Professional Development

The Chronicle Technology Forum concluded today with a half-day session. The first session was about distance education so it wasn’t that relevant to Wake Forest, which is grounded in personal face-to-face relationships between student and faculty. I know that Lauren P. has found value in working with distance librarians because they tend to use technology in creative ways that can be relevant in a blended environment, but I didn’t find that value in this particular discussion. Still, it is good to remember that there is more than one way to deliver higher education and we at Wake Forest would do well to respect that.

I was looking forward to a session on enrollment management, as I am curiously interested in the topic. It was a rather shallow treatment, however, with a consultant hashing over past accomplishments and then a sales presentation on Blackboard Connect Ed. There were a couple of nuggets: recruiting costs $600 per freshman in a public environment and $2000 per freshman for privates. The Admissions arms race continues now in the social networking sphere. Schools are texting, twittering, and friending students as young as 8th grade!

The final session was a total loss on me as it was on “The Enemy Within: How to Predict and Prevent Computer Attacks from People Inside Your Institution.” Scary! I let Rick Matthews worry about that and instead used my time to construct an internal “hierarchy of thought” as I try to figure out the twitter/blogging art forms from private to public willingness:

• thought stays in my head
• thought is recorded in private notes
• thought is put on Twitter/Facebook (but not on public group hashtag)
• thought is put on Twitter/Facebook (and public group hashtag)
• thought is put on Twitter/Facebook and hashtag with live projection during session
• thought is put in blog (like this one) after daily reflection

I’m a Myers-Briggs INTJ, what can I say?

Lynn

Rick Matthews, Associate Provost for Information Systems, and I are attending the Technology Forum sponsored by the Chronicle of HIgher Education. I am one of only a handful of librarians. There are more CIO types, along with a smattering of provosts, presidents and lots of vendors from the technology industry.

This is the first conference that I have Twittered. I’m fairly new to Twitter to start with, so this was baptism by fire. The hashtag is #chetf09 if you’re interested. At one point, the Twitter feed showed up behind the panel of speakers and the snarkiness factor went down immediately!

Ironically, the opening keynote was about Twitter and other new social networking technologies. The representative from iTunesU talked about his 2 year old’s prowess on his iTouch and how he worried that his son’s fearless creativity would be “educated out of him” by the time he got to college. The speaker from Penn State summarized student’s expectations as “wanting to be able to do what I do out there,” namely connect with content and with each other with free use of images, video and text. Instead, we give them discussion boards on Blackboard. To meet these expectations, Penn State created a digital platform for blogging, video, and all the tools students are used to from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The next speaker is four months overdue on writing a book called the Googlization of Everything. He said he was not out to either praise or criticise Google, but he did little of the first and a lot of the second. He cited as “public failure” that Google has taken over information commodities on a number of campuses such as email, calendaring, document management, etc. However, the following breakout session featured two institutions as different as Notre Dame and the Virgina Community College system who described their switchover to gmail and other Google Apps as seamless, beautifully engineered and well supported. The debate on Google remains: are they evil or not?

The luncheon speaker was Ed Ayers, President of the University of Richmond and creator of Valley of the Shadow, a groundbreaking site. This was my favorite presentation of the conference (so far). Ayers was at UVA when he created Valley and is now bringing his passion for digital humanities with him to Richmond. He quipped that scholarship has been open source even before the digital era. He and his colleague demonstrated some amazing examples of digital scholarship; check them out: History Engine, the Texas Slavery Project,and Voting America. He emphasized that these projects do not require multimillion dollar grants or huge technology infrastructure. They accomplished them at Richmond with a couple of smart graduate students and a lot of imagination.

I suffered through a discussion of the Georgia State v AAUP lawsuit over copyright violations with digital reserves. Georgia State was described as at the far left of fair use interpretation and really seemed to be out on a limb, but the prevailing opinion in the room was to solve the problem through licensing and royalty payment, abandoning fair use altogether.

There was a very interesting discussion of how to manage the student life cycle from eager applicant to generous graduate donor. Social networking software is being used throughout, perhaps most effectively by Admissions because they have the youngest (and therefore the savviest) audience. The most common question asked by applicants is, “are you going to look at my Facebook page?” Universities have to adapt to the fact that they have lost control of the message to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The most disappointing session was “Library Design in Changing Times.” Maybe it was because library as place issues are so familiar to us in libraries that it surprising to hear people being shocked at the idea of coffee shops! Paradigm shifts have been around as long as there have been libraries! Still, I did get a wicked idea for ZSR that I will sleep on overnight….

