Education Commons^™

The Big Deal Is Dead! Long Live The Big Deal!, James A. Galbraith, Stephanie P. Hess

Charleston Library Conference

In many countries, the proclamation “The King is dead, long live the King” heralds the demise of the old monarch and the accession of a new one. This tradition ensures that the throne never remains empty while facilitating a smooth transition of power.

When the “Big Deal” journal subscription model debuted in 1996, few suspected the extent to which academic libraries would come to rely upon it, or that it would become the primary channel by which academic libraries procure academic journal content.

As budget cuts take their toll on libraries, the demise of the Big Deal model seems inevitable …

Introducing Seamlessaccess.Org: Delivering A Simpler, Privacy-Preserving Access Experience, John W. Felts, Tim Lloyd, Emily Singley

Charleston Library Conference

Managing access to subscribed services in an era of abundance is a major challenge for libraries. Users have come to expect a seamless, personalized experience on their mobile devices, but traditional approaches to access management force librarians to choose between the anonymous ease of onsite IP authentication or the access friction experienced by users authenticating across multiple resources with Single Sign-On. Building on the work of the RA21 initiative, a recent NISO Recommended Practice on Improved Access to Institutionally Provided Information Resources charts a way forward. It will enable libraries to provide seamless, privacy-preserving and one-click access to its subscribed …

Hacking For Good - Workshop Summary, Alex Humphreys, Curtis Michelson, Heather Ruland Staines, Geoffrey P. Timms, Caroline Muglia

Charleston Library Conference

At the 2019 Charleston Library Conference, five facilitators from a diversity of organizations led a pre-conference called Hacking for Good. The goal of the half-day pre-conference was to introduce participants to the “hacking mindset” beyond the traditionally understood technology-driven terminology. In this context, hacking refersred to an approach of identifying a challenge or set of challenges in their respective knowledge organizations and gathering a set of techniques or approaches to address and overcome those challenges. The pre-conference provided a highly interactive and supportive environment to consider all aspects of a workplace challenge related to workflows and personnel and determine the …

The Time Has Come…For Next-Generation Open Access Models, Celeste Feather, Sara Rouhi, Anneliese Taylor, Kim Armstrong

Charleston Library Conference

Libraries, consortia, and publishers are exploring new models to support Open Access (OA) content. Native OA journal publishers are facing a different set of challenges as there is no existing library subscription base to transform into support for OA. Author-pays OA models are challenging to the ecosystem for a variety of reasons. Large institutions with heavy scholarly output may pay more, small institutions that use the content but publish less are wondering what role they will play, and authors from the global south may not have funding to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs). What new models are under exploration to …

Your Ir Is Not Enough: Exploring Publishing Options In Our Increasingly Fragmented Digital World, Adam Blackwell

Charleston Library Conference

When people talk about the downside of open access publishing, they typically focus on things like high article processing charges and the difficulties that arise in differentiating between reputable peer-reviewed journals and low-quality journals from predatory publishers. But when OA publishing is equated with making articles and other academic content available exclusively via OA sites like (most) institutional repositories, there is arguably an even more serious downside: the effective quarantining of scholarly research.

We’ll explore how institutional mandates to promote a library’s IR sometimes override a researcher’s desire to make research available to peers via Google Scholar and other common …

Lessons From Ithaka S+R On Research Practices In The Disciplines: What Have We Learned? What Should We Do?, Steven Weiland, Jennifer Dean

Charleston Library Conference

It is a byword of the study of academic research that disciplines mean differences. The series of studies underway at Ithaka S+R (with library partners) shows how scholars and scientists understand “Changing Research Practices.” The project’s goal is to guide libraries toward the most fruitful forms of support for research, enhancing the scholarly workflow according to disciplinary routines and innovations. Launched in 2012, nine reports have been published thus far, with others planned or anticipated. The disciplines range from history to public health, from chemistry to Asian Studies. The interview-based studies show how scholars manage their methods, and the opportunities …

