Library and Information Science Commons^™

Making The Most Of Your Data: Embedding Business Intelligence Into Daily Operations, Jimmy Ghaphery, Susan Stearns

Charleston Library Conference

Increasingly under pressure to demonstrate their value in relation to the objectives of the institution or consortium, libraries are looking for ever more creative ways to improve efficiency and productivity and expand their services. Powerful analytic capabilities enable libraries to put numbers on their value and to expose tangible evidence of their leading role in the academic lifecycle. From usage data and onwards, analytics shed light on the inner workings of the entire institution, as well as those of the library. Valuable insight into libraries’ operation can be gained via purchasing trends, comparative analysis, and even predictive analysis—helping managers to …

Lights, Camera, Information Literacy: Collaborating To Create Multimedia Materials For Library Instruction, Michael Stöpel, Sally Murray, Jackie Ricords, Shiva Darbandi

Charleston Library Conference

Academic librarians devote their lives to research. Whether it’s providing scholars access to authoritative works or guiding new students through the uncharted territory of online databases and primary sources, librarians are an integral part of the research process. However, lack of time and resources can often restrict librarians’ abilities to apply in-depth research methodologies to evaluate their own institutions.

The irony of this circumstance was not lost on the librarians at the American University of Paris, where innovation and collaboration are strong tenets of the institution’s culture. AUP librarians chose to build on their partnerships both internally and externally with …

Great Expectations: New Organizational Models For Overworked Liaisons Based On The Uncg Libraries Liaison Collections Responsibilities Task Force, Steve M. Cramer, Beth R. Bernhardt, Mike A. Crumpton, Amy L. Harris, Nancy B. Ryckman

Charleston Library Conference

Liaisons (subject specialists) keep getting busier. Research instruction, embedding in classes, outreach, collection development, weeding, assessing teaching and collections, promoting scholarly communication issues, and creating online learning objects are all potentially part of what a liaison is expected to do nowadays. So we hope every liaison is very interested—and very good—at all those responsibilities. Is that realistic? And does a liaison have time for all those things?

At University of North Caroline at Greensboro (UNCG), library administrators decided it is time to examine how liaisons are organized to manage all of these competing responsibilities. The library formed a Liaison Collection …

Serials Workflow Changes: Transitioning From Print To Digital Subscriptions, Netta S. Cox

Charleston Library Conference

Academic library collections are transitioning from print serial resources to digital subscriptions. Due to smaller library budgets, users’ preference of electronic resources, and publishers’ emphasis on electronic-based full-text publishing, print serials are no longer the preferred accessible format. Many libraries are increasing their purchasing of electronic serial resources and reducing their print versions. This has created an impact on library workflows. This paper looks at the reasons for the cancellation of print serials and the impact of the workflow at F. D. Bluford Library.

Social Research Collaboration: Libraries Need Not Apply?, Jan Reichelt, Christopher Erdmann, Jose Luis Andrade

Charleston Library Conference

Social media was born an efficient method of personal networking. As more and more researchers took to social media platforms, we have witnessed an organic growth of collaboration among scholars, faculty, students, etc. This phenomenon has led us to a profound change in the way we conduct research through social media. Research through collaboration is now increasingly important in order to achieve a higher impact throughout the research community. But where does the library fit into this? The simple answer is that researchers are now bypassing the library.

This presentation will look at the new reality of social research collaboration …

The Changing Landscape Of Course Content: Electronic Textbooks And Electronic Coursepacks, Heidi M. Schroeder

Charleston Library Conference

This fall, Michigan State University (MSU) implemented electronic textbook (eText) and electronic course pack pilot projects. Faculty and over 1,000 students in several pilot courses used either eTexts from one of two major publishers or faculty generated electronic course packs. All course content was accessible through MSU’s course management system via the Courseload platform. Courseload offers searching, highlighting, note taking/annotations, sharing, printing, and the ability to embed and add other electronic content, user statistics, and more.

This paper describes these pilots in detail and provides readers interested in eTexts and electronic course packs an overview of one university’s experiences from …

Moving Technical Reports Forward, David Scherer, Roberto Sarmiento, Maliaca Oxnam, Charles Watkinson

Charleston Library Conference

Technical reports have always posed problems for libraries and librarians. They are often bibliographically inconsistent, difficult to source, and published to varying standards of quality. In some science and technical fields, these reports are also large in number and central in importance. Additionally, established workflows for acquiring and preserving technical reports in distributed repositories have been undermined by the transition from print to digital. Overall, the "grey literature" challenges librarians face have increased.

