Projects and Initiatives

Projects and Initiatives by UIC Library Faculty

Developing and testing assessment tools for measuring library impact on student academic success

The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Library, in partnership with Northern Illinois University (NIU) Libraries, was awarded $250,141 for a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant for 2022-2024 (LG-252338-OLS-22). Dr. Scoulas, a faculty member at the UIC University Library, serves as the Project Director and Principal Investigator for this research project, leading a research team that includes Co-PIs Sandra De Groote, a faculty member at UIC, Kimberly Shotick, a faculty member at NIU, and Nestor Osorio, also a faculty member at NIU. This research project aims to develop the assessment tools examining academic engagement, psychological factors, and students’ definitions of academic success, to demonstrate the impact of the library on students’ academic success from the learners’ perspective of academic success. Through engagement with undergraduate students at two academic institutions serving underrepresented minorities and first-generation students, this project will test and validate the developed assessment tools. The tools will be made available for dissemination to academic libraries who may not have capacity or policies to utilize learning analytics or for academic libraries who wish to supplement or replace their use of learning analytics, to assess the impact of their library on student success and to further support and address students’ needs and/or academic libraries. For more information about this research project, please visit the IMLS site: https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/lg-252338-ols-22

Community Health in the Library (CHIL): Reinvigorating Outreach at the UIC Crawford Library of the Health Sciences

The Community Health in the Library (CHIL): Reinvigorating Outreach at the UIC Crawford Library of the Health Sciences project will improve access to high quality, reliable health information for the city of Rockford, Illinois and the surrounding Winnebago County community. (Cynthia Reynolds) (NLM)

Chicago Collections Consortium

The UIC Library is a founding/governing member of the Chicago Collections Consortium, and UIC librarians serve on the board and on many of the committees to help preserve and share the history and culture of the Chicago region. Mary Case is on the board of directors, Kate Flynn is the Explore Portal Manager, and many UIC Library faculty serve on committees for the Chicago Collections Consortium.

Nursing Experts: Translating the Evidence (NExT)

The NExT project, a collaboration between the UIC Library, the UIC College of Nursing and Western Illinois University School of Nursing, aims to improve community health with free education and resources for public health nurses and other community practitioners. NExT includes in-person workshops, an online course, and a mobile information portal (gonext.uic.edu), to learn and to support evidence-based practice. The project team has provided 12 in-person workshops throughout the state of Illinois and has awarded online CEUs throughout the United States.?This project was supported by the funding of two project awards from the?Greater Midwest Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.

Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program

The high-cost of textbooks is one of the factors that affects student learning outcomes and student success. Students avoid certain classes, drop a class, or do poorly when they cannot afford the text for a course. The Open Textbook Faculty Incentive Program will be to support undergraduate students by creating incentives for teaching faculty to use alternative lower-cost educational materials rather than high-cost textbooks. This may include the creation of new Open Educational Resources (OER) or the use of existing OER materials.

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