UC Riverside Library

Have you ever heard of a collection strategist librarian? Is your library considering moving from a traditional subject-based model to a functional model? Or, maybe you're just curious about how libraries can leverage Ex Libris products, particularly Rialto, to better manage our collections. In this session, we will give an outline of our library's functional model and our role as collection strategists, plus some advantages and disadvantages of the model. We will talk about strategies we have developed using Rialto, such as evidence-based acquisitions (EBA), selection plans, firm ordering, and more. We will also discuss challenges we have faced and what we have learned from our mistakes.

O que torna um documento de arquivo um "documento de direitos humanos"? Quais tipos de documentos se enquadram nesse termo genérico? Como e por que podemos desenvolver uma tipologia desses documentos? O que está em jogo – eticamente, teoricamente e na prática – quanto às formas e razões pelas quais definimos e classificamos documentos como tal? Este artigo procura responder a essas questões delineando uma proposta de tipologia de documentos de direitos humanos, apresenta revisão de literatura que explora a história das definições de documentos de direitos humanos em estudos arquivísticos, bem como a discussão atual mais ampla na Ciência da Informação sobre as políticas de organização da informação. Em seguida, delineia a metodologia para a análise conceitual descrevendo as formas pelas quais essa metodologia será empregada para construir a categoria “documento de direitos humanos”. Conclui com uma proposta de tipologia dos documentos de direitos humanos, postulando que tais documentos de arquivo podem ser examinados de acordo com cinco vetores interligados: quem os criou, por que e quando; onde estão atualmente custodiados e como estão sendo usados, com base na análise de dois exemplos importantes de documentos que retratam eventos de violações de direitos humanos usando a tipologia proposta. Finalmente, tece considerações sobre as implicações éticas, políticas e profissionais da tipologia proposta sugerindo formas de utilização dessa proposta no futuro.

This study examines how AI influences existing differences in professional writing between native and non-native English writers (NEWs and NNEWs) in the United States, reflecting individuals’ task-related proficiency and language-based social positioning. We compare how these two groups integrate AI-generated content into their writing and include writing self-efficacy as a moderator to examine whether perceived task proficiency shapes the differences in AI use between the two groups. We also test an underlying social-psychological mechanism by examining the mediating role of perceived superiority: the extent to which participants judged the AI-generated text as better than their own writing. In an online experiment, 327 NEWs and NNEWs were recruited to write a job application cover letter for a hypothetical scenario. Participants were randomly assigned to receive AI-generated content written at either a simple or advanced lexical level and were asked to revise their letter as they chose, potentially incorporating the AI-generated content. Using natural language processing techniques, we measured the extent to which participants integrated AI-generated content. Findings show that NNEWs favored simpler content, while NEWs tended to incorporate advanced content. This difference was pronounced among those with lower writing self-efficacy. However, the perceived superiority of AI-generated text did not explain this pattern. These findings show that while AI can support lower-skilled groups in specific tasks, sociolinguistic gaps still remain even with AI-assistance. We conclude by calling for AI training frameworks that scaffold learning to address both proficiency gaps and social constraints.

Through data gleaned from semi-structured interviews with 17 community archives founders, volunteers and staff at 12 sites in Southern California, this paper develops a new tripartite framework for understanding the ontological, epistemological and social impact of community archives. Throughout, it reflects the ways in which communities marginalized by race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender and political position experience both the profoundly negative affective consequences of absence and misrepresentation in mainstream media and archives (which it calls ‘symbolic annihilation’) and the positive effect of complex and autonomous forms of representation in community-driven archives (which it terms ‘representational belonging’).

What can fungi reveal about evolution, biodiversity, and life on Earth? In this episode, Dr. Jason Stajich, Professor of Microbiology and Plant Pathology at UC Riverside, discusses how genomics and computational tools are used to study fungal evolution. We also explore  the role of library resources in enabling open, collaborative scientific research.

Listen to this episode at this link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7a0esJ9q8YYrMBk3KOyULT

In this holiday special, we are having two guests from the UCR Library, Mary-Michelle Moore, our STEM Teaching Librarian and Michele Potter, our Collection Strategist for STEM. We discuss library resources and services, along with behind-the-scenes stories that showcase the people and processes that support them.

Listen to this episode at this link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7E3taJIUgeYqddqHjBDVkW

How does technology shape the way we create and experience music? Dr. Ian Dicke, Professor of Composition in the Department of Music at UC Riverside, joins us to discuss the intersections of electronic music, sound design, and emerging technologies. His work explores the relationship between live performers and technology, often incorporating multimedia, interactivity, and social themes. We also talk about the role of AI in music composition and how digital archives can inspire new creative research.

Listen to this episode at this link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2oBbYFnCFHIm0cFSPkYYrJ

This presentation introduces NuclearGuard AI, an interactive nuclear safety dashboard that applies deep learning and anomaly detection to public gamma-ray spectral data. The prototype visualizes radiation spectra, anomaly scores, reconstruction errors, and spatial risk patterns to help identify suspicious radiological signals. Using Streamlit, Plotly, and machine learning models such as Isolation Forest and deep autoencoders, the project demonstrates how AI can support radiation monitoring, interpretable nuclear safety analysis, and operator decision-making.

Clifford Trafzer's disturbing new work, Death Stalks the Yakama, examines life, death, and the shockingly high mortality rates that have persisted among the fourteen tribes and bands living on the Yakama Reservation in the state of Washington. The work contains a valuable discussion of Indian beliefs about spirits, traditional causes of death, mourning ceremonies, and memorials. More significant, however, is Trafzer's research into heretofore unused parturition and death records from 1888-1964. In these documents, he discovers critical evidence to demonstrate how and why many reservation people died in "epidemics" of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and heart disease. Death Stalks the Yakama, takes into account many variables, including age, gender, listed causes of death, residence, and blood quantum. In addition, analyses of fetal and infant mortality rates as well as crude death rates arising from tuberculosis, pneumonia, heart disease, accidents, and other causes are presented. Trafzer argues that Native Americans living on the Yakama Reservation were, in fact, in jeopardy as a result of the "reservation system" itself. Not only did this alien and artificial culture radically alter traditional ways of life, but sanitation methods, housing, hospitals, public education, medicine, and medical personnel affiliated with the reservation system all proved inadequate, and each in its own way contributed significantly to high Yakama death rates.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.

This landmark anthology is an essential guide to the histories of Native women’s lives in earlier centuries. Sixteen classic essays, plus new commentary—many by the original authors, describe a broad range of research methods and sources offering insight into the lives of Native American women. The authors explain the use of letters and diaries, memoirs and autobiographies, newspaper accounts and ethnographies, census data and legal documents. This collection offers guidelines for extracting valuable information from such diverse sources and assessing the significance of a such variables as religious affiliation, changes in women’s power after colonization, connections between economics and gender, and representations of Native women.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.

In Before the Fire Dogs Steal the Sun, Crystal Mun-hye Baik blends different genres, from narrative prose to epistles to ancestral mourning rites, to offer an intimate cultural history of war, illness, and estrangement through the experiential lens of her family.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.