This paper presents three case studies of how academic libraries have found innovative ways to face the problems of technical reports and improve their production, dissemination, and …

Intellectual Property Policies In Academe: Issues And Concerns With Digital Scholarship, Sheri V. T. Ross

Charleston Library Conference

The generation of digital scholarship, through both research and teaching/learning activities, has caused colleges and universities to either create or revise their institutions’ intellectual property policies. Many factors should be considered when crafting a comprehensive and fair policy. This discussion focuses on the relatively new interest by higher education institutions in the copyright ownership of scholarly literary works, which has traditionally rested with the faculty creator. Digital technologies have led to the easy reproduction and commodification of these creations, prompting institutions to rethink their positions. The discussion considers the characteristics of copyrightable digital works, competing interests in the ownership of …

Understanding Escience: Reflections On A Houston Symposium, Joanne Romano, Allen Lopez, Maianh Phi

Charleston Library Conference

EScience is a data-driven research concept that encompasses the creation of vast data sets on a broad interdisciplinary scale. It is gaining momentum as a venue for librarians to collaborate with researchers and scientists like never before. The data curation necessary for eScience activities will provide librarians with a new platform for demonstrating their expertise in data retrieval, collection, and storage. This paper provides a reflection on the Houston eScience symposium and how it culminated in the creation of the Library’s first eScience Task Force and the Library’s eScience Portal, “Understanding eScience.” As outlined in the paper, this portal benefits …

Knowledge Unlatched: Toward An Open And Networked Future For Academic Publishing, Frances Pinter, Lucy Montgomery

Charleston Library Conference

Specialist book length publications in the humanities and social sciences (including but not exclusively monographs) are experiencing a crisis. It is clear that the current publishing system is failing both the producers and users of scholarship and neglects many of the opportunities associated with networked culture.

This paper introduces Knowledge Unlatched (www.knowledgeunlatched.org), which aims to improve the efficiency of markets for scholarly books.

What Do Publishers Do?, Sylvia K. Miller

Charleston Library Conference

In today’s exciting new world of digital communication and do-it-yourself publishing, what professional publishers actually contribute to the publishing process is often unknown, unrecognized, and underappreciated. The natural invisibility of publishers’ work prompts questions about what value they actually provide and whether it’s worth what customers are asked to pay. This paper attempts to reveal some of the hard-to-see aspects of publishing in hopes of depicting all of the work that goes into publishing. Topics include acquisitions, copyediting and production, design and typesetting, subsidiary rights, and electronic publishing. Ultimately, the paper aims to portray the importance and value that publishers …

Journals And Supplementary Data, Betty Landesman

Charleston Library Conference

Supplementary materials provide further information, explanation, or details that complement an article. These materials can include tables, figures, multimedia, and data. There is a growing interest in supplying these materials with an author’s work as possible storage is created for them. This paper discusses supplementary data as it applies to journals. It provides some examples of publishers’ policies regarding supplementary materials and what issues may surface with such policies. Changes in these policies are also discussed to portray the ways in which publishers are adapting to this growing interest in supplementary data. Data citation and storage, such as archiving in …

The Future Of Serials In A Linked Data World, Laurie Kaplan

Charleston Library Conference

Laurie Kaplan is the Director of Content Operations for Serials Solutions, a ProQuest business. Laurie is also currently an MLIS student at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. A version of this paper is being submitted as a term project for her Digital Libraries course for the 2012 fall semester.

This paper is based on a presentation prepared by Valerie Bross and Laurie Kaplan, and presented at the 2012 Charleston Conference by Valerie Bross and Yvette Diven (in Laurie’s absence). Valerie’s review of this paper contributed to the final version. Valerie Bross is the Head of the Continuing Resources …

Keeping The Momentum: Moving Ahead With Research Data Support, Hilary Davis, Steve Morris, Barrie Hayes

Charleston Library Conference

From June 2011 to early 2012 the NCSU Libraries and the UNC Libraries took part in the ARL/DLF E-Science Institute to frame a strategic agenda for supporting research data management and its broader e-science needs at our universities. We conducted an environmental scan, interviewed key researchers and administrators, and participated in capstone meetings with peer institutions. Our two institutions represent two strategies with varying degrees of divergence and convergence. At the NCSU Libraries, with no repository explicitly designed for research data, we are focusing on developing a portfolio of services and partnerships to create a “campus collaborative” of experts, tools, …

Open Access/Closed Coffers: Repositioning An Institutional Repository To Reflect Reality, Anna R. Craft

Charleston Library Conference

During 2011, a combination of budgetary and staffing factors led the NC DOCKS institutional repository system at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) to restructure its staffing, policies, and procedures, particularly with relation to the handling of faculty publications. A task force convened to study the issues, and its research and recommendations led to a focus on born-digital files and the scaling back of solicitation and staff support for faculty publications. As expected, the changes have led to a decline in the number of faculty publication added to the database, but student works are set to continue to …

Overview Of The Altmetrics Landscape, Richard Cave

Charleston Library Conference

While the impact of article citations has been examined for decades, the “altmetrics” movement has exploded in the past year. Altmetrics tracks the activity on the Social Web and looks at research outputs besides research articles. Publishers of scientific research have enabled altmetrics on their articles, open source applications are available for platforms to display altmetrics on scientific research, and subscription models have been created that provide altmetrics. In the future, altmetrics will be used to help identify the broader impact of research and to quickly identify high-impact research.

