CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES AND PROSPECTS OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES IN THE GLOBAL SCENARIO OF UNCERTAINTY: UNILIBNSD EDITOR'S VIEW

The global scenario of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how quickly university libraries can respond to changes in the educational and research ecosystems of their institutions. The new (6th) issue of the journal “University Library at a New Stage of Social Communications Development. Conference Proceedings” is exactly about this. The papers discuss new behaviours / work of library staff based on digital communication technologies, our projects, our goals, our hopes, as well as our doubts and concerns for the maximum contribution of libraries to the development of university communities in a constantly changing world. Full-length articles about the most interesting world library and information practices and ideas were selected, reviewed and recommended by members of the international editorial board of the similarly-named conference (UniLibNSD-2021), which was held in a hybrid format on October 7-8, 2021 in Dnipro, Ukraine. The title “University Library at a New Stage of Social Communications Development. Conference Proceedings” has been accepted in Scopus (2021).

Digital footprint in predicting school graduates’ educational strategy

This research article aims at evaluating the results of the school graduates’ educational strategy transformation with the help of digital footprint data. The analysis of official and unofficial Internet communities of universities in the social network «VKontakte» shows that their active users are school graduates, who thus receive the necessary information about the university. The method presented can become a promising tool to forecast the demand for higher education. The study covers the period from 2019 to 2021, a total of 502 thousand user profiles having been identified, 246 thousand accounts included in the final sample. The results show that during the analyzed period the number of user subscriptions to university communities has decreased in all Russian regions. The orientation towards universities located in other regions has also changed: these were more popular before the pandemic, being subscribed to by the majority of students, whereas after the spread of COVID-19, most of the graduates began to choose universities located in their native region. A significant limitation of this method is that a number of profiles are closed, which logically does not allow to use them in further analysis. The results of the study show, however, high validity and wide opportunities for the use of the digital footprint method when predicting young people’s educational trajectory and planning the enrollment campaign, both on the scale of the university and the whole country.

Past, Present, and Future of Human Rights in Gerontological Education

The rights of older persons, essential to our work as gerontologists, were discussed in the World Assembly on Aging (1982) and adopted through the United Nations Principles of Older Persons and followed by the Madrid International Plan of Action on Aging (MIPPA) in 2002. Although it has been endorsed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, in contrast to conventions, it is not binding on member states. This paper discusses the rights of older persons and our obligations as educators and researchers to focus on core issues associated with the rights and quality of life of older people. We will review the role of education in meeting this call to action through examples like the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing where education is a required element to accomplish the action areas and the Age-Friendly University movement. Both have involved multiple university communities on a global scale.

Non-Core Business? An examination of university art galleries in New Zealand Aotearoa

<p>University art galleries are the most common form of campus museum in New Zealand and are increasingly viewed as alternative and innovative interdisciplinary teaching tools. Much of the literature concerning university art galleries discusses the potential of these organisations to act as forums, laboratories and portals for the presentation of diverse ideas within institutions of higher education. Yet these organisations are often overlooked by their parent organisation and considered superfluous to the university’s core business. Despite the ubiquity of university art galleries, little research has been undertaken regarding these organisations within the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. This dissertation explores this issue by examining the ways in which university art galleries have integrated themselves into their university communities. This dissertation provides a general and concise overview of university art galleries in New Zealand and then presents two in-depth case studies, examining first the Gus Fisher Gallery and then the George Fraser Gallery at the University of Auckland. By utilising a wide range of sources including international and local theoretical literature, interviews, and documentation of public programmes and exhibition histories, these two case studies demonstrate that university art galleries contribute to their parent organisation in a variety of ways. These include serving as an important public interface for the university by showcasing academic and creative scholarship undertaken by the institution’s staff, students, and alumni; acting as a vehicle through which the university can achieve strategic and academic goals and objectives, and assisting the university in fulfilling its duty to act as the “critic and conscience of society”. This dissertation makes a contribution to museum studies and current museum practice by addressing a gap in the New Zealand literature on this topic. It is the first critical academic analysis of university art galleries in this country situated in relation to British and American theory. In particular, it builds upon and refines Janet Marstine’s argument that university art galleries can lead in the development of the Post-Museum and questions whether Marstine’s theories can apply to the New Zealand context.</p>

Non-Core Business? An examination of university art galleries in New Zealand Aotearoa

<p>University art galleries are the most common form of campus museum in New Zealand and are increasingly viewed as alternative and innovative interdisciplinary teaching tools. Much of the literature concerning university art galleries discusses the potential of these organisations to act as forums, laboratories and portals for the presentation of diverse ideas within institutions of higher education. Yet these organisations are often overlooked by their parent organisation and considered superfluous to the university’s core business. Despite the ubiquity of university art galleries, little research has been undertaken regarding these organisations within the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. This dissertation explores this issue by examining the ways in which university art galleries have integrated themselves into their university communities. This dissertation provides a general and concise overview of university art galleries in New Zealand and then presents two in-depth case studies, examining first the Gus Fisher Gallery and then the George Fraser Gallery at the University of Auckland. By utilising a wide range of sources including international and local theoretical literature, interviews, and documentation of public programmes and exhibition histories, these two case studies demonstrate that university art galleries contribute to their parent organisation in a variety of ways. These include serving as an important public interface for the university by showcasing academic and creative scholarship undertaken by the institution’s staff, students, and alumni; acting as a vehicle through which the university can achieve strategic and academic goals and objectives, and assisting the university in fulfilling its duty to act as the “critic and conscience of society”. This dissertation makes a contribution to museum studies and current museum practice by addressing a gap in the New Zealand literature on this topic. It is the first critical academic analysis of university art galleries in this country situated in relation to British and American theory. In particular, it builds upon and refines Janet Marstine’s argument that university art galleries can lead in the development of the Post-Museum and questions whether Marstine’s theories can apply to the New Zealand context.</p>

