Silvia Sheffield
Name Pronunciation
sil-vee-uh shef-eeldPronouns
She / HerTo acknowledge that assumptions about someone’s gender identity could be incorrect, many organizations, including NC State, have begun to encourage community members to include a brief statement of their gender pronouns as they introduce themselves within a group.
Collections & Research Librarian for Engineering
Department:
Collections & Research StrategyPhone: (919) 515-1199
Email: slsheffi@ncsu.edu
0000-0003-4342-6450
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Project SAFE Ally
Green Zone AllySubject Specialist Areas
- Engineering
Recent Works
Beyond the Library: The Role of Academic Libraries’ Chat Reference in Answering Campus Questions
Owens, E., Arce, V., Del Bosque, D., Fowler, R., & Sheffield, S. (2024). Beyond the Library: The Role of Academic Libraries’ Chat Reference in Answering Campus Questions. The Reference Librarian, 4, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2024.2334216
"There is fun to be done!": Supporting Students' Access to Textbooks
Sheffield, S., & Davis, H. (2023). "There is fun to be done!": Supporting Students' Access to Textbooks. 2022 Charleston Conference Proceedings. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14369519
Lessons Learned from a Publishing Workshops Pilot
Chang, B., Davis, H., Richard, C., & Sheffield, S. (2023). Lessons Learned from a Publishing Workshops Pilot. Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) Annual Meeting.
Guides
- Engineering Standards Research Guide (edited on October 31, 2023)
Shout-outs From My Colleagues
Shout-outs are kind words from Libraries staff to other Libraries staff for going out of their way to be extra awesome at their job.
A big Shout Out to Bertha, Silvia, and Cole for working with me to conduct a soft launch of our publishing workshop series for NC State! What started as an idea 2 years ago was realized over the last 2 weeks. Silvia, Bertha, and Cole were the dream team to work with - from brainstorming the when, where, how, who, what, and why at the early states, to setting everything up in REPORTER, to generating outreach to all corners of campus, to configuring all of the intricate features of Zoom, securing and facilitating colleagues to be instructors for the workshops, and doing the workshop wrap-up and assessment. I'm grateful to get to work with them every day!
— Hilary Davis
Silvia has been a hard-working and thoughtful collaborator on a wide range of projects with me over the past few years — from the NRL webpage, to user research studies, to co-writing a peer-reviewed article. It’s such a joy to work with Silvia! I always look forward to meetings with her.
— Robin Davis
A recently published article describes the incredibly thoughtful and practical approaches that this multi-departmental, 4-person team took to create user-centered library email notifications. A quote I love from the article: "As we evaluated and rewrote our email templates, we considered how a stressed user or a user in crisis would react to the email. We repeatedly asked ourselves questions beginning with “What about a user who…” or “What if the user…?” We aimed to find a way to add the least amount of stress to our users’ already stressful lives, while still suggesting that they take action in response to some of these email templates." Check it out: Davis, R. C. & Partlow, M. & Pearce, D. & Sheffield, S., (2022) “Snippets, subject lines, and exclamation points: A case study in constructing better library emails”, Weave: Journal of Library User Experience 5(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/weaveux.1634
— Hilary Davis
About 5 months into our shift to working differently, a bunch of positions were vacated in both the Collections & Research Strategy (C&RS) Dept and in the Research Engagement (RE) Dept. In addition to Oliver Morris who has generously given his time, creativity, and energy to C&RS (check out his Shout-Outs!), another person has really delivered her expertise and leadership to both RE and C&RS. That person is Silvia Sheffield, who not only stepped in to fill needed responsibilities within RE and C&RS, but also continued to fulfill her role at NRL. Silvia has contributed significantly to the ongoing development of RE as a department in goal-setting and pursuing actions related to our goals; she's helped Alexa create an assessment plan for instruction, workshops, and consultation; she has expertly facilitated our meeting culture in both RE and C&RS; she is helping Emily triage tons of streaming media requests from faculty; she jumped in to help triage researchers' requests on writing their data management plans for grants. And that's just the tip of the iceberg! Silvia has been integral in taking steps to enhance accessibility to collections, improving library communication via Sirsi notifications, leading ongoing discussions on improving inclusion, equity, and diversity in our work across the library, etc. I'm grateful to Silvia for sharing her skillset and her knowledge so broadly.
— Hilary Davis