2023 OER Faculty Fellowship Announcement

Touro University Libraries, in collaboration with The Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 Touro University Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Fellowship. This fellowship awards faculty a stipend of $500 to develop OER for use in their courses. At the end of the fellowship, the fellows’ OER projects will be published on Touro Scholar and in public OER repositories. Our 2023 OER fellows are:

Gena Bardwell, MFA
Director, General Education
Chair and Assistant Professor, Speech and Communication
Touro University NY, NYSCAS

David Nussbaum, MA 
Assistant Professor, Speech and Communication 
Touro University NY, NYSCAS 

Michelle Buccinna, OTD, OTR/L 
Director, Long Island Campus, Occupational Therapy MS 
Assistant Professor, Occupational Therapy MS 
Touro University NY, School of Health Sciences 

Regina Burch, AB, MSA, JD  
Interim Assistant Dean for Academic Excellence and Bar Success   
Visiting Professor of Law 
Touro Law Center 

Stephanie Klinesmith, MS  
Instructor of Anatomy and Neuroanatomy 
Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Middletown 

Jacqueline Randa, PT, DPT, PhD, NCS, OCS 
Assistant Professor, School of Physical Therapy 
Touro University Nevada 

Deborah Ratti, PhD  
Assistant Professor, Sociology 
Touro University NY, NYSCAS 

Tom Rozinski, JD, MA 
Associate Professor and Deputy Chair for Lander College for Men 
Department of Political Science 
Touro University NY 

James Van Rhee, MS, PA-C 
Associate Professor and Chair of Assessment and Remediation  
PA Program 
Touro University  

Touro College Libraries Instructional Support Checklist

Photo by Olia Danilevich from Pexels

Do you have readings you’d like to make available to your students online? 

Sharing in Canvas: If you are sharing a journal article or book chapter from outside of the Touro College Libraries databases with your class this semester, you may need to get copyright clearance to include the material in your Canvas course. This applies to electronic and scanned materials. The Libraries are available to assist you with determining whether you need to secure copyright clearance, and, if you do, with requesting permission to share. Please contact Marina Zilberman for more information. 

Student Research Fellowship Grant Program- Summer ’21

screenshot from the Student Research Fellowship Grant Program webpage

Attention all students and professors!

Are you interested in receiving support to conduct your own research project this summer that will hone your academic skills and enhance your career prospects?

Touro has announced a grant program for student-led summer research projects across the Touro College & University System. The competition is open to all students (from our Undergraduate, Graduate, and Professional Schools) at the four major campuses, Touro College, Touro University California, Touro University Nevada, and New York Medical College. Accepted applicants will receive a stipend to support their work. Projects are student-initiated and completed under the guidance of a faculty mentor.

Find all the details on the grant, and apply (before July 9th) here:

https://www.touro.edu/departments/research/research-support/student-research-support/

Get help from the library

If you have questions about the research process, finding and evaluating sources, citation, or practically anything else during the course of your research, the Library has you covered! Our librarians are available for one-on-one assistance via our Ask a Librarian service. You can chat with us, call us, email us, or tweet us. Need help beyond a quick question? Schedule a (remote) research consultation with us!

And be sure to check out our libguides on:

• Conducting a research project
• Citation
• ProQuest RefWorks

post contributed by Kirk Snyder, Open Educational Resources & Instruction Librarian.

New Resource Alert! ProQuest’s Free Collection of African American History Documents.

image: screenshot, Black Freedom Struggle in the United States, May 2021. http://blackfreedom.proquest.com

ProQuest is familiar to the Touro community as a provider of scholarly literature, with their popular database ProQuest One Academic. They have recently released a collection of primary source documents on the history of African Americans’ struggle for freedom, Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: Challenges and Triumphs in the Pursuit of Equality.

This collection was released as a free resource on the web, so you can access it any time, even when you’re not signed in to the TouroOne system. It is presented as an accessible, easy-to-navigate website, separate from ProQuest’s research databases.

image: screenshot, Featured Subjects, Black Freedom Struggle in the United States, May 2021. http://blackfreedom.proquest.com

Primary sources are first-hand accounts from people directly connected to a subject, event, time or place. They are invaluable to the study of history, especially when they center the voices and perspectives of those largely kept out of the historical narrative.

See also: Librarian Emily Johnson’s libguide on Primary Sources.

Black Freedom Struggle in the United States features speeches, interviews, letters, newspaper stories, government documents from the FBI and Congress, laws and court records from the era of slavery and abolitionism all the way to contemporary times, with Black Lives Matter, the high-profile killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others, and the racial unrest of 2020.

The website contains approximately 1,600 documents, organized into these six eras of history:

1. Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
2. The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
3. Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
4. The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
5. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
6. The Contemporary Era (1976-2000s)

-post contributed by Kirk Snyder, Open Educational Resources & Instruction Librarian, Touro College Libraries.

How to Find a Missing Article

When you’re hot on the trail of an article and suddenly the link is broken or the piece mysteriously vanishes, what can you do? Don’t panic! Here are a few things you can try:

Go directly to the database

If you are searching for an article in the QuickSearch bar on the Libraries website, and clicking on the link takes you to an error page, try going directly to that database and performing a search there. You can also take your search terms to other databases related to the subject you are researching, as the article might be available in a different place.

Check for open access options

Like the many Touro faculty who share an open access version of their publications in Touro Scholar, the authors of the paper you are looking for might also have shared their paper in an institutional repository. You might be able to locate an open access version of the article via a search in Google Scholar or by going directly to the institutional repository of the institution with which the authors are affiliated.

