BU Libraries Scholarly Papers and Presentations
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A collection of scholarly presentations and papers published by BU Libraries staff.
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Item Library strategies to support experiential learning courses in business schools(2025-06-05) Berger, Kathleen; Moylan, DoriceIn 2020, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), an American professional and accreditation organization, included requirements for experiential learning courses in business schools across the U.S. Since that time, we have seen an increase in experiential learning classes offered at Questrom School of Business at Boston University which has allowed us to develop additional library support strategies for these classes. We will briefly review research about this trend in business school curricula. Next, we will discuss examples of library support that we provided to these classes over the past few semesters.Item Enhance your library research with AI(2025-04-17) Edmunds, BrockThis presentation examines how generative AI can enhance the library research process by providing more efficient tools and strategies. Topics covered include selecting AI tools suited for research tasks, crafting effective prompts to produce high-quality results, and integrating AI into existing research workflows. The session also highlights best practices for verifying and fact-checking AI-generated content, citing AI tools responsibly, and using AI to assist with citation management. Designed to offer practical guidance, the presentation equips participants with actionable methods for leveraging generative AI in academic research. This presentation was delivered in six separate Zoom sessions for members of the Boston University community during Spring 2025, on March 18, March 20, March 31, April 3, April 14, and April 17. The same content was presented at each session. The slides from the April 17 session are included here for reference.Item AI in action: practical ways library staff can leverage AI(2025-06-05) Edmunds, BrockThis presentation explores practical applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for library staff. As AI continues to transform academic work, it is increasingly important for library professionals to understand these tools to better support their patrons. The session demonstrates how AI can streamline tasks such as composing emails, crafting announcements and social media posts, generating custom images for LibGuides, library news, and presentations, and assisting with citation and bibliography creation. Additional uses, including idea generation and content planning, are also discussed. Attendees will gain actionable strategies to enhance efficiency, creativity, and service quality, while learning how to critically evaluate AI-generated content. This presentation was delivered at the Boston Library Consortium Forum on June 5, 2025, at Boston University.Item Using AI tools for literature searches: how great is this idea?(2025-06-25) Ettien, A'Llyn; Carkin, Jillian; Downing, Kathleen; Drouhard, Rebecca; Gunn, Bridget; McNichol, Meghan; Silfen, Kate; Tatarian, AllieFor this presentation at the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) Forum, medical librarians from multiple institutions collaboratively reviewed six generative AI tools, representing a mixture of general use chatbots and more specialized tools. Using uniform prompts on all platforms, we requested peer-reviewed literature on two health topics. We were interested in the number and percentage of real vs. hallucinated citations for each tool, whether articles (if real) were relevant to the prompt, and how results compared with those from a database search for the same topic. We also considered how often each tool repeated citations to a particular user and how often multiple users received the same citations in their results.Item Adapting MLA’s “my favorite tool” for a large university library(2025-04-30) Silfen, Kate LeslieItem Scholarly publishing and repository services(2025-03-31) Ohira, YumiItem Special collections(2025-03-31) Friedel, Claudia M.Item Digital Ventures digitization lab(2025-03-31) Wright, Sami; Fowler, AmandaItem China Historical Christian Database: Building an accessible dataset(2025-03-31) Ireland, Daryl; Menegon, EugenioItem African Ajami projects(2025-03-31) Ngom, Fallou; Rodima-Taylor, DaiviItem Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3...Building Consistent and Collaborative Workflows for a University Library Digitization Program(2025-03-18) Wright, SamiBuilding a new digitization program is a long, multifaceted project. Once you get institutional buy-in, ensure the infrastructure is in place, and select the equipment...what happens next? This presentation discusses a real-world approach to testing and establishing efficient imaging workflows for multiple use cases with a focus on sustainable thresholds, consistent application, and cross-institutional collaboration. It also walks through designing an overarching digitization project workflow for working with repository partners to clearly communicate expectations, generate detailed documentation, and provide a consistent, yet flexible foundation for project structures to be built on.Item Salary Survey: New England Health Sciences Librarians(2024-06-12) Ettien, A’LlynItem Don’t Panic! Teaching Strategies for Introverts(2024-06-12) Maratos, BarbaraYou’ve just been given your first library teaching assignment. You may be new to the library