April 15th, 2020 — I had a Zoom meeting with Lena (45 minutes) and learned about the tools we will be using for the project. Created Bepress and wiki accounts and studied how to use them. Time: 1 hour + 15 minutes.
April 30th, 2020 — Downloaded the Open Access Button extension and set it up. I tested it and studied it. Time: 1 hour.
May 7th, 2020 — Met with Lena and learned about WordPress. Created a WordPress account and joined Microsoft Teams. I now have experience with two open knowledge management systems, WikiMedia and WordPress, and I have used three remote collaboration tools, Zoom, google spreadsheets, and Microsoft Teams for this project. I started this activity log. I wrote an introduction to the Open Access Permissions checker as training documentation. This involved how to get started using it and screenshots of the checker in action. Time: 4 hours.
May 8th, 2020 — Met with Lena at 10 am and again in the afternoon so she could review my work. She taught me about job keywords that I could put into my activity log. I learned about the Professor Works and Faculty Profile spreadsheets that are located in Microsoft Teams. I learned about the workflow of adding the professors’ works on the discovery and OA checked sheets– by web-scraping and cross-walking the data from The Checker. (Data is happy when it is organized).
After the data has been checked, the next step is to see if it is on the professor’s selected works page. I spent the afternoon creating training documentation for the spreadsheets and how to cross-walk the data using Professor Adriano Udani’s works. Time: 6 hours.
May 11th, 2020 — Met with Lena at 11 a.m. for 30 minutes. We talked about the workflow, how to name the files, changes to the Faculty Profiles spreadsheet, and the Notes field of the spreadsheet. I worked on finishing Professor Lav Gupta’s works spreadsheet. I created training documentation for the Microsoft Teams files, particularly the Faculty Profiles spreadsheet, and how to name the Professor Works spreadsheets and where to put them in the files.
I met with Lena at 3:30 pm for 45 minutes. We discussed clarifications for the Microsoft Teams documentation, continuity of the answers on the Bepress column for the Professor Works spreadsheets, and she added a “Date Retrieved” column to the Professor Works spreadsheets. I went back and added that to Udani’s spreadsheet and the template. I also edited the training documentation as we had discussed. Time: 4.5 hours.
May 12, 2020 — I had a 1:00 meeting with Lena that lasted 10 minutes. I made new screenshots for the Discovery through Checker & Bepress training documentation. I also made a few clarifications to the document. I next tested the documentation by following to create a new Professor Work’s spreadsheet for Alexei Demchenko. I noticed a few things in the documentation that need tweaking as I used it myself. I fixed the errors I found in the template as well. I met with Lena at 5:00 pm with Lindsay to discuss the OA practicum. The meeting lasted 30 minutes. Time: 4 hours.
May 13th, 2020 — I split the Discovery to Checker to Bepress training documentation into three parts — Discovery, Using the Permissions Checker, and Comparing the OA checked works to Bepress. I added new screenshots and edited and information where needed. I worked more on Demchenko’s Works spreadsheet, adding some of the older items I had missed from his Discovery page. I had trouble filtering the results again but figured it out by removing blank rows and selecting from the bottom of the data. I put the previously missing titles into the Permissions Checker, but it didn’t find results for any of them. I tried again, but still nothing. I will run them again in the morning to double-check the results. I started comparing his OA checked works to his Selected Works page. I noticed he has works on his Selected Works page that are not on his Discovery page. I have not finished this step yet. Time: 4.5 hours.
May 14th, 2020 — I worked on finishing Demchenko’s spreadsheet by comparing the OA checked works with his Selected Works page. Met with Lena at 11:15 am for 1 hour. Watched as she created a workflow for the OA practicum process. As the workflow was formulated, we discussed how to divide the training documentation and organize it so it matched the workflow chart. It was decided there would be 4 processes for now — 1 Claim Your Professor, 2 Discovery Cleanup, 3 Checking OA Permissions, 4. After the meeting, I redid the training documentation, moving information about, replacing a couple of screenshots, and added information about the Grade column to each of the documentations. Time: 4 hours.
