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The Design Cycle and a Mixed Methods Approach for Improving Usability: A Case Study

This case study explores the concept of the design cycle as a guiding principle for choosing usability methods. It discusses the stages of the design cycle alongside the strengths and weaknesses of usability methods commonly used in libraries. Hollins University applied the design cycle principles to the redesign of the library’s website, which involved various methods (e.g. analytics, card sorting, content audit, surveys, and usability testing). This article argues that using the design cycle encourages an effective practice of mixing different usability methods, which leads to a more informed approach to improving usability. It concludes with recommendations for application of the design cycle to library projects.

In Memoriam: Chauncey Wood, 1935-2020

In MemoriamChauncey Wood, 1935-2020 Sidney Gottlieb I have spent many years with George Herbert, and the better part of that time – truly the better part, qualitatively as well as arithmetically – has been alongside Chauncey Wood, usually at a distance but always feeling that he was close. For me, there is Herbert before Chauncey and Herbert after Chauncey, and the glow of the latter surely has warmed everyone now reading what I am writing. That is why I am so sad to write that he died on March 27, 2020, at the Hospice of the Valley, Phoenix, Arizona, after a long battle with cancer. He is survived by Sarah, his loving, beloved, and inseparable wife of more than fifty-eight years, two daughters, Stephanie and Jennifer, and a granddaughter, Vanessa. Although he lived elsewhere for most of his life, Chauncey was a proud New Jerseyan. He was born in Englewood on June 16, 1935, grew up in Tenafly, and went to Tenafly High School, Union College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and then Princeton University, where he received his Ph.D., specializing in medieval literature, attracted to this field particularly after being introduced to it by legendary Princeton professor and scholar D.W. Robertson. Chauncey taught briefly at Hollins College, University of Cincinnati, and the University of Wisconsin before moving to McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, where he was an extraordinarily dedicated, popular, and effective teacher (recognized by a Best Teacher award) and administrator and prolific researcher and scholarly writer until he retired in 1996. But retirement is not a word that can be easily applied to Chauncey, and he went on to be a visiting professor at numerous institutions, including Western Michigan University, College of Charleston, University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (the latter as Distinguished Visiting Professor, where the students liked him so much they formally petitioned to have him come back). [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. We know him primarily as a Herbertian – and in many ways as the Herbertian. Some years ago I took great pleasure in not entirely jokingly introducing him at a conference as the current Godfather of Herbert Studies, a position of honor that was well earned: as author of numerous finely written and deeply researched articles on Herbert; teacher and mentor to lots of people doing important and often subsequently published work on Herbert; absolutely indefatigable and wise consultant reader of papers submitted to the George Herbert Journal; conference organizer; co-founder and reliable advisor to the George Herbert Society; and on and on. But there's so much more: Chauncey chased birds and butterflies as well as Herbert. He and Sarah were out every weekend, and through the years traveled widely and birded from Manitoba to Key West, the Everglades, and the Rio Grande. And though for many years I have been in constant touch with him, I'm now realizing that I still missed things about him, which Sarah continues to fill me in on: Chauncey and I corresponded constantly about our shared love of the New York Knicks, but I didn't realize that he was "a pretty good basketball player up until his retirement." And though I knew he had a keen ear for Herbert's musicality, I didn't know that he was a talented jazz clarinetist. I did know that he was a photographer, and have copies of some of his stunning and radiant shots of butterflies (two of which are reprinted as figures 1 and 2). But my favorite Chauncey picture is not one he shot but one he is in (figure 3), presenting the first of an award that is so rightly named after him and acknowledges how much he has done for us and how much he is loved, appreciated, and respected. In his last message to me, knowing that the end was near, he wrote honestly and bravely about "inevitable decline," gratefully about the [End Page 2] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Simon Jackson receives the inaugural Chauncey Wood Dissertation...

