PSU Library Services hosts 39^th annual reception bibliography 

Alyssa Tyler editor in chief  

Pittsburg State University faculty members were invited to the Axe Library for the 39^th annual celebration of the faculty publication of scholarship.  

Pittsburg State University faculty members who have published anything in the past academic year had their works displayed. During the reception, academic heads such as Howard Smith, the Provost of the university attended. Roberts and Smith both gave opening remarks about the work done by Pittsburg State University Faculty members. Tim Dell, a faculty member of the automotive technology department and the deiseal and heavy equipment coordinator, was given an engraved gift. 

“Today at Axe Library we are having our 39^th annual celebration of our faculty publication of scholarship. For all these years, we’ve recognized our faculty, whether it’s a journal article, book or chapter in a book, book review, could be a recording, a blog post, or all kinds of things. We want to take this opportunity to support and celebrate and recognize all of the university authors that we have at Pittsburg State University,” said Randy Roberts, the dean of Library Services.  

Dell released the second edition of his textbook, ‘Hydraulic Systems for Mobile Equipment’ this past year. And another second edition of another book is due to be released any day.  

“It’s encouragement, and it helps those put the pens to the paper. It takes a lot of work. It’s hard to imagine the amount of work it takes to do,” Dell said.  

Compared to past years, Roberts said the number of publications was lower. However, looking at how the Covid-19 pandemic affected people, it was not necessarily surprising.  

“This year we may be down in total numbers a little bit. But I think in view of the fact that we have gone through covid, along with the difficulty all of our faculty have experienced in flipping classes. But even trying to do research during that time, there weren’t a lot of places, archives, libraries, opportunities to work with people, to do research, some of those opportunities were diminished. I’m extremely pleased that we have over 40 items that we’re celebrating today,” Roberts said.  

Any kind of publication done by Pittsburg State University faculty members are collected in a variety of ways. From investigative research on the library services side to faculty members reporting their work to the library services staff.  

“I think it’s important for all of us to recognize what our colleagues are doing. Our faculty spend a lot of time obviously, in the class, teaching, they spend time with service. But for the scholarship aspect of that, it’s really one of those areas where they get to fulfill particular interest that they have when conducting research and publication. It’s important to them, it’s important to the university, and it helps establish the university as a center for research and creative endeavors. And so, we’re really pleased that we can help them celebrate among their colleagues, among the community, and even among our students. It’s important for students to realize the totality of the work that our faculty does in terms of their academic careers,” Roberts said.