Steven J. Bell – Part 2

Associate University Librarian for Research and Instruction Services, Temple University Charles Library

by Donald T. Hawkins (Freelance Conference Blogger and Editor) <dthawkins@verizon.net>

When you open up the morning paper and the lead story on the front page is about the opening of a new university library, 1 you know something big is happening. By coincidence, that very same day, I went to Temple University, home of the new Charles Library, to interview Steven Bell. In this issue you will find part two of my interview with Steven. Part one can be found in ATG v.32#2 April 2020. The full interview is also available online at https://

against-the-grain.com/2020/04/v32-2-

atg-interviews-steven-j-bell/. — DTH

DTH: Many public libraries are reinventing themselves and becoming community centers. They have makerspaces, outreach programs, meeting rooms, etc. for the community. Is the same thing happening in the academic world?

SJB: I believe so. I think that many academic libraries see that they have a community mission as well. We are not putting up walls and gates to keep the community out. Rather, we are doing those kinds of things for the people who are affiliated with our university. You must keep in mind that although the College of Engineering might have a makerspace and the College of Communications might have a great video production studio, you cannot use those unless you are a student in those schools. So it is up to the library to be the place on campus that provides those kinds of facilities for the entire community much like a public library might provide those kinds of space for everyone in the community. Not everyone has access to a private makerspace, so we see that as being very important to our mission,

and we have all of those things. We have extensive community programming, such as lecture series or musical series that are open to everybody that wants to come. We also have our Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio, a digital scholarship center for faculty and students from across the university who want to learn how to use digital scholarship techniques, and we have expertise in how to do that.

We have a virtual reality and visualization studio in the library for any student who wants to learn how to use those technologies and tools. So if you are a student in the Tyler School of Art that wants to learn how to use virtual reality for your art, you can do that at the TU library. Plus, we have a makerspace that has 20 3D printers in it. We already have humanities faculty coming in and showing their students how to use makerspace technology to create 3D replicas of ancient artifacts.

DTH: Some of the public libraries are getting into areas that an academic library would not. I am thinking of the Fayetteville, NY Public Library that has sewing or woodworking classes as well as 3D printers (which are the most popular). 2 I don’t see that coming into academic libraries.

SJB: Probably not. The reason we would not do that is because we probably have that expertise in other areas. So our Tyler School of Art, for example, has extensive resources for people who want to learn how to do woodworking, sewing, fashion design and those sorts of things. It would not surprise me if at some point our Scholar’s Studio might bring in something like that. It is really up to what people want; if students said, “We want to start a sewing club and need a place to put our sewing machines,” we would provide that. A couple of years ago, students came to us from our Gaming Club and said, “We need a place on campus where we can have our monthly meeting and gaming tournaments, and we created a “Gaming Den” in the library; our Scholar’s Studio will be where all the gaming takes place.

I should mention that TU Library, being in a highly densely populated urban area, does collaborate with the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) which has five branches in North Philadelphia that are somewhat near to our campus (the closest one is a mile away). For example, we held a “sign up for a library card” event here so our students and faculty could get an FLP library card. That is very valuable for our students and faculty because, for example, we do not collect any audio books. We therefore encourage our students and faculty to get a FLP card because they have extensive audio book collections. We asked our FLP colleagues if they would mind if we directed our students and faculty to sign up for an FLP card, and they said, “Tell as many people as you can!”

DTH: Do they have to be Philadelphia residents?

SJB: The state is moving toward a “state library card” to reduce barriers between counties. Even though I am a Montgomery County resident, there are some things I can get from FLP when I show my local library card because they have cooperative agreements between the counties. But the main thing is that any student affiliated with TU can get an FLP card. We collaborate with the FLP branches in our area and talk together about what kinds of offerings to have. In this region of the city, the libraries do not have makerspaces and sewing clubs like continued on page 46

they have in Fayetteville because they are much more stretched for resources. So if there are ways in which we can help out, we are glad to do it.

DTH: Do you want to say anything about the TU Press? It is now physically located in the library.

SJB: Our relationship with the TU Press 3 was established about seven years ago when the University Provost restructured it so that it reported to the Dean of the library. Our Dean has been working to create a much more collaborative relationship and make the Press an integral part of the library. So when we were designing the library one of the things we wanted to do was to bring the Press into it.

