News & Blog

Want to build library instruction into your online course?  The UCF Libraries have you covered! One of the easiest ways to help your students build skills related to citing sources, avoiding plagiarism, or researching topics with library resources is to integrate the library’s Obojobo Info Lit tutorials into your canvas course. 

Each tutorial takes approximately 20-30 minutes to complete and allows instructors to import assessment scores directly into their Canvas gradebook.  There are twelve different modules to choose from that cover everything from the mechanics of integrating secondary sources into academic writing to evaluating sources.  For information on how to integrate the modules into your course check out our Quick Start Guide.   

If you have question or there are topics you would like covered that are not currently available, email Christina Wray at christina.wray@ucf.edu

Students at UCF work on all kinds of interesting creative projects and research. UCF Libraries has the privilege of being able to house physical and digital copies of decades of research done by students and faculty.  

STARS is UCF’s Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship, and is home to scholarship and creative works done by students and faculty across disciplines. STARS provides an option for contributors to share their work while retaining their copyright. Most items in STARS are freely available to users around the world. Materials can be browsed College, Department, or individual collection: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/communities.html. 

Users can browse all Theses and Dissertations completed at UCF, including everything from a political science paper about the 2020 Presidential primaries and the Democratic Party’s influence to a Communication paper on the effects of social media on mental health. College and Department level collections are also available, as well as a browsable collection of Advisors and Chairs. 

We’ve also curated a list of some of the many interesting works by students in the History Department, Creative Writing program, College of Sciences, and College of Nursing below:  

History 

Pestilence and Poverty: The Great Influenza Pandemic and Underdevelopment in the New South, 1918-1919 by Andrew Kishuni 

Farm Women as Producers & Consumers in the 20th Century U.S. South by Joseph J. Kaminski 

Rebuilt and Remade: The Florida Citrus Industry, 1909-1939 by James Padgett  

Hippieland: Bohemian Space and Countercultural Place in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood by Kevin Mercer 

Mass Media and the Evolution of the Environmental Movement: 1960-1979 by Donald Anguish 

Creative Writing 

Golden Years by Sienna Malik 

Tourist Trap: On Being Raised In Award-winning Sand by Catherine Jane Carson 

According to the Gospel of Haunted Women by Judith Roney  

Assisted Living: Stories by Donovan Swift 

I Have Questions by Lorena Matejowsky 

Migrant Child by Nicholas Shepherd 

College of Sciences 

A Socio-Economic Assessment of Marine Turtle Eco-tourism by Kendra Cope (2015) 

Impact of Increased Green Turtle Nesting on Loggerhead Fitness by Amanda R. Carmichael (2018) 

It’s Just a Bad Period” and Other Ways of Dismissing Women’s Pain: An Ethnographic Look into the Experience of Endometriosis by Seline Hays 

Impact of Work-Life Balance on Health-Related Quality of Life Among College Students by Emily Vernet 

Experiences of Young Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Latinx People in Healthcare by Caleb Hernandez  

Whose Sustainability? An Analysis of a Community Farming Program’s Food Justice and Environmental Sustainability Agenda by Sarah Davenport  

College of Nursing 

Exploring the Different Factors Associated with Burnout by Natassja J. DeBra 

As we continue to share UCF Library’s online resources, we hope that you find new ways to engage with your fellow Knights across disciplines and genres. 

Summer is nearly here! As faculty work to develop online courses for the summer semester, questions may arise about copyright and fair use. Common questions about online classes and copyright include:

• Can I scan a book chapter and post it in Canvas?
• Am I allowed to add a PDF journal article to Canvas that I downloaded from UCF Libraries?
• Can I link to a YouTube video?

Whether you have a question about journal articles, e-books, or streaming video, UCF Libraries is available to assist you with any copyright, fair use, or licensing questions that you have.

The Office of Scholarly Communication offers a variety of resources and services to help you navigate the complexities of copyright in your online courses. Visit the website for more information about copyright: https://library.ucf.edu/about/departments/scholarly-communication/

If you have questions about copyright and fair use for your summer courses visit UCF Libraries Guide on Academic Resources during COVID-19 Situation: https://guides.ucf.edu/covid/home. It provides excellent resources and copyright clarifications to aid you in this process.

If you have additional questions, Scholarly Communication Librarian, Sarah Norris, is available to provide general guidance to faculty and staff about copyright and transitioning their classes online. For the month of May, Sarah is providing online office hours, Tuesday & Thursday, 11:30 a.m. – Noon. You can also reach her through email or phone.

University of Central Florida, through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), has established the Federal Emergency Grant to support students negatively impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Technology is one of the items for which CARES Act funds can be used. Two specific examples are new technology for online classes and the purchase of laptop/desktop as a result to classes moving online due to COVID-19.

Students who need assistance meeting these unexpected financial challenges should apply for CARES Act funds by submitting a federal emergency grant request.

The form to apply for funds is available at https://ucf.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_86rDdVwFnV1Rj0h

Application window will be open until 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, May 19. Assistance is subject to availability of funds, and applicants must meet eligibility criteria.

UCF has a CARES Act FAQ at https://www.ucf.edu/coronavirus/question/how-can-students-apply-for-cares-act-funds/.

For additional resources, the UCF CARES office provides assistance in connecting students with mental health services, support groups, sexual and domestic violence support, and concerns about wellbeing such as financial and housing crises.

Library Support for Course Materials

Whether you’re teaching online or face-to-face, UCF Libraries provide access to a variety of materials that can support your courses — from journal articles, streaming videos, e-books, and more. But, these materials have a wide variety of access models that are not always evident. In this session, UCF Librarians Sara Duff, Rich Gause, and Sarah Norris will share how to navigate the plethora of resources available to support teaching and learning with a particular emphasis on resources that can be used during remote teaching during emergency circumstances. How to access these materials and ensure they’re accessible by students, as well as copyright and licensing will also be explored in this session. 

Faculty Session: May 28, 2020 – 1:00 -2:00 pm

Copyright and Student Works

Copyright is an important part of student works. As UCF students, they not only use copyrighted content but are also creators of copyrighted content. That’s because when a student writes a research paper, thesis, or dissertation, creates a presentation, or produces any other original and creative work, students own the copyright of those works — without having to apply for copyright. In this session, we will explore copyright as it applies to students and will provide context and recommendations that faculty can use to help foster students to be good stewards of copyright and intellectual property and to aid in ensuring student copyright is protected. 

Open to all: June 16, 2020 – 1:00 – 2:00 pm