A Worser Way

Research Article| November 01 2018 A Worser Way Virginia Lee Wood Virginia Lee Wood Virginia Lee Wood is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of North Texas. She holds an MFA from Hollins University. This is her first publication. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google the minnesota review (2018) 2018 (91): 30–39. https://doi.org/10.1215/00265667-7137165 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Virginia Lee Wood; A Worser Way. the minnesota review 1 November 2018; 2018 (91): 30–39. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00265667-7137165 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll Journalsthe minnesota review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2018 Virginia Tech2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

On Listening to My Father Sing, and: Where the Next Poem Is

On Listening to My Father Sing, and: Where the Next Poem Is Morgan Blalock (bio) ON LISTENING TO MY FATHER SING What that song is made of:ethanol, red dirt, throbbingfingers, the biggest porch you ever seen— whose father doesn't knoweach word to every kind ofblues there ever was? Our house got death letter blues, got brokedown engine blues, got downhearted,got travelers' blues: lined up, shot at with the Colt that soredmy shoulder. Son House,Blind Willie, Mississippi John wail around woodstack, Miss Dolly humsJolene's name left of propanetanks, Robert Johnson behind the brick pile. Twenty-some years, must'vebeen a hundred times Fathertold me all I need is a black cat bone [End Page 66] and some mojo; must've beencountless days of backbreakingwork he ran through Muddy's dirty bass. Wiki says a black cat bonepromises good luck, rebirth,success in love, wards off an evil eye. Guess my father lived adifferent life than I made up.To obtain a black cat bone: first catch the cat, boil it alive—midnightonly—and better be sure youpicked it right. Father says you'd hold the bones up front of a mirror, choose darkestreflection. See, he hasn't alwaysbeen here, making sure I know everybody's got to fall at their crossroadin order to pray and get back up, to seek, take aim. [End Page 67] WHERE THE NEXT POEM IS On the barest pantry shelf, where preserves crowdbefore summer jams heavy on us. At the core of the question Mother asks each July:Little girl, when did it get so bad? Inside three years in which I watched your bodymean things outside of speech. Second floor of the once-house where the sweetestblackest wine is stored in jugs near bathtub below half roof, filled up half-clearwith rainwater and ash, with light. Near the (now collapsed) kilns where WilliamBurrell lost both legs in a rockslide and bled fourteen minutes on the road to C&OHospital in Clifton Forge, 1941. At the moment Rodney Jones wrote and this iswhen it's not language; how I remember you standing apart from me acrossthe white yard grown impossible. [End Page 68] Morgan Blalock Morgan Blalock graduated from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, but now lives in South Park, Colorado. You can find her work in CutBank, The Adroit Journal, Collision, and Prairie Margins. Copyright © 2017 Berea College

Can you picture that? Using visual media to inspire playwrights

In the United States, the culture of new play development has led to placing primary importance on the spoken dialogue rather than the larger world of story. Because many writers do begin in early dramatic writing classes, it is important for playwriting instructors to recognise that they themselves are dramaturgs operating in a workshop environment. This research asked instructors to consider using exercises (which we may also think of as writing prompts) that challenge writers to engage with other media as a means writing for performances in three-dimensional spaces: Todd Ristau at Hollins University has an exercise in which he asks his students to build small, imagined versions of the sets for their plays using found materials. James Ryan, formerly of The New School, asks students to use photographs of persons and antiques to create monologues and scenes. In my advanced dramatic writing class, students take pictures using their friends (or action figures, Legos, etc.) to stand in for their characters and world of story during key moments of their plays. The article argues that these approaches will help playwrights move away from dialogue as an end-goal by encouraging writers to focus on the mise en scène.

