Reflections from CALICon19: Two Best Sessions

Looking out over downtown Columbia, SC #CALICon19

Some talk has been floating around in My Communities for covering conferences that may relate to TS, OBS and even CS members. There is understandably a lot of variation in many member job duties and with that plenty of room for overlap of these SIS individuals. Coming from an I.T. department position before my current role this makes total sense, and I can see the benefit to many of us not only having backgrounds in computer science and other technical fields, but also the advantages to continuing education in those areas as library professionals. This is where CALICon comes in.

With Web Developer Leslie Grove at CALICon19

Many of us are familiar at least in some way with CALI the organization (a.k.a. Computer Assisted Legal Instruction). They provide our law students with extremely helpful study aids, plus have resources that help faculty members with all sorts of things. Librarians fit into this section of folks CALI has resources for too. I first heard of CALICon a few years ago when my friend and web developing office-mate Leslie flew to Denver, CO to co-present with our Information Technology Librarian Jason. Their talk titled "Enough to be Dangerous: 00000110 Things Every Beginner Needs to Know about Coding", gave a snapshot of the main programming language fundamentals to the varied CALICon audience. What a neat conference I thought at the time. I had only been to either Drupal Camps full of I.T. guys or state librarian conferences which were full-on librarian attendees, and the idea of a conference that brought librarians, tech-heads and faculty together sounded... well downright phenomenal!

A couple years later I lucked into CALICon coming to Atlanta. Being in Athens, GA it was a short drive. I presented on infographics, and realized I was right - CALICon is pretty amazing. The unique mixture of attendee's makes for interesting discussion and highly useful content that naturally lends itself to collaborative relationships. In true tech-event fashion CALICon live streams all of the sessions and at hyper-speed uploads them all for streaming on YouTube. So, if you have never been to CALICon before, I encourage you to consider it next year. One only has to browse the CALICon playlists of session videos to wonder why everyone doesn't attend.

This brings me to my top 2 sessions from #CALICon19 which I felt would be most useful to  TechScans followers:

• Leveraging eResources for Affordable Course Materials - Mary and Lisa were excellent presenters who didn't just share something cool (maybe their topic wasn't the flashiest on the schedule) but certainly brought one of the more relevant sessions for me throughout CALICon's two-day whirlwind. What institution isn't interested in saving money for their law students? What library doesn't grapple with ways to make things more cost-effective? This session not only discussed measures that would greatly benefit students but also ideas for faculty members who want to publish their own course content. In this session I learned about lulu.com (CALI actually uses them to publish their books! SUPER affordable, 600+ page books for around $25 shipped!), Powernotes, H20 open casebook platform and more. The presenters even shared strategies for liaising with your registrar office and faculty members to offer alternatives before or alongside booklists, and how they reviewed their own booklists from past semesters to locate and suggest cost-saving measures for specific courses. 

John Presents at CALICon19

• Automating Processing and Intake in the Institutional Repository with Python - Wow, just wow is all I could say after this session. Most of us deal with our IR in some form or another. As my own role with our Digital Commons site continues to increase, I went into this session with high hopes and seated next to our law school web developer (the office-mate mentioned before), and we were not disappointed. If you have ever manually entered items into your own IR one at a time as I typically do, you smile at the prospect of batch loading. With a large project of archiving old photos in our own IR looming I have been postponing preparing my own spreadsheets - I know it will be tedious and a worm hole of a project. After John's session I am SO glad I waited. My colleague, the coding goddess, and I sat in awe of the automation John was sharing. I was pleasantly rejuvenated leaving the session with a collaborative game plan which I am happy to say we are already making great progress on. Although the presenter's project was with Law Journals and pulling content from PDF's, our own is actually much simpler since we are pulling titles, image URLs and (hopefully) basic descriptions. By far this session left me feeling the most excited about returning to work with something we could instantly put to use.

Click on the session hyperlinked titles for slides and streaming video. Did you attend CALICon too? What were your favorite sessions or biggest takeaways? Find other sessions from CALICon 2019, or past years in CALIorg's YouTube Playlists.

