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RU librarian trains US and Canadian college personnel on plagiarism

The respected Texas-based professional development organization for colleges and universities, STARLINK, recently determined that they needed a seasoned expert on plagiarism. So they decided to reach over the continent to Rutgers and 'borrow' one of our librarians.

Vibiana Bowman, an instructional librarian in the Paul Robeson Library on the Rutgers-Camden Campus, was one of two national experts on plagiarism who appeared in the STARLINK program, "Plagiarism pitfalls and prevention strategies," in April. The program was offered to STARLINK's membership as a streaming video presentation over the Internet or as a DVD.

Vibiana is one of the co-producers of a short, humorous three part video series on plagiarism created by the staff of the Paul Robeson Library in the last academic year. The video series received national acclaim in May 2007, when it received a rave review in the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus blog weekly email. The video series is now posted on YouTube and the Robeson Library has received requests to use the videos from educational institutions in Australia, Canada, England, and other countries.

As an agency of the Texas Association of Community Colleges, the State of Texas Academic Resource Link (STARLINK) offers cost-effective, high quality and dynamic learning opportunities to educational institutions, governmental agencies, and other public entities. The STARLINK network currently provides over 100 hours of professional development programming annually to 140 member colleges and universities in twenty-four states and Canada.

For more information on STARLINK's 'Plagiarism pitfalls and prevention strategies' program, please see: http://www.starlinktraining.org/Programs/Programs2008/april7.asp. To view the three part video series on plagiarism developed by Robeson Library, please go to: http://library.camden.rutgers.edu/EducationalModule/Plagiarism/