May 15th, 2020 — I chatted briefly with Lena Teams about what I would be working on next week and the procedures for her being unavailable. I started working on the spreadsheet for Professor Badri Adhikari. Time: 1 hour.
May 16th, 2020 — I watched the video about Open Access that Lindsay had posted in Teams. I also did the readings she posted. The Excel ones were beneficial for the work we have been doing. I finished Professor Adhikari’s Discovery and tried The Checker. Something went wrong though, and I decided to come back to that later and keep working on Discovery. I checked more Professors from the Faculty Profiles to see if they were in the Discovery system. If they were not, I indicated that in the Faculty Profiles spreadsheet and went down the list to the next Professor. I created a spreadsheet for Professor Vijay Anand and did Discovery for him. Time: 3 hours.
May 18th, 2020 – I worked on checking if Professors were in the UMSL discovery system. I created four new professor’s works spreadsheets and completed Discovery on them — Nasser Arshadi, Bindu Arya, Lindsay Athamanah, and Anne Austin. I also chatted with a fellow practicum student about a problem she was having filtering titles in a spreadsheet, but I was unable to help her. Time: 4 hours.
May 19th, 2020 – I continued checking professors for Discovery. I created new spreadsheets for Mei Bai, Kurt Baldwin, and Michael Bahr. I finished crosswalking the discovery to the spreadsheet and fixed the formatting. I think it might be useful to add information about formatting abstract and the scholar sections in the Discovery documentation since those also need to be moved from Column A to Column B along with the Year, Type, and Title. Time: 3 hours
May 20th, 2020 – I created spreadsheets for James Bashkin, Eike Bauer, and Alicia Beatty. I completed the Discovery for Bashkin and Bauer, but I ran into formatting problems on Bauer which took more time to fix than I was expecting (the problem was primarily user error). Alicia Beatty’s formatting still needs to be fixed. Time: 3.5 hours.
May 21, 2020 — I created spreadsheets for Julie Beauregard, Annnah Bender, Marvin Berkowitz, Julie Bertram, Sanjiv Bhatia, and Adam Boessen. I completed the Discovery for all of them. I also tried to get the Permissions Checker to work, but had no luck, even with the usual troubleshooting methods. I tried downloading a new copy of the Checker and restoring a previously downloaded copy that worked. I tried different professor’s titles, but that didn’t help either. After that, I went back to working on Discovery. Time: 4.5 hours.
May 26th, 2020 — I had a meeting with Lena at 9:10 am that lasted 20 minutes. After that, I worked on Permission Checking some of the professors I had already completed the Discovery on. Time: 2.5 hours.
May 27th, 2020 — Continued working on Discovery for professors. I had trouble with the Permissions Checker but was able to get a couple of professors up to grade C. Time: 3 hours.
June 1st, 2020 — Met with Lena for 40 minutes. She trained me on bepress since I cannot attend the training session on Thursday. I started making training documentation for adding works to the Professor’s Selected Works page. This involves editing the professor’s selected works page by harvesting their works or doing research to find the link or more information. Time: 2.5 hours.
June 2nd, 2020 — Finished the training documentation and adding works to Professor Adhikari’s repository Selected Works page. I included many screenshots in the training documentation to make it easier to follow. Time: 3 hours.
June 3rd, 2020 – I met with Lena briefly about step 5 training documentation I had created. I added a note to the documentation about seeking help on Teams for figuring out the discipline(s) of a work when adding links instead of harvesting them. I also replaced a couple of the screenshots in the documentation for clarity. After that, I brought Professors Bindu Arya, Lindsay Athamanan, and Anne Austin up to A’s. Time: 3 hours.
June 4th, 2020 — Worked on the step 5 training documentation, splitting it into 3 different parts and set up the new Chrome extension for discovery and checking and tried it out. Time: 1 hour
June 5th, 2020 — Finished splitting the “Getting to A” documentation into 3 parts — 1) Adding Works to the Professor’s Selected Works profile, 2) Adding a Link to the Professor’s profile, and 3) Adding Metadata and Books to a Professor’s profile. Time: 1 hour
June 8th, 2020 — I chatted with Lena and worked on editing the A+ OA Process training documentation. I worked through the process with the 3 professors I had gotten to A’s. I added screenshots for using the Mizzou Library discovery system and a few others for clarification. I added a PDF for Anne Austin. I noticed that the columns have changed with the updated Permissions Checker and so will vary depending on when the Professor’s works were OA Checked. Time: 2.5 hours.
