Library and Information Science Commons^™

Disability Inclusion And Library Collections: Initiatives For Greater Access For All, Elizabeth German, Eric Hartnett

Charleston Library Conference

One of the core values of librarianship as expressed through ALA’s Code of Ethics is providing equitable service and access to all library users. This is further enforced by federal laws such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which includes Section 508 requiring federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities. While there has been much said about accessibility within library scholarship, this paper takes a unique holistic approach at applying the accessibility maturity model to library collections and services through covering a number of initiatives that Texas A&M University Libraries have taken …

Managing Etds: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Dan Tam Do, Laura Gewissler

Charleston Library Conference

Mandating contribution of theses and dissertations (TDs) to university archives and their electronic equivalents (ETDs) to an institutional repository (IR) is common practice. Optimizing workflows for archival print copies while managing electronic copies in an IR can be challenging given such factors as embargoes and the skill sets required to ensure theses and dissertations are accessible, discoverable, and ultimately safely stashed where they belong. As rational processes were gradually developed at the University of Vermont, pitfalls and breakthroughs presented themselves. This article relates our experience launching an ETD mandate, including campus outreach initiatives and improvements to the various related processes …

The Digital Monograph And Primary Source Databases: Agenda Toward A Unified Conversation, James Kessenides

Charleston Library Conference

In the realm of scholarly research and publishing in the humanities, much interest and activity has focused on the impact of digital technology on the academic monograph, and on the application of this technology to archival collections. In terms of the former, this paper addresses the discourse of the “future of the monograph,” focusing on statements made about the digital monograph assuming new online forms. In terms of the latter, this paper comments on primary source databases. Whereas the “future of the monograph” has been approached mainly as a question of form, the matter of primary source databases has been …

What’S Past Is Possible: Opportunities And Perspectives For Library Alumni Resources, Jo-Anne Hogan, Corey Seeman

Charleston Library Conference

When considering the theme “What’s Past Is Prologue,” there might not be a better application than to think of former students at our colleges and universities. As they venture into the role of campus alumni, their information needs become complicated when they lose access to the wealth of electronic resources that are available at most campuses. Having resources at hand while a student is wonderful, but the grim reality of having little available upon graduation can be a bit of a letdown. A growing number of colleges and universities are offering alumni a suite of electronic resources that are either …

Assessing Large E-Book Collections: Is The Past A Roadmap For Developing Collections Of The Future?, Stacy B. Baggett, Andrew Kulp

Charleston Library Conference

Many academic libraries rely heavily on massive prepackaged e-book collections from vendors such as EBSCO and ProQuest to support their research communities. This shift away from traditional collection development is seen as a budget-friendly strategy to provide current monographs across many disciplines. Librarians at Shenandoah University questioned whether their largest e-book subscriptions, ProQuest’s Ebook Central and EBSCO’s eBook Academic Collection, measured up to standard collection development tools. This study uses the Outstanding Academic Titles lists published by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries as a benchmark to measure the quality of large e-book collections. By analyzing five years’ worth of …

Eba In Practice: Facilitating Evidence-Driven E-Book Programs In Both Consortium And Individual Library Settings, John Abresch, Laura Pascual, Andrea Langhurst Eickholt

Charleston Library Conference

The University of South Florida (USF) Library maintains multiple DDA and EBA e-book programs as the basis for its collection management strategy in an effort to provide the scope of monographic material required by a large metropolitan research university in the most cost-effective manner. A patron-driven acquisitions program replaced the traditional print approval plan. Leveraging this usage data, several evidence-based acquisition programs were established with providers such as Wiley, Project Muse, and Elsevier. The process began with profiling the DDA and was developed combining factors that satisfied our programmatic requirements. Successful implementation at this scale requires collaborative effort from a …

O Brave New Print Collection, That Has Such Data Science Books In It!, Heidi Tebbe, Mira Waller

Charleston Library Conference

The field of data science exists at the intersection of several disciplines, including statistics, social science, information science, computer science, and visualization. This can make collection development for data science challenging, but it’s a field that has become increasingly important in industry and academia. Data scientists, and increasingly researchers, academics, and others, work with large amounts of data, complex computation, and data visualization to solve real-world problems. Those working in or studying data science may need to learn new skills and tools to be successful.

