Academic Library Response to COVID-19

from Against the Grain v32 #3 June 2020

Interviews

Optimizing Library Services — Academic Library Response to COVID-19

by Prof. Jennifer Joe (Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Engagement Librarian, University of Toledo, USA) <Jennifer.Joe@UToledo.Edu>

Column Editors:

Ms. Brittany Haynes

(Editorial Assistant, IGI Global) <bhaynes@igi-global.com>

and Ms. Lindsay Wertman (Managing Director, IGI Global) <lwertman@igi-global.com> www.igi-global.com

Column Editors’ Note: This column features IGI Global contributor Prof. Jennifer Joe, Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Engagement Librarian at the University of Toledo, USA, co-editor of the publication Social Media for Communication and Instruction in Academic Libraries along with Prof. Elisabeth Knight, from Western Kentucky University, USA. — BH & LW

Introduction

Serving patrons from a distance is nothing new. There is a large body of literature available showcasing the ways that colleges and universities have adjusted their approach to library services for the good of students who are off campus. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) released the most recent Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services (which began as the 1990 ACRL Guidelines for Extended Campus Library Services)in2016, and it states, “The originating institution is responsible for ensuring that the distance learning community has access to library materials equivalent to those provided in on-campus settings” (American Library Association, 2016, n.p.). While attempting to adhere to this guideline, modifications have mostly been small and appropriate in scope for the number of patrons they serve, which depends on the institution. Overall, however,a 2015 survey found that just 54.05% of institutions offer “special classes or training program[s] for distance learning students,” which means many face-to-face programs and methods have not been adapted for the online learner (Primary Research Group, 2015, p. 38).

At the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio, USA, where I am the undergraduate engagement librarian, the institution went to a work-from-home plan beginning the week after our Spring Break (March 9-13, 2020). By the end of the week (March 20, 2020), library employees were all working remotely, and our building was closed. We only had a few basic services designed for distance students — electronic resources, LibGuides, reference chat, and email consultations. This abrupt departure from normal clearly required some changes in our approach toward our patrons.

We Are All Online Learning Librarians

Even before the decision to shutter the library and the rest of the campus, the administration had decided to shift classes to the online environment. The initial decision was that this would happen on a temporary basis and then it would be reevaluated, but subsequent talks in the administration have resulted in classes being held online through the summer (Whiteside, 2020). Therefore, even before we were working from home, faculty and staff at the university had prepared to meet our students in the online environment. We had reviewed important LibGuide materials; made sure that students were aware that they could our office computers with web conferencing software so that we could conduct synchronous consultations to meet the needs of our patrons.

Once we learned that the situation would be more permanent and that we would also be working from home, our preparations shifted slightly. First, we had to test that we had access to everything we would need from home. This gave us unique insight into the challenges that our students faced as they returned to reach us via email, chat reference, and social media; and set up

their homes. Connection issues, redundant sign-in requests, and unintuitive paths to accessing materials were suddenly our problems, too. This confirmed what had already been reported in the general literature. For example, a study conducted by Mueller et al. found that of nine eBook platforms studied, no platform achieved a 100% success rate in more than two of the research tasks attempted, and some eBook platforms failed to achieve 100% in any task (2019). Our electronic resources librarian is working diligently to help us with these issues as we find them in our own resources, but some of them are systematic and are out of her control.

Finally, some of us also made attempts to teach information literacy in the online environment. In addition to the three librarians who are also instructors at our university and were teaching credit-bearing courses online, I was able to teach a one-shot library session virtually through our learning management system. The class was a Pro Seminar in Anthropology and Sociology. Thanks to a good working relationship with the instructors of record, they felt comfortable allowing me to teach the class online synchronously on the same date that I would have been teaching it in person, March 30th, less than two weeks after the university had shifted to online work. It was optional for the students, but we had a good turnout, leading me to believe that it is something students would benefit from in the future. We also recorded the session for students who were unable to attend. This returns us to the report by Primary Research Group conducted in 2015; we have the technology and capabilities for more comprehensive distance learning efforts. Now that we have heightened demand, it would behoove us to conduct them.