The last talk of the day was from John Markoff, a New York Times reporter giving an insider’s view of Silicone Valley and playing to about half of the original audience. He said there really haven’t been that many big ideas, just the original personal computer and ubiquitous computing. Then, each new generation of technology devours the previous one. Otherwise, Silicon Valley will become the next Detroit (depressing to a native Detroiter…)

On Sunday, we woke up to HUGE snowflakes coming down, which turned an hour later into a cold rain. Seattle weather may be worse than Detroit’s. I dutifully trudged down to the convention center for the closing sessions.

“Buzz Off! Tossing Traditional Collection Development Practices for Patron Initiated Purchasing,” Sue Polanka, Wright State University, Alice Crosetto, University of Toledo, Kari Paulson, EBL

The presenters asked the same questions I have asked myself from time to time, what if we just stopped guessing which books to buy and let the patrons select them. Actually, I presented a paper on this at ACRL in Charlotte when Wayne State had a grant from the Ford Motor Company to buy netLibrary ebooks. [As an aside, the speakers used Turning Point clickers for the first 50 people in the audience , which was fun.] Kari Paulson from EBL explained the concept. Patrons make selections by accessing the ebook online, either on the first or second click. The advantage is that you get 100% usage, unlike the traditional method of guessing what books patrons will actually use. At Wright State, they did a study of approval plan books, which showed a 50% usage rate (like the classic Pittsburgh study from years ago). Some models even offer a short-term lease. You could think of it in terms of the ultimate 2.0 experience. You can set controls by setting price and subject or other parameters if you feel compelled. The speaker who chose the “con” side emphasized the professional responsibility of the librarian to see the collection as a balanced whole and that no one else is better equipped than librarians to make those judgments with limited funds. She saw it as a control issue, which is not very noble imho.

Closing Keynote, Ira Glass, This American Life,

Ira Glass tried to explain his (rather unusual) approach to broadcast journalism, combining humor with drop-dead-serious topics. They have a staff of 8 researchers who develop the stories surrounding compelling personalities. Topics like Guantanamo, Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis, post traumatic stress disorder, or race in the 2008 elections take on a real-life dimension when digging into the humorous, fearful, tragic or heroic sides to ordinary people. They maintain a storytelling structure (anecdote, comment, anecdote, comment) to their show meant to keep the audience engaged (and tuned in) which seems a lot less like manipulation if you just go with it, besides which it is the same structure that is used by clergy of every religion. He tried branching out to TV, which turned out to be a bigger difference than any of them thought. The “John Smith” clip he showed was amazingly moving for its length. He closed with the story of Scheherazade, who saved her life by telling stories in the Arabian Nights. Ira Glass, master storyteller. This might have been the best keynote I have ever heard. The last standing ovation I saw at a library conference was Barack Obama!

Sunday afternoon and evening, I met with our University Libraries Group cohort. I can’t really share the details, as the stories were of the director-to-director-to-stay-in-the-room-only type. Suffice it to say that every campus is having the same economic difficulties, that political battles happen all the time, either centralizing or decentralizing can take away staff on a moment’s notice, and we will all be glad when the stock market returns to normal.

I am now sitting in the airport waiting for the red-eye connection to Atlanta and then on to Greensboro tomorrow morning. Wanda had terrible luck and missed her connection in Atlanta, so she left the hotel at 8:30 this morning and will get back to Greensboro at 8:30 tomorrow morning, ironically on my same connecting flight. I hope the rest of the gang make it back OK.

It may be too early to offer reflections on the ACRL experience, but I basically have nothing else to do for the next hour an one half. So here are some random observations:

Academic librarians, much like undergraduates, are getting younger all the time. I definitely looked and felt like a senior citizen compared to the hipsters of the ALA crowd.

I was reminded that ACRL is basically a public service type conference. It was a little heavy on the reference/information literacy kinds of topics, which is great if that is your thing but not so much if you are not, if you follow me.

ACRL would do well to push back the submission dates for contributed papers, since the ideas are now a full year old.

The major message I am bringing back is the don’t-waste-a-good-crisis philosophy, which I will play out in various nefarious ways.

And finally, I hope everyone realizes that we take these conferences seriously and work darn hard, day and night, nights and weekends, all to bring back fresh ideas to ZSR. This was a good one.

See you tomorrow, a bit rumpled.

We woke up Saturday to a cold rain, which must be the reason why the rest of America doesn’t all move to Seattle because it’s pretty nice otherwise. The title of my first Saturday session is the underlying theme of the conference, in my book.