North Carolina State University (NCSU) recognizes the importance of this growing field, as shown in …

Beyond Cost Per Use: Exploring Multivariable E-Resource Assessment, Courtney R. Mcallister

Charleston Library Conference

The converging pressures of dwindling budgets, increasing subscription costs, and shifting user expectations has intensified the impact of collection management decision making. Assessing e-resource subscriptions is an integral part of any library’s collection management process, though it is especially important in academic environments. While cost per use (CPU) can be a straightforward and informative measure to consider, that lone data point might not reveal the true value of an e-resource. This paper outlines a multifaceted assessment strategy that considers the various merits of an e-resource, such as supporting accreditation, providing access to material not easily obtained through resource-sharing channels, discoverability, …

Critical Business Collections: Examining Key Issues Using A Social Justice Lens, Heather A. Howard, Katharine V. Macy, Corey Seeman, Alyson S. Vaaler

Charleston Library Conference

Academic librarians perform a balancing act between the needs of patrons, licensing restrictions, and the missions of our libraries. As part of the work to develop our campus collections, academic business librarians work with both schools and commercial vendors to provide resources that our business students and faculty require. Business publishers charge academic customers pennies on the dollar for access, but are likely to seek protections for their intellectual content by placing usage restrictions that run counter to what librarians would prefer. This can cause difficulties for librarians in serving their unique populations. This also can run counter to the …

Is It Really “Not Applicable?” Zoom In To Understand E-Book Accessibility, Xiaoyan Song, Danica Lewis

Charleston Library Conference

The decisions that we make when reviewing our collections and negotiating licenses have enormous effects on our users. They also have the potential to, in turn, shape the priorities and decisions of publishers and platform creators. The questions we ask and standards we set now set the stage for the chapters our users inherit. And while users with special access needs might not form a large percentage of our current user population, they will always be part of that population. For e-book accessibility, it can be difficult to draw the line between what is essential, what is aspirational, and what …

Are E-Book Packages Overwhelming And Redefining Your Collection?, Rhonda R. Glazier, Matthew J. Jabaily, Lynn E. Gates

Charleston Library Conference

Most academic libraries offer numerous e-books alongside their print titles. Traditionally, print materials have been chosen by subject liaisons with input from departmental faculty, whereas e-books have been acquired en masse through large collection purchases, subscriptions, or PDA/DDA programs that include large numbers of discovery records. At Kraemer Family Library, the print budget is divided into subject areas using a formula that includes the number of students in a discipline, level of program (bachelor, master, or doctorate), number of faculty by discipline, and average cost of materials in a subject area. This budget breakdown is an attempt to balance the …

Books On Demand: A New(Er) Look For Print Monographs Acquisitions, Paolo P. Gujilde, Cara Huwieler, Debra Skinner

Charleston Library Conference

How do you respond to increasing library materials cost? Do you still provide enough, fewer, or more print books? How do you sustain access to library resources? In the past few years, Zach S. Henderson Library at Georgia Southern University faced these questions and more. As many libraries have done, Henderson Library responded by decreasing monograph acquisitions to allocate additional funds for serial acquisition. However, these challenges provided opportunities for the library to be creative in purchasing monographs. One of the approaches the library chose to explore was establishing a print demand-driven acquisition (pDDA) or Books on Demand program with …

One Root, Many Trees: Reviving Collections Practices, Kevin Farley, Emily Davis Winthrop, Ibironke Lawal, Patricia Sobczak

Charleston Library Conference

Collections are undergoing intense change and pressure from technology, budgetary uncertainties, and emerging perspectives on future approaches. Our case study—drawn from our experiences as collections librarians—examines these complex issues facing academic collections, large or small, across the profession. Through the development of “collections of distinction” within the local collection, collaborations and scholarly partnerships with colleagues and faculty, and advocacy for the importance of dedicated oversight to ensure that collections investments fulfill the academic mission, we explore possible solutions to the complicated issues defining contemporary collections practices.

Is The Past Really Prologue? The Effect Of A University’S Consolidation On Its Jstor Subscription, Melissa E. Johnson, Kate Kosturski

Charleston Library Conference

University consolidations do more than just affect students and faculty. Changes to the makeup of a campus and the programs available can have a great influence on needed journal and database subscriptions. The electronic resources and serials librarian from Augusta University and the outreach coordinator from JSTOR investigated how the consolidation of two universities with different academic missions changed the usage of their six JSTOR collections. Using data produced by JSTOR in 2012, prior to consolidation, and compiled again for 2016, the authors describe changes in usage, factors that could affect usage, and the implications for future resources.

The Print Book Purging Predicament: Qualitative Techniques For A Balanced Collection, Allan Scherlen, Alex D. Mcallister

Charleston Library Conference

At previous Charleston Conference meetings, there was much discussion about how to massively and efficiently weed collections across disciplines using quantitative criteria. The presenters recently published an article in Collection Management entitled “Weeding with Wisdom: Tuning Deselection of Print Monographs in Book-Reliant Disciplines” in which they argue for the importance of retaining some print materials in areas such as history and literature where scholars are dependent on older, lesser-used materials for their research and teaching. Presenters offered suggestions and invited discussion on ways to improve the deselection process through the use of qualitative techniques for weeding book-reliant disciplines in an …

Showcasing E-Book Platform Features, Shaun R. Bennett, Xiaoyan Song, Danica M. Lewis

