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Poster presented at HurriCon: Science at the Intersection of Hurricanes and the Populated Coast, at East Carolina University, February 27-28, 2020.Abstract: Climate change driven increase in frequency of hurricanes is part of the new normal. Focusing on academic commitments following a disaster is challenging for students. Prior research has demonstrated high rates of stress amongst students following a range of natural disasters. Our aim is to promote science learning through community- engaged research as a pathway to persistence for disaster-impacted students. NC State University (NCSU), like many schools in North Carolina, has a high number of students who were impacted by Hurricane Florence in 2018. Many disaster-impacted students are also low-income or from ethnic minority backgrounds. Research documents the importance of science learning that is highly connected with local communities and broader societal issues for student persistence. Students also value being able to apply STEM training to solve real world problems affecting their communities, including issues of environmental and social justice.Of the 4,797 NCSU students impacted in 2018, we selected 50 to participate in a learning experience focusing on student resilience and hurricane impacts on urban forests. Most students come from counties in the coastal plain which are susceptible to damage from flooding. Initial survey found that 21.9% of students (N=110) indicated some level of impact ranging from moderate to substantial, 18.8% of students indicated major impacts, and 32.3% reported minor impacts. Students reporting a lower level of social integration experience the highest impact. The majority of students strongly agree that temperatures and frequency of hurricanes is likely to increase in the future. Most students also report a high affinity for a diversity of tree species in their neighborhood forest despite relatively moderate knowledge of the local species. During summer 2019, students documented damage to the forests in their communities through: 1. 360° photography at 566 sites, and 2. oral history interviews with community members. This combination of immersive visuals and oral history narratives helps us develop a rich understanding on how both communities and local ecosystems respond to hurricanes and how we build greater resilience.

Poster Presented at the 2020 Teaching and Learning Symposium organized by the Office of Faculty Development, North Carolina State University, February 28, 2020.Abstract: Natural disasters, including those linked to climate change, such as hurricanes, can have lasting impacts on a community, especially the youth. The damage after a disaster can lead to more stress for students and affect how they perform in school. There is little research on how this affects college-aged students, and effective learning approaches to help them recover. We evaluated how participation in informal learning experiences after a natural disaster affected students’ persistence, resilience, and STEM identity. Fifty undergraduate students from NC State, selected from a pool of 4797 impacted by Hurricane Florence (each paid a $1000 stipend), engaged in an informal learning experience where they worked in pairs over 2 weeks to collect community-relevant forest impact data in their home counties. The informal learning experience took place in Summer 2019. Students had different opportunities to participate in research, i.e., collecting oral histories related to forest damage, photographing the forestry damage following the hurricane, and using geospatial analytic techniques to map hurricane impacts. We used pre- and post-test measures to evaluate changes in students’ learning, science identity, persistence, and resilience. Students reported a growth in science identity, knowledge of trees and climate change, and in perceptions that science can be used to effect change in local communities. Further, participants experienced a boost in science interest and identity on days when they had positive data collection experiences. Post-disaster interventions using relevant research learning experiences can thus play an important role in helping students recover from disasters.

Poster presented at HurriCon: Science at the Intersection of Hurricanes and the Populated Coast, at East Carolina University, February 27-28, 2020.

Collections and liaison librarians receive requests for specialized resources that may require use of passwords or other mediated access, local hosting, or special software. Sometimes, although not always, these resources are used in a business or industry setting, and their subscription and licensing processes do not follow typical academic library acquisitions patterns. Librarians may also receive requests for raw data that is part of a subscribed resource. How do librarians respond to these user needs? How do vendors make decisions about which products to bring to the academic library market? The authors present views on these issues and options to consider.

Some of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries’ largest investments are in collections, digital library development, and technology‐rich collaborative spaces. The goal of the NCSU Libraries Fellows Program initiative, "Aligning Collections with Emerging Needs in Research Informatics," is to ensure these areas leverage one another to the benefit of our users in support of emerging research informatics needs through licensing and acquisition of new data sources, as well as leveraging the capabilities of new high‐tech library spaces. Over its two years, this initiative seeks to address and mainstream subject specialists’ and selectors’ consideration of high‐tech research informatics needs of users. Early accomplishments of the initiative include content mining agreements, increased awareness of scholarly APIs, and an ontology to describe research informatics. Ongoing work includes an investigation of relevant collections, licensing terms, and the landscape of the current marketplace; an environmental scan of NCSU research and teaching contexts that would benefit from greater availability of content as data for computational purposes; how‐to documentation and training for more technologically sophisticated uses of existing resources; negotiations of select licenses to allow for more flexibility of content use; and revision of our website to promote the research informatics capacities of the Libraries’ collections to our users.

This paper examines the use of magic as heuristic metaphor or new understanding for practice in the library field, particularly as it has recently arisen in the professional literature in response to the challenges of the digital library. Drawing on concepts from anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, and critical theory, various types of library magic are illuminated. Ultimately, magic itself is seen to be emerging as a medial symbol to denote the ineffable qualities of the library that we experience but cannot readily or rationally explain. A magical consciousness implies new models for both the library institution and the profession of librarianship, and perhaps wholly new understandings of how library professionals might even conceive of thought and practice.