We Are All Scholarly Communication Librarians

At the University of Toledo, we have a scholarly communications librarian. Her job includes handling everything related to public access, data sharing, copyright, and the support of new scholarship. In normal times, her job gets many requests, but when one is trying to pivot to online in the middle of the semester, in the middle of an international emergency, these requests were not always going directly to her. Furthermore, if they had gone directly to her, she would have easily become overwhelmed. Therefore, many of us took it upon ourselves to help answer scholarly communications issues in our respective subject areas. I took a question from one of my liaison departments about continued on page 68

format access that turned into coordinating a response from our reserves specialist that would not violate copyright but that would also provide the students with materials that they needed. The response also eventually came to involve our cataloging staff, as they worked through the possibility of individually purchasing eBooks from publishers directly, which is something that had not been done by the university in the past.

Other patrons needed access to electronic materials, too, not just faculty. I have navigated many research questions where the best materials for research are locked up in our building right now, helping students find electronic resources that will answer their questions and help them proceed with their work. As I have dealt with these questions, I have also begun managing a list of materials that have become open access in response to the crisis. I am not the only librarian keeping these lists; many librarians outside my institution have been freely sharing lists that they have made themselves, to the point that my list is more like a list of lists. I have also been developing the best ways to express to students how to find these materials; because they are temporarily open access, they typically would not show up in our discovery tool. WorldCat has become a dear friend to me because it can show me if something has an electronic format available. Unfortunately, at least one study has suggested that students are less capable of navigating WorldCat, with Gewritz, Novak, and Parsons finding, “[m]any students appeared to have difficulties interpreting records in [WorldCat Local],” and, as a result, these students were unable to find materials that they could have accessed (2014, p. 119).

We Are All Solo Librarians

My colleagues are still available to support me when I have tough questions, but gone are the days when I could just stop by their office. This has led me to work harder, and hopefully smarter, at answering the questions posed by patrons and my liaison units. However, it is reminding me more and more of my previous library position, where I was a solo campus librarian at a regional university campus, 70 miles away from my colleagues working for the same system.

It has opened me up to new possibilities, too. Because I am using e-mail and video chat to contact my university colleagues, I am just as likely to ask the same question in a webinar or a listserv; these two methods of information gathering require the same amount of effort, but I also get the added benefit of hearing more diverse opinions, leading to more innovation in my job.

Conclusions

The pandemic has made clear position definitions blurry, but it is also identifying the strengths within us all. While we should not be afraid to step outside of our assigned roles when it is necessary for the good of our patrons, we must also recognize when someone else on our team would be better suited for the task and allow them to do the work themselves. During a disaster, self-motivation and cooperation with a team must work together to meet the challenges the library faces.

This is, of course, only the response from one academic library. We should and are working together to share best practices. There are already several surveys circulating, asking individuals to share their responses to the crisis. Hopefully, those results will be made available as soon as possible because it will help us plan. As we navigate this new but hopefully temporary normal, we should be planning for two different futures: one where we are able to return to our buildings, and one where we are not. The former will happen eventually, as our students miss our collaborative spaces, our computer access, and yes, even our physical materials, but the latter may last longer than we would like, or it may become necessary again at some future date. We should try to learn from the best practices we are developing today, so that we can use those practices again in the future.

Works Cited

American Library Association. (2016). Standards for Distance Learning Library Services. Retrieved from: http://www. ala.org/acrl/standards/guidelinesdistancelearning (Accessed April 14, 2020). Document ID: afcce136-a64c-6094-6de0- 7ad1550814c4

Gewirtz, S. R., Novak, M., and Parsons, J. (2014). Evaluating the Intersection Between WorldCat Local and Student Research. Journal of Web Librarianship, 8(2), 113–124. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2014.877312

Mueller, K. L., Valdes, Z., Owens, E., and Williamson, C. (2019). Where’s the EASY Button? Uncovering E-Book Usability. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 59(1), p. 44-65, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/rusq.59.1.7224

Primary Research Group. (2015). The Survey of Library Services for MOOCS, Blended and Distance Learning Programs. Primary Research Group, Inc.