New Study Released by ITHAKA S+R on Library Acquisition Patterns

Library Acquisitions Patterns, Report by Katherine Daniel, Joseph J. Esposito and Roger C. Schonfeld. 
https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/2019-report-library-acquisition-patterns/

Researchers at ITHAKA S+R, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, conducted a study and released a recent report analyzing purchasing tends in two areas at US academic libraries.  One area of the project relied on 2017 data from 124 libraries using Ex Libris’s integrated library system, ALMA, or OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services (WMS).  A second area concentrated on print and e-book purchasing trends of 51 US academic libraries for fiscal years 2014 through 2017.

Two interesting findings from the 2017 report:

-On average, the libraries within the sample spent $3.61 million in 2017 and added 4,750 print books and 345 e-books acquired on a one-time, title-by-title basis

-Ongoing resource expenditures account for three-quarters of total materials expenditures with one-fifth going towards onetime purchases.

Two interesting findings from the 2014 to 2017 trend analysis:

-The average cost of an e-book in the sample rose by 35 percent between 2014 and 2017, while the cost of print books remained stable.

-GOBI and Amazon were the leading vendors of print books in the sample. GOBI was the leading vendor of e-books

With a mission to broaden access to higher education by reducing costs and improving student outcomes, ITHAKA S+R  is a nonprofit organization that partners with a wide range of organizations in the academic community including foundations, universities, libraries, colleges, scholarly societies, publishers, as well as individual.

Read the full report at DOI: https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.310937

Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) R5 Update effective January 2019

COUNTER, founded in 2002, is a non-profit organization supported globally by a community of library, publisher and vendor members. Members contribute to the development of the Code of Practice (COP) through working groups and outreach. The Code of Practice provides guidance and enables content providers to produce consistent, comparable and credible usage data for their online content. This allows librarians and other interested parties to compare the usage data they receive, and to understand and demonstrate the value of the electronic resources to which they subscribe. In 2014, the organization developed and implemented COUNTER Release 4 (R4) as the Code of Practice for information providers. With the rapid development of technology, this rendition soon became outdated and complex. A working group of librarians, publishers, representative of ERM systems, and other usage service providers came together to meet changing needs and reduce complexity. The aim was to simplify reports, increase consistency and clarify metric types and reports. The group released a new iteration, COUNTER R5, which replaces the former release and becomes mandatory for content providers beginning this month, January 2019. See COUNTER's online guide, The friendly guide to release 5 for librarians and read more at the COUNTER website.   

Project COUNTER publishes librarian's guide to COUNTER release 5

COUNTER release 5 is scheduled to replace COUNTER release 4 by January 2019. In preparation for this change, Project COUNTER has issued The friendly guide to release 5 for librarians.

COUNTER release 5 represents a revision of the COUNTER code of practice to better reflect changing reporting needs. Types of reports have been simplified to both assist providers in becoming COUNTER compliant and provide librarians with "usage statistics that are credible, consistent and comparable." Page 19 of the guide provides a table comparing Release 5 reports with covered Release 4 reports. Several sample usage scenarios are provided.

The COUNTER code of practice provides consistent guidelines for publishers reporting electronic resource usage, assisting librarians in evaluation of their usage.

Artificial intelligence laboratories in libraries?

Libraries have often been the incubators of novel ideas and new technology. In an effort to share AI development to a wider array of students and the public, the University of Rhode Island is opening an AI lab in their university library. 

The University of Rhode Island is taking a very different approach with its new AI lab, which may be the first in the U.S. to be located in a university library. For URI, the library location is key, as officials hope that by putting the lab in a shared central place, they can bring awareness of AI to a wider swath of the university's faculty and student body.

The Dean of Libraries, Karim Boughida specifically mentions the lack of diversity of AI and its resulting issues of a biased algorithm as the reason to put an AI lab in the library, a place that values inclusivity. "Without explicit countermeasures, machine learning and AI could magnify existing patterns of inequality in our society", says Boughida.

Unlike a typical AI lab focused on research, the URI AI Lab will offer students and instructors the chance to learn new computing skills, and also encourage them to deepen their understanding of AI and how it might affect their lives, through a series of talks and workshops. The 600-square-foot AI lab will be located on the library’s first floor and will offer beginner- to advanced-level tutorials in areas such as robotics, natural language processing, smart cities, smart homes, the internet of things, and big data.

