News & Blog

UCF Libraries is building a digital time capsule, based on this year’s Diversity Week theme, Stronger Together: Unified! Connected! Family!

In this unprecedented year marked by COVID-19 and the continued fight for racial equity, we ask you to tell your story, share your voice, and be heard. Chronicle your connection to this year’s theme by contributing photographs you have taken, illustrations you have created, or text you have penned. You can influence how the present will be remembered. Share your message.

Submission information:

• Open to UCF students, faculty, staff, and UCF Alumni. 
• One submission per person. 
• Submissions will be digitized and housed in STARS. STARS is UCF’s digital repository to publicize, disseminate, and preserve works by, for, and about UCF.
• Submissions must be sized 8 ½” X 11” in a landscape orientation.
• Submissions formats are pdf, jpg, png, or docx.
• All submissions must be original work(s).
• Participants must submit a consent form granting permission for their content to be digitized and placed into STARS as part of the Qualtrics form.
• Submissions will be accepted August 1, 2020 – October 25, 2020.
• Sexually explicit content will not be accepted, and UCF Libraries reserves the right to omit any submission.
• All works will be placed into the digital time capsule as received; no editing services will be provided.

Submit at the Knights Stronger Together Digital Time Capsule Qualtrics form.

Are you working on planning your mixed mode or online courses for fall and thinking about incorporating library instruction? We have several options available, including both synchronous and asynchronous sessions. We can tailor the sessions to your particular course and research assignments.

If your class is meeting synchronously through Zoom, your librarian can hold a live session for you and your students demonstrating search techniques and highlighting relevant library resources.

If your class is being held asynchronously, we can create recorded sessions or other customized learning objects to include in your Webcourse modules. We also have our Information Literacy Modules, which cover a range of research and citation topics, that can be assigned to your students.

Contact your subject librarian to find out more information about our services and to schedule your library sessions for the coming semester.  

With almost 3,000,000 downloads in just five years, STARS wants to help you reach a worldwide audience by providing an online home for your digital projects! Faculty and students navigate a world where scholarship is increasingly digital. STARS, UCF’s Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship, is the digital institutional repository of content by, for, or about UCF. Through STARS, UCF offers authors a way to manage, share, and increase impact for their full range of scholarship, from open educational resources and podcasts to image galleries and journals.

Did you know you can shine a light on your scholarship by adding your works to the Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works collection? This collection was created specifically to showcase faculty contributions.  View the works and citations currently available and then login or create an account to start adding your materials. Your Author Dashboard will provide access to real-time download activity, alternative metrics, and usage reports on demand. Newly integrated PlumX metrics show you citations, media mentions, tweets, and more.

Need a new collection for your project? Let us know!

Questions about submitting works or your rights as an author? Email us at STARS@ucf.edu

Ready to see how STARS can help you shine a light on your works? Visit stars.library.ucf.edu 

Do you have students in your class who you think would benefit from a one-on-one research appointment with a librarian? While UCF Libraries continues to offer research assistance virtually for general reference inquiries through our Ask Us service, we also offer virtual research appointments for those seeking an extended, personalized service for more complex questions.

Students can meet with their subject librarian to discuss their particular research questions and challenges. In these sessions, librarians can guide students through sample searches using their topics, recommend resources to explore, suggest possible keywords, and more.

To schedule an appointment, students simply need to fill out the “Schedule an Appointment” form online and provide their contact information and some information about their research project. Then a librarian will contact the student to schedule the day, time, and format for the virtual session. We encourage you to let your students know about this helpful service.

UCF understands this can be a very stressful time for our international students and we want you to know that we are dedicated to ensuring all of our students have the resources and services they need to complete their studies.

UCF is committed to the following steps to support our international students:

• Engaging with colleges and departments to provide course offerings that meet immigration guidelines.
• Working with our international students one-on-one to guarantee their individual class schedules meet enrollment requirements.
• Ensuring students have met the required face-to-face portion of their coursework prior to the Thanksgiving break.

We recognize that guidance may change in the coming days and weeks, and we will continue posting updates on the UCF Global website.

And at the library we want to make sure you know of all the resources available to you as a UCF student. We have a guide detailing such resources from multilingual glossaries of library terms, English language learning resources, contacts for your subject librarians, to contacts for the many departments at UCF who are here to assist our international community. https://guides.ucf.edu/internationalstudents