DTH: Is there friction between the Press and the library?

SJB: No. We maintain a productive collaborative relationship.

DTH: They have different missions. The Press must sell books and produce income, and the library is giving out information, not selling it.

SJB: That’s true. The library does use some of its budget to support the TU Press because, like the vast majority of university presses, the TU Press does not sell enough books to cover all of its expenses. It is very important that universities, when they are able to do so, continue to support the press so that we can have a press which produces scholarly monographs that no commercial publisher would ever publish. The other thing that is great about the Press is that we collaborate quite a bit on programming. We have authors that feature the content of their books and they bring in interesting speakers.

One of the things that presses are doing to become more self-supporting is to produce more popular types of books; two of our most popular books are the encyclopedias of the Philadelphia Eatypes of works help support the scholarly monographs. We have also created a new imprint called North Broad Press that is designed to publish only open access books, and we already have eight books in the pipeline. All books published by North Broad Press will be available as open textbooks. We will use the expertise of the Press to get the books through the publishing process, getting rights to materials, editing, and reviewing. The expertise of the Press makes these types

of projects possible. gles and Pittsburgh Steelers. Those

We are also not the only library that has an ASRS, but one of the things that is very different about our implementation of it is that we are not using it as just a storage facility. Some libraries do that, but they do not have 40,000 students and 3,000 faculty on campus almost every day. We believe that we are the first university that is experiencing regular daily heavy use of our ASRS to retrieve materials from a very active circulating collection. Unlike some libraries, our circulation has not plummeted but is rather healthy. Right now, we are retrieving books from the ASRS at the rate of one every four minutes. Other libraries might retrieve 50 or 60 books a day, so

we are really putting our ASRS to the test as an everyday collection that people use heavily, and you can see that our hold shelf is packed with requested books.

DTH: You told me that you can order something and by the time you walk down 3 floors from your office, it is available on the shelf.

SJB: Yes. We tell people that retrieval can be between 20 minutes and 1 hour, but we know that we are doing it much quicker than that; we just did not want to raise expectations when we first opened. Retrieval times depend on the time of day when a book is ordered; in the mornings books can come very quickly. One of the tradeoffs that people will always tell you about these kinds of systems is that you lose the serendipitous discovery of materials, and we totally understand that. But another thing that is very valuable to people is their time, especially to students and faculty. TU is a school of people from middle-class families. Many of our students have jobs or families to take care of, and we want to maximize their time for that; for example, if you are a student at home, you could order the books you want, then come to campus and as you are walking to class, you stop at the library, pick up your books, check them out at a self-check machine, and be on your way. How much time would it have taken that student to search, write down all the call numbers, go to the stacks, search for every book, and perhaps find that one is missing? That is a lot of time we are saving people with a system like this.

DTH: If people really want to wander the stacks and have serendipitous discovery, you have a whole 4th floor for them.

SJB: We do, and those are our latest five years of books, and we weight that collection towards more visual materials. For the future we and other libraries are working to have an online virtual browse technology, so you can imagine being on your computer, looking up a book, then swipe to the left or right and see what continued on page 47

books are on either side of that book. We are totally comfortable with people requesting 20 books and when they look at them, only taking the five that they need. You could still retrieve books and browse them in our hold area.

DTH: Another thing that I think is innovative is a single “one stop shopping” help desk for anything.

SJB: We previously had three different service desks: a reference desk, a circulation desk, and a media services desk. That created a lot of confusion because people did not know what desk to go to, or they would go to one desk and be told that they needed to go to another one, so we centralized all of the services at a single desk. No matter what your task is on any day, you can go to that one desk and the staff there can resolve your need. Most people need help with finding a book, paying a fine, or reserving a room. These are repetitive questions that are easily handled by our one-stop desk staff.

DTH: So you do have fines?

SJB: Yes, although students pay no fines until they reach $35. They can keep borrowing books and accrue fines up to $34.99. Few students ever reach $35 in fines. Students must pay replacement fees for lost or damaged material, but we understand that students are struggling and always work with them to develop reasonable options because not everybody can afford these costs.

DTH: We have mentioned open access already, but is there anything more you would like to say about its role at TU?