Playing The Odds: Pascal’S Wager And Decision Making In The Long Scholarly Conversation, Douglas Black

Charleston Library Conference

This talk explores some of the philosophical issues surrounding the nature of the scholarly record and current challenges in academic libraries. The discussion arises from a 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education feature on a widely influential 1979 article entitled “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Making Under Risk,” which proposed a new model for how people assess risk and weigh decision factors. The theory has been applied to dozens of disciplines and cited thousands of times, and it has applications in academic collection development as well as everywhere else. It addressed the limitations of Utility Theory, which grew out of …

Trln Oxford University Press Consortial E-Books Pilot, Ann-Marie Breaux, Annette Day, Aisha Harvey, Rebecca Seger, Luke Swindler

Charleston Library Conference

This pilot attempts to create a financially sustainable model for consortial acquisition e-books coupled with needed print copies, while moving the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) and partner publishers to a decidedly electronic environment for books that will enhance support for instruction and research across the disciplinary spectrum. Working with their shared book vendor (YBP Library Services), TRLN libraries and Oxford University Press (OUP) hope to evolve a vending model for e-books that other consortia and their partner publishers would find useful.

A Delightful Challenge: 330 Days, $410,000 For Books, And No Staff Added, Kathleen A. Sullivan

Charleston Library Conference

This presentation explains the challenge that The Phoenix Public Library was faced with when given $410,000 to purchase, receive, catalog, process, and pay for approximately 20,000 replacement library books within a 9-month period without additional staff. With only two Collection Development librarians available to order the replacements and no added staff to catalog and process these materials, staff looked for other ways to accomplish targeted, community-based material purchases in a fraction of the time usually allotted to such a large project. This paper concentrates on this challenge and explains the process taken to achieve the outcome. Ideas and implementations for …

Shared Journals: Save Space, Improve Access With The Maryland Shared Distributed Journal Collections Project, Barbara J. Snead

Charleston Library Conference

The continued growth of collections poses many challenges when it comes to storage space for all types of libraries. Academic libraries have the most difficulty accommodating this growth due to their attempts to preserve materials. While converting existing journal collections to electronic format is a popular, tempting solution, budget constraints and lack of online surrogate availability make this a difficult process for most academic libraries. Budget constraints also prohibit smaller university libraries from reassigning low-demand materials to remote storage facilities. This paper offers one solution to this situation, which was taken by the library at Groucher College, and describes its …

Not Your Mother’S Pda: The Transition From Pda Pilot To Full Acquisitions Integration, Bruce Fyfe, Erin Gallagher, Nicole Nolan, Harriet Rykse, Nazi Torabi, Yves Vanier

Charleston Library Conference

Western Libraries and Ingram Content Group worked together to establish a Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) program that has been incorporated into the regular acquisitions workflow at Western. Some features of the program include: all titles selected for addition to the PDA collection are filtered through the approval profiles established by the librarians, the library’s holdings are uploaded to Ingram weekly so that duplicate titles are avoided, invoices for purchased PDA titles are sent weekly, and holdings for un-purchased and purchased PDA records are updated weekly. A PDA Working Group established the program at Western by meeting with collections librarians to …

Wasted Words?: Current Trends In Collection Development Policies, Matt Torrence, Audrey Powers, Megan Sheffield, Maureen James, Donna K. Rose, Carol I. Macheak, John R. Warrick

Charleston Library Conference

The transition to electronic resources and the changing role of the collection development librarian are having a tremendous impact on the manner by which libraries select and acquire new materials. The goal of this research project was to further elucidate the current trends of collection development policies in members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) as well as gauge current use and future efficacy. The survey was designed and sent to librarians responsible for collection development at university-affiliated ARL libraries in order to obtain a current picture of academic collection development policies, and how they are changing due to …

Ebb And Flow: A Selection To Access Workflow For Consortia Pda, Denise Pan, Yem Fong, Mary Beth Chambers, Yumin Jiang

