Dr. Paula Roper was named Outstanding Professional Librarian at the 2024 Missouri Library Association Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. First awarded in 2017, the Outstanding Professional Librarian Award recognizes a librarian with an MLS or MLIS degree who has made a significant contribution to the improvement and advancement of library and information services. Nominees must have at least five years post- MLS/MLIS work in the library profession.
Dr. Paula Roper has worked for University of Missouri Libraries for nearly 40 years, beginning her career at Ellis Library as part of the inaugural MU postgraduate “Intern-Scholar Program” in 1986. During her time at Ellis, Dr. Roper has worked closely with the MU School of Education and the Black Studies Department to aid both students and faculty, from the early days of online catalogs to the current challenges of navigating AI software. She has also advocated for the Library’s involvement across campus, including large, public events like Black History Month programming and National History Day. Her experience, knowledge, and drive is valued by both her library colleagues and the faculty at her liaison departments. As one of her colleagues puts it, Dr. Roper “encourag[es] and valu[es] her less experienced colleagues, spurring us to get out of our academic comfort zone, and embrace the power we have, as architects of ‘extracurricular curriculum’.”
It’s MULSA’s 75th anniversary and we are working on a 75th anniversary cookbook! Please submit your favorite, treasured, fun, creative, etc. recipes: https://forms.gle/QFBYrkMkXnLfm9A5A
Two options are available and approved for automated meeting summaries to help record notes during virtual meetings. Zoom AI Companion is provided as part of our university license and is available through the Zoom application at no charge. Microsoft provides intelligent meeting recaps through Teams Premium and has been approved for use.
It’s MULSA’s 75th anniversary and we are working on a 75th anniversary cookbook! Please submit your favorite, treasured, fun, creative, etc. recipes: https://forms.gle/QFBYrkMkXnLfm9A5A
The Digital Initiatives team has been working to digitize historical commencement programs in the past year. In one year, 176 programs were scanned. We uploaded 135 programs and will upload the last 41 program in the next few months. You can find the digitized collection on MOspace: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/86901
We are very proud of this project because we not only created high-quality scans as we always do, but also made efforts to improve the digital accessibility on the PDF files we created for this project. Each PDF file of the commencement programs has corrected OCR and is screen reader friendly.
What is the digitization process like for this project?
A digitization project usually starts with a planning process that defines the scope of the project, evaluates the condition of the physical items, and decides on the equipment, technical and metadata standards to be used for the project. Then, the project will be assigned to staff and students for the scanning, editing, quality controlling, and uploading processes. This project started in September 2023 with the planning process and handed over to a team of one student and 2 staff to execute the digitization workflow. Our student employee Evie worked about 12 hours per week on scanning and editing images.
Digitization workflow for commencement programs
Why invest time on improving digital accessibility of the pdfs?
Though we always take care, when possible, to provide OCR that is generally readable and searchable, certain items such as these commencement programs provide important details about Mizzou history and Mizzou alumni. Alumni, family members, and researchers often find commencement programs to be meaningful. Accuracy of the content is crucial for digitized commencement programs because users would want to search and find specific information such as student names, degree programs, awards and honors in the commencement.
How did you improve digital accessibility of PDFs?
We first use a software that automatically does OCR (optical character recognition) and then follow up with a few more manual steps to ensure digital accessibility, including:
reviewing and correcting text (particularly names)
correcting the reading order of elements on each page
adding alt-text to images when needed
Pic1-Checking for name errors in automatically generated OCR textPic2-Before and after correcting the OCR errors caused by unique fonts.Pic3-before correcting the reading order of text blocks (pay attention to #5, #10-17)Pic4-after correcting the reading order of text blocks
According to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), digital accessibility is the inclusive practice of ensuring that websites, tools and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. Furthermore, when digital tools are correctly designed, developed, and updated, generally all users have equal access to information and functionality.
Digital Initiatives team has been interested in learning about digital accessibility since a couple of years ago. We attended multiple webinars and training sessions and discussed how to apply what we learned into practice. The commencement programs project is a great learning experience for both staff and students, and we hope this digital collection serves all users equally.
