Silvia Sheffield

Many NC State researchers face expensive article processing charges (APCs) in order to publish their work open access in journals. These costs can be thousands of dollars. Where possible, the Libraries negotiates agreements with key publishers that allow NC State authors to have these APCs covered as part of our subscriptions and agreements with them. This highly valuable work is led by Bertha, Silvia, and Danica. They do an outstanding job with negotiating and managing the OA agreements and, especially, with helping researchers get the information they need to take advantage of this service. Routinely faculty express thanks for the quick and thorough support Bertha, Silvia, and Danica offer. Even when having to convey less than good news, each member of the team does an excellent job with communicating clearly and effectively with researchers. Bertha, Danica, and Silvia, thanks for all the thoughtful and collaborative work you do to support researchers and OA publishing!

— Kim Duckett

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

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