SJB: We are strongly committed to open access and have a staff member who works with the scholarly communication group in the library and also with the Press, so that is a unique position. Few libraries have a staff member working for both the library and the Press who bridges the two.

We are one of the libraries that ended our Big Deal with Elsevier in 2019. We felt that we could no longer pay the exorbitant amount of money that they were requesting to keep our existing Big Deal in place, so we decided to subscribe to their publications individually, and it seems to be working out very well. It has saved us a large amount of money, and the items that we are subscribing to are our most heavily used items. We receive few complaints from anybody about cancelled publications. We are also using the Copyright Clearing House’s “Get It” service. When people want an article from a journal that we do not have, they can use this service to get it within 24 hours. We also obviously make heavy use of interlibrary loan. To my knowledge, since we ended our Big Deal with Elsevier, we have been able to fully meet the needs of our community for scholarly information. We also encourage our faculty to publish in open access journals, celebrate Open Access Week, Open Education Week, and Fair Use Week, acknowledge faculty who publish in open journals, offer an Author Publication Charges fund, and promote all these to our faculty and graduate students.

TU was one of the first universities to start a textbook affordability project in the library, and we consider it an important part of our work. We started this project in 2010, and since then we have had nine cohorts consisting of ten faculty projects. We provide them with a stipend to literally stop using commercial textbooks, as well as expertise to help them identify alternative materials which could be open educational resources, articles in eBook chapters from the library, or any number of no-cost options. We have had faculty use primary research materials in place of textbooks. It does require the faculty to do a bit of work and change the nature of their course, and we believe they should be compensated for the time they put into that, which is why we provide stipends. Conservatively, we have saved our students approximately $1 million. We have heard frequently from students that they don’t buy a textbook if it is too expensive or that they drop the course. The bottom line is that affordable learning content contributes to student retention and success, and we want to support that.

DTH: Do you have an institutional repository?

SJB: We have definitely been behind the curve on that and are actually rolling out TUScholarShare now. It is in beta right now and should be fully implemented for the Spring 2020 semester. We created and filled a position that is heavily involved in the maintenance of an institutional repository. I used it the other day (I am on the beta team), and it is super simple for people to add materials to the repository.

DTH: Is that publicly available?

SJB: It will be. You could use it to find our content. We are one of the libraries that use the Blacklight discovery system, 4 which uses open access software and is used at several libraries. We customized it to meet the needs of our researchers. If you look at our web page and click on “library search,” you are using the Blacklight system. It searches everything we have, so when you get your results, you see the books, articles, videos, special collections, our web site, our librarians with subject expertise, and materials from the TUScholarShare. So you will not have to do a separate search on ScholarShare, but you can just use the library search to bring back results from it.

DTH: Let’s broaden our outlook to the information industry in general. What do you see as the major trends for now and the future and are any of them unique to a large academic institution like TU?

SJB: As a major research library, we still continue to make heavy use of all types of information resources, in the traditional databases as well as the more contemporary ones. Part of the challenge is that there seems to be no decline in the number of databases that third parties are developing and offering to libraries. We are constantly doing trials of new types of databases and services. I cannot foresee any time in the near future when we would not be providing access to the traditional databases like EBSCO, ProQuest, Web of Science, etc.

DTH: Do you use a traditional commercial discovery system?

SJB: Our library search using the Blacklight system searches many of the databases. I think the trends continue to point to an increase in streaming video and audio (Films on Demand and Kanopy are very popular with educators). I anticipate that we will see more of these kinds of databases, but they are expensive, and we have limited resources, so we will need to make some very tough decisions.

Another major trend is the information industry showing greater awareness of accessibility, privacy, and security issues. We are only at the cusp of this; at our university, we cannot even buy one continued on page 48

of these products until it goes through an accessibility review. Either it must be fully accessible or the vendor must have a demonstrated roadmap or pathway to becoming accessible. If we want to buy something that is not accessible, we must demonstrate that it is the only product in that category that is available for purchase, or we can get an exclusion for a two year period. The same thing now applies to security. If we want to acquire certain information systems, they must go through a security audit.

DTH: Does that also include privacy?