“Thriving in an Economic Downturn: Don’t Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste”

Betsy Wilson of the University of Washington put the session into context by saying that only 5 states in the U.S. do not have a revenue shortfall for the current year, endowments are plunging, and no one knows when it will end. In the past, however, libraries have typically used a crisis to increase collaboration. For example, the Association of Research Libraries was created during the Great Depression.

Steve Hiller, University of Washington, observed that data collection is by definition a backward looking activity, but use of the data is action driven toward the future. It is imperative to understand how faculty and students work and how we can position ourselves to serve them.

Similar to the presentation that Rosann Bazirjian and I will give later, Hiller said that our libraries are pretty much undergraduate spaces. They also provide work space for graduate students.We need to pay attention to match our hours of opening with student lifestyles, reduce physical collection footprint, and close branch libraries with low traffic,

Camila Alire, is known as the “Master of Disaster” for having led two different libraries through two devastating floods and one fire. She talked about the supreme importance of communicating with staff during a crisis. It was recently revealed that many employees of the firms making headlines in today’s recession said they heard nothing from their management about what was happening.They heard it on TV, but heard nothing internally.Camila said you can’t emphasize enough: communicate, communicate, communicate.In one of her disasters, she was told by her university counsel and the insurance company what she could and could not say for liability purposes.So if you are ever on the receiving end of an unsatisfactory communication, be aware that there are all kinds of factors involved.She held open forums for the staff and said what she could say and promised to have another one when she could say more. Integrity must prevail, you must be straightforward and honest.Her motto is to underpromise and overdeliver.Be honest if you have to set a timeframe back.Avoid promises that you may not be able to keep. Share the data that you do have so people will see your reasoning.

Tom Leonard, University of California, Berkeley

Seven ways forward in these uncertain times:

1)Dig through files to find collaborations from the past that are sound, but largely forgotten. Inter-institutional cooperation can really help now.

2)Step up to find short-term gain with partners. They formed a research library fellows cohort with some of their peers.

3)Train up existing people in skills you need.

4)Keep an eye out for barriers falling away with changes in university leadership.

5)Don’t leave money on the table and don’t stop progress because of fear of sustainability.

6)Sometimes we can fail in fruitful ways. Portals were thought to be the answer, they weren’t, libraries lost that battle to Google, but resources were ready to be harvested as a result.

7)Mass digitization is the only way forward. It wouldn’t have happened without Google, no one else has those resources. So stop apologizing and keep going.

“The Academic Library as Publishing Agent:Showcasing Student, Faculty and Campus Scholarship and Publications,” Marilyn Billings, UMass Amherst, Teresa Fishel, Macalester College, Allegra Gonzalez, Claremont University Consortium

[This is one of those presentations where the content was good, but what was extremely valuable was the ideas it generated for me on how to follow up back home.I came away with a whole slew of ideas (some good and some probably not so good) that I will share with the Scholarly Communications Committee when I get back. I think this is an area where ZSR can take a leadership role on campus.]

At the Digital Commons at Macalaster (BE Press group), their focus was on student honors projects, which is something we talked about for Wake if we can’t get faculty cooperation. They put up the online Macalaster Journal of Philosophy, and Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity and Classics, sponsored by faculty in the institution. These journals are indexed and discoverable in Google Scholar.They set up an editorial board of faculty to provide peer review and scrutiny.

The Claremont Colleges Digital Library (Content DM) published a formerly unpublished math textbook, which thrilled the author, and also Interface Journal (student work from Harvey Mudd). They established partnerships with the University Press, and faculty roles involving journals, conferences and workshops.They found unexpected champions in the emeritus faculty (who often had unpublished manuscripts that they were thrilled to see published.

Saturday at 1:30 must have been the most popular time slot in the conference, as my paper with Rosann Bajirjian (Replication of the OCLC Perceptions Study: The Experience of Two Academic Libraries) was then, as well as Lauren’s panel (Mapping your Path to the Mountaintop: Planning Where You Want to be in your Career) and a presentation by former colleagues at Wayne State! Rosann and I found our presentation well received, with lots of questions and interest from the audience.The practice presentation we did last week at ZSR helped a lot. We were afraid it was an old topic already, but many people came up and thanked us for doing it. That concludes two years of data collection, analysis and writing, almost like doing a dissertation!

After de-briefing at the poster sessions,all ZSR folks went to hear Roz talk about Google Docs at the Cyber Zed Shed (I am not making that up). She was fabulously cool, calm and collected, even when she lost her Internet connection and had to wing it for a while until she could borrow access from another computer!