THE HOUSE OF SCHOLARSHIP, THE SEEDS OF KNOWLEDGE, THE TREASURY OF SCIENCE: RHETORICAL IMAGERY AND SOCIAL METAPHORS OF 13TH AND 14TH CENTURIES WESTERN EUROPEAN ACADEMIC COMMUNITIES

The article scrutinizes the ideas about the academic communities typical for the Latin world of the 13th and 14th centuries. It focuses on the ‘metaphorical vocabulary’ of academic corporations that was formed at that time within the framework of the Ars Dictaminis and was widely used to substantiate the status of university communities. These metaphors significantly supplemented the vague legal concepts that described academic communities (studium/studium generale, universitas). The most widespread metaphors of higher education institutions included such images as house of scholarship, seeds of knowledge, and treasure. All of them had deep roots in the Holy Scripture, but became widespread thanks to ‘exemplary’ texts included in rhetorical manuals and summae. With their help, social reality was interpreted within the framework of rhetoric as an epistemic system, often overlapping with the spheres of law and theology. The paper considers these metaphors in the context of their distribution, within the networks of local political and cultural ties drawing on cases of two Iberian universities – those of Lisbon (founded between 1288 and 1290) and Lleida (founded in 1300).

Mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission at a Large Public University

In the Fall of 2020, many universities saw extensive transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among their populations, threatening the health of students, faculty and staff, the viability of in-person instruction, and the health of surrounding communities.1, 2 Here we report that a multimodal “SHIELD: Target, Test, and Tell” program mitigated the spread of SARS-CoV-2 at a large public university, prevented community transmission, and allowed continuation of in-person classes amidst the pandemic. The program combines epidemiological modelling and surveillance (Target); fast and frequent testing using a novel and FDA Emergency Use Authorized low-cost and scalable saliva-based RT-qPCR assay for SARS-CoV-2 that bypasses RNA extraction, called covidSHIELD (Test); and digital tools that communicate test results, notify of potential exposures, and promote compliance with public health mandates (Tell). These elements were combined with masks, social distancing, and robust education efforts. In Fall 2020, we performed more than 1,000,000 covidSHIELD tests while keeping classrooms, laboratories, and many other university activities open. Generally, our case positivity rates remained less than 0.5%, we prevented transmission from our students to our faculty and staff, and data indicate that we had no spread in our classrooms or research laboratories. During this fall semester, we had zero COVID-19-related hospitalizations or deaths amongst our university community. We also prevented transmission from our university community to the surrounding Champaign County community. Our experience demonstrates that multimodal transmission mitigation programs can enable university communities to achieve such outcomes until widespread vaccination against COVID-19 is achieved, and provides a roadmap for how future pandemics can be addressed.

Near Future Teaching: Practice, policy and digital education futures

When considering digital futures for universities it is the instrumentalising narratives developed by corporate ‘ed-tech’ which often drive the debate. These are narratives which, aligning tightly to marketisation, unbundling and other dominant ideological trends, describe a highly technologised, datafied and surveillant future for teaching. This future is often framed as an imperative, leaving university communities with the sense that a future is being designed for them over which they have relatively little control. This paper describes the theory, methods and outcomes of a project which set out to counter this tendency, using participative, co-design methods within a ‘top down’ policy initiative to envision an alternative future for digital education within our own institution. Our starting point was that universities need to get better at crafting their own, compelling counter-narratives concerning the future of technology in teaching, in order to assert the agency and presence of the academic and student bodies in the face of technological change. In working toward this, we drew on recent thinking in anticipation studies in education and developed an original methodology for participative futures work within universities. The paper reports on the outcomes of this project, and its implications for the sector more generally, arguing that university communities can work to define their own digital futures through an emphasis on collectivity, participation and hope.

On Supporting University Communities in Indoor Wayfinding: An Inclusive Design Approach

Mobility can be defined as the ability of people to move, live and interact with the space. In this context, indoor mobility, in terms of indoor localization and wayfinding, is a relevant topic due to the challenges it presents, in comparison with outdoor mobility, where GPS is hardly exploited. Knowing how to move in an indoor environment can be crucial for people with disabilities, and in particular for blind users, but it can provide several advantages also to any person who is moving in an unfamiliar place. Following this line of thought, we employed an inclusive by design approach to implement and deploy a system that comprises an Internet of Things infrastructure and an accessible mobile application to provide wayfinding functions, targeting the University community. As a real word case study, we considered the University of Bologna, designing a system able to be deployed in buildings with different configurations and settings, considering also historical buildings. The final system has been evaluated in three different scenarios, considering three different target audiences (18 users in total): i. students with disabilities (i.e., visual and mobility impairments); ii. campus students; and iii. visitors and tourists. Results reveal that all the participants enjoyed the provided functions and the indoor localization strategy was fine enough to provide a good wayfinding experience.