Whiteside, B. (2020, April 6). UT, BGSU move all summer classes online. The Blade. Retrieved from https://www. toledoblade.com/local/education/2020/04/06/ut-and-bgsu-moveall-summer-classes-online/stories/20200406076

Considering Games in Libraries and Such — Zoom-AZooma Head Shots: In Virtual and In The Real

Column Editor: Jared Alexander Seay (Media & Services Coordinator, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424; Phone: 843-953-1428) <seayj@cofc.edu> blogs.cofc.edu/seayj

Column Editor’s Note: In the distant future (just before we succumb to our robot overlords) the irony of starting out a column talking about a Netflix series during a time of severe “shelter in place” will be lost on readers. So, while this irony is currently fresh and relevant in your minds, I am going to roll with it. — JAS

In the future science fiction world of the Netflix series Altered Carbon, in which the virtual world is every bit as realistic as the real one, the characters distinguish between the two by referring to the real world as being in the real. During this time of pandemic exile, we have reached the point now where we too need to start distinguishing between working in virtual and working in the real.

Before this pandemic forced me to do so, I had very little idea of the whole video conferencing thing. I had been in Skype interviews and meetings before, but it was still in my peripheral vision as something the “with it folk” were into. But it did not figure prominently in my world. Golly, what a difference a pandemic makes.

Now everyone is a Zoom veteran. Indeed, I think that the iconic symbol of this pandemic, at least for the work-fromhome crowd, will be Zoom. My dreams are even populated with images of people talking to me from multiple little boxes, Brady Bunch style, splayed across my dream vision screen.

As far as a way of having meetings, I actually kind of like it. In fact, in keeping (at least microscopically) with the theme of this column, I have created a kind of game for myself while in these virtual meetings in which I try to gauge the mood and motivations of the meeting participants while closely observing their expressions, dress and backgrounds. Zoom meetings seem especially conducive to this. For one thing it seems I can more easily gauge the mood of each person in the meeting by actually staring into each person’s face for extended periods of time, without them knowing it. Now, once you get beyond the creepy sound of that last sentence, there is a certain value in this. Work with me for a minute.

In a normal face-meeting one’s vision is of course focused on the speaker. Indeed, in these table meetings in the real, other than the purpose of giving another meeting member a knowing nod, it is socially forbidden to stare into the eyes of any other person for very long. It’s just weird, and besides, except for your colleagues sitting directly across the table from you, the only view you get of most people is some angle on the side of their head. Well, not anymore.

Now that we have the Brady Bunch style meetings, with everyone’s thumbnail video image stacked up and spread out across the screen, one can see each one of their colleagues face-on. Everyone is literally staring into each other’s eyes. Of course, this staring is not in the real, so though everyone sees each other, no one can see who is looking at who. This allows the interesting pastime of carefully studying each person in the meeting in detail, including their facial cues and fashion choices. In fact, one can often get insight as to whether the person in their little thumbnail video has really thought about how they are being perceived. Some people have their face right up into the camera, giving an almost fisheye look to their image. Such people are either keen to have their presence right in there, or they have trouble gauging camera distance. Then there are those who apparently do not particularly care if they are fully in the field of view. The most common symptom being the “eyes above the horizon” look, with the head stuck to the bottom of the frame and only visible from the chin or nose up. In a meeting in which you can see yourself for the whole meeting (literally like looking into a mirror) I do not understand why one would want to appear with only part of their head visible, like the top of a carrot sticking out of the ground. But perhaps they cannot be bothered by such vain considerations, no more than they think twice about their background.

Ah, the background. This is perhaps the most interesting component of these “virtual” meetings in that it affords the novelty of seeing all of your colleagues in their home world — usually their kitchen, living room and even bedroom. It is intriguing to get a glimpse of the home environment of people you have worked with for years and have never seen outside of the office. I spend entire meetings meticulously taking in the backgrounds of doors, windows, nik naks, paintings, photos, furniture and even children milling about. Of course, some folks short circuit my intense observations by placing themselves against a blank wall, giving them a neutral, sterile look that gives the appearance of broadcasting from a prison cell. Some just throw up a headshot picture and be done with it. Then there are those of a sweeping fantasy mind that do the green screen thing of giving themselves an exotic digital background of outer space or a tropical island. I am always looking for the imaginative person who gives themselves the digital background of a broom closet. How exotic would that be? Though no one combination of camera placement and background is superior, I like to think that each one says something about the personality of each person or at least how they are feeling.

