ACRL Framework for Impactful Scholarship and Metrics

The ACRL Impactful Scholarship and Metrics Task Force was formed primarily to create a framework for the measurement and evaluation of academic librarian scholarship. The framework is designed to address gaps between current scholarly evaluation practices and impactful scholarly activities within academic librarianship, including ways to measure and evaluate the impact of a wide range of research outputs

Novel Muscle Imaging in Inflammatory Rheumatic Diseases—A Focus on Ultrasound Shear Wave Elastography and Quantitative MRI

In recent years, imaging has played an increasing role in the clinical management of patients with rheumatic diseases with respect to aiding diagnosis, guiding therapy and monitoring disease progression. These roles have been underpinned by research which has enhanced our understanding of disease pathogenesis and pathophysiology of rheumatology conditions, in addition to their key role in outcome measurement in clinical trials. However, compared to joints, imaging research of muscles is less established, despite the fact that muscle symptoms are very common and debilitating in many rheumatic diseases. Recently, it has been shown that even though patients with rheumatoid arthritis may achieve clinical remission, defined by asymptomatic joints, many remain affected by lingering constitutional systemic symptoms like fatigue, tiredness, weakness and myalgia, which may be attributed to changes in the muscles. Recent improvements in imaging technology, coupled with an increasing clinical interest, has started to ignite new interest in the area. This perspective discusses the rationale for using imaging, particularly ultrasound and MRI, for investigating muscle pathology involved in common inflammatory rheumatic diseases. The muscles associated with rheumatic diseases can be affected in many ways, including myositis—an inflammatory muscle condition, and myopathy secondary to medications, such as glucocorticoids. In addition to non-invasive visual assessment of muscles in these conditions, novel imaging techniques like shear wave elastography and quantitative MRI can provide further useful information regarding the physiological and biomechanical status of the muscle

This is My Place: The Academic Library as a Retention Resource

This dissertation project addressed the gulf between the persistence rates of students in underrepresented minority (URM) and non-URM communities. To this end, a multisite exploratory qualitative case study focused on the experiences of students in academic libraries was conducted. The project applied a sense of belonging as an interpretive framework based on prior research which relates belonging to improved academic success outcomes among URM students. Previously, libraries’ capacity to support URM students’ sense of belonging had not been systematically analyzed. The three articles that constitute this dissertation, a literature review and one article on each of the two sites, a university pseudonymously referred to as Southwestern University (SWU) and a community college referred to as Southwestern Community College (SWCC), described the interplay of institutional context and student characteristics in the dynamics of URM students’ belonging. They each support the overarching finding that academic libraries are a retention resource by fostering URM students’ sense of belonging