June 9th, 2020 — I brought Sonya Bahar to an A+. I made documentation for adding working papers to a professor’s Selected Works profile. I had a 10-minute Zoom meeting with Lena at 10:50 am. Time: 2 hours.
June 10th, 2020 — I brought Professor’s Bahr and Bai’s spreadsheets up to A+’s. I found an open-access article for Bai and added the PDF to her Selected Works page. I started on Professor James Bashkin’s spreadsheet. Time: 2 hours.
June 11th, 2020 — I finished James Bashkin’s spreadsheet, bringing him up to an A+. I had a couple of questions about if some of his works should be included in his Selected Works or not — two of the works were half-page summaries of experiments and the other was a correction to a work already in his profile. Lena answered my questions via chat. I added the two short works to the profile and added a link to the correction in the details of the other work. Also, edited A2 of the workflow with information about including co-authors. Time: 2 hours.
June 12th, 2020 — Deleted the previous file and Chrome extension for Discovery and downloaded the new version and added it to my laptop. I started working on the cleanup project for the professors that I had previously gotten to A+ by adding the deposit statement to the pdf files that have been uploaded to the selected works profile. Time: 3 hours.
June 15th, 2020 — Finished bringing Eike Bauer to an A+ and Alicia Beatty to a B. I had trouble locating one of Alicia’s articles and spent time looking for it with no luck. I touched base with Taylor and he said to ask Lena about it when she returns. Time: 2 hours.
June 16th, 2020 — Looked one more time for the Alicia Beatty missing file and then redid the discovery for Julia Beauregard and brought her to an A+. Time: 1 hour.
June 17th, 2020 — Started working on Annah Bender. I redid her discovery and then found what was missing from her Selected Works and brought her up to an A+ (there were not any OA works to add). Time: 1 hour.
June 20th, 2020 — Started working on Nasser Arshadi and finished his profile. I redid the discovery on all the professors I had previously claimed so that they would be ready to work on if the discovery system or checker went down. I worked on Marvin Berkowitz, Julie Bertram, Adam Boessen, and Sanjiv Bhatia, bringing them all to a’s — although Berkowitz had some articles I could not find. I used the Mizzou Library discovery system, Google, and Google Scholar without finding the missing articles. When I meet with Lena, I will ask her how to grade professors with missing articles and what other actions we should take. Time: 6 hours.
June 21, 2020 — I worked on John Dalton, Larry Davis, and Matthew Davis. I reviewed Sonya Bahar and I am unsure about the publisher’s statement for the open-access works I added to her repository and made a note to talk to Lena about it. Time: 2.5 hours.
June 22, 2020 — Chatted briefly with Lena about Alicia Beatty’s missing article and I made an appointment to meet with her. Added one last link to Professor Berkowitz’s repository. Wrote my mid-term report for the practicum. Time: 2 hours.
June 23, 2020 –Worked on Susan Dean Baar’s spreadsheet, bringing her up to an A+. Time: .5 hours
June 24, 2020 — I had a meeting with Lena at 5:30 that lasted 1 hour. Time: 1 hour.
June 25, 2020 — I worked on Alexei Demchenko’s spreadsheet, finding which of his works were missing from his repository page and I started adding the missing works. I also added an item to the A+ Checklist about the meaning of VOR (version of record) and added a note to the A documentation about putting “not found” for works that cannot be located. Time: 3 hours.
June 29th, 2020 – I finished Alexei Demchenko’s spreadsheet, adding works and one open access pdf. I worked on Professor Cody Ding’s spreadsheet, bringing him to an A+. I noticed that I could not find a work on the Discovery page if the professor had a lot of works listed. I could only find the latest and the oldest works, not the middle works. I made a note to ask Lena about this. I was trying to find book chapters and I was looking to see if the name of the book and/or the ISBN was listed on the Discovery page. Time: 4.5 hours.