I went back to the last presentation of the day, “Putting your money where your mouth is - $$ Speak Louder than Words,” Kim Armstrong, CIC, Jay Starratt, Washington State, where they examined the Top Ten Assumptions for the Future of Academic Libraries and Librarians, published by ACRL in 2007.The takeaway for me was when they looked at national norms in academic library statistics over a multi-year time span. For example:

Reference down 35% 2002 to 2007 (ACRL)

Circulation down 10% 2002 to 2007 (ACRL)

Gate count up 14% 2000-2006 (NCES)

Wanda was at the same session and we agreed it would be valuable to look at ZSR statistics for the same categories in the same time periods.We have been concerned over the drop in reference statistics but putting it in the context of the national norms will help to put it in perspective.

On our last night in Seattle, Wanda, Susan, Mary Beth and Roz had a great dinner at Wild Ginger and then met Lauren at the All Conference Reception at the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. We all agreed that Chris Burris absolutely needed to be there.Star Trek and Jimi Hendrix:what could be better?! Whew, long day.

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I remember by typing and I didn’t want to forget anything.

Brother Can You Spare a Dime? 2009 ACRL Trends for Academic Libraries

In a smart move, the planners of this session retooled it completely from what they had planned to do a year ago (revealing one of the flaws of ACRL conferences that they are planned WAY too far in advance to get current material) to consider the effects of the global economic collapse.10 days ago, ACRL re-did its Trends document, “Strategic Thinking Guide for Academic Librarians in the New Economy.” They invited the four panelists to respond to this new document. They identified these key drivers:

Changing economics in higher education

Changing student demographics

Changes in information technology

Charles Lowry, ARL Executive Director, didn’t talk about the ACRL document but instead listed out ARL’s own environmental scan document.

• Trends in scholarly communication: budget reductions in acquisitions; new model publications beginning to have effect;faculty are innovators so build relationships with them; bring dissemination back to the academy; re-engineering library services; embed yourself in research practices; library’s role in research, training and education; large funders specify management of content

• Trends in public policy:economy and national security will be dominant; Congress and Administration to revise Bush policies; focus on technology and innovation; enhance search and access capability; focus on copyright and intellectual property; cyber infrastructure developments; difficulty in balancing competing interests; environmental; accountability and assessment. FRPA reauthorization would extend NIH rule to other agencies to counter Conyers’ House Bill 801; USA PATRIOT Act coming up, fighting the national security letter provision to let it sunset. Section 108 of Copyright may see action.
• Trends in teaching, learning and research on our campus: ran out of time to enumerate.

Deb Gilchrist, Pierce College: Deb is known as a strategic thinker. She mentioned a prophetic article from Change magazine in 2003, “Dealing with the future now,” which stressed looking ahead instead of looking at the present. (Reminds me of my favorite hockey saying, “skate to where the puck is going to be.”) Two common choices in dealing with a crisis are 1) muddle through or 2) make a radical transformation to totally reconceive our business (Rahm Emanuel’s don’t waste a good crisis philosophy).She advised looking at the broader picture before designing library services.Content is leaving us as educators; the future is in process based pedagogies, that is, teaching students how to think, and how to reason rather than how to remember facts.

Community college students are more fragile, the average age 29 at Pierce. [Reminds me again of how small the Wake bubble is, compared to the real world.] Their role is to serve as economic bridge, to do this they collaborate with public libraries.She is looking at a creative re-design of structures as they face a 12% cut at her college. They developed institutional outcomes for technology, rather than continuing to work in separate silos. She has taken to hiring to the mission, not the job description [excellent pearl of wisdom] and mainstreaming services, putting the research in front of others. Student success is what it’s all about by stepping up the librarian’s role to work side by side with faculty.

Annie Paprocki, University of Illinois, Reference Librarian

Paprocki asked how can academic librarians think strategically? The time has come for the Big Idea. (Again, don’t waste a good crisis) This economy will touch everyone and everything. The difference in this recession is everyone is in this together. Robert Reich says there is more innovation in times of depression though it might look different. Change in scholarly communications is at the tipping point; this crisis could push us over into the valley of open access.

Jose-Marie Griffiths, Dean, School of Information and Library Science, UNC-CH

Even though people will be working longer and not retiring as soon with the collapse of retirement funds, eventually we will need to replace 50% of academic librarians over the next 10 years. Up until now, library jobs have been increasing, we don’t really know if this recession will behave differently. Think of the effects on the library of institutional change; think on library’s role, what should be centralized or decentralized, (again don’t waste the crisis). Griffiths sees more and more user instruction, helping them to help themselves. Libraries are not the only game in town anymore regarding bibliographic control. See LC’s new publication,On the Record. We are about to see a cyber (I’ve never liked the word cyber) infrastructure revolution, which is included in President Obama’s main infrastructure initiative. There is a network layer, a computation layer (hardware and software), a content layer (in the infrastructure, available to all) and a tools and service layer. It is time to move broadband to deeper penetration, but the last mile is the responsibility of the institution. Technology question: where in the learning workflow can the library insert services?

