University Library News

Grey Literature is often overlooked, yet it is a vital component of evidence synthesis. The Evidence Synthesis Collaborative invites you to an engaging workshop where you’ll explore the role of Grey Literature in strengthening systematic reviews and evidence syntheses. 

Workshop: Grey Literature in Systematic Reviews & Evidence Synthesis 
Presenters: Kim Reycraft & Traci Mays 
Date/Time: Friday, November 14, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. 
Location: LIB 222 (in-person) or via Zoom 

Grey Literature refers to research and information not controlled by commercial publishers—such as reports, dissertations, conference proceedings and policy papers. Including these sources leads to more comprehensive, robust reviews. 

In this interactive session, you’ll gain an overview of Grey Literature and be introduced to tools and strategies for effectively finding and incorporating it into your research. 

We warmly encourage faculty and graduate students to join us for this opportunity to expand your evidence synthesis toolkit. Please register here! 

FGCU's institutional repository, ScholarsCommons, is an accessible repository that collects, preserves and disseminates the scholarly and creative output of our university community. Think of it as your professional portfolio meeting an academic archive that is accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world, 24/7.

There is an array of benefits to updating your ready-made researcher profile, chief among them being that your work in ScholarsCommons becomes immediately discoverable through Google Scholar and other search engines. While traditional journal articles may sit behind paywalls, limiting who can access them, ScholarsCommons provides easier access to your scholarship. This means:

Global reach: Researchers, practitioners and students worldwide can find and cite your work.
 

SEO optimization: Content is indexed by major search engines, increasing your digital footprint.

Persistent URLs: Each item receives a permanent link that won't break over time.

ScholarsCommons also accepts a wide range of scholarly materials, allowing you to display your work with ease. Some options include:

• Publications: Journal articles (check publisher policies), book chapters, working papers
• Conference materials: Presentations, posters, proceedings
• Creative works: Performances, exhibitions, artistic projects
• Teaching materials: Instructional guides, syllabi, learning modules (when appropriate for sharing)
• Datasets: Research data with appropriate documentation
• Technical reports: White papers, policy briefs, commissioned reports
• Theses and dissertations: Student work you've directed (through existing ETD programs)

Ready to increase the impact of your scholarship? Visit ScholarsCommons or contact the University Library to learn more about how you can showcase your work. Whether you are submitting your first article or building a comprehensive collection of your life's work, ScholarsCommons provides the platform to ensure your scholarship reaches its full potential. 

Your research deserves to be seen! Let ScholarsCommons help you share it with the world.

Are you tired of juggling endless articles and struggling to organize your research? Discover powerful tools that can streamline your workflow and elevate your evidence synthesis in this upcoming workshop!

Join Kim Reycraft and Traci Mays from the Evidence Synthesis team on Thursday, October 16, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. for an exciting workshop designed to help you master tools for systematic reviews and evidence synthesis.

What is Evidence Synthesis?
It’s a method of gathering, selecting and combining results from multiple studies to paint a clear, comprehensive picture of all the scholarly research on a topic—including published and unpublished work.

Why attend?
This workshop will introduce you to online tools that simplify the complex process of systematic reviews — from screening studies to managing citations. You’ll leave equipped with practical knowledge about the latest tools to make your research faster, easier and more effective.

How to join?
Registration is required. You may choose to attend either in-person or online. Sign up now on the library’s calendar page.

Don’t miss this chance to supercharge your research process. We look forward to seeing you there!

Looking for an easy way to develop and store free, openly licensed course materials tailored to your students’ needs? Pressbooks is an open-source platform that allows faculty and staff to create, adapt, and publish textbooks, guides, and manuals for the classroom, all at no cost to students.  

Pressbooks' user-friendly interface makes it simple to collaborate, revise, and update content over time, ensuring your materials stay relevant. Whether you're designing a new resource or customizing existing open educational resources (OER), Pressbooks empowers content creators to customize learning experiences that fit the curriculum. Start creating today and make your courses more accessible!  For more information, check out our resource guide.

It’s been an exciting semester when it comes to ScholarsCommons, FGCU’s institutional repository (IR). After only a few short years, ScholarsCommons now connects users to over 9,000 research outputs created by the FGCU community with many more on the way!

How does ScholarsCommons benefit you, you might be asking. One of the major benefits of making your research more accessible is that the more people that see it, the greater the chances are of increasing your citations! This becomes an even greater possibility if your work is open access, which means that it can be read by users across the globe. Over the last few years, there has been compelling research showing that there’s a direct correlation between greater citation counts and open access (Huang, et al., 2024). If publishing open access is not an option available to you, there may be a solution in the form of green open access, a form of open access wherein most major journals, usually after a stipulated period of time, permit you to share a version of your submitted work in an institutional repository, just like ScholarsCommons!

If you would like any assistance with the determining how to turn any past or future scholarship into green open access, all you have to do is reach out to Research Systems & Applications Librarian Kaleena Rivera at krivera @ fgcu.edu. For more information on ScholarsCommons, including how to interact with your pre-made researcher profile, check out the user guide here!

References

Huang, CK., Neylon, C., Montgomery, L. et al. Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations. Scientometrics 129, 825–845 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04894-0

FGCU Library staff have been busy looking at the list of textbooks for next semester and have prepared over 1500 course materials lists that correspond with courses on offer during the fall semester. The library covers over half of the fall 2024 textbooks with library-owned materials either in print or electronic format!

If you are a student, check and see if there are reading lists for courses you are taking (or are interested in taking). Your course textbook could be available for you to borrow or to view online at no cost to you!

If you are an instructor, check and see if we have already made you a course reading list. If there is a reading list for your course with library-owned materials in it, be sure to share with your students by activating your lists in your Canvas courses. You can easily add more books, videos, articles, and websites to any pre-made reading lists to make them your own. If you don’t have a pre-made list, you can always create one!

Course Reading Lists are available for any FGCU faculty member to create or edit. These course readings lists can be fully integrated into Canvas, making it easy for students to connect with course readings and resources. Course Reading Lists can be used to create low-cost or zero-cost courses using library resources or Open Education Resources (OER). See our complete guide to Course Reading Lists to learn about the possibilities.

How to Read a Library Created Course Materials List

The library creates online "reading lists" for courses each semester. We start those reading lists with required textbook information we get from the bookstore. If the library owns a print or electronic copy of the textbook, there will be a link or location information linked to that citation. If we do not own the textbook, only the title and ISBN information will appear, along with an indication that the book is available from the bookstore.

FGCU's ScholarsCommons is a public portal that highlights the scholarship and expertise of FGCU's community of scholars. It provides access to their collective research activities and allows anyone to view works including articles, book chapters, creative works, theses and dissertations and more. Works can be browsed or searched by subject, author, college/unit, or research type.

To date there are over 8,000 total works in ScholarsCommons, 63,325 views, and over 6,000 downloads worldwide. 

Please contact Kaleena Rivera (krivera@fgcu.edu) for more information, or to help answer any questions.

Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to have a library book delivered straight to your dorm building or office? Our Library Express Delivery (LED) service is an easy and convenient way to get your library materials delivered directly to you!

After searching for your item in the library catalog and selecting “request”, you can then choose the pickup location. From the drop-down menu, choose your dorm building, or for offices choose the “Campus Library Express Delivery” option.

*Please note that this delivery service is available for physical items only and excludes our textbook reserves collection. Your item(s) will be delivered on the same day or next depending on the time your request is made.

This service is a great way to get your books in a pinch, and can be utilized by students, staff or faculty to make it easy for you!