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  • Publication
    Unseen Labor: An ATG Interview with Ann Kardos and Gretchen Neidhardt
    (2022-01-01) Kardos, Ann; Neidhardt, Gretchen; Kubilius, Ramune K.
    Ann Kardos, creator of the "Unseen Labor" project, sought to tackle the mysteries of metadata work in a visual way. She invited colleagues to visually illustrate the story of metadata labor through stitching. ATG occasional contributor, Ramune Kubilius, asked some questions in order to learn more about this interesting, multi-faceted project.
  • Publication
    Review of Digital Historical Research on Southeast Europe and the Ottoman Space, edited by Dino Mujadžević (post-print)
    (2021-01-01) Seifried, Rebecca M
    Review of Dino Mujadžević (ed.), Digital Historical Research on Southeast Europe and the Ottoman Space, Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe Volume 35 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021). https://doi.org/10.3726/b17129
  • Publication
    STEM Librarians and the Future of Scholarly Publishing: Scholarly Communication Concepts that Researchers Need
    (2022-01-01) Pacion, Kelee; Radik, Melanie; Duong, Khue; Martinez, Jessica; Bogucka, Roxanne
    This narrative reflection describes how five librarians developed a scholarly communication workshop intended for a specific conference with an audience of science researchers, then proceeded to modify it to fulfill different professional development opportunities. We explored themes around open access, the current and future landscape of scholarly publishing, and the decision factors for researchers when choosing a journal to submit papers to. Identifying further venues for the workshop and submitting formal and informal proposals leveraged our knowledge of our own professional associations and what might appeal to those audiences.
  • Publication
    Cross-functional policy development for a Data Repository
    (2021-01-01) Atwood, Thea P.; Jerome, Erin; Kardos, Ann; McGinty, Stephen; Radik, Melanie; Reznik-Zellen, Rebecca
    Policy can articulate the scope of work. For repositories that house data, policy can help users manage expectations, especially for individuals who are new to data sharing, or where expectations for sharing data have changed. We cover some of the current literature around the process for writing policy, specifically focusing on policy for data collections and repositories, factors that encouraged us to create a repository policy, our collaborative process for creating the policy, and lessons learned. We hope that others can use our processes to build their own policy that reflects the needs of their campuses and scholars and further moves the needle toward the “Library as Publisher” model.
  • Publication
    Yours, Mine, Ours: Some Best Practices for Authors Writing Collaboratively
    (2021-01-01) Knapp, Rachel A.; Borrego, Paulina; Atwood, Thea P
    The authors of this article focus on the best practices we learned through our experiences in scholarly writing, with a specific focus on the collaborative writing process. For the sake of this paper, we define collaborative writing as a collective process of creating a scholarly work for distribution, either through formal (e.g., peer-review) or informal (e.g., white paper) venues. This article is, in part, in response to our lack of formal training and addresses a situation in which we felt other researchers might find themselves. We hope to provide starting points for others interested in writing collaboratively and help empower those wishing to have a broader conversation about writing. Our scope here is limited to collaborative writing, and as such, we exclude other components of collaborative scholarly work, such as generating an idea, pursuing a grant, or analyzing data. Nevertheless, we do endeavor to provide resources and advice broadly applicable and relevant to all disciplines. After a brief literature review, included to provide a broader context, the authors give some background information on their own experiences with co-authorship prior to this article. However, the authors dedicate most of this article to presenting reflections, advice, and a curated list of open-access resources related to some of the critical aspects and challenges of collaborative writing.