Read the whole article at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/17/rhode-island-hopes-putting-artificial-intelligence-lab-library-will-expand-ais-reach.  

eBooks in the Law Library - Part 3

LLRX recently completed its look at the status of eBooks in law libraries. The first half of this final installment is a case study of how the New York Law Institute added eBooks to their collection. It details how their original model had to evolve in response to changes driven both by publishers and by patrons.

The second half of the article is a brief survey of how other law libraries are incorporating eBooks into the collections. The main revelation of this overview is that no single approach may be appropriate for any one library. Many libraries are approaching eBooks in multiple ways, creating a custom process that is right for their users while also fitting within the budget.

If you're dealing with adding eBooks to your own collection, this three-part series on LLRX is a great place to orient yourself.

Librarians to play increasing role in OER

A survey of more than 2700 faculty members shows that there is an increase of instructors using OER over traditional textbooks. An article in Inside Higher Ed reports on the survey findings:

The "Opening the Textbook" survey, published by the Babson Survey Research Group today, reports that the number of faculty members at two- and four-year institutions using OER as textbooks has nearly doubled in the last year -- from 5 percent in 2015-16 to 9 percent in 2016-17.Awareness of OER -- openly licensed and freely accessible teaching and learning materials -- has also increased. Twenty-nine percent of faculty described themselves as "aware" or "very aware" of OER this year, up from 25 percent last year and 20 percent the year before. The proportion that reported they had never heard of OER fell from 66 percent in 2014-15 to 56 percent this year.

However as Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, mentioned in the article, awareness of OER is still low and there are additional barriers such as finding and evaluating currency of materials.

Raising awareness, finding resources, and updating materials are all very familiar responsibilities for librarians. That is why Nicole Allen, the director of open education for SPARC, a coalition that supports open policies and practices in education and research, predicts that librarians will "play an increasingly important role in helping faculty members find and evaluate OER content."

The comments following the article further press this point. Librarians are natural resource experts to faculty. One librarian mentions LibGuides as a tool to educate on open sources. Another librarian mentions that "incentivizing for faculty is key."

The full article is available at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/12/19/more-faculty-members-are-using-oer-survey-finds.

Negotiating with Vendors

As I begin to dive into acquisitions and vendor relations, a recent article in Online Searcher appears to be well-timed and of potential benefit to others facing negotiations with vendors (see Michael L. Gruenberg, Five Key Questions for Negotiators to Ask, Online Searcher, Nov.-Dec. 2017, 44-47). In this article, Michael L. Gruenberg discusses key questions librarians repeatedly asked while he was promoting his book Buying and Selling Information. These topics are things we should, as negotiators for our institutions, be addressing with our sales representatives and vendors.

The questions Gruenberg addresses in this article:

1. Should you ask for, and expect, a price sheet from your sales rep?
2. Can the vendor defend the price?
3. Can a library request a different representative be assigned?
4. What is the standard renewal rate?
5. Do I really need to create a negotiation plan?

If you’ve taken a Negotiations course in college or law school, you probably already know the answer to #5…

Gruenberg has some useful insight from his background in sales that can benefit us as negotiators for our organizations.

eBooks in the Law Library - Part 2

Law and Technology Resources for Legal Professionals, LLRX, continues its look at the current state of eBooks in law libraries. The second of their three-part series offers a great summary of the various pricing models that may be encountered during the acquisitions process. There are many ownership and subscription options for eBook acquisition and this article does an excellent job of explaining how the various plans work. It offers concise explanations for even the most confusing plans, such as non-linear lending and access to own. 

Still not sure what model would work best for your particular budget? The article also offers numerous helpful tips for keeping eBook costs down while growing a collection. 

The article concludes with a list of questions that should be addressed before selecting any eBook package. For example; making sure the technical requirements match the resources of your library and its users, examining the content and scope of the eBook package to make sure you're meeting your user's needs, and inquiring about user interface and other functions such as printing and copy/pasting from the eBook titles. 

