you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nGraduate students are expected to use literature from their first years in the program for qualifying exams. Storing articles and their personal notes on an organized platform helped students be better prepared for their tests without starting from scratch, and they have approached O\u2019English on the bus or in the library to tell her as much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes you go a whole week or two weeks and you don\u2019t have an interaction where you feel like you\u2019ve made a difference in somebody\u2019s life. Then somebody tells you something like that,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is so powerful and so affirming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019English said many people do not realize how valuable government information is within research. While her subject areas focus on political science, sociology, criminal justice, sports studies, and philosophy, they overlap with many other disciplines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even documents like the census, which \u201cmay sound kind of dull,\u201d provide statistics on educational attainment, languages spoken in households, and other demographic information revealing the background of individuals in the United States, she said. The library also subscribes to the PolicyMap database, where students can overlay statistics over a map to visualize data and how they are distributed across the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To develop her collections of documents, comics, music, and books, O\u2019English searches for materials that are relevant to faculty and students\u2019 studies and research needs in the departments she works with, that are well reviewed, and that are diverse in thought or authorship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor me, collection development is 24\/7, 365 [days of the year],\u201d she said. \u201cEverything I read, I\u2019m always looking for new books I think I\u2019d buy for the library.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019English said her phone is filled with screenshots of books and articles she found \u201cin the wild\u201d from X, formerly known as Twitter, or scholarly journals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also looks for graphic novels and popular books that may spark students\u2019 interest in reading, said Humanities Librarian Erin Hvizdak. Not every student feels comfortable jumping into scholarly journal articles right away, and lighter reads can provide students with a stepping stone, a leisurely break, or a form of representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA scholarly book might be about diverse identities, but students don\u2019t necessarily see themselves in that,\u201d Hvizdak said. \u201cWith the other books, they see themselves, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m a part of this library, so I\u2019m going to feel more comfortable coming into this library.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WSU\u2019s limited space and funding mean O\u2019English is always aware that purchasing books is a big commitment. She said she builds on the collection not only for current students and faculty, but also for those in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This fall, O\u2019English said she is looking forward to launching Constitution Week at the WSU Libraries. In mid-September, members of the WSU and Pullman communities will do a round-robin reading of the Constitution aloud in the Terrell Library atrium for about an hour and set up a station where students can read the document on their own. They can mark where they stopped reading, allowing another student to pick up where they left off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019English said she hopes there will be enough people in attendance to read the Constitution twice in the atrium, and she is not afraid to volunteer passersby. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI literally have dragged people in the atrium to the podium to read it, so don\u2019t walk by me in the atrium on that day,\u201d she said with a laugh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the Constitution does have many issues, including the fact that women and underrepresented groups were not involved in its creation, O\u2019English said it is still moving to read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs you sit there reading it, you think, \u2018Oh the Constitution, it\u2019s so dry,\u2019 but you\u2019re seeing a country being created,\u201d she said. \u201cThen you see the country fall apart. Then you see the country try to rebuild. You see a country try to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flying home to Corvallis, Ore., from a political news panel at WSU\u2019s Foley Institute, Lorena O\u2019English had an epiphany. She realized she had a passion for connecting people with knowledge \u2014 it was what made her tick. Years after receiving a question about accessing political information at the panel, she joined WSU Libraries on Nov. […]","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[88,89,86,84,85,56,87],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-browse","tag-collection-development","tag-constitution-week","tag-government-information","tag-lorena-oenglish","tag-political-science","tag-wsu-libraries","tag-zotero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.wsu.edu\/friends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}