Confronting the Business Lens for Accountability of General Learning as it Pertains to Information Literacy. Marilee Bresciani, San Diego State

Bresciani invited us to consider the context for accountability of general learning. Specific disciplines (Engineering, Nursing) have their own specific accountability engines, but general learning typically compares institution to institution (rankings), not outcomes. Higher Ed as a whole usually says “you just don’t understand us” and have gotten away with it up until now; but no more.

How do those in the business world evaluate the quality of their product? How could we do that with the quality of student learning and present evidence of it? What is the purpose of information literacy? How does it fit into learning expectations? [Here is where she started to drift as I'm not sure she herself understands what information literacy is.] Is it skills or knowledge?Is the disposition toward finding an answer or a process?

We should organize ourselves around the information (like food in a restaurant). Interaction with the consumer is key. A really good meal is a constant interaction to make sure the quality of the experience is optimized.Likewise, information literacy or the whole library experience.

For lunch, I went to Pike Street Market, the coolest part of town, and met the Pike Street pig.

Conflict and Consensus - Clusters of Opinions on E-books, Aaron Shrimplin, Andrew Revelle, Miami Universit, OH

I’ve often wondered why e-books have faced a much slower adoption rate than e-journals.These two young librarians wondered the same thing. They see a similar transition from print to electronic journals, just slower. Their study was meant to try to understand the motivations, attitudes and perceptions of users.Why do they use e-books, or not?

They used Q methodology to study human subjectivity, a technique not used much in libraries but in other social science disciplines. They conducted 17 in-person interviews, got 200 statements of opinion, and selected 45 of the 200. Later, 74 faculty and students did a Q sort into a forced distribution grid, and came up with 4 factors or points of view:

1)Booklovers - love books, emotional attachment to the book as physical object, like to collect and own them, don’t feel comfortable reading off the screen (predicted)

2)Technophile - love technology, gadget lovers, like e-books because they like all technology, no problem reading off screen, don’t print (predicted)

3)Research focused - academic monographs, like to search, just use parts of books, print the parts they need, no emotional attachment to the book, very practical (not predicted)

4)Interface issues - they print whatever they look at online but worry about it, resent subscription issues, resent learning new interface, but these things can be addressed (not predicted)

In 3 of the 4 factors, users don’t like to read on the screen. The authors don’t really know how new readers like the Kindle are received, because it was not specifically studied. Neither do they know what percentage of their campus fits into each factor. It was a very interesting study, regardless.

Reaching Public Service Excellence: Developing a Mystery Shopping Program To Measure Service Quality, Elizabeth Kocevar-Weidinger, Longwood University, Candice Benjes-Small, Radford University

The presentation was done in Lincoln-Douglas debate style; don’t know why.

What is mystery shopping? An incognito user of service who rates the experience.

How is it better? Intentionality of the shopper, who is trained to know what to look for.

If your students are your shoppers, are they biased either for (or against)? Students were to know what to look for and how to evaluate, also used a variety of shoppers.

Is it “legal” to mystery shop? Yes, but check with HR and IRB first.

How reliable is it? What if someone has an off day? It seems like spying, trying to catch people in bad acts.

Shopping season ran for 2 weeks each semester, results were shared with staff, supervisors, and administration. There were lots of positive responses, also areas for improvement. Results were given in the aggregate only, they did not track by individual.

RESOLVED: The Master’s Degree in Library Science is Not Relevant to the Future of the Academic Library, moderated by Jim Neal, Columbia University. This was the second debate format in a row.

Affirmative:Arnold Hirshon, NELINET, Library schools are not identifying the right people, they teach them the wrong things (too superficial), therefore libraries shouldn’t require MLS for any position.

Negative: Liz Bishoff, MLS program must emphasize education, not training, as well as critical thinking and team building skills. Research, the release of creative energy, is critical for any profession and is best begun in library school.

Rebuttal (Bishoff): Digital library is our future; it’s a matter of time, not either-or, but MLS still prepares best.

Rebuttal (Hirshorn): Research is something that you can’t teach, but you have to do. Apprenticeship and outreach are important.

Maybe it was the end of a long day, but I found this session very disappointing.

I was invited to dinner by my editor and publisher, Toni Tan of Cambria Press. I was one of the first authors to sign on with this new publisher in 2006 and they have grown exponentially since then.Toni picked my brain for over three hours, asking why libraries buy the books they do, what kind of marketing they prefer, hardcover or paperback, choice of jobbers, difference between acquisitions and collection development, what is the future of e-books, how can they get on approval plans, what do librarians think of series, and on and on! It was fun!

