Guiding patrons to become adept researchers and effective communicators by providing teaching and learning that engages with students, researchers, faculty, and staff.
- Fondren Library Graduate Student Library Advisory Board (GSLAB) member, Aravind Govindaraju, spearheaded a successful effort to expand the storage limits on Fondren Library’s subscription to Zotero. Beginning in the spring of 2020, Rice Zotero patrons were granted unlimited file-syncing storage, to be used for storing and synchronizing saved files in their Zotero library on multiple computers.
Collection Development
- The collection development team continually supported library patrons by remotely teaching information literacy and research instruction to support courses throughout the university.
- A Fondren 101 course was created in Canvas during the pandemic, which allowed patrons to orient themselves to library services and resources in lieu of the in-person class and tour previously offered.
Fondren Fellows
The Fondren Fellows program funds Rice undergraduate or graduate students to conduct research or teaching projects that involve skills, collections, spaces, or services related to libraries and archives.
- Molly Morgan, an archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology, mentored students examining the lives of enslaved people who lived and worked at regional plantations including Levi Jordan and Varner-Hogg. History students Katelyn Landry and Virginia Gonzalez completed a 12-week project (page 14) to create an annotated bibliography with more than 200 sources. Their research complements the ongoing work of the Rice University Task for on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice.
Digital Scholarship Services
Digital Scholarship Services partnered with faculty, students, and staff to advance research, teaching, and creative expression in the digital age, offering expertise and access to facilities and tools:
- In collaboration with Fondren and the Center for Research Computing, the Data@Rice workshop series included more than 30 different offerings throughout the year. The courses are designed to assist patrons to organize, document, analyze, and visualize their data and include classes in SQL, R, Python, and Excel.
- Consultation and support services were provided to student-run journals, as well as project faculty advisement for the Rice Historical Review. Issues and articles can be found in the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive; approximately seven articles are published by Rice students each spring.
Cataloging
- The cataloging department collaborated with the international Program for Cooperative Cataloging pilot project which explored contributions for subject and authority linked data to the Wikidata platform. The program also served as a practicum opportunity with a University of North Texas graduate student. Upon completion, the department finished nearly 800 edits, accumulating more than 30,000 page views linked to Rice research and history.