A Tribute to William Jay Smith

A Tribute to William Jay Smith Suzanne Marrs The distinguished poet William Jay Smith, Eudora Welty’s good friend, died on August 18, 2015, at the age of ninety-seven. In addition to writing many volumes of poetry, Smith penned books of children’s verse, translations of poems by Jules Laforgue and Andrei Voznesensky, memoirs, and a collection of his own astute literary criticism. He took bachelor’s and master’s degrees in French literature at Washington University; served in the US Navy during World War II; was a Rhodes Scholar; taught at Hollins College, Columbia University, and Williams College; and from 1968 to 1970, served as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (a post we now call Poet Laureate). The intersections of Smith’s life with Welty’s were numerous and important to them both. They met in 1950 in Italy, amid the glories of Florence, introduced to each other by John Robinson. They saw each other frequently in New York City. Welty spoke three consecutive years at the Suffield Writer–Reader Conference where Smith was on staff; Smith and his wife Sonja came to Jackson for Eudora Welty Day in 1973; Smith organized a celebration of Welty’s work at Hollins College in 1974; Welty invited Smith and his wife to join her at the White House in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and Welty delivered a reading from Hawthorne’s “The Birth-mark” at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine when Smith was poet-in-residence there. Smith’s 1980 memoir Army Brat, a book about growing up within the confines of Jefferson Barracks Military Post near St. Louis, helped to convince Welty to deliver the Harvard lectures that became One Writer’s Beginnings. Yet even this impressive (and partial) list of their meetings in person and on the page does not do justice to the closeness of their friendship. A single fact does: Smith was one of the few friends with whom Welty discussed the two great loves of her life, John Robinson and Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald. The exchange of such confidences marks the true depth of their relationship. I count myself supremely fortunate to have called Bill Smith my friend. He and I met at Eudora Welty’s funeral in 2001 and felt an immediate affinity as we shared our grief. Later we discovered that relatives of his were neighbors of my parents in Norman, Oklahoma. And our Oklahoma [End Page 9] ties were intensified when he gave me a copy of his magnificent book The Cherokee Lottery, a series of poems about the Trail of Tears, which ended in the territory that would become my native state. When I spoke of my work on a Welty biography, Bill was quick to offer assistance; I spent a productive and delightful week near his home in Cummington, Massachusetts, talking with him daily about the confluence of his life with Eudora’s. Subsequently Bill twice agreed to give poetry readings at Millsaps College, where I taught. Both students and faculty found these readings engraved in their memories. Then in 2011, I was honored when Bill asked me to write the foreword to his book My Friend Tom, an account of his almost fifty-year friendship with Tennessee Williams, which was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2012. In this memoir, Smith wrote that Eudora Welty “became for me during my entire literary life the kind of mentor that Tom Williams had been at the beginning” (101). Like Welty, William Jay Smith possessed a genius for friendship in addition to genius as a writer. Blessed with a ready sense of humor, he was gracious and unassuming, brilliant and generous, a champion of social justice, traditional poetic forms, and love for family and friends. The world is a lesser place without him. Suzanne Marrs Eudora Welty Foundation Scholar-in-Residence Works Cited Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty: A Biography. New York: Harcourt, 2005. Print. Google Scholar ——. “Foreword.” My Friend Tom. By William Jay Smith. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2012. xi-xxi. Print. Google Scholar Smith, William Jay. Army Brat: A Memoir. New York: Persea...

Rural Stigmata

Rural Stigmata Jen Coleman (bio) I’ve nurtured the glowing wound:peroxide, salve,bandages. I’ve done rightby this one. The rawness eased,was replacedby budding infantcells. Trenches formedin the nickel-sized spotwhere my fate and life linesintersected the injury,two deep vertical redcanals in a waxy purple-pinkcircle: a burnt pig’s nose,some grotesqueelectrical outlet, the markof blaze to come. [End Page 33] Jen Coleman Jen Coleman has recently been a finalist for The Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships and the Zone 3 Press First Book Award. Her work has appeared in Buddhist Poetry Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, New Welsh Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Hollins University and currently teaches English at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College and Lynchburg College. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia with her two Manx cats. Copyright © 2015 Berea College

Blue Tick Mongrel: Pacing the Pittsylvania County Line

Blue Tick MongrelPacing the Pittsylvania County Line Annie Woodford (bio) This blacktop tells of possum scent But I lead myself to a red dirt rising, Where lanky pine trees bend And whistle in wind. I stop and sniff, then pace Again, a dog intent on going somewhere. I travel with squared haunches Past tobacco fields all yellow With a tawny scent and let The bumblebee buzz me by. Even in sleep my paws twitch With the dream of this plateau: I’m running to the creaking pines, Orange with dust, padding over silent straw. Let me be I tell the truck: I left my shaded yard months ago. Strange men with smokehouses Shall not capture me though at night I bay For hearths and table scraps I’ve forsaken. I am the hound you find pacing, up Into the curve of scarlet horizons. My blood tells in the way I hang my head And move a little side-ways That I have a coyote way of knowing— [End Page 106] Somewhere close there’s a circle Of raccoon eyes, high Among pines that praise the sky. [End Page 107] Annie Woodford Annie Woodford is originally from Henry County, Virginia. A graduate of Hollins College’s MA program in Creative Writing, she now lives in Roanoke City, Virginia and teaches developmental English at Virginia Western Community College. Copyright © 2015 Berea College