profession or a mid-career librarian taking on your first teaching role. Do you panic at the thought of standing up in front of the class? For introverts the prospect of teaching or public speaking can feel especially daunting. While teaching may take you out of your comfort zone, it is possible to develop effective strategies to manage the process. In this presentation, hear from an experienced instruction librarian (and self-described introvert) who has been successfully teaching for more than 15 years.Item Building A Community of Interest Around Cultural Heritage Digitization(2024-06-12) Castro, EleniThis presentation will walk you through a tour of several Boston-area digitization programs that BU Libraries' Digital Ventures team went on as they went about setting up their new digitization and digital collections program. This brief talk is for information sharing purposes for the BLC community to see where a variety of different institutions are in their cultural heritage digitization journey and to solicit feedback from the BLC community on how we build a community of interest to regularly get together to discuss best practices, new and ongoing projects, and community developed guidelines on digital collections and digitization.Item Boston University Libraries: Building New Connections with Digital Ventures(2024-05) Castro, EleniItem An introduction to the African Ajami Library(2020-11-17) Castro, EleniPresented on the African Ajami Library (AAL) project at the 4th Annual Princeton African Humanities Colloquium, Africa and Digital Humanities on November 17, 2020. The AAL is an almost ten year partnership with international partners and researchers, BU Anthropology Professor Fallou Ngom, the BU African Studies Center, and BU Libraries. This ongoing project’s main goal is to aggregate and make openly accessible to the world digitized manuscripts from all across Africa, which are written in African languages using modified Arabic script called Ajami.Item Beyond orality: digital preservation and the African Ajami Library(Boston University Libraries, 2020-04-07) Adugna, Gabe; Castro, Eleni; Dwyer, RachelThis talk will provide an overview of the African Ajami Library (AAL), an open access digital repository of materials written in Ajami script (modified Arabic script) from all over Islamized Africa, which is hosted in OpenBU at Boston University. AAL is a collaborative initiative between Boston University and the West African Research Center (WARC) in part funded by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme. We will discuss use cases of collaborations from both East and West Africa, along with more general technical digitization workflows, lessons learned, and opportunities for international scholars to engage more deeply with these manuscripts.Item Building a library talent program from scratch: how Boston University Libraries separated talent from HR to transform its people operations(Boston University Libraries, 2020-03) Zanders, Tony; Castro, EleniThe uncertainty of the future of the academic library casts a long shadow on today’s library operations. This session will discuss the important distinction between talent and HR, and the need to recast a vision of future-proofing our organizations under unprecedented budgetary and environmental constraints.Item NIRDs unite: building a community of institutional repository practitioners in the Northeast(Against the Grain, 2019) Castro, Eleni; Jerome, Erin; Lukens, Colin; Simon MacDonald, Mikki; Palmer, Lisa A.In the northeastern United States, there is a noticeable lack of any organized regional events specifically related to the topic of IRs. With other regions across the country holding similar events — along with recent national discussions and projects proposing a move away from local repositories (Coalition of Networked Information [CNI], 2017; Weinraub, Alagna, Caizzi, Quinn, & Schaefer, 2018) — starting a regional community of practice could prove beneficial in the long-term for repository managers and their institutions. Repository managers have a vested interest in the ongoing success of the repositories they manage; have genuine policy, copyright, and self-archiving concerns; and have developed robust workflows to manage their IRs’ unique content and needs. At the end of the day, how do we communicate the value of the work we do to external stakeholders, our broader institution, and library administration?Item Beyond African orality: digital preservation of Mandinka ʿAjamī archives of Casamance(Wiley, 2019-06-14) Ngom, Fallou; Castro, EleniThis article focuses on the digital preservation of African sources written in Mandinka ʿAjamī, i.e. the enriched form of the Arabic script used to write the Mandinka language for centuries. ʿAjamī writing has been utilized to document intellectual traditions, histories, belief systems, and cultures of non-Arab Muslims around the world. ʿAjamī texts have played critical roles in the spread of Islam in Africa and continue to be used for both religious and non-religious writings. However, African ʿAjamī texts such as those of the Mandinka people of Casamance in southern Senegal are not well known beyond local communities. ʿAjamī texts in Mandinka and other Mande languages are among the least documented. Only a few Mande ʿAjamī texts are available to scholars. Thanks to the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), Africa’s rich written heritage in ʿAjamī and other scripts previously unavailable to academics is being preserved and made universally accessible.