ULA / MPLA Conference 2024

What Makes a Learned Person - Connecting Marketing Poster Art with UX
Charlene Brewer, Southern Utah University
It began with a challenge, "what makes a learned person?" As a librarian, challenge
accepted! But don't take my word for it, I use words of those more eloquent. A marketing
poster brings Southern Utah University's Gerald R. Sherratt Library to the students' pockets for ultimate UX with a parting challenge through the art.

Discovering Little Blue Books
Ashley Shaw, University of Utah Marriott Library
In 2022, the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Rare Books department received a large collection of “Little Blue Books”, an extensive series of pocket-sized pamphlet books produced by Haldeman-Julius during the first half of the 20th century. In the process of determining which ones to keep, a cataloger discovered that there were not only variants, but also peculiarities within the variants themselves. Research led to discovering the intricacies of these seemingly simple pamphlet books, and the cataloger was able to better describe the quirks of each item in catalog records and provide insight into mass printing practices of the time.

From Digital Preservation to Open Educational Repository: How a Photo Digitization Project Transformed into a Library-Developed Open Educational Repository
Bryan Hull, Carmin Smoot, Julia Curtis, Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah
DERM (Dermatology Education Resources & Modules) is a collaborative effort between a university department of dermatology and an academic health sciences library to produce an open educational platform for the discipline of dermatology. The project began as an effort to digitize a collection of 14,000 Kodachrome slides depicting clinical presentations of dermatological conditions taken and donated by a former faculty member of the department. The project soon morphed into developing a custom-made platform to explore selections of the images using diagnoses, clinical features, and textbook references. This poster outlines the development process and presents outcomes of the project so far.

Between the Covers and in the Stacks: Understanding Artists’ Books in Special Collections
Emily Hernandez, University of Utah
This poster will introduce the audience to artists’ books with a selection of examples from the University of Utah’s collection. It will focus on how the particular terminology used to describe the items by makers necessitates expanded controlled vocabulary for catalogers and how University of Utah’s resource, Opening Artists’ Books, provides a connection between the two in order to aid discoverability and assist in student research.

Maintaining a Digital Library Collaboration: Lessons Learned from Sophie
Adam Griggs, Ben Peterson, Brigham Young University
The Sophie project is a collaboration between the Harold B. Lee Library and BYU’s German department, to acquire, preserve, transcribe, and digitize the works of female German authors. With hundreds of thousands of downloads, these publications provide researchers a glimpse into the life, times, struggles, and contributions of these early female authors through a variety of mediums and genres. The poster will demonstrate how students and staff adapted and integrated new systems to ready these documents for publication. We will also show how we continue to incorporate new methods and technologies into this collection to meet researchers’ needs.

Archival Education To-go: Creating Primary Source Education Kits at New Mexico State University Archives
Erin Wahl, David Irvin, New Mexico State University
In spring of 2023, I wrote and received a small grant to create primary source education kits at NMSU. These kits, processed as though they were a real collection, would contain facsimiles of portions of each of our collections (University Archives, Rio Grande Historical Collection and Political Collection), lesson plans for 1-12th grade and College level students, and links to online "expansion packs" all designed for checkout to the university and surrounding communities. These kits enable archivists to extend their education efforts beyond the building and time allotments of archivists and engage New Mexico's communities in primary sources in a new way. This poster will go over the purpose, process, and future of the new primary source education kits at New Mexico State University. Included on the poster will be an anatomy of a box and links to further resources.

Tenure Track Librarian Burnout Before and During COVID-19
Erin Wahl, New Mexico State University
From July-October 2021 we undertook a national survey of tenure-track librarians and archivists to see how burnout related specifically to the areas of support and workload was being affected by COVID-19. The results are currently being analyzed with the hopes of producing two scholarly articles; one on the quantitative and related data and another on some open-ended qualitative questions at the end of the survey. This poster will focus on the qualitative data gathered during the process, which asked librarians and archivists to consider what other factors may have contributed to their feelings of burnout during the pandemic. This information is important for the sustainability of the library profession across the country.

Crafts! Crafts! Crafts! All I hear, all day long, is how great crafts are...
Deanna Duffy, Las Cruces Public Libraries
When we’re kids in school we get recess, a special time set aside to turn our minds off and just play. Sadly, as we get older, recess goes away. Let’s bring it back! Why craft programs are important and how to make them great.