  • Publication
    New Data on Southern Euboean Landscapes: Results of the Norwegian Archaeological Survey in the Karystia
    (2021-01-01) Tankosić, Žarko; Laftsidis, Alexandros; Psoma, Aikaterini; Seifried, Rebecca M; Garyfallopoulos, Apostolos
    We present the results of a diachronic survey of the Katsaronio plain in the Karystia, southern Euboea, Greece. The project was organized under the aegis of the Norwegian Institute at Athens with a permit from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture under the official name of the Norwegian Archaeological Survey in the Karystia. Five years of fieldwork (2012–16) covered an area of 20 km2 in a large agricultural plain located about 5 km north-west of the town of Karystos. The survey identified 99 new findspots with a range of dates spanning from the Final Neolithic to Early Modern times. Here we present the collected prehistoric through Roman data, which represent the bulk of the acquired evidence. One of the notable features of the assemblage is the vast quantity of lithics that were recovered, numbering over 9,000 and consisting mainly of obsidian. Certain periods were absent from the evidence, such as post-Early Bronze Age prehistoric and Geometric, while others were represented with varying intensity. We offer initial interpretation of the patterns observable in the evidence in an attempt to reconstruct the past use and habitation of this part of Euboea.
  • Publication
    Reveiew of Can't Pay Won't Pay: the Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition
    (2021-01-01) Taylor, Jaime
    While focus on the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic means that parts of this book will, we hope, soon feel dated, Can’t Pay Won’t Pay captures the economic zeitgeist of the early 21st century. A mere five chapters and just over 150 pages, the brevity of the book makes it an accessible introduction to the reasons so many individuals, communities, and even countries have found themselves deeply in debt. While fewer words are spent on remedies to the problem than describing it, the authors recommend the formation of debtors’ unions, modeled on labor unions. Through such unions, they suggest, collective power can force the abolition, or at least renegotiation, of debts. Can’t Pay Won’t Pay will help higher education librarians understand the conditions under which their students are laboring, as well as illuminating both the personal and systemic positions of librarians themselves.
  • Publication
    The Stone-Built Palaiomaniatika of the Mani Peninsula, Greece
    (2021-01-01) Seifried, Rebecca M.
    There are over 170 stone-built settlements in the Mani Peninsula that scholars believe were inhabited from the Middle Byzantine period (eighth to thirteenth centuries AD) up until the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. These enigmatic sites are known as palaiomaniatika, and roughly half of them are abandoned today, their massive stone walls in various stages of collapse and overgrown by olive trees and unchecked brush. This paper reviews the state of scholarship on the sites, outlining the typical characteristics of the vernacular architecture and discussing variations in settlement size and layout. A case study of the abandoned village of Koulouvades is offered to illustrate how targeted archaeological sampling and archival analysis can be fruitfully combined to illuminate the timeline of village abandonment. The final part of this paper is a call to action to archaeologists of the medieval and post-medieval eastern Mediterranean to adopt the theoretical lens of household archaeology. Through excavations of rural villages, data can be gathered that can answer questions about social process from a “bottom-up” perspective. Despite the body of art historical and architectural studies that have been carried out at the palaiomaniatika over the past 40 years, the lack of archaeological excavations limits the questions we can ask about daily life in these villages, as well as about the factors that contributed to their abandonment. Yet, they are an ideal candidate for household-scale excavations that would contribute to a wider understanding of social process in rural landscapes, not only in the Peloponnese but across the eastern Mediterranean as a whole.
  • Publication
    Introduction
    (2021-01-01) Stewart, Deborah E. Brown; Seifried, Rebecca M.
    Deserted Villages: Perspectives from the Eastern Mediterranean is a collection of case studies examining the abandonment of rural settlements over the past millennium and a half, focusing on modern-day Greece with contributions from Turkey and the United States. Unlike other parts of the world, where deserted villages have benefited from decades of meticulous archaeological research, in the eastern Mediterranean better-known ancient sites have often overshadowed the nearby remains of more recently abandoned settlements. Yet as the papers in this volume show, the tide is finally turning toward a more engaged, multidisciplinary, and anthropologically informed archaeology of medieval and post-medieval rural landscapes. The inspiration for this volume was a two-part colloquium organized for the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in San Francisco. The sessions were sponsored by the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology Interest Group, a rag-tag team of archaeologists who set out in 2005 with the dual goals of promoting the study of later material and cultural heritage and opening publication venues to the fruits of this research. The introduction to the volume reviews the state of the field and contextualizes the archaeological understanding of abandonment and post-abandonment as ongoing processes. The nine, peer reviewed chapters, which have been substantially revised and expanded since the colloquium, offer unparalleled glimpses into how this process has played out in different places. In the first half, the studies focus on long-abandoned sites that have now entered the archaeological record. In the second half, the studies incorporate archival analysis and ethnographic interviews—alongside the archaeologists’ hyper-attention to material culture—to examine the processes of abandonment and post-abandonment in real time.