It's Not Just About Budget Cuts: A Study of Print Periodical Usage and a Subsequent Cancellation Project at a Small Academic Library

Susan Vandale of Hollins University discussed the 2013 print periodical survey conducted by Wyndham Robertson Library and offered an overview of how this study was used to inform cancellation decisions necessitated by the library's flat budget for fiscal year 2013/2014. In addition, she discussed how the library was able to use the study and cancellation project as an opportunity to address space concerns and shift limited funds from less-used resources to new resources that would better serve their community. Framing her presentation in the conference themes of value and impact, Vandale highlighted the library's constructive approach to the process, commitment to fulfilling the needs of their stakeholders, and success in generating a positive outcome from a less-than-ideal situation.

English

Kiran Desai was born in 1971 and educated in India, England and the United States. She studied creative writing at Columbia University, where she was the recipient of a Woolrich fellowship. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and Salman Rushdie's anthology Mirrorwork: Fifty years of Indian Writing. In 2006 Desai won the MAN Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. Kiran Desai depicts the contemporary society in terms of psychological and social realism with about to happen fact. Kiran Desai’s debut novel Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard is based on magical realism. Kiran Desai is the daughter of Anita Desai, herself short-listed for the booker prize on three occasions. She was born in Chandigarh, and spent the early years of her life in Pune and Mumbai. She studied in the Cathedral and John Connon school. She left India at 14, and she and her mother then lived in England for a year, and then moved to the United States, where she studied creative writing at bennington college, hollins university and columbia university. Desai resides in the United States, where she is a permanent resident. The aim to present this thesis is to analyze the term magic realism in Kiran Desai’s novel and how subtly the novel runs embossing the fantasy and realism within it.   Key words: Magic realism, Kiran Desai, Guava Orchard and Hullabaloo.

Stumbling and Succeeding Together: a New Medical School’s Collaborative Initiative to Elevate Interprofessionalism as a Signature Hallmark in Training Future Healthcare Leaders

The process of creating a longitudinal interprofessionalism curriculum was initiated through the collaborative efforts of the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, the Jefferson College of Health Sciences and the Batten Leadership Institute of Hollins University. A year-long Interprofessionalism Leadership course, that constitutes the first part of the Interprofessionalism domain that spans the four years of medical school at VTCSOM, was designed and implemented. The strategy for creating this course and subsequest alterations based on student feedback and faculty reflection are provided. The commentary provides experiential insight for other schools embarking on curricular revisions revolving around interprofessional healthcare education.

Boris And MENTOR

This article gives a description of two different programs: (1) The Russian Language Tutor Program (RLTP - affectionately know as Boris) developed at Dartmouth College and used at Hollins College' (2) and MENTOR which is an authoring program that enables foreign language teachers with no previous computing experience to create their own lessons. RLTP was originally written in SBASIC for a Honeywell computer and now runs on a VAX 11/780. It is an interactive, bilingual program designed to teach general vocabulary and Russian inflection to college students in beginning and intermediate Russian classes. It is tied to a specific book, Russian for Everybody by V. G. Kostomarov. The FLTP output on the monitor is in transcription form. However, they have equipped one printer (a Decwriter II) with a SD 120 terminal controller card to permit it to output hardcopy in the Cyrillic alphabet. MENTOR was developed by Roland Sussex and his colleagues at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and is being tested at some selected colleges and universities in the U.S.

French in Cyberspace

This article discusses the development of an online French language skills course, "French in Cyberspace," for undergraduates at Hollins University. It reviews the desirability and feasibility of conducting an online foreign language course for resident undergraduates as well as advocates a special niche in the instructional cycle that such a course might optimally occupy. The author also considers the "no significant difference" research that suggests that distance learning courses are equivalent to traditional face-to-face classes and concludes that the technoconstructivist advantages offered by an online French language skills course represent unique, important, and meaningful benefits for students seeking to improve their language skills. The course itself is described in detail and provides a potential blueprint for constructing and conducting an online French language skills course. The author furnishes a step-by-step account of all aspects of the online learning experience including student orientation to distance learning, suggested web resources that accommodate the various learning styles of the students, online activities that promote language skill development, and an evaluation rubric for the course.