Charleston Library Conference

In the traditional workflow for delivering electronic resources to patrons, acquisitions have been the bridge between collection development and cataloging. However, new Patron Driven Acquisitions (PDA) purchasing models have reordered workflows and reemphasized communications. The sequence of activities differs since e-book discovery precedes purchasing activities. Workflow complexities are further exacerbated in a consortia environment. The University of Colorado (CU) system collaborated to implement a consortium PDA pilot with Ingram Academic on the MyiLibrary platform in December 2011. This presentation provides an overview of the pilot program and describes the workflow used for shared selection, cataloging, purchasing, and assessment of e-books …

Smart Pull For Remote Storage: How To Keep (Mostly) Everyone Happy When Making A Large Collection Move To Remote Storage, Tom Klingler

Charleston Library Conference

This paper includes an in-depth look at one university library’s technique in down-sizing its collection to make room for new services and to provide patrons with a more relevant, useful collection of books. Kent State University’s “smart pull” process included moving a large collection of books to remote storage to create these new services in the library. This process led to the sorting of the library’s large collection based on factors such as low use and publication date. It also allowed for continuous sorting of the collection as demand for books in the remote storage increased. The paper discusses its …

Distinctive Collections: The Space Between “General” And “Special” Collections And Implications For Collection Development, Daniel Dollar, Gregory Eow, Julie Linden, Melissa Grafe

Charleston Library Conference

Many libraries separate collection development activities into two broad categories, that of “general” collections versus “special” collections. Although this makes for a clean distinction between two areas of library activity (roughly the work of librarians as distinct and separate from that of archivists), in between these two poles lie “distinctive collections”—items that are neither especially rare nor unique (special), but are also not run-of-the-mill monographs or journals. Government documents, numeric datasets, ephemera, area collections, audiovisual media, born-digital materials—these are all recognized subsets of library collections with their own frameworks (more or less developed) for acquisition, cataloging/metadata, preservation, inter-institutional collaboration. Falling …

If You’Ve Got It, Flaunt It!: Refocusing A Collection With No Connection, Jennifer Ditkoff, Rodney Obien

Charleston Library Conference

Many libraries have a unique collection within their space that holds value and importance but has lost its connection to the college curriculum and the undergraduate research on campus. These collections may have had different people overseeing them over time or had changes in funding. They might have been created without thinking about the big picture. The paper examines one college library’s experience of turning an underused and unfocused collection into a vibrant and relevant part of the library through collaboration with key constituents in the academic and local community and staying true to the mission and vision.

Accidental Collection Assessment: The Ncsu Libraries Collection Move, Annette Day, John Vickery, Hilary Davis

Charleston Library Conference

In January 2013, the NCSU Libraries will open a brand new library, the James B. Hunt Jr. Library. Approximately 1.4 million volumes will be transferred to the new library from existing campus locations for opening day, with the majority of those collections being housed in an automated retrieval system (bookBot) and not in open stacks. A collections move of this size requires strategic planning reinforced and guided by a lot of data, assessment, and clean-up of records, items, and processes. This system-wide effort has given us unique and unprecedented opportunities to assess our collections, their scope, access, composition, and trends …

Proving The Value Of Library Collections, Lea Currie, Amalia Monroe-Gulick

Charleston Library Conference

Proving the value of library collections has always been a concern of collection development librarians. Librarians have devised creative methods of gathering evidence to demonstrate to university administrations the essential role that libraries play in research productivity. In an attempt to demonstrate the value of library collections, the authors from the University of Kansas (KU) Libraries conducted a citation analysis study utilizing KU science faculty publications. Using a random sampling of faculty from the departments of Physics, Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, and Geology, the authors developed lists of the citations in these faculty publications and checked to determine if KU …

Running A Contest To Encourage Timely Monograph Ordering, Carol J. Cramer

Charleston Library Conference

An age-old problem: Whatever deadline you set for placing monograph orders, you receive a big burst of orders at the last minute. Acquisitions staff beg for book orders one month and get flooded with orders the next. Librarians at Wake Forest University tried to mitigate this problem by running a contest: spend 65% of your target by an early deadline, and your fund wins a share of a cash prize. The presenter will discuss how the contest idea proved an effective incentive for selectors and how it served to make acquisitions work more steadily.

What Is Keeping You Up At Night? A Discussion Of Current Hot Topics In Collection Development, Susanne Clement

Charleston Library Conference

In this interactive lunch discussion, participants discussed the top issues in collection development that kept them up at night. Unlike the collection development issues included in the ARL “Issue Brief: 21st-Century Collections,” released in May 2012, these participants talked about very local and immediate issues as compared to the strategic issues listed in the ARL document. The collection development issues that were discussed can be grouped into several broad categories: budget, discovery tools, collection management, and media collections.