Professional Development

Lynn, Mary Beth, Wanda, Patty, Jean-Paul, Kaeley, Barry, Chris B. Lauren C., Lauren P, Kevin, Tim and Erik attended the session which was a presentation on how Georgia Tech (Tyler Walters) and Clemson(Emily Gore) approach digitization and digital priorities.

Emily covered what Clemson is doing and presented on her work building a digital initiatives program including MetaArchive, Open LOCKSS, the development of a written preservation plan and a goal to participate in the development community. She briefly covered their beginning use of Archivist Toolkit. She talked about their use of grants and regional grant/collaborations to digitize resources, work with partners to preserve digital resources, and run a ‘regional scan center.’ She mentioned their work to plan a fedora repository and discussed a project called <a href=”http://www.intelligentriver.org/”>Intelligent River</a>, a site that focuses on archiving real-time hydrologic data and data sets in south carolina.

Tyler Walters talked about the Galileo knowledge repository (http:/GKR.library.gatech.edu) which will focus on providing IR hosting via Dspace, workshops, IR services and a collaborative metadata repository. He also talked about Virtual Research Environments which are based on drupal/fedora sites called islandora (http://vre.upei.ca/dev/islandora) that has been developed by the University of Prince Edward Island. Georgia Tech is going to try out a similar approach. He also discussed e-publishing services offered by the library (Epage @ Tech, The Tower).

Tyler also talked about search & discovery approaches including Vufind, metalib (Xerces Xserver), and Tsquared (Univeristy Sakai system) - a project to integrate metalib into Sakai. As he discussed their architecture he mentioned a sun infinite archive solution, sun storagetek 2540 disk array (16 TB), SL 500 Tape library (529 TB), Managed by Sun’s SAM server and ZFS software.

Next ASERL Lunch-n-Learn on November 12th with Mary Molinaro (U-Kentucky) and Toby Graham (U-Georgia)!

On May 27th Lynn, Megan and Giz met in the ITC Screening Room at 10am for a Mass Digitization Collaborative Information Session by Lyrasis. Laurie Gemmill the Lyrasis Digital Services Program Manager was the speaker. After a quick test of the webinar tools, Laurie Gemmill wanted to get a feel for everyone’s location, so we marked our location on a map.

Palinet established this collaborative about a year ago to assist members with digitization needs. Recently members asked for help with the specific digitization work. Reached out to the Sloan Foundation and committed to do 60,000 books or 20,000,000 pages, includes books, serials, etc. They are also looking to expand this digitization to oversize books, and other media like video and audio.

Laurie Gemmill began with an explanation of the program. On her first day there were over a hundred messages asking for assistance thanks to an announcement of the Sloan Foundation grant. Began with some mini-pilots at a variety of institutions like the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Penn State. Over a dozen mini-pilots were held. Pilot experiences were positive despite the variety of goals across the institutions. The benefits as seen by the pilot participants included: centralized coordination, visibility, ease of startup and billing, collaborative collection development, sustainability, digitization and OCR, metadata, and digital files and preservation.

The service includes: digitization, including OCR and quality control, hosting and preservation of files, project coordination, selection assistance, a quote based on # of volumes (not pages) and a one time cost. The Sloan Foundation grant helps by subsidizing costs, bigger projects get bigger discounts.

The overall process begins with a request for a quote, sign the quote, and have an orientation. Then materials are selected, copyright and metadata are the main criteria. Items are shipped, digitized and returned. The digitization centers are all over, but the ones in our close proximity are at Princeton Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne and Allen County Public Library: Fort Wayne, Indiana and Historic Barrow Mansion: Jersey City, New Jersey. Staff turn each page by hand before lowering glass platen and digital cameras shoot from above, both left and right simultaneously.

To see books contributed by Lyrasis members visit http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=lyrasis

Items are digitized literally cover to cover. Flip book and Flip book beta let users page through the book. Full text comes from OCR. The “all files” options shows users a complete list of the file types available. Master files are JPEG 2000 files.

Microfilm is still done at San Francisco center. It will be rolled out to other centers once the process is optimized.

Items are digitized at dpi relative to size, 300-600 dpi range:

•14.2″x 9.4″= 300 dpi
•10.6″x 7″= 400 dpi
•8.5″x 5.5″= 500 dpi

-overall size limit: 14.5″tall x 9.7″page width
-can do fold outs

Books are digitized in entirety “cover to cover” including blank pages. Books are scanned in full color. Microfilm is scanned as grayscale.

FAQS:

•How will our materials be handled?
-Staff experienced with fragile material
-Can accommodate specific handling requirements
•Will we get copies of images?
-Yes.Once digitized, files are available to download
•Can we link to materials?
-Yes. Feel free to update catalog records; links are permanent

Collaborative Members:

•Bloomsburg University
•Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
•Curtis Institute of Music
•Duquesne University
•Elizabethtown College
•Free Library of Philadelphia
•GoucherCollege
•Independence Seaport Museum
•Institute for Advanced Study
•Lancaster County Historical Society
•Lycoming College
•New Jersey State Library
•Paterson Free Public Library
•Pennsylvania College of Technology
•Penn State University
•Philadelphia Museum of Art
•Rutgers University
•St. Mary’s College of Maryland
•University of Maryland
-Baltimore
-College Park
-School of Law
•University of Pennsylvania
•University of Pittsburgh
•University of Scranton
•Villanova University
•West Chester University
•West Virginia University

How to Participate:

•Go to Lyrasis website
-View MDC info
-Sign up for info session
-Request a quote
•http://www.lyrasis.org/Products-and-Services/Digital-Services.aspx

•Contact Laurie Gemmill
-Laurie.Gemmill@lyrasis.org
-800.233.3401 x 1291
-Sign up for listserv

Yesterday I attended the ASERL-Auburn Forum on Library User Services. As usual, I took copious notes and posted them to my blog. If you’re interested in reading more I’ll put the links at the bottom of this post. To keep it interesting, I’m posting the main points here.

