ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst
We are now able to accept submissions directly in ScholarWorks. For submissions that are not doctoral dissertations or masters theses, please log in with your NetID, click the + (plus) in to the top left corner, and select the Submit Research option.
Graduate students filing for February 2025 degrees: We are now accepting submissions directly to ScholarWorks. Directions for submissions can be found in this guide. Please email scholarworks@library.umass.edu if you have any questions.
Request forms are functional. If you do not receive a reply to a submitted request, please email scholarworks@library.umass.edu.
This site is still under construction, please see our ScholarWorks guide for updates.
Featured Items
Recent Submissions
Publication Strategic Planning into the Unknown Future(2025-06-13)Many academic libraries have strategic plans and those that don’t often feel pressure to have one. Strategic plans are a tool for communicating priorities, values, and initiatives to library staff, college and university partners, leadership and external stakeholders, such as funders and prospective employees. The process, however, can take months and even years of library staff time and resources. Too often valuable time is taken developing, promoting and reviewing surveys. Outside consultants can stretch thin budgets. Strategic planning can create unrealistic expectations – what happens if external factors make some goals impossible to achieve? This presentation by an academic library director will outline time-saving ways to develop strategic plans that position the library as an essential element of a successful institution. Attendees will learn about alternative assessment methods, such as Appreciative Inquiry, that offer valuable information in hours. They will be able to utilize existing sources of quantitative and qualitative data rather than starting from scratch. They will be able to easily incorporate the skills and knowledge of existing team members ensuring that everyone can see themselves in the plan. They will leave with practical tips for creating a plan that is actionable, achievable and agile in uncertain times.Publication Formula for an EXCELent Inventory Creating a Successful Barcode Inventory & Shelf-Reading Project at a Community College Library(2025-06-13)For some academic libraries, under-staffing, technology limitations & and other professional priorities can make inventory an endless chore. After researching different methods, an inventory project using Microsoft Excel & a barcode scanner was developed and tested after the completion of a large weeding project at the MWCC LaChance library. Initial results show a significant reduction in time to finish inventory and improved accuracy in shelf-reading. A brief history of the project, the failures, creative solutions and the future implications of this new inventory procedure on acquisitions and cataloging will be discussed.Publication Beyond One Shots: Increasing Visibility and Building Sustained Partnerships with a Library Instruction Menu(2025-06-13)Connecticut State Community College Manchester’s librarians “made our own luck” by reimagining the library’s instruction program post-Covid during the summer of 2023. The project’s goals were to reintroduce our information literacy instruction program to the campus community, boost faculty engagement, diversify and standardize offerings, and move beyond the "one-shot" model. This session will cover menu development, impacts, assessment, and program refinements. Attendees of this session will gain practical strategies for creating, promoting, and fine tuning a menu of instructional offerings that can be tailored to address not only the specific needs of individual courses but also emerging trends in higher education and information technology that require significant shifts in pedagogical practices. By sharing our process – including successes, unexpected challenges, and assessment results – this session will equip participants with actionable ideas for enhancing the visibility of library instructional services, deepening faculty-librarian collaborations, and redefining its library instruction program to better meet the evolving needs of students and faculty in a post-COVID campus environment. This presentation will appeal to those looking to refresh their library’s instructional approach and cultivate an inclusive, responsive, and sustainable program.Publication Feeling Lucky? New Library AI Tools(2025-06-13)Generative AI systems are exciting, transformational, disruptive, and emergent. In recent months, many library vendors including EBSCO, JSTOR, and ProQuest have released new AI tools as part of library subscriptions and services. Other vendors have hinted at or promised to release AI tools in the near future. It is easy to imagine how new tools will continue to be released, and with greater frequency mirroring the rapid advancements of generative AI systems. Library AI tools, especially ones trained using high-quality content within library databases, may provide better outputs than tools trained on open-web data and subject to garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) problems leading to AI hallucinations or mirages. Many library AI tools have been rolled out as service enhancements as part of regular subscriptions and without added costs. Libraries are lucky to be able to experiment with new tools in library subscriptions in place of experimenting with fee-based tools in open-web environments. This session will provide an insider’s view of the release of three or more library AI services deployed within subscription-based services at Worcester State University. The presenters will provide short demos of each service and will compare and contrast service offerings. They will provide their analysis of the current and future state of AI library tools. The session will conclude with Q&A and a call to colleagues to share what they know about the exciting future of AI library tools.Publication Defusing Workplace Urgency: Staying Grounded, Setting Boundaries, and Getting Your Work Done(2025-06-13)Since COVID-19 shutdowns swept the globe, and permanently altered the work of academic librarians, the concept of a “workplace emergency” has taken on new weight. With the pandemic behind us, but the repercussions still very much part of our day-to-day experiences, we can struggle to discern a work crisis from an unpleasant email. The service ethos of our profession compounded with our socio-political landscape pressures many librarians to work constantly and perfectly. As a result, our nervous systems are in disarray, and work can feel like a battleground. In this workshop, we will explore the concept of urgency and how it shows up in the workplace, specifically for academic librarians in a faculty and / or student-support role. We will unpack different types of urgency and the cultural contexts that exacerbate them. In small groups, participants will deconstruct common workplace situations, create strategies to set boundaries, and clarify their work foci to set boundaries so their jobs can be manageable. Attending with department colleagues is encouraged. Participants will leave the workshop with a set of practical tips and a sense of permission to de-escalate their work lives and (re)claim professional agency.
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