Integrating Immigrants into the LIS Workforce: A Pilot, Collaborative Project  

PI: Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran (with Co-PI Dr. Ana Ndumu from University of Maryland, College Park) 
Funding Agency:  Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)  
Funding Amount: $750
Funding Period: 2020-2021

Summary: The REFORMA Education Committee is partnering with the REFORMA Mid-Atlantic Chapter and Prince George’s Public Library System on a one-year pilot project to introduce refugees and immigrants to the library professions through a self-paced mini-course. Funding supports a collaboration to develop the course and then encourage participation among up to five immigrant or refugee adults who seek to apply their skills to the U.S. workforce. This project advances the ALISE Community Conn@CT mini-grant’s mission of connecting with social justice organizations to create innovative solutions. In addition, it presents an avenue for increasing ethnic and racial diversity in the library field.

Native American Community Anchors: TV Whitespaces for Tribal Connectivity, Equity, and Inclusion

PI: Dr. Kristen Rebmann
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $249,882
Funding Period: 2018-2021

Summary: San Jose State University’s School of Information, the Tribal Libraries Program of the New Mexico State Library, the New Mexico State Department of Information Technology Office of Broadband & Geospatial Initiatives, the Gigabit Libraries Network, and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Computer Science will collaborate with tribal libraries across New Mexico to explore dramatically improving tribal internet connectivity, equity, and inclusion through the design and implementation of several TV Whitespace (TVWS) networks statewide. The project will address challenges associated with Native American digital access and inclusion through a four-part work plan involving professional development, technology implementation via a subaward program, evaluation research, and model development/dissemination.

National Forum on the Assessment of Scholarly Communication Programs

Partner: Dr. Lili Luo
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $149,384
Funding Period: 2019-2021

Summary: Dr. Luo Lili joins the IMLS grant project titled  “National Forum on the Assessment of Scholarly Communication Programs” as an evaluator. Her role is to provide methodological expertise in the data gathering and analysis for the project. With the support of the grant, the Sacramento State University Library, in collaboration with the San Jose State University Library, will hold a two-day forum that will focus on standards and best practices in evaluating scholarly communications programs at large master’s degree-granting public universities. Forum attendees will include experts from library assessment, who may have experience in scholarly communication, to present and lead discussions on how existing assessment techniques can be implemented for scholarly communication services. The forum will result in a report with recommendations for standards and a comprehensive set of best practices in assessing the range of services that comprise a scholarly communication program.

CSU Commission on the Extended University/Innovation Grant for MS in Informatics Degree

PI: Dr. Sandy Hirsh
Funding Agency: California State University Commission on the Extended University/Innovation Grant
Funding Amount: $50,000
Funding Period: 2019-2021

Summary: This grant funding is to assist in the development of the fully-online Master of Science in Informatics degree at SJSU offered in Fall 2019 through a self-support model. The development grant was intended to help fund course development stipends, marketing activities, student assistant salaries, and software licenses to create a robust, high-quality program. 

Recasting First Generation Student Experience for LIS Success

PI: Dr. Anthony Bernier
Funding Agency: ALISE Research Grant
Funding Amount: $5,000
Funding Period: 2019-2020

Summary: This research project will further a previous investigation on how library and information science (LIS) in general, and SJSU iSchool in particular, can better prepare first generation professionals to thrive both at school and in practice.  This competitive grant was awarded on the basis of its potential for LIS education, the significance of the project, Dr. Bernier’s demonstrated qualifications, and the overall project design. 

Debating Diversity: How Twitter Facilitates Professional Discussions

PI: Dr. Deborah Hicks 
Funding Agency: San Jose State University RSCA Grant Program
Funding Amount: $5,000
Funding Period: 2019-2020

Summary: Discussions about diversity and what it means for librarianship have been ongoing for decades. There is little doubt that librarianship is committed to diversity as a core value; however, recent debates have highlighted a disagreement among librarians about how this core value should be interpreted. This disagreement came to a head in 2018 in response to the ALA’s revision of “Meeting Rooms: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.” The revised interpretation included hate groups amongst the groups libraries could not exclude from using library meeting spaces. Librarians took to Twitter to debate the revisions, with their conversations coalescing around the hashtags #NoHateALA and #IStandWithALA. The debate highlighted not only the power of Twitter as a platform for professional discussions, but also how librarians understand their core values. This project will use these debates as a case study to examine how librarians negotiate the collective meaning of their core values. A discourse analysis and social network analysis will be performed, alongside interviews with stakeholders, to examine the professional discourses and relationships that arose during the controversy. The aims of this project are: To explore librarians’ evolving understanding of their core values of diversity and intellectual freedom; and, to understand how librarians use Twitter to debate and discuss issues important to the profession. 