SJB: Yes. Part of our security audit requires that the vendors have liability insurance covering a security breach of their system, and if they are collecting data about our students, they must divulge this information. Our IT has very high security concerns, the foremost of which is cybersecurity. We must make absolutely sure that the products in the information industry will not open us up to cybersecurity liability, which will become a greater concern across all the libraries and vendors that we deal with.

We are looking forward to other new kinds of exciting products, and I hope the information industry will continue to develop things in the artificial intelligence area, such as voicebots and chatbots. We obviously have concerns about privacy and security, but on the other hand, how can we make a better library experience for all the people that use our technologies? The people now coming to our university exist in a largely digital world. Our students in the Class of 2023 were born in 2001, so they literally have lived all of their lives in front of screens. For better or worse, that’s the information landscape in which we exist and for which we must adapt.

DTH: That raises staffing issues. With all these new innovations and services, what additional skills and training do you expect from your professional library staff? Is the MLS still good enough for a professional position? What other backgrounds and degrees do you see as being desirable for TU as it staffs its new library?

SJB: That could be a conversation all to itself! You are absolutely correct that to have a successful 21st century library at a research university, you need a fairly diverse staff in terms of the skill sets that they bring to it. For example, just to run Blacklight, you need a team of programmers and developers to manage those kinds of systems. In a building like this, every study room is on an automatic scheduling system so that rooms can be reserved online. We therefore need to have people that can make those systems work. Our Access Services and Special Collections staff had to undergo extensive training to learn the ASRS system. Staff are continuously learning new skills to make sure our library customers have the best possible experience.

DTH: Do you have an in-house IT staff?

SJB: We do, and we collaborate with the campus Information Technology Services as well, so if you look at research data management services, data curation, or data preservation, a contemporary research library needs to know how to provide those kinds of services such as advising a faculty member how to curate a large set of data. You can learn about that in a library science program, but you may need to collaborate with somebody in IT who knows how supercomputers work or how to set up storage systems for vast amounts of data.

DTH: Or how to do natural language processing or automated indexing.

SJB: I think library science programs are changing to realize that you just cannot teach people all the technology skills they need to have in a year or two. They will be learned on the job. We need to prepare students to have the soft skills and the critical thinking and learning skills so that they know that they are a work in progress and still have a huge amount to learn to be an effective librarian, technologist, or educator. That is where continuing education will be critically important in the future for people coming out of library schools.

I am currently an instructor for San Jose State University teaching design thinking, which is something they were not teaching in library schools even a few years ago. Increasingly, librarians are presented with very challenging problems that don’t have obvious answers, and you can use a technique like design thinking to create a design challenge with your colleagues, so that you have a more sophisticated way of arriving at a good thoughtful solution to a problem. Very few library schools teach design thinking. It is an example of those kinds of soft skills, leadership, and knowing how to work in more diverse environments that you will need in a library science environment, as well as organization of information and how certain technologies work. Library science must change, and there must be a clear path to continuing education for future skill development. It is not like 20 or 30 years ago when you could graduate like I did, and your skills were fine for 5 or 10 years because nothing changed that much.

DTH: If there are other things you would like to discuss, please mention them now.

SJB: I would always advise librarians that if they have questions about the design and nature of this library to come and visit and experience it for themselves. I think it is interesting that many of the students and new librarians that I encounter want to know how to learn about the nature of this profession and industry, and I tell them that you learn what is happening by going out and visiting libraries and librarians. If they come here and experience it for themselves, they will see where innovation is happening. This library is not designed just for today’s students, but to be in a position to serve people who will be here two or three generations from now. We can hardly imagine what skills library workers will need in that future, but I suspect that design practice and design thinking will always contribute to our professional success.

DTH: Speaking for myself as one who has been in this industry for many years, it certainly has been a fascinating experience to come here, tour this library, see the technology, and have this conversation.

We often close these interviews on a personal note. What do you do for downtime, relaxation, and spare time (if there is any!)?

