UC Santa Barbara Library

Academic open source contributors face a wide array of challenges, making it difficult for universities, support staff, and funders to determine which needs they should prioritize. To help address this problem, the University of California (UC) Open Source Program Office (OSPO) Network conducted a multi-campus survey of open source contributors and aspiring contributors. The goals of this survey were two-fold. First, we aimed to understand the needs of university open source contributors, so that we might design programs to address those needs. Second, we sought to characterize open source activity on campus, in order to assess the value of an OSPO. We received 294 valid responses from students, faculty, researchers, and staff. 93% of students and 92% of researchers report that open source software is important for their work. 58% of experienced open source contributors have served as project maintainers, indicating that a large number of university affiliates not only use open source software, they also build and maintain it. The most common challenge is lack of time, particularly time for writing documentation. Regarding opportunities for support, respondents strongly prioritized access to robust computing environments and dedicated grants for sustainability. Finally, comments revealed that institutional norms and priorities can sometimes impede contribution. The survey findings reveal diverse needs across contributor groups, with resources, infrastructure, and culture all playing a role. At the same time, the abundance of maintainers, the prevalence of time and funding-related challenges, and the comments regarding maintenance all underscore a critical need for support for open source sustainability. We conclude by recommending actionable strategies universities can adopt to incorporate sustainability into their open source initiatives. We expect the findings to extend beyond OSPOs to benefit scholars of open source and research software more broadly, providing empirical insights into open source participation and sustainability in academic contexts.

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy describes the dispositions of an information literate student, but how can we assess if students are developing these dispositions? This presentation explores how the University of North Carolina Wilmington Library developed a flexible, reflective assessment template to evaluate dispositions in information literacy. Drawing inspiration from the Information Literacy Reflection Tool – a metacognitive self-assessment aligned with the ACRL Framework's threshold concepts – the library’s Academic & Research Engagement department created a bank of reflective prompts mapped to the university's information literacy student learning outcomes and benchmarks for first-year, intermediate, and graduating students. The tool was first piloted in English Composition courses as pre- and post-research reflections and encouraged students to consider how their information behaviors maintained or evolved over time. Now implemented programmatically across the curriculum, liaison librarians are trained to adapt the template to their instructional contexts, selecting relevant prompts and methods of delivery for their needs. This approach not only fosters student metacognition, but also provides actionable insights into instructional trends and areas for growth. Attendees will learn how to design adaptable, reflective assessments that promote student engagement, contribute to meaningful instruction, and inform programmatic evaluation.

Data curators play an important role in assessing data quality and take actions that may ultimately lead to better, more valuable data products. This study explores the curation practices of data curators working within US-based data repositories. We performed a survey in January 2021 to benchmark the levels of curation performed by repositories and assess the perceived value and impact of curation on the data sharing process. Our analysis included 95 responses from 59 unique data repositories. Respondents primarily were professionals working within repositories and examined curation performed within a repository setting. A majority 72.6% of respondents reported that "data-level" curation was performed by their repository and around half reported their repository took steps to ensure interoperability and reproducibility of their repository's datasets. Curation actions most frequently reported include checking for duplicate files, reviewing documentation, reviewing metadata, minting persistent identifiers, and checking for corrupt/broken files. The most "value-add" curation action across generalist, institutional, and disciplinary repository respondents was related to reviewing and enhancing documentation. Respondents reported high perceived impact of curation by their repositories on specific data sharing outcomes including usability, findability, understandability, and accessibility of deposited datasets; respondents associated with disciplinary repositories tended to perceive higher impact on most outcomes. Most survey participants strongly agreed that data curation by the repository adds value to the data sharing process and that it outweighs the effort and cost. We found some differences between institutional and disciplinary repositories, both in the reported frequency of specific curation actions as well as the perceived impact of data curation. Interestingly, we also found variation in the perceptions of those working within the same repository regarding the level and frequency of curation actions performed, which exemplifies the complexity of a repository curation work. Our results suggest data curation may be better understood in terms of specific curation actions and outcomes than broadly defined curation levels and that more research is needed to understand the resource implications of performing these activities. We share these results to provide a more nuanced view of curation, and how curation impacts the broader data lifecycle and data sharing behaviors.

Review of "Essential Handbook of Women's Sexuality" by Donna Castañeda, ed.,

Review of Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sanchez Korrol

Review of four books on women of color and reproductive justice: Jennifer Nelson, WOMEN OF COLOR AND THE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS MOVEMENT; Jael Sillimen, Marlene Gerber Fried, Loretta Ross, & Elena R. Gutierrez, UNDIVIDED RIGHTS: WOMEN OF COLOR ORGANIZE FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE; Dorothy Roberts, KILLING THE BLACK BODY: RACE, REPRODUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIBERTY.

Review of The Rights of Women: The Authoritative ACLU Guide to Women’s Rights, edited by Lenora M. Lapidus, Emily J. Martin and Nmaita Luthra. 4th ed.

In an era of transformative agreements for journals, the article examines the Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project through a transformative lens. How might we apply transformativeness to open access monograph publishing? Is transformativeness measured in strictly financial and transactional terms, or should more qualitative measures be considered; and, if so, what might those measures be? Centering academic values, scaling small, fostering communities of practice, production efficiencies, and collaboration are characteristics of the COPIM Project. Libraries and universities committed to academic values are called on to align both the direction of their scholarly communication programs and the principles underlying their collection development policies around a reimagined and transformative open access monograph publishing system that aims higher, beyond transaction-based cost transparencies.