There were four big take aways for me:

1. Assessment is very important.
2. User research will make our services/collection/building/web presence better.
3. A little bit of time, invested early on, can save time later on.
4. Successful programs at other places won’t necessarily be successful in every organization. Best to talk with users before implementing new things.

The day was packed (but not too rushed) with great presentations talking about everything from the practical to the more theoretical. We heard about trends in user services, usability testing and user studies on how students do research, we learned about how Rochester did their anthropological studies and how the University of Virginia built a culture of assessment, we heard about the fabulous work done at Georgia Tech that positioned them to win the 2007 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award and how statistics can be useful in evaluating services.

This was particularly good timing for me as I have been thinking more lately about usability and talking with users about their experience on the web side of things.  This forum addressed the same issues in a much wider way. Interestingly, many people come to user studies/experience through web usability or space design. People see how useful studying these issues can be and then begin to apply the principles to a broader spectrum of library work.

It also became clear to me that in order to effectively implement broad scale user studies, a library would need some level of processes in place. User studies appear to happen largely before the prototyping phase, during development, and after implementation. Having clear stages of development makes it easier to incorporate user studies.

Now for the detailed notes:

• It’s all about U: The ASERL-Auburn Forum on Library User Studies

This is the introduction to the day.

• Keynote: User Studies: What are We Learning, and What Does it Mean for the Future of Research Libraries?

This really interesting talk focused on trends found in a recent study of research libraries.  A fair amount of the talk was on instruction, which was particularly interesting to me in my instructional design role. He echoed much of what the ID world has been saying about blended learning, collaborative student work, facilitator teaching, etc. Good talk!

• The Realities of Virtual Space: Lessons from Observing Library Users

John Law, of ProQuest, gave this fantastic talk on a study of student research behaviors. It was an excellent study, from recruiting participants to meeting them where they were. He used some really excellent software as well. He had some interesting points about the different roles that Google and databases play in student research.

• Case Study #1: Georgia Tech’s User Studies of Their Physical Space

This talk described the work that Georgia Tech has done in their library and the way they incorporated user studies in their work. He talked about the space, marketing, and studies, and generally set us up for our tours of the space.

• Case Study #2: Translating User Studies into Everyday Services and Spaces

This talk was on the fabulous work done at Rochester. They’ve done some amazing work that I suspect would be fairly applicable here based on the similarities between our schools. Interesting stuff!

• ASERL Panel on User Studies-Who is Doing What?

This panel included Joe Williams of NCSU, Erin Mayhood of University of Virginia, and Brian Mathews of Georgia Tech. Each instituition is doing really excellent work, and I wish we had more time to hear from each of these speakers.

It was a great forum. If you want to talk about user studies and services, just let me know!

Today I had the privilege of attending ASERLs workshop for non-librarian managers in Atlanta, GA. First, I must say, they had very good coffee, the Tech Team would have appreciated this aspect.

This was a very interesting workshop. Of course the morning began with a brief opening, followed by introductions. People from several different universities were represented, along with several different positions within those academic libraries. This gave way to many different viewpoints, which I found beneficial.

The opening speaker discussed “why we do what we do.” I really liked the message from this presentation. The focus not what we do individually, but what we do in regards to the mission of our libraries and inevitably our universities, nation, world, etc. A story was shared (and it may or may not be true) in which John F. Kennedy, while visiting NASA, bumped into a janitor and he asked the janitor what he did and the janitor replied that he was helping to put a man on the moon. We’re not just staff in circulation or tech services, we are providing services for the betterment of the university, and so on.

A couple of other sessions I enjoyed involved the new technologies at research universities and how those affect us and user perceptions of academic libraries. Good news, we’re moving in the right direction and everyone is struggling with the same issues that ZSR is. Bad news, we have to be aware of security/privacy issues and the perception of libraries is that of a place of books - and that’s it. There was also mention of how the library is not where people go first for information and how we are having to compete with Google and other search engines, but in thinking about this I don’t think we should compete with Google, if anything we should collaborate with Google. Should it matter where or how people get information as long as they get good, useful, correct (and if applicable scholarly) information…I don’t think so. I can understand the concern behind that, but I think it doesn’t have to be that way.

The last session involved a three person panel of library directors (deans) sharing “what keeps library directors awake at night.” This was interesting, directors must never sleep. Some of the things directors worry about are: faculty status of librarians (this opened up a big conversation amongst the non-librarians, there are several pros and cons as you can imagine, but the cons seemed to depend on whether tenure was an option), budget issues, information commons and renovations in general, library hours (being open 24 hours), noise created by increasing collaborative space (and other such complaints from faculty), reluctance to change (library and campus wide), and the future of higher education. There were more, but these seemed to be the issues mostly discussed.

There was also mention of disappointment in library science schools. I don’t want to say too much in regards to this topic, especially since I don’t know much about the issue, but I thought this topic was interesting, and especially the openness of this discussion and how all of the directors agreed with this. Enlightening, very enlightening.

Overall, this was a great workshop, I would encourage anyone else in the ZSR Library to attend this workshop. We have been asked as participants to suggest topics for potential future workshops and events and I have a few ideas…

Tomorrow is SOLINET, which should also be interesting.