Charleston Library Conference

Faculty, students, and library staff are making increasingly nuanced use of e‐book collections, but the variance in e‐book attributes between publishers and platforms necessitates much more specific information about the various features of e‐books in order for patrons to make informed decisions. Librarians have been increasingly tasked with fielding questions ranging from the stability of links in syllabi, to the number of simultaneous users, download formats, soft ware requirements, and support for assistive technology. These new information needs have led the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries to develop a public‐facing Web tool designed to help make the features, permissions, …

You May Own It . . . But Can They Find It? A Panel Discussion: Part 3 Of Panel Presentation: Collection-Level Cooperative Cataloging, Jeff O. Siemon

Charleston Library Conference

Have you purchased e-book or e-journal collections where the metadata was not provided or was incomplete? Can users find all of your collections? If metadata is unavailable, researchers can’t find your materials, resulting in lower usage.

Library directors and electronic resources managers are encouraged to add metadata specialists to their e-resources teams by reassigning catalogers. Catalogers are encouraged to develop skills for cataloging collections, in addition to their skills cataloging individual items.

Developing A Weighted Collection Development Allocation Formula, Jeff Bailey, Linda Creibaum, Star Holloway

Charleston Library Conference

In this preconference workshop Bailey, Creibaum, and Holloway presented detailed instructions on how to create a spreadsheet-based library collection development allocation formula, one option to manage a library’s collection development budget. The presenters demonstrated and led participants through the process of creating customizable Excel-based formulas that can easily be modified to utilize the criteria relevant to a specific library and institution. The primary element in the success of such a formula is the use of weights applied to each factor contained in the spreadsheet. Potential factors include the number of students graduating from each degree program, total faculty per department, …

Prologue To Perfectly Parsing Proxy Patterns, Jeremy M. Brown, Gretchen M. Smith

Charleston Library Conference

As libraries spend an increasing percentage of precious collection funds on electronic resources, important questions arise to drive collection management decisions: What is being used? How much? and finally, Who is using our resources? Vendor-supplied statistics can help answer the first two questions, but we have encountered specific questions about our users at Mercer University.

To help answer this question, we turned to our proxy server logs and began a pilot study in the spring semester 2017. This presentation will explain the methodology we used in mining data from our proxy server logs in combination with our existing user database. …

Statistical Analysis, Data Visualization, And Business Intelligence Tools For Electronic Resources In Academic Libraries, Cheng Cheng, Tracy J. Gilmore, Colleen Lougen, Connie Stovall

Charleston Library Conference

Analytics, business intelligence, and data visualization have an increasingly important space in the changing assessment landscape of academic libraries. Today, most academic libraries are spending a significant amount of their total expenditure budget on electronic resources. While they are high-value assets for modern libraries, the expensive annual subscription cost and continuing price increases of e-resources also make them a substantial budgeting burden. It is therefore essential to have a clear statistical view of the trends and patterns in price changes for e-resources and vendors. This paper focuses on three major topics vital for developing such a view: first, the e-resources …

Where Are We? Providing Information For The Clinical Enterprise (17th Health Sciences Lively Lunch), Ramune K. Kubilius, Jean Gudenas, Laura Schimming, Jonathan Shank, Vida Vaughn, Neal Nixon

Charleston Library Conference

If the past is prologue to the future, where are we today? Though they are diverse, most academic health sciences libraries have historically described and continue to outline their missions as being directed to serving the education, research, and clinical information needs of their user populations. Over the years, Charleston Conference Health Sciences Lively Lunches have covered many themes, and in 2012, the focus was on the point of care information tools landscape. The 2017 17th Health Sciences Lively Lunch focused on issues and challenges of providing clinicians and clinical affiliates with access not only to point of care tools, …

Taking The Long View: A Case Study Of E-Book Usage At A Comprehensive Research University, Edward F. Lener, Mitch Moulton

Charleston Library Conference

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech made their first major acquisition of e-books in 2008 with a purchase of new e-book collections from Springer. While the business relationship has evolved over time, it has continued forward to the present day. Currently, the library’s online holdings include most of the frontlist subject collections available from what is now Springer Nature, as well as the Springer book series and the Springer Book Archives. In all, the University Libraries make over 120,000 e-books available to patrons through the SpringerLink platform. The cumulative usage of this material represents over two million chapter downloads by …

Using Technology To Facilitate Pre‐Acquisition Workflows For Electronic Resources, Paoshan W. Yue

Charleston Library Conference

Investigation of new e‐resource requests before a purchase decision is made can be very complex, potentially involving gathering information from various parties (publishers/vendors, library stakeholders), setting up a trial, gathering trial feedback, and making sure stakeholders are notified in a timely manner throughout of the investigation process. The University of Nevada, Reno Libraries approached this management challenge by creating a dynamic online form. With its front end originated in InfoPath and its backend database and workflow controlled in SharePoint, this form allows an automated process covering request submission, product evaluation, collection development review, and selection decision. All the information regarding …