This is an excellent primer for any librarian looking to add eBooks to their collection. The next article in the series will include a case study of how the author's library has built its eBook collection.  

eBooks in the Law Library

A recent article in Inside Higher Ed asked if medical schools still need books. The question of the role of eBooks in all types of libraries has been batted around in some form or another since the advent of eBooks. While the Inside Higher Ed article settles on familiar answers and case studies of paperless and hybrid libraries, it seems clear that all libraries are arcing slowly toward having eBooks as a substantial part of their collections.

Law and Technology Resources for Legal Professionals, LLRX, is addressing the state of eBooks in law libraries in a three-part series. The first part, published this week, gives a helpful overview of some the challenges and opportunities that come with adding eBooks to law library collections. Of particular interest to technical services librarians is the section on acquiring eBooks. Various platforms and modes of purchase are discussed. The article also briefly touches on issues related to integrating eBooks into the library's existing technological infrastructure.

The second article in the series promises to delve deeper into eBook acquisitions issues. The third part will present some case studies of how various law libraries have added eBooks to their collections.

Digital Libraries Do Not Mean Cheaper Libraries

In August 2017, The Chronicle of Higher Education reiterated a point already understand by library technical service departments: digital resources are not always easier and cheaper than physical ones. In the law library field, we often face an issue discussed in the article. "Publishers work with vendors who bundle digital products and market them to libraries; libraries and library consortia often find themselves paying a lot for bundles that contain some material they want, along with much that they don’t. Managing budgets in that environment can feel like squirming in a vise." Our library would prefer to purchase eBooks (over print) from a leading legal publisher. However, this means purchasing everything available through the platform even when we know books analyzing specific aspects of foreign law will not likely be used. 

Beyond the acquisitions aspect, e-resources can also face other labor intensive upkeep such as monitoring licensing, access issues, and discovery restrictions. Haipeng Li, library director of University of California at Merced mentions other expenses of his modern digital library, the "ever-rising journal prices, the costs of making detailed catalog records of materials that users access remotely, and upkeep of computer hardware and software."

This article also highlights the growing trend of libraries as "learning commons." Librarians roles are changing to include teaching and research responsibilities as well as "instructional design, information literacy, and specialized areas like digital humanities and research-data management." As a librarian involved in many facets of the library, I do not condemn these efforts but recognize that it often means increased costs.

The article states, "some academic libraries have been removing physical books, generally quite tentatively — and often controversially — when books are 'deaccessioned' because of scant use, but most commonly when digital equivalents take their place." It cannot be denied this is practice employed by all law libraries to some degree. A letter to the editor the following week titled Librarians Should Accept Fact That Most Books Aren’t Available In Digital Format responds to the article pointing out that many books (especially older and foreign ones) have not made the leap into digital format and "old doesn't necessarily mean 'out-of-date'" in certain subject areas. Old often means out-of-date for the law but with some resources unavailable in digital format, this argument is understandable. 

You can find the entire article at: http://www.chronicle.com/article/As-Libraries-Go-Digital-Costs/240858?

Ebook collection analysis

Two publications recently came across my desk: the May/June 2017 Library Technology Reports called Applying Quantitative Methods to E-Book Collections by Melissa J. Goertzen, and the June 2017 issue of Computers in Libraries called Ebooks Revisited. This suggests that as ebooks continue to be a large collection issue for libraries on various levels (platforms, pricing, patron-drive acquisition (PDA) and demand-driven acquisition (DDA), discovery records, etc.) we are reaching a point where we can more fully evaluate the long-term impact they are having on our patrons and our budgets. I was particularly interested in the Computers in Libraries article called Ebook ROI: A Longitudinal STudy of Patron-Driven Acquisition Models by Yin Zhang and Kay Downey. The authors work at Kent State University Libraries and have been using a PDA program for five years now; they were able to use this long-term data to evaluate the usefulness of short term loans, determine if PDA purchases continue to be used after the purchase is triggered, and and analyze what books from various publication years and subject areas are purchased under their PDA profile. I found this study inspiring; we have only had our DDA program for less than one year, but I hope to conduct a similar analysis after a full year of the program and regularly thereafter so we can be sure our patrons are finding the program useful.