Contact a librarian

You don’t have to search alone! If you are having a challenging time finding the article you are looking for, reach out to your campus librarian for assistance. We can help you explore other places where your article might be hiding or help you find another option that suits your research needs.

Email the author

The author of the article you are looking for might be able to send you a copy of it via email. Many researchers are happy to share their work with students and colleagues, but remember that not everyone is able to do so, especially at this time; be patient if you try to get the article this way, and consider other options, especially if you need the article soon.

Request it through Interlibrary Loan

Because many libraries have closed their physical locations during the pandemic, interlibrary loan is limited at this time. Consider this your last choice option if you are not able to track down the article using any of the other approaches listed here and be prepared to seek other options if your request cannot be fulfilled.

You’re invited…to our spring webinars!

The Touro College Libraries are excited to share the schedule of webinars our staff are offering this spring. From Pubmed to peer review, these sessions will offer Touro faculty and graduate students the opportunity to learn new tools and expand their skills. We hope you can join us!

Please click on the title of a webinar for more information and to register via Zoom. Note: times listed are in EST.

Advanced Pubmed: Taking Your Search to the Next Level (NYMC)
Friday, January 29, 2021 – 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Accessing & Navigating Library Resources Remotely (TC)
Thursday, February 18, 2021 – 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Depositing Your Work in Touro Scholar (TC)
Thursday, March 4, 2021 – 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Conducting a Systematic Review (NYMC)
Tuesday, March 9, 2021 – 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Creating a Research Web Presence: Tools for Research Profiles and Websites (TC)
Thursday, April 22, 2021 – 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Peer Review and Open Peer Review (TC)
Thursday, May 13, 2021 – 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Unpaywall your published article via Touro Scholar (TC)
Thursday, May 27, 2021 – 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Introduction to Grant Searching for Biomedical, Life Sciences and Public Health Research (NYMC)
Thursday, June 3, 2021 – 4:00pm – 5:00pm

These webinars will be recorded and shared on our Recorded Webinars LibGuide, where you can also find past webinars. If you have any questions about these webinars or topics to recommend, please email sara.tabaei@touro.edu.

Volume & Issue Numbers Demystified

“What is a periodical?” video from Touro Libraries’ Savvy Researcher Video Series

If you’ve done research papers in the past, you’ve probably had at least one professor ask you to cite something called an academic journal article (or three). But what exactly is it that your instructors are looking for?

Well, to answer that question, first we have to talk about what librarians call “periodical literature.” This is just a fancy collective name for magazines, newspapers, and journals which are published on a recurring, periodic basis, perhaps daily, weekly, or monthly. Individual issues of an academic journal are usually identified by volume and issue numbers. While you might browse through the September 2015 issue of Rolling Stone at the dentist, you’re more likely to find Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 122, Issue 3, on the shelves of your college library.

All of the different numbers in journal article citations can be a little tricky to keep straight though, so let’s break it down another way. Think of your favorite TV show. Got it? Ok. So, I’m going to go with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In this case, the show had 7 yearly seasons of 22-ish episodes each. In terms of periodicals, that would be 7 yearly volumes of 22 issues each.

If my friend wanted to watch the silent episode of Buffy, I could direct him to season 4, episode 10. If I wanted to quote Patrick Shade’s scholarly analysis of the episode’s philosophical implications on communication theory in an essay, however, I would direct readers to Volume 6, Issue 1 of The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association in my citation.

On the topic of academic jargon, it’s worth mentioning that the opposite of a periodical in the library world is sometimes called a monograph — but in the rest of the world, we just call them books. To continue our analogy, books are more like movies. Sure, there might be a sequel or two – or new editions, in book terms – or it might be part of a series, but they are still essentially self-contained entities.

So now that you know that journal articles are identified by the journal they’re published in, and the particular volume and issue it appears in, hopefully, it will make them easier to identify and cite!

Visit the library homepage to choose a database to begin your search, or check out the Student Services page for more research help, like the difference between scholarly vs. popular periodicals.

Contributed by Chelsea DeGlopper, Former Instructional Design Librarian, Midtown

Bay Shore Welcomes New Librarian Keith Pardini

Vintage Long Island map, featuring Touro Bay Shore (source)

How’s it going Touro Community! My name is Keith, and I’m the newest librarian at the School of Health Sciences in Bay Shore. For those of you unfamiliar with our Long Island campus, here at Bay Shore we cater to both undergraduate and graduate students who are primarily enrolled in health sciences fields. The majority of students pursue programs such as: Biology, Psychology, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, and Physician’s Assistant. The school also offers programs in Education and Special Education.

2016 Survey Results: Responding To Your Responses

(CC image)

In December, we ran our annual User Satisfaction Survey asking students, faculty, and staff about their experiences with Touro libraries over the past year. Your responses give us insight into how we can improve our services and offerings. We value your feedback, so we’d like to share some trends we noticed and our responses to the most common issues mentioned.

Touro Scholar: A New Way to Preserve and Disseminate Your Research Worldwide

View real-time information on which articles are being downloaded where

We’d like to take this opportunity, after mentioning it in several blog posts, to formally introduce you to one of our most exciting new services, Touro Scholar! Launched in April of this past year, Touro Scholar is the institutional repository of the Touro College & University System, including New York Medical College. This means it’s the online archive of all the scholarship our campuses are producing, and a new place to see lots of digitized materials from the Touro Institutional Archives. We’re pretty thrilled about it, and hope you will be too!