As for me, I am never satisfied about how I look on camera. Like most people, I do not like the way I look on camera anyway, so I try to compensate by being particularly careful of my environment. Coming from a background in theater and video and possessing loads of self-conscious vanity (and with my mind always on posterity), I am deliberately cognizant of how I appear on camera. Though I cannot really do much about my appearance (my genetics, alas, are mostly unalterable, despite my best efforts), I can change my background with ease. I have thus carefully constructed a “set” with lights and a black hanging curtain backdrop that gives little or no indication of the actual interior of my house. I try to give myself that headshot, interview look with a professional background. This makes it appear that I might have something witty or important to say, even if my actual statements during a meeting belie that impression. continued on page 85

Library Analytics: Shaping the Future — Inspec: Precision Analytics for Research Excellence

Upcycling, Innovation, Relevance and Renewal: How Analytics Transformed our Business

by Vincent Cassidy (Head of Academic Markets, the Institution of Engineering and Technology) <VCassidy@theiet.org>

Column Editors: John McDonald (EBSCO Information Services) <johnmcdonald@ebsco.com>

and Stephanie S. Buck (EBSCO Information Services) <ssbuck@ebsco.com>

As the process of scholarly communications continues 3,500 classification codes in a 5-tier structure, allows the highly to reshape itself with pace, it can often seem that those structured Inspec records to be discovered precisely and accubest placed to respond to the new opportunities require rately. Inspec is available across a range of platforms including a rare mix of size, agility, technology and, often, a singular EBSCOhost, Elsevier’s Engineering Village, Clarivate’s Web purpose. We can see this borne out, both in the strategic plays of Science, ProQuest’s Dialog and Wolters Kluwer’s OVID, of big corporations and their leverage of scale and technology as well as the IET’s own Inspec Direct. to innovate new solutions and services, as much as we can see it in the proliferation of start-ups and micro-businesses, often springing from the research communities themselves. But what of learned societies? How are learned societies faring? Do they have the scale, the agility or the strategic intent? Learned societies can often appear to be slow to respond, with complex governance and multiple stakeholder interests. For a learned society, the pace and rate of change and the singularity needed to respond to it can be daunting, and can challenge the identity and the mission of the organisations themselves.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has geared up to respond to changes in research literature discovery behaviours. It has reinvigorated its Inspec A&I service with Inspec Analytics, an insight and analytics soluInspec’s Precision Discovery Connecting Two Records Across 50 years tion, and it has effectively reinvented itself as a 150-year-old start-up. This has been done by focussing on users Over the last ten years, however, changes in user behaviour, and workflows, re-engineering key processes and embedding largely driven by the emergence of “good-enough” free-to-air an agile project methodology. Most importantly, and critically, scholarly search alternatives, and an increased preference for we have invested considerable time and effort in revisiting our full-text library discovery services have led to declining usage partnerships with librarians and platform hosts, and engaging of A&I resources in our core research market. In turn, some of them in our change process. What follows is a brief account our library partners, increasingly requiring return on investment of how the IET has embraced the challenges in the changing evidence to justify subscription commitments, reluctantly canprocess of scholarly discourse and how this is changing the way celled long-held institutional access to Inspec. From 2014 this our organisation approaches new projects. had become a noticeable and worrying trend for Inspec, and

Before reviewing the project, first a little context. The IET, unique searches declined by around 30% between 2010 and 2017. celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2021, is the world’s leading The IET has long had strong partnerships with libraries and inter- and multi-disciplinary engineering institution with over universities, and over the last three years we have been working 168k members around the world in 150 countries. We aim to with a group of librarians around the world to understand the deliver on our mission to ‘engineer a better world’ by supporting dynamic of declining usage, seeking a better appreciation of the engineers and researchers in their education, training, certificarelative value of the “good-enough” alternatives, and looking to tion and professional development, including the publication identify new uses for our high quality structured data. Partnering of research journals, books, proceedings and Inspec. In terms with libraries to explore “upcycling” opportunities in the expandof scholarly publishing output we are a mid-size learned and ing workspace around scholarly communication reminded us of professional society, with the accent on professional. the shared goals and shared DNA we have. Research libraries

Inspec is a jewel in the IET’s crown, covering a broad waterand societies are mission driven and independent, connecting front of research output across the physical sciences, engineering people and communities and we have been refreshed to see this and computing comprising over 19m records from journals, shared purpose reflected in our Inspec Analytics project. We proceedings, books and pre-print services. Our domain experts are appreciative that our colleagues from the library community curate around 900k new items a year sourced from over 200 pubwere willing to back up their clear understanding of the value of lishers, and our application of 10,000 controlled terms and over continued on page 71