From Users to Developers: NCSU’s Involvement with an Open Source ERM

A recent article in Code4Lib Journal describes the experience of library staff members at North Carolina State University when adopting and making enhancements to an open source electronic resource management tool.

According to the article’s abstract:

“CORAL, an open source electronic resource management tool, has been adopted by libraries around the world. The community manages the software development contributed to the open source codebase by independent organizations. NCSU Libraries’ Acquisition & Discovery Department started using CORAL to manage monograph orders at the end of 2013. Since then, they have completed a series of developments to enhance CORAL functions for workflow management, streamlining the complex electronic resource acquisition process. This paper presents NCSU’s adoption and development of CORAL. It explains what prompted the development, shares the experience, from identifying internal resources to outsourcing development work, and identifies challenges and opportunities of the current mechanism of CORAL development.”

The author of the article concludes that CORAL is a strong open source software product, and it seems like NCSU had a positive experience working with it.

Song, Xiaoyan. Code4Lib Journal, Issue 34, October 2016, http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/11954

An Update from Project COUNTER on Hidden Metrics

Remember how Project COUNTER wanted to hear from you about hidden metrics back in October?  They’ve compiled the results from their online survey along with feedback from their face-to face focus group and international webinar, and recently published an official report of their findings called “Distributed Usage Logging: A Report on Stakeholder Demand.”

Here are a few highlights:

• All respondents are interested in going beyond basic counts of usage and having access to data on how users are actually engaging in the content.

• There is strong support for all content to have a DOI (digital object identifier) and for institutional repositories to mint them for items that do not have them.

• Demand for DUL (distributed usage logging) differs slightly, depending on whether participants are a provider or a user of the content.

• Content providers wish to have access to DUL data reports so they can clearly report to consumers a picture of total usage, across their own platforms and beyond.

• DUL usage statistics are desired by publishers to demonstrate the true value of a journal, to understand more about who is recommending particular authors, and to have access to country and article level data.

• Librarians generally discourage usage of academic sharing networks, in part due to copyright and impact reduction concerns.

• While altmetrics may not bring significant value to librarians when making collection management decisions, they are an important form of support for faculty authors and can provide consortiums with useful background information on academic engagement.

• Most are in agreement that standard usage reporting would help with the implementation of open access policy and would help simplify things across the current landscape, made up of multiple models for open access and freely available content.

• Some publishers already track open access usage for certain customers who have agreements where their license and open access publication fees are covered in the same deal.

Want more details?  Download their full report today to learn more about the respondent groups, their methodology, and to hear what your colleagues think about topics such as shared social network sites, calculating cost per use, and more!  

Project COUNTER Wants to Hear More from You about Hidden Metrics!

With the increasing diversity of scholarly communication systems providing us with a constant influx of new ways to share information with one another, search out content and access materials, traditional usage statistics may fall short in telling the story of the value of research and scholarship – from the perspective of those conducting the research and producing the scholarly pieces, those providing online access to these works, and those using the associated usage statistics to inform collection management decisions and calculating cost per use.

Publisher’s content can be scattered across multiple platforms, including institutional repositories and scholarly social network sites as well as aggregators such as EBSCO and ProQuest, so single platform usage metrics may be limiting.  Additionally, alternative metrics such as likes, shares, tweets and citations on Wikipedia can communicate important information to both consumers and providers.

In response to the landscape changes that result in increasingly hidden usage, COUNTER is working with Information Power Limited to undertake research into a new method of reporting called “Distributed Usage Logging” which enables publishers to provide reports on “total usage” regardless of where that usage happens. Such reports could also provide more details in the emerging altmetrics field, such as shares and tweets.