SJB: I try to get to the gym several times a week and stay physically fit. I think that is really critical, especially when we have a lot of stress in our life. Staying fit and eating healthy is very important to me. When I am teaching like I do now, I do not have much spare time. People who know me know that I do a lot of writing—two columns a month for Library Journal which I have been doing for 10 years now. Writing gets you to think about things carefully, and it forces me to stay current with what is happening in librarianship, higher education, and technology. I also like taking walks, going camping, hiking, gardening

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Interview — Steven J. Bell

from page 48

and taking care of plants, and spending time with my family as much as I can. I probably do not pay as much attention to the work-life balance as the people coming into the profession now do; I came in at a different time and am part of a different era and a different culture. I seek to understand the new colleagues coming in to the profession; they have different ideas, different interests, and different lifestyles. At TU, we offer flexible work arrangements to allow staff a better way to manage their lives, which can be complicated now.

Donald T. Hawkins is an information industry freelance writer based in Pennsylvania. In addition to blogging and writing about conferences for Against the Grain, he blogs the Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian conferences for Information Today, Inc. (ITI) and maintains the Conference Calendar on the ITI Website (http://www.infotoday.com/ calendar.asp). He is the Editor of

Personal Archiving: Preserving Our

Digital Heritage, (Information Today, 2013) and Co-Editor of Public Knowledge: Access and Benefits (Information Today, 2016). He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and has worked in the online information industry for over 45 years.

Endnotes

1. “New library is Temple’s most compelling work of architecture in decades,” Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 19, 2019, Page 1 (also available at https://www.inquirer. com/columnists/temple-university-library-inga-saffron-architecture-review-snohetta-20190919.html). 2. “Making and Community Engagement in the Library,” Donald T. Hawkins, Information Today, Vol. 32, Issue 8, Page 1. 3. http://tupress.temple.edu/ 4. https://projectblacklight.org

Rumors

from page 44

This is from Publishers Weekly: The investment firm KKR has completed its purchase of OverDrive. On Christmas Eve, KKR announced it had reached an agreement to acquire the digital reading platform from the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten. The deal was expected to be closed in the first quarter of 2020; it is not known whether the pandemic caused a problem in completing the agreement. “With the sale completed, we are excited to begin working on the opportunities to grow our digital content platform with KKR’s support,” said Steve Potash, OverDrive founder and CEO, in a statement. In addition to OverDrive, KKR owns RBmedia, one of the largest independent publishers and distributors of audiobooks. The OverDrive acquisition, like that of RB, was overseen by Richard Sarnoff, one-time executive at Random House who also was presi dent of Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments until leaving for KKR in 2011. Thanks to PW for

during the COVID-19 crisis, Publishers Weekly is providing free digital access to the magazine,

archive, and website. https://www.publishersweek ly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/industry-deals/article/83551-kkr-completes-overdrive-purchase.html continued on page 85

LEGAL ISSUES

Section Editors:

Bruce Strauch (The Citadel) <strauchb@citadel.edu> Jack Montgomery (Western Kentucky University) <jack.montgomery@wku.edu>

Legally Speaking — “McEngage” Disengages

by Bill Hannay (Partner, Schiff Hardin LLP, Chicago, IL) <whannay@schiffhardin.com>

On May 1, 2019, textbook publishers McGraw-Hill and Cengage announced that they had signed a merger agreement that would produce “a broad range of best-in-class content — delivered through digital platforms at an affordable price,” worth $5 Billion. Almost exactly a year later, on May 4, 2020, the parties announced that they had mutually agreed to terminate their proposed “merger of equals.” They ascribed the breakup to opposition from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and U.K. who demanded substantial divestitures of course offerings to avoid competition concerns.

In a press release about the termination of the merger agreement, the head of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Asst. Atty. Gen. Makan Delrahim, stated:

The decision to abandon this merger preserves competition in the market for textbook publishing, an important industry in the education sector.

Cengage and McGraw-Hill’s decision to abandon this merger also preserves innovation, as the two firms compete aggressively in the development of courseware technology.

At the time the merger was devised, it would have combined the second and third largest publishers of textbooks in the United States in a market long dominated by only three major textbook publishers. The leading education company is Pearson plc which owns educational media brands including Addison-Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eCollege, Longman, Scott Foresman, and others. McGraw-Hill and Cengage were the second and third largest textbook publishers in the U.S., respectively.

McGraw-Hill, headquartered in New York City, is the second-largest publisher of course materials in higher-education, which include physical textbooks, eBooks, and digital courseware. McGraw-Hill is a private company, owned by a private equity fund operated by Apollo Global Management LLC.