Great Expectations: Leading Libraries Through The Minefield Of Continuous Change, Denise D. Novak

Charleston Library Conference

If there is one thing all library administrators and managers can be sure of, it is that our space, our collections, our systems and our leadership will be impacted by change. Managing that change is critical if managers, directors, deans in our libraries will be able to continue to meet the needs of our communities with different tools and resources. This lively discussion will feature brief presentations about how libraries at Carnegie Mellon University and at Kresge Business Administration Library (University of Michigan) have changed in recent history. The presenters will include what worked well and what worked not as …

Reconsidering Literacy, Audrey Powers, Marc Powers

Charleston Library Conference

Literacy, until recently, was defined as the ability to read printed text and to understand the nuances of both the form and content of that printed text. More recently there has been a focus on subsets of literacy – data literacy, numeracy, visual literacy, media literacy, etc. – that recognizes the means of communicating ideas and facts are not limited to the printed text and that there are multiple means which may be more powerful ways of communicating in our world. In recent years, higher education has been redefining what it means to be educated – from a focus on …

When You Don’T Know What You Don’T Know: How Two New Collections Librarians Right-Sized A Collections Budget, Cara M. Cadena, Marcia Lee

Charleston Library Conference

Due to impending campus-wide downsizing, the Grand Valley State University (GVSU) Libraries projected that a worst-case scenario would result in a 14% cut to the library’s collections budget for fiscal year 2020. In the same year, GVSU Libraries welcomed several new members of its leadership team, including the dean, two associate deans, head of systems, head of collections, business administrator, and a vacancy after the long-time acquisitions manager retired. Budget cuts and staff turnover are tough, but they prompted a much-needed reassessment of roles, culture, and priorities in the library. Different approaches to spending and curating the library’s collections were …

Tip Of The Iceberg, Part 1: Choosing What Shows, Karen Kohn

Charleston Library Conference

In the summer of 2019, Temple University’s main library relocated to a new building, in which most of the 1.3 million-item main stacks collection resides in an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS), and a small portion in open stacks. The open stacks, or browsing collection, includes highly circulating items, new books, and materials with a particular need for browsing. Highly-circulating items were identified by dividing the total number of loans by the number of years the library had owned the book. Materials with a particular need for browsing, generally those with significant visual components such as art and music …

Tangled Up In Books: Using The Lyrics Of Bob Dylan To Understand The Changing Times Of Collection Development, Thomas A. Karel

Charleston Library Conference

The lyrics of Bob Dylan can be an interesting way of understanding the changes that have occurred in academic libraries in the past 40 years.

What Are Students Saying About Their Reference Needs?, Damon Zucca

Charleston Library Conference

Libraries and publishers rely on transactional data to support evidence-based decision making. However, by itself quantitative information does not provide a full picture. To anticipate the evolving needs of our audience we also need to hear from the individual users themselves. In this article, I will review the findings from several recent examples survey-based research into the question of how students use reference materials in and outside of their libraries. What are students actually saying about their needs and preferences when it comes to reference? While some uses cases for reference are moving out of the library into the open …

Get It From The Source: Identifying Library Resources And Software Used In Faculty Research, Karen S. Alcorn, Erin E. Wentz, Gregory A. Martin, Shanti C. Freundlich, Joanne A. Doucette

Charleston Library Conference

Libraries and Information Technology departments aim to support the educational and research needs of students, researchers, and faculty members. Close matches between the resources those departments provide and the resources the institution’s community members actually use highlight the value of the departments, demonstrate fiscally responsibility, and show attentiveness to the community’s needs. Traditionally, libraries rely on usage statistics to guide collection development decisions, but usage statistics can only imply value. Identifying a resource by name in a publication demonstrates the value of that resource more clearly. This pilot project examined the full-text of articles published in 2016-2017 by faculty members …