At this point, COUNTER needs your help!  They’d like to discover what additional data would be useful to YOU, as librarians, institutional repository managers, publishers and vendors.  So take a moment to fill out their survey and let your voice be heard. It consists of short question and should take no more than ten minutes to fill out.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/K5HC8B3

I reached out to Lorraine Estelle, Director of COUNTER, and she provided me with some background information about the project as well as a link to the following slideshow presented at the Fall SSP Seminar on September 16, 2015 at Washington DC:

CrossRef Distributed Usage Logging Pilot from Victoria Rao, MS

For additional information about hidden usage and metrics from a law librarian perspective, check out what some of our AALL colleagues have to say:

• Assessing Altmetrics: Why law librarians (and law schools) should care about altmetrics. Mark Popielarski, AALL Spectrum, 19:2 (2014) http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Publications/spectrum/archives/Vol-19/No-2/altmetrics.pdf
• Altmetrics: How to For Using the “Invisible Metric”. Katie Brown, AALL Annual Meeting presentation, 2014 http://www.slideshare.net/KAtieBrown1/altmetrics-how-to-aall-2014
• Altmetrics: Documenting the Story of Research. Collister, Lauren B. and Timothy S. Deliyannides, Against the Grain, 28:1 (2016) http://www.against-the-grain.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/fea_collister_deliyannides_v28-1.pdf
• Telling the Story of Research: Altmetrics at Pitt. Collister, Lauren B. and Timothy S. Deliyannides, AALL2go webinar, 2016 http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Education/aall2go/webinars/2016/aallwebinar201609.html

Be sure to respond to the COUNTER survey by October 15^th!  

Your responses will help formulate developments in this area of work, and results will be shared in summary format on the COUNTER website.

Watch the Librarian of Congress Ceremony Live Tomorrow!

14^th Librarian of Congress Incumbent, Carla Hayden
Image from Wikipedia

The Library of Congress (LC) will stream Carla Hayden’s swearing-in on its YouTube channel on Sept. 14 at noon EDT. Hayden, who will become the 14th Librarian of Congress, will take the oath using the Lincoln Bible from the LC’s collection. The video will have closed captioning.

This historic ceremony marks not one, but two milestones: Hayden is both the first woman and the first African-American to serve as Librarian of Congress.  

Want to learn more about the journey?  Check out this round-up of resources from the past few years:

·        Carla Hayden Swearing-In to Be Broadcast on YouTube – September 2, 2016
Library of Congress on the upcoming event

·        What the ‘First Black Woman’ Librarian of Congress Means – July 18, 2016
Time magazine on the milestone firsts of Hayden’s confirmation

·        Five Things to Know about Carla Hayden, America’s First Black, Female Librarian of Congress – July 13, 2016
Fusion.net offers a few interesting facts about Hayden and what her appointment means

·        The Library of Congress Gets a History-Making New Leader – July 13, 2016
The Atlantic’s take on Hayden’s confirmation

·        Senate Confirms First Black Female Librarian of Congress – July 13, 2016
The Hill’s take on Hayden’s confirmation 

·        “No” on Nomination of Carla Hayden to Be Librarian of Congress – July 13, 2016
Heritage Action for America takes issue with the president’s nomination

·        Obama Taps Baltimore Library Chief Carla Hayden to Lead Library of Congress – February 24, 2016
NBC News on Carla Hayden’s nomination by President Barack Obama

·        What Law Librarian Want to See in the Next Librarian of Congress – August 3, 2015
3 Geeks and a Law Blog on what the American Association of Law Libraries hopes to see in their next Librarian of Congress

·        Finding a Librarian of Congress for the Digital Age – June 23, 2015
Information Today’s take on James Billington’s retirement and the skills and expertise desired in his future replacement

·        Nation’s Librarian Champions Digital Age – December 23, 2014
Learn more about James H. Billington and his tenure at the Library of Congress

Prefer to watch instead of read?  Take a moment to meet President Obama’s Nominee for Librarian of Congress through this short video, posted on The White House’s YouTube channel in February of 2016.

Programming Ideas for AALL Austin 2017? Now Is the Time to Share Them!

As the TS-SIS liaison to the Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC) for Austin 2017, I'd like to remind everyone that crowdsourcing on the IdeaScale platform is now open for AALL members to submit program ideas for the 2017 annual meeting in Austin!

The platform can be accessed here: AALLAnnual Meeting Program Ideas.

In order to participate in crowdsourcing, you must create an IdeaScale account. Your AALL website credentials won't work and even if you used IdeaScale last year, you may still need to create an account to participate this year. I've used it myself and can promise that it's is super easy to add your own ideas and browse and vote for other ideas that strike your fancy. 