  • Publication
    The Legacy of Byzantine Christianity in the Southern Mani Peninsula, Greece, after Imperial Collapse
    (2021-01-01) Seifried, Rebecca M
    Religion is one of the many potential mediums for emphasizing ethnic difference and highlighting group membership. Particularly in mountainous landscapes, which are difficult for imperial or state powers to control, religion may be a key means of asserting peripherality. The residents of the Mani Peninsula, Greece, converted to Orthodox Christianity during the reign of the Byzantine Empire and maintained this religious affiliation even after Byzantine collapse in 1463 CE, when the region came under Ottoman and, later, Venetian rule. This study reviews the research on Mani’s Byzantine churches to date – much of which is published in Greek – and presents new interpretations of the religious practices of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine communities of Mani. This case study sheds light on the role of religion in rural communities and the potential reasons for religious continuity in peripheral landscapes during periods of social transformation. In particular, the firm adherence of Mani’s residents to Orthodox Christianity emphasized their ethnic difference from the ruling authorities and simultaneously undermined these authorities’ ability to assert hegemonic power in the region.
  • Publication
    Library Space Redesign (Virtual)
    (2009-06-21) Billings, Marilyn S
    This session will present a series of "think pieces" for both librarians and other campus constituencies to explore as we create new ways of working together to meet the needs of students, faculty and researchers of the 21st century. Topics will include new scholarly communication techniques, digital repositories, new partnerships and ways of marketing our scholarly outreach activities, and examine the implications for our current and future workforce.
  • Publication
    Toward a Conceptual Framework for Scholarly Information Seeking
    (2020-01-01) Fitzgerald, Sarah Rose
    This article reviews literature on information seeking theories and discusses the relevance of those theories to the information seeking habits of faculty with research expectations. A new model is constructed to depict the factors influencing scholarly information needs. The model incorporates career advancement factors, the influence of discovery tools, and the influence of interpersonal networks. Theoretical frameworks from T.D. Wilson and James Krikelas play important roles in building the model to describe scholarly information needs. This model can be of use to librarians, discovery tool designers, and university administrators supporting the information seeking, research, and teaching of faculty.
  • Publication
    ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst: FY20 Annual Report
    (2020-01-01) Jerome, Erin
  • Publication
    Seascapes and Fresh Water Management in Rural Greece: The Case of the Mani Peninsula, 1261–1821 CE
    (2019-01-01) Seifried, Rebecca M
    The Mani peninsula is a semi-arid landscape with few natural sources of fresh water, yet it supported a dense population during the Late Byzantine and Ottoman periods. This paper reviews the archaeological and historical evidence for water-management practices in Mani, concentrating on its domestic-scale hydraulic infrastructure (cisterns and saltpans) and the ports and harbours along its coasts. The data point to a critical shift in household-level social organization at the turn of the 18th century, underscoring the fact that people living in supposedly ‘peripheral’ regions like Mani nevertheless engaged in far-reaching networks of contact and exchange.