Strengthening Regional Collections One Request At A Time: Using Resource Sharing Technology To Facilitate Coordinated Collection Development, Shannon Pritting, Kate Ross

Charleston Library Conference

There can be many barriers for success in Coordinated Collection Development (CCD) projects. Delivery and ownership are major concerns, and libraries are committing institutional funds, often to contribute to group or consortial collections, which requires trust and a consistent measuring of whether the CCD venture is a good use of scarce collection dollars. CCD efforts often require advance agreement on policies, collection areas, and dedicated funds, which can lead to decreased overall satisfaction. In many CCD projects, mutual trust is not built through a shared practice and workflow that allows for choice and data-driven decisions but is established through CCD …

Liaison Librarians In The Know: Methods For Discovering Faculty Research And Teaching Needs, Nora B. Wood, Melanie Griffin

Charleston Library Conference

Libraries constantly seek information from their faculty partners on what, precisely, is needed from the library to support their teaching and research needs. This paper uses a case study from the University of South Florida (USF) as a framework to explore methods for determining the curriculum and research needs of faculty across disciplinary boundaries and ways for promoting library resources and services to departments across campus. Using syllabus analysis, website analysis, focus groups, and interviews, this project sought to evaluate faculty needs without relying on surveys. The data gathered from this case study will allow the liaisons at the University …

Finding The Right Fit For Article Delivery: Using Resource Sharing Technology To Provide Enhanced Access, Shannon Pritting

Charleston Library Conference

Electronic subscriptions occupy an ever increasing majority of budgets and prevent libraries from expanding services in other areas. There are few attractive options for libraries who want to provide access to research materials to users in a way that is cost effective and simple for users. Libraries are caught between subscriptions to single journals, large packages, or article-level purchasing that is either not instant or must allow access to everyone, which can quickly become costly. The IDS Article Gateway platform, developed by the IDS Project and SUNY Polytechnic Institute Library, uses resource-sharing technology and workflows to deliver fast or instant …

A Tale Of Two Campuses: Open Educational Resources In Florida And California Academic Institutions, Alejandra Nann, Julia I. Hess, Sarah Norris, John Raible

Charleston Library Conference

Open educational resources (OER) provide a high-quality and low-cost alternative to traditional textbooks. The University of Central Florida (UCF) and the University of San Diego (USD) have been engaged in a multitude of efforts related to OER and textbook affordability. This article will discuss the textbook affordability climate at the state (Florida and California) and institutional (UCF and USD) level. Macro and microventures and lessons learned will be shared by both institutions ranging from perceptions of open education resources by the universities to collaborating with constituents across campus, in addition to specific case studies with UCF faculty teaching online and …

Head In The Clouds: Will A Next-Generation Library Management System Bring Clear Vision?, Denise M. Branch

Charleston Library Conference

Multiple systems, disconnected workflows, and siloed information have plagued libraries for years. Librarians are tired of wrestling with inefficiencies and are seeking ways to unify their environment. Fortunately, they have discovered an effective tool to combat inefficiencies. Next generation library management systems are a new technology that brings many benefits. With these cloud-based systems a network of remote servers are hosted on the Internet that store, manage and process data rather than on a local server. They can transform the way services are delivered bringing streamlined workflows and enabling increased visibility and accessibility of all resources to the user community. …

Wrangle Your Data Like A Pro With The Data Processing Power Of Python, Geoffrey P. Timms, Jeremy M. Brown

Charleston Library Conference

Management, delivery, and marketing of library resources and collections necessitate interaction with a plethora of data from many sources and in many forms. Accessing and transforming data into meaningful information or different formats used in library automation can be time consuming, but a working knowledge of a programming language can improve efficiency in many facets of librarianship. From processing lists to creating extensible markup language (XML), from editing machine-readable cataloging (MARC) records before upload to automating statistical reports, the Python programming language and third-party application programming interfaces (APIs) can be used to accomplish both behind-the-scenes tasks and end-user facing projects. …

Supporting Research Information Management In The Research University: Partnerships, Challenges, And Possibilities, Rebecca Bryant, Beth Sandore Namachchivaya, Julie Speer

Charleston Library Conference

Research universities are increasingly engaging in complex efforts to collect and synthesize information about an institution’s research footprint. The collection, updating, and sharing of the campus’s bibliographic research outputs is an increasingly important part of this effort, as institutions seek to develop external profiling systems and enable collaborator discovery and to also increasingly internally understand the research strengths and synergies of an institution for planning and assessment. Institutions are adopting a variety of tools to support research information management (RIM), faculty activity reporting (FAR), and researcher collaboration and discovery on campus. In this presentation, we will talk about the complex …