Library Analytics: Shaping the Future from page 70 Launched in Spring 2019, Inspec Analytics is available to all Inspec subscribers, adding precision insights and impact analysis to the traditional A&I proposition. The semantic enrichment of curated and structured data by supporting its development into insight and impact tools. the Inspec article records (bibliometrics, affiliations, authors, journals, concepts and keywords) has created a knowledge base of billions of data points that can now be related in response to

Our library advocates provided invaluable insights into the specific user needs, deriving new value and up-cycling 50 years segmentation of user types within the university or corporation of curated data. Now, researchers can monitor global trends in that they support, helping to set up interviews and work-shadow their field, compare emerging topics and find the most relevant sessions, engagement in the development of proofs of concepts journals to consider publishing in. Libraries can monitor the and prototypes and, critically, facilitating trials and demonstrations. research output of their institution and evaluate resources in line

Partnering with librarians helped the introduction of open, with growing and declining areas. Inspec Analytics provides agile project working and has transformed our organisation. It insights to allows senior teams to compare their institution with has helped to bring users and their workflow into sharp focus, collaborators and competitors to set valuable benchmarks, monreminding us that our first objective is to understand our users in itor research output to evaluate strategies and find collaboration the context of their work and, to paraphrase our mission statement, opportunities to support research impact. to engineer better research outcomes. Identifying real-world problems, use cases and personas has helped us to identify new value propositions and re-engineer our production process. The agile process worked particularly well for the development of Inspec Analytics as it is a visual analytics application that uses a large amount of high-quality legacy data. We were able to interview users to understand their pain points and key business needs, demonstrate the development progress, and they could specify which additional data points would be most valuable to them. For example, when we demonstrated a feature showing how many articles an organisation had authored on a particular subject, customers specified it would be very useful to see lists of authors who had published those articles. As we already had the data, we were able to modify our roadmap based on customer feedback to add this feature and implement it within a We continue to receive positive support from our library few sprints — and customers were very pleased with the response. contacts who appreciate the opportunity to provide impact

Our partners have also brought important insights into the projassessment tools across the organisation and particularly into ect. Elsevier’s Engineering Village team has helped to identify the hands of those making strategic budget decisions, all within key user journeys, allowing the visualisation of data on Inspec their current Inspec subscription. Furthermore, we are delightAnalytics to trigger searches back into the Engineering Village ed to have been awarded the Best New Product or Service award platform. Inspec users can now move between Inspec and Inspec from The Charleston Advisor in October 2019. Anaytics within the Engineering Village platform. Our EBSCO More importantly, as well as transforming the use of Inspec’s colleagues have opened doors into the library community and data, the introduction of Inspec Analytics is also increasing the collaborated with us on researcher communications and usage use of the Inspec database. From September of 2019, usage campaigns and EBSCOhost provides a gateway to Inspec Anaof both Inspec and Inspec Analytics has improved month to lytics encouraging customer access. month, with usage of Inspec up by 300% on prior year. Usage of Inspec is now back at peak levels, in some instances, showing that there is a full and rich life for A&I datasets beyond pure discovery. The investment in quality and in the specialist curation of Inspec data over 50 years is now reaping dividends in a research environment seeking reliable, authoritative and verifiable sources that can be trusted. We are now planning the next phase of our developments for Inspec, including adding additional datasets to complement the Inspec data, and we look forward to working with our users, customers, information professionals and platform partners alike to help transform the landscape of research communications and EBSCOhost Provides a Gateway to Inspec Analytics engineer better research outcomes.

Academic Library Response to COVID-19

Next Article

Interviews

Optimizing Library Services — Academic Library Response to COVID-19

Ms. Brittany Haynes

Introduction

We Are All Online Learning Librarians

We Are All Scholarly Communication Librarians

We Are All Solo Librarians

Conclusions

Works Cited

Recommended Readings

Considering Games in Libraries and Such — Zoom-AZooma Head Shots: In Virtual and In The Real

Library Analytics: Shaping the Future — Inspec: Precision Analytics for Research Excellence

Upcycling, Innovation, Relevance and Renewal: How Analytics Transformed our Business

Encouraging Customer Access

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This article is from:

Against the Grain v32 #3 June 2020