July 1st, 2020 — I started on Stephanie Dipietro’s spreadsheet and wrote a description of the practicum that could be used on my resume. Time: 1.5 hours.
July 3rd, 2020 — Finished Stephanie Dipietro’s spreadsheet. Worked on Elaine Doherty’s and Ronald Dotzel’s spreadsheets and selected works, bring them up to an A+. Time: 1 hour.
July 4th, 2020 — Worked on the following professor’s spreadsheets: Priscilla Dowden, Valerian D’Souza, Suellyn Duffey, William Dunaway, and Finn-Aage Esbensen; bring them all up to an A+. Time: 3 hours.
July 5th, 2020 — I brought Kevin Fernlund and Anne Fish’s spreadsheets up to an A+. Anne Fish was challenging in the sense that some of her works were difficult to find as they were just small bits in the “News” section of the Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing. I was not able to find them all because only the first page of the “News” section was visible and they were not searchable articles within the journal. I also added other links and one open access pdf file. Time: 5 hours.
July 6th, 2020 — Worked on Professor Flores, bringing the profile up to an A+ and worked on Henry Kang. Time: 1.5 hours.
July 7th, 2020 — Finished Henry Kang’s Selected Works, bringing him up to an A+. Time: .5 hours.
July 8th, 2020 — Started and finished Minsoo Kang’s profile, bringing him up to an A+. Redid Lav Gupta’s profile with the new processes and brought him up to an A+. Time: 2 hours.
July 10th, 2020 — Redid Professor Udani’s spreadsheet with the new processes.
July 12th – I added two columns to the Faculty Profiles spreadsheet for Links added and OA works added. I also prepared training documentation from Debbie Tusher’s process for handling professors that are not in the Discovery system and for adding new works to Selected Works pages. I started tallying up some of the professors I had worked on and continued redoing professors’ A+ that I had done without the Chrome Extension. Time: 5 hours.
July 14th — I redid Bindu Arya, Lindsay Athamanah, and Anne Austin’s spreadsheets to the new format with the Chrome Extension and tallied the works linked and added. Time: 1 hour.
July 15th — I redid Sonya Bahar’s, Eike Bauer, Mei Bai, Kurt Baldwin, and James Bashkin’s spreadsheets and/or added the tally for links and OA added to the Selected Works profiles. Time: 2 hours.
July 18th — I continued tallying the number of links and OA works I added to the professors’ Selected Works, taking the chance to review some of the spreadsheets as I went. I redid Larry Davis’ spreadsheet with the Chrome Extension and I added a PDF that was already on the Selected Works page to the Open Access Works category. I made a couple of edits to the documentation that had been suggested by co-practicum students. My tally for the OA project was 40 professors, 213 links added, and 23 OA pdfs added. Time: 5 hours.
July 19th — I wrote my final report for the practicum and completed the student survey of the supervisor for the practicum. I also continued the process of reviewing the work I had done throughout the practicum, including adding the proper Creative Commons citations to the pdfs I had added. I also searched for more of the items I had marked “Not Found”, finding another article. Time: 6 hours.
July 20th — I chatted with Lena briefly in the morning. I continued reviewing and searching for works for the professors I had worked on during the practicum. I am going to send my final report to Lena and add part of it on here. Time: 1 hour.
From my Final Report:
My favorite part of the practicum was being able to write training documentation for the OA project. I believe the skills I learned creating training documents will be a great asset to me in my career as a library professional. The fact that the processes and workflows changed a few times taught me to be flexible and how to update work that has been previously done.
I learned a lot from working with the collaborative tools of Teams and WordPress. Teams would sometimes frustrate me (always asking me if I wanted to open a file on the web instead of the application and asking me if I was back when I switched from the tab to tab), but I had not used either before this practicum and now I feel comfortable using both. Collaborating with other practicum students on the training documents was also a useful experience that taught me valuable skills I am already using at work.
It was wonderful to work with Lena throughout this practicum. When I started the practicum, I was still home from work and it was great to meet with her through Zoom. She taught me about the importance of making Open Access works accessible to researchers and illuminating the work of the university’s professors.
I can relate Michelle.