Cengage had emerged from bankruptcy in the Spring of 2014, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2013. The company had struggled with the major trend affecting textbook publishing, i.e., the move from paper to digital versions of learning tools. The industry has also suffered from the vicious cycle of increased book pricing, prompting students to save money by borrowing, renting, or buying used texts. At the time, Cengage vowed to focus on electronic versions of its textbooks and developing digital study guides and other educational supplements.

Following May 2019, the proposed merger — which quickly was dubbed “McEngage” — prompted opposition from student groups and open market advocates, such as SPARC, which in turn prompted concerns among Democratic Congressmen and led to investigations into the potential effects of the merger by the DOJ Antitrust Division and Great Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Critics of the merger asserted that the combined firm would control between 40% and 50% of the college textbook market in an era when major textbook publishers had dramatically raised prices in recent years. Between 2006 and 2016, the price of textbooks had risen at four times the rate of inflation.

During the winter of 2019-20, the parties to the merger disclosed that the transaction had been and remained under review by the U.S. Department of Justice as well as antitrust authorities in Australia, New Zealand and Mexico and in certain U.S. states. Early in March 2020, two

members of the U.S. House Antitrust Subcommittee, Chairman David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Commerce Chair Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, wrote a letter to the DOJ asking for increased scrutiny of the deal. In addition to raising competitive concerns about market concentration, the Congressmen expressed concern that the merger would put more student data into the hands of one company. This could increase the risk of cybercrime but also potentially give the combined entity “an insurmountable lead in the development of machine learning tools for higher education.”

On March 24, 2020, the U.K.’s CMA announced that it had decided to conduct an in-depth review of the transaction, referred to as a “Phase 2 investigation.” The Phase 2 process provides for a 24- week review, which is subject to further extension by the CMA.

It became clear by the Spring of 2020 that McGraw-Hill and Cengage were prepared to divest (or spin off) a few titles or subject areas where there was substantial overlap, i.e., direct competition between the parties, but it was equally clear that the DOJ and the CMA were looking to have the companies shed significantly more overlap products. No lists were made public, but press reports suggested that the Justice Department had demanded “significant divestitures of several dozen courses” to address antitrust concerns. And the CMA said that the companies had offered divestitures that were “unlikely to be sufficient in addressing its competition concerns.”

In the end, no settlement could be reached with the government agencies, and the publishers decided to walk away from the deal rather than go to court over the dispute. continued on page 51

Cengage issued a press release on May 4th, stating that the deal was scrapped “by mutual agreement due to a prolonged regulatory review process and the inability to agree to a divestitures package with the U.S. Department of Justice.” The company vowed to act, on a standalone basis, “to continue to support the transition to digital and help students save significant money.” Looking ahead, as faculty and administrators move their classes online, Cengage is “now singularly focused on ensuring the Cengage Unlimited subscription and our leading digital courseware platforms continue to deliver value for students and faculty.”

The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) which was one of the NGOs opposing the transaction raised doubts about the future benefits of the textbook publishers’ individual efforts: “While Cengage and McGraw-Hill won’t have quite as much power to jack up prices on course materials, the new wave of digital textbook products out there — from access Cases of Note — Copyright

Ripping off Lady Liberty

codes to ‘inclusive access’ automatic textbook billing — still make it difficult for students to get good grades, pay the bills, and graduate on time.”

William M. Hannay is a partner in the Chicago-based law firm, Schiff Hardin LLP, and is a frequent contributor to Against the Grain and a regular speaker at the Charleston Conference. He can be reached at <whannay@schiffhardin.

com>.

Column Editor: Bruce Strauch (The Citadel, Emeritus) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com>

Robert Davidson v. The United States. United States Court of Federal Claims. No. 13-942C, June, 2018.

Among the ceaseless waste of federal dollars, this is something of a standout.

On the corner of Las Vegas and Tropicana Boulevards in Las Vegas, NV sits the New York-New York Hotel & Casino. And what is more New York than the Statue of Liberty? The casino moguls had to have one.