Examining the Cultural Intelligence of Academic Law Librarians

PI: Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran
Funding Agency: AALL Academic Law Libraries SIS Research & Scholarship Grant
Funding Amount: $2,000
Funding Period: 2019-2020

Summary: The mixed-methods research analyzes the cultural intelligence of academic law librarians. It is a timely effort with the new AALL Body of Knowledge (BoK) to expand this research to examine all types of law librarians with this research focused on academia due to aspects such as artificial intelligence, OER, data science and analytics which are impacting the profession. This research supports both the spirit and the practical application of at least three of the AALL Body of Knowledge Domains (professionalism + leadership, teaching + training, and marketing + outreach). To date, the researcher is the only individual who has contributed empirically to the literature on this topic as it applies to law librarians and law libraries. The target population for this study is academic law librarians who currently work in an academic law library with the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section as the basis for invitation to participate in this research.

Native American Community Anchors: TV Whitespaces for Tribal Connectivity, Equity, and Inclusion

PI: Dr. Kristen Rebmann
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $249,882
Funding Period: 2018-2020

Summary: San Jose State University’s School of Information, the Tribal Libraries Program of the New Mexico State Library, the New Mexico State Department of Information Technology Office of Broadband & Geospatial Initiatives, the Gigabit Libraries Network, and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Computer Science collaborate with tribal libraries across New Mexico to explore dramatically improving tribal internet connectivity, equity, and inclusion through the design and implementation of several TV Whitespace (TVWS) networks statewide.

Libraries Leading in Digital Inclusion and Disaster Response via TV WhiteSpace Wireless Connections

PI: Dr. Kristen Rebmann
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $249,998
Funding Period: 2016-2019

Summary: This project helps libraries explore dramatically expanding internet access in their communities by using TVWhiteSpace (TVWS), a new low-cost wireless technology. This project is led by San Jose State University’s School of Information. Key collaborators, including the Gigabit Libraries Network, the School, Health, & Libraries Broadband Coalition, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and the Information Technology Disaster Resource Center, explore dramatically expanding digital access/inclusion and modes to provide connectivity as part of disaster preparedness. Read more here.

Reaching Those Who Served: Recruiting and Preparing Military Veterans for Careers in Librarianship

Partner: Dr. Sandy Hirsh
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $488,501
Funding Period: 2016-2019

Summary: The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, and its partners, the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UH-Manoa) and the School of Information (iSchool) at San Jose State University (SJSU), collaborate to conduct a two-pronged project to help more U.S. veterans to become librarians. The three-year project includes 1) scholarships for 12 veterans to attend LIS masters programs; and 2) research exploring how military veterans choose careers in librarianship and information studies. Read more here.

Institute for Research Design in Librarianship

Partner: Dr. Lili Luo
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $394,014
Funding Period: 2016-2019

Summary: Loyola Marymount University’s William H. Hannon Library, in partnership with San José State University School of Information and the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium, extends and improves the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL). Throughout the project, sixty novice academic and research librarian researchers receive instruction in research methods and a full year of support to complete a project. Read more here.

Searching for First Generation LIS Student Success

PI: Dr. Anthony Bernier
Funding Agency: ALA Diversity Research Grant
Funding Amount: $2,500
Funding Period: 2018-2019

Summary: The project analyzes the experience of First Generation masters students enrolled at San Jose State University’s School of Information. This research addresses the gap in various literature that have omitted the First-Generation graduate student experience, both on-campus and virtually. Read more here.

Investigation of Possible Uses of Blockchain Technology by Libraries-Information Centers to Support City-Community Goals

Co-PIs: Dr. Sandy Hirsh and Dr. Sue Alman
Funding Agency: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Funding Amount: $100,000
Funding Period: 2017-2018

Summary: Through a national forum, the project investigates ways that blockchain technology can be used by libraries to partner with other organizations and to support city or community goals. Blockchain technology is a shared digital/electronic ledger featuring a constantly updated list of transactions. It is supported by a peer-to-peer network that may be either public or private. This technology has the potential to help libraries develop a distributed metadata system; facilitate better digital rights management; and create a protocol for supporting community based collections. Read more here.