Hello, fellow ZSR-ites. I’m a bit groggy after traveling all day. Got here in time to check into the room with Wanda and then head over to the convention center. First person I see is Jim Williams, Dean of Libraries at Colorado-Boulder, and an old friend of mine (from the 70’s!) from Wayne State.

The conference keynote speaker canceled at the last minute but ACRL had a back-up in line, so we heard a fine speech by Rushworth Kidder who spoke generally about ethics and specifically about the topics in his latest book, The Ethics Recession: Reflections on the Moral Underpinnings of the Current Economic Crisis. He described an ethical dilemma as one being between right and right, rather than right and wrong. He congratulated librarians for standing for ethics, that is, for trying to find the “higher” right. I like that.

Kidder says we, in America, are in an ethics recession, threatening free enterprise and democracy, and need to build a national culture of integrity. Pundits typically frame questions in either the language of economics (bottom line) or politics (power)but we are now moving on to ethics, as crises like Bernie Madoff have set off a moral outrage seething through the country. He described four drivers of dilemmas: truth v loyalty, individual v community, short-term v long term, and justice v mercy (I confess I borrowed this sentence from a twitter feed set up on the Virtual Conference when I got distracted for a minute - not bad for an old woman, eh?) His definition of moral courage (another book of his) is willing endurance in significant danger for the sake of principle. He gives librarians credit for being willing to face the tough issues and act as standard-bearers for our communities. His last point was that law will rush in to fill the void if there is a dearth of ethics; self regulation is ethics, external regulation is law.

After the keynote, everyone rushed down to the Exhibits, where Wanda and I met up with Susan, Roz and Mary Beth, and where it seemed like I ran into everyone I’ve ever known. That’s one of the great things about library conferences!

I don’t always blog my ASERL (Association of Southeast Research Libraries) meetings but this one had lots of interesting information in which people might be interested.

The meeting started with a round robin introduction and 1 minute summary of the local budget situation at each library.The range of responses varied from warnings like ours at Wake Forest to a 17% cut at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.About half of the directors who had budget cuts on their campus were being protected from the full impact in the library.North Carolina, in general, fared much better than some other states like Georgia and Alabama. Private institutions were more cushioned by their endowment than state schools who were feeling the impact more immediately.

A collaborative digitization project called “Intellectual Underpinnings of the American Civil War” was proposed and positively received by the membership.It is designed to be as broad and inclusive as possible - basically anything published or created between the years of 1850-1865 that could be construed in any way as relating to the war. It is hoped that every ASERL library will contribute to the project, with the goal of having 5,000 digital objects in place by 2011, not coincidentally the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War. Sharon and Susan have already begun to think of what we have to contribute. There is a call out for members of the Technical Committee who will work with the technical specs and metadata.

Mary Giunta from Columbia University was an invited guest to talk about how their library had departed from the traditional notion of an Information Commons and is in the process of setting up three subject-based Digital Centers in the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Science/Technology. Notably, they sent their entire government documents and microform collections to remote storage in order to create space for the Social Sciences center. The emphasis is more on graduate student and faculty research processes, rather than on undergraduates.

I was particularly interested in a report by Lynne O’Brien on the OLE (Open Library Environment) project at Duke. Their goal is to design and build an open source integrated library system specifically designed for academic libraries.This is a goal shared by ZSR, so it makes sense for us to follow their work closely and join in as appropriate.The reasons they gave on why they thought an open source solution was necessary included: 1) current ILS products are woefully inadequate, 2) with industry consolidation, there are few commercial choices left, 3) the need for system interaction with other enterprise systems (Banner, Blackboard, etc), and 4) the desire to control one’s own destiny (though my husband says that is an oxymoron since destiny is by definition uncontrollable, but I digress).Since Duke put out the call, MANY libraries have shown interest and a small group is actively working on it with many more (like us) lurking and waiting in the wings.There is a strong commitment to avoid building a new system around old, legacy print processes.OLE’s guiding principles are as follows: provide for a wide range of resources; a system built, owned, and governed by the library community; a system developed using SOA (service-oriented-architecture) implemented with Web services; a system able to adapt and integrate with other enterprise systems (unlike other current open source systems like Evergreen and Koha which were not designed to meet the broader needs of academic research libraries).The vision is for a flexible, adaptable, community-developed software framework that will support core business practices.