In the early 1970s, Davidson started in the plaster business as a water boy hosing down stucco plastered the day before. Through luck and pluck, he advanced through the ranks to executive VP, then left to form Plaster Tech. A lion head design in a mega-mansion got him into sculptor and designer work.

He would start with foam for the initial shape, hand-rasping it, then slaver on plaster for the final layer. And it was Vegas. He soon was into the Egyptian theme of the Luxor Hotel, shaping walls like pyramid blocks and building a 110-foot-tall replica of the Sphinx.

He built the Joan of Arc at the Paris Hotel in Vegas and a Mount Rushmore of Dudley Do-Right characters at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

These successes led to the Lady Liberty job, a model two-thirds the size of the Statue in New York harbor.

The end result was terrific but not an exact replica. He wanted it more modern, more feminine. A picture of his motherin-law was a big influence, and a plaque in her memory was placed at the crown.

Not since Whistler’s Mother has …

The cost for materials and labor ran $152,000 with a profit of $233,000.

Which is not relevant to our case, but you might want to change professions.

The US Postal Service introduced the Forever Stamp in 2007. The first one was an image of the Liberty Bell. Wanting another patriotic image, they considered flags, but those had been over-done. Likewise, the USPS had used the Statue of Liberty in 20 different images.

Nonetheless, culling through Getty Images, they came across a photo of the Statue of Liberty they liked and paid $1,500 for a three-year non-exclusive license to print a blizzard of stamps. They were unaware the photo was of the Vegas statue.

In their defense, if you Google it, the difference does not jump out at you. Upon study, the Vegas statue has a less severe face. But that does become important. And in CYA communiqués, the USPS later insisted that even had they known, they would have used it anyway as they loved it so much.(!) And in a footnote, it is stated that the USPS has run a loss every year since 2006 on annual revenues of $60 billion.

By the time the error was discovered, a billion stamps had been printed. The USPS scrambled to determine ownership of the image while continuing to ship and sell images.

Meanwhile, Davidson’s excited wife returned from the post office presumably having recognized her mother on the stamp. Davidson filed suit.

So, Let’s Look at the Law.

The USPS asserted the statue was a replica and had no original work. The standard, however, is only a minimal degree of creativity. See Feist Publ’ns. Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 345 (1991).

Further, it does not need to be wholly original. You can work off a prior creation in a new and original way. Id.

Davidson testified he was hired to invoke the image, and he did it by making her softer and more feminine. The fact finder need only decide that the differences are non-trivial. Which the court found. The jaw is less massive and the face more rounded. Indeed, these features were appealing enough to cause the USPS to select Davidson’s version.

But is it Fair Use?

The Fair Use defense is laid out in 17 U.S.C. § 107 (2012).

A.Purpose and character of the use. Other than chopping and continued on page 52

sizing it for the stamp, the USPS did nothing to transform the image which would put it under

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music,

Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994). But in fact, the USPS never really argued that, asserting instead that the bulk of the money received was the necessary payment for sending mail.

They had, however, sold $4 billion of stamps for $140 million profit, making this a purely commercial use — not educational or charitable — and not subject to fair use defense. Davidson takes that one. B. Nature of theCopyrighted Work.

The USPS argued Davidson’s work was so derivative as to receive only a thin copyright.

Davidson said the USPS wanted the image for a reason, otherwise they would just print blank stamps. And the statue had been up since 1996. Result: factor favors neither party.

C. The Portion Used. This favors

Davidson, as the face was the part the USPS wanted and they used it all.

D.Effect of the Use. This favors the USPS as Davidson had not attempted to exploit his creation so they didn’t disrupt a market of his sales.

E. The Use Was Not Fair. Davidson wins this one. The USPS used it to earn revenue and collected a whole bunch. USPS’s only defense is they didn’t hurt Davidson very much.

So What Are the Damages?

USPS argued they never paid more than $5,000 for art, and the artist ought to consider it an honor to be used and revel in all the publicity. Which is to say if they had known Davidson wanted to sell, they wouldn’t have given him squat.

On the other hand, if you wanted to license their image for your product, well, that’s different. Want to put the image of a stamp on a million T-shirts, the USPS would seek a running royalty at around 8% of total gross sales.

And there was a whole bunch of expert testimony from both sides on how to value the thing.

