysis of the Spanish of Belize in 1979. More than a linguistic benchmark, however, these interviews document a disappearing cultural heritage and are therefore reimagined as cultural patrimony. Thus, rather than giving primary consideration to linguists as is traditionally done in the creation of linguistic corpora, the goals of specialist researchers are balanced with those of repatriation...

Science Fiction Against the Margins

Fri, 14 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

"Science Fiction Against the Margins" explores what takes place when the science fiction genre extends outside of Hollywood and into independent filmmaking productions that foreground cultural difference, political injustice, and social inequality. Sci-fi films are typically dominated by Hollywood's action-driven melodramas and state-of-the-art spectacles featuring a heteronormative star who will restore social order, whether on earth or in space. "Science Fiction Against the Margins" challenges these conventions of mainstream cinema by considering how certain independent filmmakers repurpose established tropes to privilege alternative representations of race and ethnicity, gender politics, and national identity in the construction of speculative cinema. This project is funded by the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time 2024 Grant that focuses on the intersection of science and art. During this Paper Talk we will present a working draft of our program introduction. The final...

What is Digital Humanities?

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This presentation includes a brief overview of UCLA's Digital Humanities Program, introduces projects and methods as well as local people (Wendy, Anthony, and Ashley) and their expertise(s). The methods covered: text analysis/text-mining, mapping, 3D modeling -- and, perhaps, network analysis. Our goal is to acquaint librarians with what DH is, the main resources/methods, and how to refer/contact us.

The UCLA Library and Wikidata: A Pilot

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Since the fall of 2020, the UCLA Library has been participating in the Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s Wikidata Pilot, an initiative to explore contributing linked data to a free and public platform as well as incorporating linked data work and principles into current cataloging practices. This talk will introduce the linked data platform Wikidata and the benefits it provides, including opportunities to share siloed metadata with the public, serving as a hub of identifiers, and supporting multilingualism, among others. We will walk through current projects that the UCLA Pilot team is working on, and the lessons learned thus far. We hope that this talk will inspire our colleagues to think of other Wikidata projects and to spark new ideas and discussion about the potential of Wikidata in not just cataloging, but also broader research and scholarship.

Promoting Critical Reading through Learner-Centered Design: WI+RE’s Approach to Open Online Learning

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The WI+RE team recently had a book chapter (title above) accepted in the ACRL published book "Teaching Critical Reading Skills: Strategies for Academic Librarians". Our book chapter explores three WI+RE projects: the Reading Strategies Playlist - a bank of videos that outline general tips for reading and comprehending informational content efficiently and effectively, the Breaking Down Academic Articles webcomic - focuses on reading strategies that help learners identify and understand the essential components of academic articles, and C.R.E.A.T.E.S - an interactive website highlighting a six-step approach for comprehending and analyzing scientific papers. By highlighting these online learning resources, and the process through which they were created, we outline the cross-applicability of learner centered design in creating responsive, community-oriented instruction in general. We will advocate for WI+RE’s learner-centered design process by outlining how it informed three unique...

Assessing the effectiveness of a university library's strategic initiative to foster data-informed decision making

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Using a survey of UCLA Library employees, interviews of library leaders, and an assessment of planning documents and reports within UCLA Library’s Data Lake, the authors examine the extent to which the organization has adopted a culture of assessment where data-informed decision making is a norm. The study attempted to frame its findings using various maturity models to determine how the organization has met markers for instilling a culture of assessment, but found those models insufficient, particularly in light of a lack of benchmarking data. Therefore, the authors developed a set of model-influenced measurable characteristics from the data to illustrate how well the organization incorporates assessment within its culture that will be used in a future replication study. The study reveals the current attitudes and perceptions of organization members who took the survey, what interviewed library leaders think about assessment efforts and priorities, and how well those who attempted...

Henry J. Bruman Maps at UCLA through Georeferencer