They will be holding a series of regional workshops in the next few months (Erik, Lauren C. and Mary Beth will attend a two day session in Durham December 15-16).They will complete the design document by July 09, and Mellon has already invited them to submit another grant to build the designed system (when Mellon invites you to submit a grant, it pretty much means you will get it).Their goal is to have a working system by mid-2011, with a lot of work in between. They are looking for additional partners to join working groups on scope, workflow, project planning, governance, communications, connections, and also volunteers to test the system.This is a welcome and valuable addition to the library community and Susan, Erik and I will be working to figure out how to best incorporate this initiative into our plans for the future.

A secondary discussion took place as to whether Kudzu, the highly successful document delivery system sponsored by ASERL, should link with OLE to design and build an open source document delivery system independent from, but linking to, OCLC and ILLiad.40% of Kudzu transactions are initiated and filled within ASERL.Savings of $400,000 in OCLC transaction fees could be achieved under such a system.ASERL directors wanted more information before committing to such a development.

HBCU Exchange Experiences:the five libraries that participated in this year’s exchange program between HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) librarians and ASERL institutions shared their experiences.The benefits of networking and sharing best practice information were similar to ZSR’s experience with Iyanna Sims of North Carolina A&T twoyears ago.A third round of exchange is foreseen for the summer of 2010.

SOLINET merger with PALINET:Kate Nevins from SOLINET reported on the status of the merger. I am on SOLINET’s Joint Coordinating Board and have been privy to all the fascinating details of the merger, but I have been mostly sworn to silence up until now. I am happy to report what Kate told the ASERL group:both the SOLINET and PALINET Boards have voted for the merger and both organizations are preparing for a membership vote some time after the first of the year. The new (still unnamed) organization will be headquartered in Atlanta with a field office in Philadelphia, but the new organization will be chartered in Pennsylvania.Kate will serve as CEO for the first 18 months, with Kathy Wilt of PALINET in charge of research and innovation.After 18 months, the new Board will decide on continuing leadership.The new Board will initially be composed of 6 current SOLINET members, 6 current PALINET members and 3 non-librarians.One third of the Board will be replaced each year until there is a totally new Board, based on type of library.The membership vote will be electronic, but must be followed by an onsite meeting to comply with current bylaws.The merger has been a fascinating process, full of political intrigue, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. The reasons for the merger are forward looking and compelling:1) a changing environment for OCLC networks; 2) desired new service models independent of geography, balanced by local touch where geography is important; 3) increased capacity for innovation in services; 4) access to Palinet services that SOLINET doesn’t have; 5) increased leverage with vendors; 6) cost control through consolidation.

Collaborative Federal Depository:Judy Russell (former Superintendent of Documents and current Dean of Libraries at the University of Florida) presented a Center of Excellence proposal to provide a new model of depository service for the Government Printing Office to consider.The program would identify which regional depositories have the strongest collections in given agencies and then can move materials from selective depositories into regional depositories to create complete collections. They are asking a two year commitment: $1000/regional, $750/selective. (ZSR is a selective depository) I admit to playing devil’s advocate on this issue as it seems a low priority/low demand issue when budgets are so tight.I asked why should we invest in an outdated model to move unused print materials around rather than digitize them.Judy said that GPO has issued an RFP for a “no-cost-to-the-government” proposal to digitize pre-1976 legacy collections.The Law Library Microform Consortium put in a proposal jointly with the Internet Archive along with one other unknown bidder.We should know the outcome in the spring.

The Education Committee is planning a summer summit on information literacy 2.0 with the HBCU group and is looking for names for a planning committee. George Mason University issued a proposal on a training program for liaison librarians.There might be a possibility of working with the HBCU Alliance to get it into their Mellon grant. This topic is of great interest to us here at ZSR.

SCOAP3: an international coalition of physics scholars is looking for “non-binding, revenue-neutral” support to achieve open access for seven High Energy Physics journals. We should investigate this issue and possibly sign the proposal.

Association of Research Libraries: Charles Lowery, Interim Executive Director, gave a brief presentation on ARL’s emphases in their strategic plan: scholarly communication, public policy governing information issues, and the research process, as well as the enabling capabilities of diversity and assessment.Regional consortia like ASERL, CIC, BLC, NERL, and GWLA add an operational element to the higher end initiatives of ARL.

The last presentation of the meeting was the University of Tennessee’s Newfound Press.It was described as a digital scholarly publishing demonstration. It was founded in 2005 with the purpose of taking control of publishing, and lowering the cost of scholarship.Goals are to increase access to scholarly works and collaborate with faculty on new forms of communication. The editorial board consists of UT faculty who provide peer review.Their output includes books, one e-journal, conference proceedings, and multimedia. They have a business plan for 2008-11, and hope to stay in business long after that.This is a creative and practical way to be proactive in the scholarly communications process and is something we might hope to emulate some day at Wake Forest.