It's important to note that submitting program ideas on IdeaScale does not translate in to any obligation! Crowdsourcing is intended to help the AMPC generate a list of must-have program topics that the AMPC will commit to deliver next July in Austin. This is NOT the formal program proposal process, so don't be afraid to just submit a word, a run on sentence, a list -- whatever it takes to get your idea in the mix. 

The formal program proposal process comes later and TS's Professional Development Committee will be available to help you and serve as a resource during the process.

If you have any questions about the AMPC, the proposal process, IdeaScale, or anything related to programming for Austin 2017, please email me at amoye@charlottelaw.edu!

Upcoming Joint Reception of the CS/OBS/RIPS/TS Special Interest Sections (AKA the "Alphabet Soup Reception")

Calling all CS, OBS, RIPS & TS-SISers - While in Chicago for AALL this year, please stop by and have some fun during the Joint Reception of the CS/OBS/RIPS/TS Special Interest Sections (AKA the "Alphabet Soup Reception").

SAVE THE DATE! 

Joint Reception of the CS/OBS/RIPS/TS Special Interest Sections (AKA the "Alphabet Soup Reception").

WHERE:  Hyatt-Crystal Ballroom B

WHEN:  Saturday, July 16 from 7pm to 9pm

WHAT: Hors D'oeuvres and Drinks with Old and New Colleagues

Special thanks to Innovative Interfaces for their generous support in making this joint reception happen!

See you there!

Is it cost-effective to purchase print books when the equivalent e-book is available?

The aim of this study was to analyze and compare print and electronic book usage for equivalent core clinical titles at the University of South Alabama Biomedical Library collection from 2010 to 2014 to determine format preference and if it would be necessary to purchase identical books in both electronic and print formats. The purpose of purchasing print books that are also available in electronic format is to meet the preferences of some users who prefer to read print format. Usage of 60 core books both in print and electronic formats was compared. Usage statistics were generated from the library’s integrated library system for the print books—both those used in the library and checked out of the library. Electronic usage statistics of the same titles were generated from COUNTER reports; then titles in both formats were compared to determine format preference and whether it is cost-effective to purchase books in both print and electronic formats.

Li, Jie, Journal of Hospital Librarianship, Volume 16 Issue 1, 2016
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15323269.2016.1118288?journalCode=whos20

To Weed or Not to Weed…

Much as a good garden may have some weeds, a good library may have some weeds as well. So let’s take a second to chat a little about the ‘anti-acquisition’ – otherwise known as the ‘weed.’ 

Susannah Tredwell wrote today about this very topic, offering readers a host of typical questions asked when weeding a collection, ranging from simpler questions such as “Do we own anything more current on the subject?” to more difficult questions that attempt to determine the value of the older book.  Tredwell reminds readers that even in a law library, “a book can still be valuable even if the information that it contains is no longer current.” The law field is a field where incorrect materials can be fraught with danger to the professionals who depend on them in court, but Tredwell makes some wonderful points about ways older, even incorrect materials can still be of value to patrons.

These points reminded me of an engaging post I had read last week by Jeffrey Meyer, recounting his experience with a particular patron at the public library. This patron was challenging the decision to keep a particular book about climate change, which they claimed was riddled with half-truths and propaganda, in the collection. Meyer reminds us that the library is not the fact police, and that “the Fact Police are as dangerous as the Morality Police. If we start removing materials because they are “factually inaccurate,” we will embark on a twisted Soviet-style purge of our treasured collections. Thanks, Jeffrey. I couldn't have said it better myself.

But before you think I'm an anti-weeding kind of gal, let me point you to one more resource that promises to remind you that hoarding is not the same as collection development. Awfullibrarybooks.net is a site run by Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner, public librarians in Michigan.  They state that their site is “a collection of library holdings that we find amusing and maybe questionable for libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection.”  And amusing they are... One of my favorites is My Beautiful Mommy, in which Mommy picks her child up from school to take her along on a trip to the plastic surgeon.  

Want a little more information on weeding or all things acquisitions?  Karen Muller recently offered her list of essential resources for understanding acquisitions in libraries, including Rebecca Vnuk’s The Weeding Handbook: A Shelf-by-Shelf Guide.