Library Technology Launchpad Basics and Resources Series.

Information Technology
Library Technology Launchpad Basics and Resources Series.

In 2016, the Library Technology Lauchpad blog started a Basics and Resources Series. Each entry provides a definition, summary of the topic, "the basics", and lists of resources to learn more . In 2016, the series covered:

• Altmetrics
• API
• BIBFRAME
• Linked data

This series is a great resource for anyone who needs to get up to speed in one of the areas covered. The areas I am familiar with seemed thoroughly covered.

Library Technology Launchpad ("Technology for every librarian") is edited by James Day, Electronic Services Librarian at Embry-Riddle Aeronautic University. The mission of the blog is to:

cover technology relevant to librarians and libraries.  Covered topics will include:

• Links to library technology news
• eBook purchasing and subscription trends
• Mobile library websites and eReader apps
• Online information resources
• Social media and libraries
• Library user experience (UX)
• Cloud computing for libraries
• Institutional repositories ans scholarly communication
• Research data management
• Search engine tips and tricks
• Useful general technology information

Their pages include guides to library technology acronyms, open access journals for librarians, and social media resources for librarians. Library Technology Launchpad seems like an excellent resource for those of us trying to keep up with technology trends in libraries.

Ensuring a Future for the Digital Scholarly Record

Recent decades have brought significant changes to the way we store scholarly research. The printed end-product is no longer guaranteed, nor is it necessarily what the researcher is looking for. Many law journals are following the trend in academia and moving to a predominantly, or solely, digital format. With this transition comes a change in thinking as to the best way to manage the archives of these journals and ensure that there is a scholarly record for the future. The Keepers Registry at the University of Edinburgh “acts as a global monitor on the archiving arrangements for electronic journals.” The registry strives to identify and work with archiving agencies who have taken on the stewardship of the electronic journals and serials – the aptly-named “Keepers”— and create a network to preserve them for the future.

The Keepers Registry works with the understanding that no single institution can do this on their own and stresses the importance of a collaborative effort. The group meets to address the growing concerns of its members and to help shape the vision for preserving and ensuring perpetual access to this digital content. This past summer, after a meeting of Keeper institutions, a plan was developed to tackle this international challenge: Ensuring the Future of the Digital Scholarly Record.  

To read further commentary on The Keepers Registry, see Mike Ashenfelder’s article in The Signal.

Getting to Know TS Law Librarians: Vicky Coulter

1. Introduce yourself.
My name is Vicky Coulter and I’m the Associate Director of Collections and Administration at the University of Wisconsin Madison Law Library.

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?
My title was recently changed from Associate Director of Collections and Technical Services to Associate Director of Collections and Administration to reflect the administrative duties I took on after our financial specialist retired and was not replaced.  I had to think of something broad enough to reflect my supervision of the Technical Services Department, the collection maintenance oversight (both selection and shelving) and the delegated financial management of the library’s entire budget.  Since the Technical Services Department provides access to and maintains collections, I chose to keep “Collections”, drop “Technical Services”, and add “Administration” to hopefully reflect the management of both areas.

3. What are you reading right now?
I need a lot of diversity in my life which is why I love my job.  There is so much diversity in my day to day work!  This need for variety is also reflected in my reading as I am always reading (or listening to) more than one book at a time.  I am currently reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond (our campus Go Big Read choice), My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The New Tsar by Steven Lee Myers, and The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner.  

4. If you could work in any library (either a type of library or a specific one), what would it be? Why?
I originally wanted to be a children’s librarian and am still the person people come to when they need a book for a child.  Because I have many nieces and nephews, whom I’ve made sure are well supplied with books, I try to keep up on books they may be interested in and what’s new in the children’s and young adult market.  I worked in our local public library when I was in high school and  have loved being in an academic library for over 25 years but the chance to get back into a public library might be fun. 

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

Getting to Know TS Law Librarians: Corinne Jacox

1. Introduce yourself.

My name is Corinne Jacox. I have been the Catalog/Reference Librarian at the Creighton University Law Library for fifteen years. 

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?

My title could be updated to Metadata/Reference Librarian to reflect the additional work I do with metadata in our institutional repository, as well as cataloging.

3. What are you reading right now?

Right now I am reading Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded America by Gail Jarrow.

4a. If you could work in any library (either a type of library or a specific one), what would it be? Why?

If I could work in any library, it would be a genealogy library. I really enjoy working on the genealogy of my family and putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

4b. You suddenly have a free day at work, what project would you work on?

If I had a free day at work, the project I would work on would be putting together letters to commercial publishers to obtain permission to load articles by the Creighton School of Law's faculty into our institutional repository.

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!  

Getting to Know TS Law Librarians: Pat Sayre-McCoy

1. Introduce yourself (name & position).

I’m Pat (Patricia) Sayre-McCoy, Head of Law Cataloging and Serials at the D’Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago.

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?

Not really anymore. I am very much involved in our Law School institutional repository, Chicago Unbound—my staff adds new issues of Law School publications, such as the Law School Announcements, and the alumni magazine, the Law School Record. This requires computer skills, such as editing documents and photos, adding metadata, and creating links to individual sections of the issue. We’re going to rename ourselves in Cataloging as soon as we come up with a good name; for now my copy catalogers are Metadata Assistants.

3. What are you reading right now?

I tend to read multiple books at the same time as I either lose/temporarily misplace a book or decide I’m in the mood for something else. For work, Digital rights management edited by Catherine A. Lemmer and Carla P. Wale just arrived in my In-box. For fun, I just started Laura Anne Gilman’s fantasy novel, Silver on the Road, about a fantastical US wild west in the early 1800s.

4a.If you could work in any library (either a type of library or a specific one), what would it be? Why?

I’d love to work at the Field Museum library or any other natural history library. I have a degree in Physical Anthropology and studied human and primate evolution. I love bones! Also, working in a natural history library, I could put some of my rather obscure knowledge to use. However, one of the reasons I wanted my current position is because I love serials cataloging—it’s like a puzzle and working in a law library you really learn serials! And the people at the D’Angelo Law Library are so great to work with. It would be hard to find a better group anywhere.

4b. You suddenly have a free day at work, what project would you work on?

I have a lot of procedures to document and I’d probably get to work on them. The IR is relatively new to us and I don’t have all the procedures worked out yet. And then for a break from procedures, I could catalog some of the new faculty podcasts and videos that have been posted by the Law School. I really like to catalog them because some of our professors are great speakers with a good sense of humor. And I learn lots of new things from the podcasts.