The next ASERL meeting will be held at the end of April in Williamsburg. Whew.

I am sitting at LAX airport, waiting for my flight to Charlotte and reminiscing on ALA Anaheim. My expectations were pretty low, based mostly on the other horrid Disney/conference experiences ALA has had. I thought this one was not bad, in fact, near idyllic. The programs and meetings were the most compact I have ever seen at ALA Annual. I only had to ride the bus once! The weather was pluperfect - sunny, low 80’s, no humidity, no bugs - unlike other cold, dreary California Junes I have seen. It may have helped that I had no committees or official obligations this trip. I was free to attend the programs that interested me. What luxury! At some ALA’s I have not seen one program, being locked into committee meeting after committee meeting. Except for the lack of non-chain restaurants and non-souvenir stores, it was very, very nice. And what other convention center is lined with palm trees at the entrance?

See you all tomorrow!

Monday started with the second celebration of Susan’s ACRL/IS Innovation Award, this time at the Lexis-Nexis breakfast and this time a bit more grand.

Susan gave remarks after accepting the award and was very kind to mention a number of Wake Forest people who supported her in the Embedded project, including Professors Smith and Hattery, her entire tech team whom she named by name, and her director, for letting her go in the first place. The program portion was also infinitely more interesting than yesterday’s as Dana Milbank presented very amusing tidbits from his book about life in Washington, DC, “Homo Politicus.”

ACRL President’s Program “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions,” Dr. Dan Ariely

Ariely’s investigation in this area began when he was a long-term burn patient, subjected to excruciating pain at the hands of well-meaning health care personnel. After a series of demonstrated optical illusions, he said the human vision system is the strongest system we have but it is still subject to big mistakes. Other systems that are not as well developed are even more subject to error. He proceeded to give an interesting and amusing set of decisions that people make that seem to contradict their best interests. The most interesting was the rule of three. If presented with a choice between A and B, the choice may be random or obvious. It a third choice is introduced and is a lesser version of either A or B, then the corresponding more desirable version will attract much stronger appeal than the third unrelated choice. This can be used as a force for good or for manipulation. You choose. A panel of librarians then asked a series of questions about the presentation.

The conference is winding down. Tonight: Anaheim Angels v. Oakland Athletics

Sunday started out with an early morning breakfast with Kate Nevins on SOLINET business. She is thinking of taking me up on my offer to host the spring SOLINET meeting at Graylyn. That would be terrific!

Next I attended a program of the ACRL Science and Technology Section (to which I belonged many years ago) because it was called “The Embedded Librarian: New Role or New Title?”

Marianne Stowell Bracke, Purdue University
Nancy Deegan, Central Arizona College
Martin Kesselman, Rutgers
Sarah Watstein, UCLA

I wanted to know how closely the experiences of these science librarians were to our ZSR Embedded Librarian program. As one of the speakers said, while the situations varied greatly, the positive outcomes were remarkably similar. One speaker was embedded in a three year soil science research grant, and another was embedded as a Teaching Assistant in several Blackboard courses. The positive outcomes cited by all were closer ties to both faculty and students, a change in the view of faculty toward librarians from instructional support staff to peers, and a re-thinking of traditional roles because of an ability to “think like them.” Kesselman and Watstein have just finished a research paper on embedded librarianship that will appear in Journal of Library Administration. I will definitely look for that!

In the afternoon, I got an upfront seat to the presentation of Susan’s award from the ACRL Instruction Section. It came as the first part of their annual program entitled, “Creating Change: Teacher Librarians and New Learners.”

Susan was presented with a huge certificate and a check for $3,000 by a representative of Lexis Nexis, which sponsors the award. Great job, Susan! You honor ZSR with your energy, enthusiasm and teaching/learning/technology skills!

In the program portion, Dr. Jeffrey Liles from St. John Fisher College endeared himself to the audience by introducing himself as “non-librarian” faculty. His title was “You Can Lead a Dog to the Fridge but Can You Make Him Think?” What he meant was the need to align teaching and learning methods to achieve an effective outcome. Instead of merely reversing the focus from teacher to student, he advocated putting the subject in the middle along with both teachers and students. Good advice.

My last event of the day was the ACRL Excellence in Libraries Award celebration.  Jeff Trzeciak, my friend and former colleague from Wayne State who is now the University Librarian at McMaster University in Canada, won the award for the university library category. Jeff also served as our Digital Forsyth Consultant during the planning grant phase.  Way to go, Jeff!