Mountain Scholar
Mountain Scholar is an open access repository service that collects, preserves, and provides access to digitized library collections and other scholarly and creative works from Colorado State University and the University Press of Colorado. It also serves as a dark archive for the Open Textbook Library.
Communities in Mountain Scholar
Select a community to browse its collections.
- Explore the Colorado State University community’s scholarly output as well as items from the University at large and the CSU Libraries.
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Recent Submissions
From Minivan to Vanguard: An Oral History with Sherri Kaiser
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024-05-13) Kaiser, Emma I., author
This oral history portfolio captures the life and legacy of Sherri S. Kaiser, a civil defense attorney in the fight for same-sex marriage rights in the United States. Conducted in Berkeley, California, on March 12, 2024, the interview reveals Sherri’s role in defending San Francisco’s issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004. Her firsthand account provides an intimate perspective on the intersection of legal strategy and personal stakes during a critical chapter in U.S. civil rights history. Sherri’s reflections also highlight her experiences as a mother in a same-sex partnership, navigating societal change and building community in the Bay Area. The interview and interpretation contained in this oral history portfolio stand as testaments to the enduring impact of grassroots advocacy, legal determination, and the power of love to transform cultural and legal landscapes.
Horses without doctors: why is the equine veterinarian industry facing a shortage?
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Leo, Adison, author; Fedorka, Carleigh, author; Magee, Christianne, author
It has been well documented that there is a shortage of practitioners entering the equine medicine workforce. Unfortunately, minimal research has gone into the causative agents for this shortage. Therefore, the objectives of this study were 1) to identify current concerns within the equine veterinary medicine workforce, and 2) isolate common perceptions of equine veterinary medicine within equine industry members who no longer desire to enter the workforce. To do so, 264 members of the equine industry were surveyed. These respondents could be separated into groups of 1) equine industry members (n=243) and 2) current equine practitioners (n=21). Additionally, equine industry members were further separated based on current interest in equine veterinary practice (1=very disinterested, 5=very interested). Of those responders, 197 (n=197) had lost interest in pursuing equine veterinary medicine, while 31 (n=31) maintained interest. When surveying equine veterinarians, the primary issues within their career were work-life balance (85%), mental health (70%), and debt-to-income ratio (65%). When surveying equine industry members on the perceived problems within equine veterinary medicine, the primary issues were debt-to-income ratio (66.7%), work-life balance (61.3%), and mental health (38.7). Therefore, the top three concerns in both populations were similar, although the percentage of respondents indicating concern varied widely. When further assessing only respondents that had lost interest, the primary concerns were cost of education (61.1%), length of education (69.6%), income after graduation (49.2%), and feeling as though their grades are not suitable for acceptance (35.4%). In conclusion, it appears that the general equine industry populace is aware of the current problems within the career of equine veterinary medicine (see figure 2). As low income alongside poor mental health and a lack of work-life balance are the primary issues, these 3 aspects within equine veterinary medicine need to be addressed in order to improve the equine veterinary medicine shortage.
Harvest moon: a work in progress
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Campbell, Ava, author
The primary aim of this thesis focuses on exploration. I have never attempted a novel-length writing project, and while I knew it was impossible to accomplish that goal in a semester, I wanted to explore my ideas and become more comfortable with the process. I used researching, outlining, and writing as modes of exploration in which I discovered the themes and characters central to my novel. Through these processes, I came to understand the core significance of my work better than I had before. In a few words, my novel deals with themes surrounding femininity, desire, power, emotionality, and the human body. While my work could be considered genre fiction, specifically fantasy fiction, these themes solidify its significance in modern literature. My thesis afforded me an opportunity to discover why my work was significant through feedback, revision, and execution. The progress I have made this semester constitutes a solid foundation of content that I will continue to build on after graduation.
CatalogBank: a structured and interoperable catalog dataset with a semi-automatic annotation tool (DocumentLabeler) for engineering system design
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024-08-20) Bank, Hasan Sinan, author; Herber, Daniel R., author; ACM, publisher
In the realm of document engineering and Natural Language Processing (NLP), the integration of digitally born catalogs into product design processes presents a novel avenue for enhancing information extraction and interoperability. This paper introduces CatalogBank, a dataset developed to bridge the gap between textual descriptions and other data modalities related to engineering design catalogs. We utilized existing information extraction methodologies to extract product information from PDF-based catalogs to use in downstream tasks to generate a baseline metric. Our approach not only supports the potential automation of design workflows but also overcomes the limitations of manual data entry and non-standard metadata structures that have historically impeded the seamless integration of textual and other data modalities. Through the use of DocumentLabeler, an open-source annotation tool adapted for our dataset, we demonstrated the potential of CatalogBank in supporting diverse document-based tasks such as layout analysis and knowledge extraction. Our findings suggest that CatalogBank can contribute to document engineering and NLP by providing a robust dataset for training models capable of understanding and processing complex document formats with relatively less effort using the semi-automated annotation tool DocumentLabeler.
Justice in/and the design of AI risk detection technologies
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024-10-20) Amidon, Timothy Russell, author; Sackey, Donnie Johnson, author; ACM, publisher
This article examines the role of communication design within platforms that combine the affordances of remote sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, focusing specifically on decision support systems used for managing climate risks and disasters such as wildfire. Building upon Carroll et al.'s [65] principles for Indigenous data governance, the authors advance an original heuristic for considering the design justice [17] of smart and connected community technologies in risk management. The authors perform a heuristic evaluation [58] of one AI wildfire detection platform (AIWDP), illustrating how platforms designs might promote openness, trust, and justice.