How Many Virginians Does it Take?

How Many Virginians Does it Take? David Huddle (bio) Here’s a proper question for you Virginia legislators who’ve distracted yourselves by bullying women, poor people, and school teachers; by promoting ignorance instead of education; by clearing the way for industry to poison our land, our rivers, and our coast; by making this state so business friendly it’ll be the old days all over again, masters and slaves, plantation houses with some shacks out back. So how many of us does it take to change that light bulb? We used to say it took ten— one for the bulb and nine to talk about how good the old one was. Now we’ve got to say none, thank you, we like it just fine here in the dark. [End Page 75] David Huddle David Huddle is the author of a novella, four short story collections, an essay collection, and A David Huddle Reader (1993). His seventh poetry collection, Black Snake at the Family Reunion, is scheduled for publication later this year. He currently serves as the Roy Acuff Chair of Excellence in the Creative Arts at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. A native of Ivanhoe, Virginia, he is retired from a career at the University of Vermont and has also recently taught at Hollins University. Copyright © 2012 Berea College

Evening Fire

Evening Fire Eric Trethewey (bio) It starts slowly, gutters at the edges,and then the paper flares up fiercelyinto bright flames before subsidingto the slow combustion of damp wood. But it persists in spite of all, multipliesin intensity, until becoming at last allwe expected, warming the room, our faces,our hands, and the chill between our shoulders. What more might we ask for nowbut the blessing of words to hold back the dark,the steady burn, the recollection of sunlight,like memory, stacked up in the rings of wood? [End Page 144] Eric Trethewey Eric Trethewey is a native of Nova Scotia who lives at the foot of MacAfee's Knob in Catawba, Virginia, and teaches at Hollins University. He is the author of six books of poetry. His publication credits include The Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, Poetry, Kenyon Review, and Sewanee Review. Copyright © 2012 Berea College

Three Irish Artists

Three Irish Artists John Rees Moore (bio) William Butler Yeats You often spoke for, and often against, The embattled Ireland of your time. At the Playboy riot you took offense. And for their antiliterary crime Stoutly scolded that unruly audience. Truth is embodied in myth, you thought: Cuchulain battling the waves, Leda’s rape, Naoise’s calm heroism, how Deirdre sought By witty stratagem the final escape Into death. Immortality, but humor too: Witty satire in The Cat and the Moon, The bishop, Crazy Jane, and all that crew. With head and feet you tapped out your tunes, And those tunes live on. “Horseman, pass by,” Reads your epitaph. Your words will never die. John Millington Synge That traveling man, who knew his Ireland well, Found beauty in the lives of simple folk. At turf fires he listened, but seldom spoke. From Aran islanders he learned how to tell Stories of those elemental lives in plays Both sad and merry, full of folklore fun, And a teasing irony, that finally won Even stubborn hearts, and earned the praise Of countrymen not used to such sharp wits And suspicious of anything the church [End Page 36] Might disapprove, or womanhood besmirch. Such Irishness drove Yeats to angry fits. The Abbey welcomed this solitary man Who left us plays none would wish to ban. James Joyce: An Anthology In that great story ending Dubliners, “The Dead,” A monument to passions of the past, Quietness settles down at last With snow falling on the living and the dead. In Portrait he had the clever boldness To start things off with infant, “baby tuckoo.” Still growing, the artist to be sees a girl, Wading in water, legs white as a pearl. Ulysses arrives, the artist now in full bloom, Stretching the language this way and that— The whole world in one city, plus even a cat. In the Wake the River Liffey carries us, I presume, With maternal care, softly down to the sea, Singing a farewell lullaby in a watery key. [End Page 37] John Rees Moore John Rees More, for many years the editor of the Hollins Critic and professor of English at Hollins College, has been writing poetry and prose for the SR since 1963. Copyright © 2012 University of the South

The Joy of Quantitative Reasoning

The Joy of Quantitative Reasoning