Connect & Communicate: Collecting Pennsylvania Political Twitter Data recording available now!
The session recording for the February Connect & Communicate Series presentation on collecting Pennsylvania political Twitter data is now available on the C&CS YouTube channel. Thanks to John Russell and Andrew Dudash from Penn State University for an informative session.
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A Book Request Odyssey
From time to time, I receive book purchase requests from faculty in my liaison departments. These are often straightforward affairs, but a recent request turned out to be anything but ordinary. In early February, me and a colleague in our acquisitions department received an email via a Yahoo account from Dr. Samantha Schmidt, who stated that she was a new DAAD Post-Doctoral Fellow at Pitt. For those of you unfamiliar with the program, the DAAD is an organization that facilitates academic exchange between US and German universities. I have worked with DAAD fellows in our history department, so I’d heard of the organization before. Dr. Schmidt was writing to ask that we purchase eight titles from a particular vendor in Germany. This vendor, who I will call Dr. Jones, was copied on the message and Dr. Schmidt described him as having “really cheap prices.” It was unusual for a faculty member to request titles from a particular vendor, but I chalked this oddity up to possible cultural/organizational differences.
After discussing this request with several acquisitions colleagues over multiple emails, we decided we would pursue the purchases, but via our standard avenues and not the suggested vendor. My email to Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Jones informing them of our decision was met with immediate blowback from them both. Dr. Schmidt said that “it is not frank to buy books from other vendor, as I received the offers from him. He is a nice person, whom I met at many international conferences…” After receiving these messages, I was now wary of getting off on the wrong foot with Dr. Schmidt, so I asked our head of Technical Services to offer her opinion. She pointed out that it was odd that Dr. Schmidt didn’t have a Pitt email address and that her initial message was a sales pitch for Mr. Smith. I had previously asked Dr. Schmidt for her Pitt email, but she said she was still in the process of receiving one. This was admittedly odd, but not alarmingly so. Another colleague noted that Samantha Schmidt didn’t show up in any kind of Google search nor was she listed on the DAAD website. Dr. Schmidt also didn’t show up in our Pitt directory search.
Seeing all of these facts put together led me to the “crazy thought” that Samantha Schmidt didn’t actually exist and that she was a fiction created by Mr. Smith to sell some books. I thought that was an awful lot of work to set up a con just to sell a few books, so I still wasn’t entirely convinced that Samantha wasn’t real lest I offend her. I happened to mention this saga to a coworker and she said, “did you receive an email from Dr. Schmidt?” I said, “yes, how did you know about that?!” It turns out that Mark Robison at Notre Dame posted on the ACRL University Libraries Section listserv that he received a message from Dr. Schmidt with the exact same characteristics. It had taken him and his colleagues a bit to realize what was going on, so he was warning other libraries. He had a follow-up post in which several other libraries had gotten the same message. My “crazy thought” turned out to be quite sane; this whole thing was a sophisticated con. I admire the complexity, specificity, and audacity of this scam, but I still feel like an idiot for buying it for a second. No harm since we didn’t purchase any titles, but I wasted a lot of my (and colleagues’) time on this, so it’s still disappointing. I thought I was immune from scams, but apparently even I can be taken in. I’m glad I reached out to colleagues about this and I encourage you to do the same if you have any doubts. Caveat emptor!
Connect and Communicate Presents
Collecting Pennsylvania Political Twitter Data
Presented by
John Russell and Andrew Dudash
Wednesday, February 22 at 2:00 pm EST
This presentation will review efforts to collect election-related Twitter data from Pennsylvania-specific accounts and hashtags for 2018 and 2020 in the run-up and aftermath of both election cycles and what was learned from the process. The presenters will also discuss the work that goes into building social media data collections and some tools that can be used to support such work for platforms beyond Twitter.
John Russell is the Digital Humanities Librarian at Penn State University Libraries, University Park. Andrew Dudash is the Social Sciences Librarian at Penn State University Libraries, University Park.
We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. Session will be recorded and available on YouTube after the session. We will enable Zoom’s Live Transcription feature during the session.
If you would like to present with C&CS, please contact the C&CS team.
This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, Governor.
2023 ACRL Travel Grants sponsored by CRD
The College and Research Division is providing travel grants of up to $500 for academic librarians in Pennsylvania to attend the 2023 Association of College & Research Libraries conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Preference will be given to current CRD members. Application deadline is Friday, March 3, 2023 with notification of the award the following week. Recipients of the travel grant will be expected to provide a post-conference report suggesting topics and speakers for possible CRD workshops, Connect & Communicate webinars, and PaLA conference speakers. Contact Stephanie Thompson, CRD Professional Development Grants Manager, with any questions at stephanie.thompson@millersville.edu
This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, Governor.
Support is also provided by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association. https://crdpala.org/
What’s in a Name? Collaborating for Consistency
Early in my library career, I heard the phrase “work like a patron.” These words have come to mind frequently since then, often in conversations about user experience. Considering the language used in information literacy instruction is especially important. After all, terms like databases, peer-reviewed articles, periodicals and search filters are not often part of undergraduates’ lives outside of school.
Fortunately, a recent Niche Academy webinar, “Systemic Problems With Information Literacy Training” presented by Mary DeJong, covers these and other concerns related to engaging with students and faculty. If you haven’t seen the session yet, a description, recording, and (entertaining) slides are available online.
Many of DeJong’s observations about research assumptions and motivations — or lack thereof — resonated with us. At our library, this presentation reaffirmed our views on the need for wider conversations about a specific issue: communicating source types with students.
Why this focus? Consider these scenarios, based on a mix of past experiences:
- During a research consultation, a student notes their instructor wants them to find at least three peer-reviewed articles and no more than two online sources for an assignment. They don’t know how they can meet these requirements, given that their peer-reviewed articles were all found online. Doesn’t that make them online sources?
- When limiting a search by source title, the filter is labeled “Journal Title” — and newspapers are among the titles listed.
- A student assumes anything in a library database search meets the criteria for an assignment, because articles within a library database are listed as required sources. After a database search, the student chooses the first three results, including a book review.
The webinar and subsequent discussions brought us back to working like a patron. When students are presented with an assignment or working on activities in an information literacy session, what are their experiences like? From their perspectives, what could be more clear or consistent? Are we providing explanations for jargon-y words or acronyms that may be unfamiliar? We certainly try to. But just as important — do our explanations match those of their professors?
We’ve had conversations with faculty individually about their assignments, with good results. However, we decided to plan a more focused effort by meeting with a group of writing instructors. We work with their classes frequently, so this seemed like a good starting point. We asked how they were describing different types of sources to their students, heard about what was most effective, and listened as they shared ideas with each other. We agreed to meet again, and may collaborate on a faculty workshop about this topic in the future.
Given our small campus and existing rapport with faculty, developing these ideas with them made sense to us. Down the road, we may develop a module or tutorial about this topic. Other institutions may start with tutorials and modules. Whatever the route taken, the end goal of reducing student confusion in a sea of information is a worthy one.
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