Education Commons^™

Collection Dashboards For Selectors, Lindsay A. Cronk, Wenli Gao

Charleston Library Conference

While collections dashboards are often used as an external communications tool, they have additional applications for improving internal processes and assisting subject selectors. The value of collection visualization for analytics and strategy cannot be underestimated as visualizations can help clarify complex information to improve decision-making. This paper summarizes the current efforts to deploy collection dashboards at the University of Houston libraries. Using Tableau to parse and visualize collections data, the library is embedding visualization frameworks into the acquisitions calendar to enhance selection and deselection processes.

Keeping Up Accessibility Practices And How It Relates To Purchasing And Collection Development In Academic Libraries: A Case Study At The College Of Staten Island Library, Kerry A. Falloon

Charleston Library Conference

At the College of Staten Island (CSI) Library-CUNY, the library has access to over 160 different electronic resources. A concerted effort started in 2016 to start collecting relevant voluntary product accessibility template (VPAT) statements from new and current vendors and integrate these new practices into acquisition and electronic resources (ER) workflows. The paper will discuss the responsibilities of purchasing agents in libraries, acquisition or ER librarians, in regard to understanding disability law and how these legal mandates apply when investigating, acquiring, and maintaining electronic resources. Relevant tools will be discussed, in particular the use of VPATs and WCAG 2.0 guidelines …

How Much Do Monographs Cost? And Why Should We Care?, Nancy L. Maron, Charles Watkinson, Meredith Kahn, Shayna Pekala

Charleston Library Conference

What does it cost to make a high quality, digital monograph? What may sound like an obvious question turns out to be a very knotty one, driving to the heart of the essence of scholarly publishing today. It is particularly relevant in an environment where the potential of a sustainable open access (OA) business model for monographs is being explored. Two complementary studies funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2015 have explored this question to understand the costs involved in creating and disseminating scholarly books.

The team at Ithaka S+R studied the full costs of publishing monographs by …

Teaching The Library To Students Of Higher Education, Steven Weiland

Charleston Library Conference

The academic library and its digital transformation are ignored in graduate programs of higher education administration, which train a significant number of postsecondary professionals. A course in scholarly communications in the digital age recently introduced at one such program includes an invitation to aspiring administrators to study the contributions of the library to the ways that faculty members are coming to understand and capitalize on new technologies in teaching, research, and career development. The library is represented in the course in its traditional and new roles. It is an essential campus location for attention to what technological change means for …

Money, Money, Money—Or Not! Budget Realities And Transparency In Collection Development Decision‐Making, Mary Gilbert, Deborah A. Nolan

Charleston Library Conference

Each library’s budget is unique; however, the importance of providing information about the budget is common across all libraries and is a critical factor in how the library is perceived by its constituents. The cost of e‐resources, balancing the collection, and optimizing a flat budget in an era of escalating costs are issues often misinterpreted by the campus community, leading to both misunderstandings and misinformation. Limited budgets, escalating prices, and new acquisitions strategies necessitate clear communication with librarians and faculty about the financial realities and complex decisions surrounding collection development.

One academic library used a two‐day workshop format to inform …

“Flip This House”: “Back Of The House” Library Staff Engaging The Wider Campus Community, Patrick J. Roth, Jeffrey D. Daniels

Charleston Library Conference

Procuring and describing content for discoverability are as important now as they ever have been, but we suggest that a successful organization should expect more from faculty and staff members. As technical skill sets become more in demand, “back of the house” staff need to step to the front. In this article we explore how two Grand Valley State University Libraries back of the house departments have partnered with other organizations on campus. Collaboration has reenergized the staff, raised the Libraries’s profile, and contributed to the Libraries’s overall success.

The 2014 Credo Survey, Allen Mckiel

Charleston Library Conference

The Credo Survey addressed student research skills. Two parallel surveys over the same questions were addressed separately to students and faculty, which had respectively 2,606 and 472 respondents. Just less than 90% of the students were undergraduates split nearly evenly in progress to completion, with 87% of respondents attending full‐time and a fairly representative spread of majors. Just less than 50% of the faculty had taught over 10 years with nearly even proportions spread across the first 10 years and with a representative sampling of disciplines. Seventy‐seven percent were full‐time. The majority of responses came from about a dozen institutions—half …

Creating The Sandbox: The Juxtaposition Of Collections And Student Development, Helen Salmon, Linda Graburn

Charleston Library Conference

While academic library collections are typically built and assessed in relation to pedagogical or curricular needs and accreditation processes, they can also be intentionally developed, accessed, and promoted with more conscious attention to the developmental needs and context of the students who will use them. This paper will explore the roles that academic library collections play in relation to the psychosocial development of young adults. Drawing upon contemporary learning and young adult development theory, we will situate the role of academic library collections in relation to the various developmental stages, tasks, and learning challenges that young adults experience during a …

A Crossroads For Collection Development And Assessment, Its Fallout, And Unknowns: Where Do We Go From Here?, Thomas Reich

Charleston Library Conference

Where do we go from here? Achieving goals of sustainable resource collections through a thorough collection assessment is evermore challenged by fallout and unknowns lurking ubiquitously. There is an ever‐increasing competition for both physical space and economic space. We’re at an important crossroads for collection development, collection assessment, and libraries themselves. Change and assessment must be sustainable. To be effective, change must create its own momentum. Three years into our collection assessment project, momentum has been steady and efforts continue. However, we’ve encountered fallout and unknowns which we hadn’t planned on, and these are of an institutional and political nature.

Collection Development, E-Resources, And Meeting The Needs Of People With Disabilities, Axel Schmetzke, Cheryl Pruitt, Michele Bruno

Charleston Library Conference

Access barriers do not only exist in the physical environment but also online. Just as certain architectural design features make it possible, or impossible, for people with certain disabilities to move about independently, so does design of the electronic environment, which includes all the library e‐resources, creates either enabling or disabling conditions for certain individuals. Recently conducted research reveals a rather grim picture: while policy statements issued by professional library organization call for inclusive selection and procurement procedures, books on collection development do not cover the issue adequately. When librarians make decision about the selection of specific e‐resources, the needs …

3-D Printing, Copyright, And Fair Use: What Should We Know?, Posie Aagaard, Michael A. Kolitsky Phd

Charleston Library Conference

If the library is more than its collection, then use of 3-D printing to create knowledge is a good fit—but 3-D printing in library makerspaces can also provide greater access to collections by transforming 2-D images into 3-D tactile informational objects for use by blind or visually impaired patrons.

Will new negotiations between libraries and publishers of journals, images, maps, and other visual resources now include access to files for 3-D printing tactile objects for on-demand creation of 3-D prints for tactile use? Is a 3-D print of a 2-D photo or digital image a derivative work? Will the treaty …

Libraries Respond To Mobile Ubiquity: Research And Assessment Of Mobile Device Usage Trends For Academic And Medical Libraries, Megan M. Hurst, Eleanor I. Cook, J. Michael Lindsay, Martha F. Earl

Charleston Library Conference

The authors consider trends in mobile device usage for the Internet as a whole, for EBSCO Discovery Service across all client libraries, and at two specific libraries: Preston Medical Library, serving the University of Tennessee (UT) Graduate School of Medicine and UT Medical Center, and the Joyner Library at East Carolina University, serving students and faculty on the main campus. Librarians at Preston Medical Library conducted a survey to determine which mobile devices, platforms, and apps were used by their patrons in 2012. East Carolina University piloted an iPad and e-reader lending program in 2010–2011. The results of each are …