  • Publication
    Scholarly Publishing at a Crossroads: Scholarly perspectives on Open Access
    (2020-01-01) Fitzgerald, Sarah Rose; Jiang, Zhehan
    The cost of access to scholarly research creates inequity for readers with varying resources. Open access publishing is an avenue to address this inequity. This research employed a survey of scholars to discover what they know and think about open access. The survey elicited both faculty and doctoral student perspectives. Data were analyzed according to rank and discipline. Although the majority of scholars across disciplines agreed that their work should be freely available to all readers, there were significant differences between disciplines regarding whether scholars had distributed their publications through open access. The survey instrument was examined through Exploratory Factor Analysis.
  • Publication
    University of Massachusetts Amherst Response to Draft Desirable Characteristics of Repositories for Managing and Sharing Data Resulting From Federally Funded Research
    (2020-01-01) Atwood, Thea P
    Response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy's Draft Desirable Characteristics of Repositories for Managing and Sharing Data Resulting from Federally Funded Research. Original call for public response is available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/17/2020-00689/request-for-public-comment-on-draft-desirable-characteristics-of-repositories-for-managing-and
  • Publication
    An Exploratory Spatial Analysis of the Churches in the Southern Mani Peninsula, Greece
    (2019-01-01) Seifried, Rebecca M; Kalaycı, Tuna
    The Mani Peninsula is home to hundreds of Orthodox Christian churches that were built within the last millennium. As in other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean countryside, the topological relationship between churches and settlements is a critical factor in understanding the significance of the sacred landscape. Many churches are situated in the central part of a village or on its very edge, but others – what are referred to as “outlying churches” or exokklisia – are built at great distances away. In this paper, we make the first attempt to assess the spatial relationship between the spaces where people worshipped (the churches) and the spaces where they lived (the settlements) at a regional scale, focused specifically on the Middle Byzantine period and later (mid-9th century CE to the present day). Comparing these patterns across the Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern periods allows us to frame Mani’s sacred infrastructure within a changing, diachronic perspective. The results point to a change in the topological relationship between church and settlement that is best described as the “nucleation of the sacred landscape.”
  • Publication
    Curiosity as Outreach: Flipping Outreach on its Head
    (2020-01-01) Borrego, Paulina; Graham, Anne; Lutz, Ellen; Radik, Melanie; Reznik-Zellen, Rebecca
    Science and Engineering Library staff at the University of Massachusetts Amherst visited several sites on campus in a novel outreach initiative that involved all nine staff members taking “field trips” without agendas. We demonstrate that outreach without the explicit goal of promoting a specific resource or service can be an effective use of time, and can build social capital that shares the goals of traditional outreach. Involving all staff in this outreach effort was a valuable team building experience, exposing the depth of our interests and expertise to each other and to our campus community.
  • Publication
    NIRDs Unite: Building a Community of Institutional Repository Practitioners in the Northeast
    (2019-01-01) Castro, Eleni; Jerome, Erin; Lukens, Colin; Macdonald, Mikki Simon; Palmer, Lisa A.
    The idea for “Northeast Institutional Repository Day” (NIRD) was conceived by a group of five repository librarians in the northeast. The organizers sent out a pre-conference online survey to the IR community in November 2018 to see if fellow repository practitioners had an interest in attending and/or participating in such a day and the response was a resounding, “Yes!” The survey results suggested that building a stronger regional network of repository managers would foster meaningful discussions on the merits and effectiveness of IRs.
  • Publication
    Higher Education Publication and Institutional and National Diversity
    (2019-01-01) Fitzgerald, Sarah Rose; Jiang, Zhehan
    Educational scholarship is used by practitioners, policy makers, and scholars to shape educational practices. Since education takes place across the globe and incorporates students from a wide variety of backgrounds, educational scholarship should incorporate diverse perspectives. This study examines how institutionally and internationally diverse five leading journals of higher education are. Twelve years of publications are examined to determine the level of diversity among top higher education journals and compare diversity among these publications over time. Maps displaying the distribution of authors across the world are provided to illustrate the findings that higher education publication in the leading journals tends to come mostly from the US and to show the differences in distribution between leading journals.