The court made an odd observation that since the USPS lost money — its costs exceeding its revenue — each stamp was a small money-losing contract.

However, there are stamps on which the USPS has pure profit — those kept by collectors. And that was easy to measure, because they weren’t used to move mail. So they applied a 5% running royalty on stamps never used.

Which rather seems like something they did because the USPS had a clear record of the number of unused stamps.

Which rendered Davidson damages of $3,554,946.95.

Which is certainly precision.

Questions & Answers — Copyright Column

Column Editor: Will Cross (Director, Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center, NC State University Libraries) <wmcross@ncsu.edu> ORCID: 0000-0003-1287-1156

QUESTION: A faculty instructor asks, “Does using a platform like Zoom impact ownership of my course materials?”

ANSWER: This is a question I have heard a lot recently, and it gets at two underlying issues that many faculty instructors are currently grappling with. The first is whether changes in the way instruction is done will impact their rights under university policy. The second is whether a service like Zoom makes any claim on their work.

The first question is relatively straightforward, but the answer depends on local policy rather than black letter copyright law. Most (but not all) institutional copyright policies vest ownership of instructional materials with faculty instructors based on principles of academic

freedom rather than claiming that they are works made for hire. In those cases, however, many institutions also claim greater interest or outright ownership in materials created with “unusual” or “exceptional” use of institutional resources.

As the terms suggest, this claim is not usually asserted based on normal use of resources such as an office computer, access to the library, or similar. Instead, universities often claim ownership in instructional materials where a special grant is provided or another special benefit like course release is offered. These policies were often invoked or even revised during the great MOOC boom in the early 2010s when universities provided substantial labor and expertise, as well as funding, to create online courses that were university-branded and often launched with the hope they would become dependable revenue streams.

As noted above, these claims based on unusual or exceptional use of resources do not typically apply when an instructor simply uses a standard resource available to anyone on campus. So, instructors relying on an institutionally licensed version of Zoom may not need to worry about university ownership any more than they do when they rely on an institutional license for Microsoft Office or a course management system like Moodle or Canvas. Because every institutional policy is different, however, an instructor would be advised to check out their local policy and ask for clarification where needed.

The second part of this question may be more complicated. Zoom, like most online tools and services, comes wrapped in a set of terms of use that can create an additional layer of legal complexity. As of this writing, Zoom’s terms of service do continued on page 53

not assert ownership as a condition of use — indeed they explicitly state that users retain copyright — just a nonexclusive license needed to transmit users’ work to their audience. Because those terms can change, however, it is always advisable to review these agreements or at least refer to a resource such as Terms of Service; Did Not Read (https://tosdr.org/) that reviews and summarizes them.

This is, of course, general good practice as we all explore new tools and services whether they support streaming, plagiarism detection, or student learning. The recent report from the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) on automatic textbook billing programs (https://uspirg.org/ feature/usp/automatic-textbook-billing) offers a useful case study on the language that is often built into these services and the changes that can be negotiated by a thoughtful administration.

QUESTION: A librarian asks, “What did the Supreme Court decide in the recent Blackbeard case?”

ANSWER: In March, the Supreme Court decided a case that should have major implications for copyright holders and users even though it was focused on a narrow question about federalism. The facts before the Court were irresistibly romantic (for both headline writers and the Justices as they drafted their opinions), concerning The Queen Anne’s Revenge, a long-lost pirate ship used by Blackbeard as his flagship in the early 1700s. The ship was lost at sea in 1718 and remained lost for more than two hundred years until it was discovered off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina in 1996. As the owner of the wreckage, the state of North Carolina hired a salvage company to recover the remains of the ship. That salvage company in turn hired Frederick Allen, a local videographer, to document the operation. Allen registered copyright for the photographs and videos he took of the salvage and offered a license, but North Carolina declined the license, posting several of the videos online and included some of his photographs in a newsletter without his permission.

As a copyright matter, the case was relatively straightforward. Instead, the arguments turned on North Carolina’s claim to sovereign immunity, the general rule that federal courts cannot hear suits brought by individuals against nonconsenting states. North Carolina claimed immunity from Allen’s suit and Allen countered that sovereign immunity did not apply to copyright infringement cases based on a statute called the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA), which provides that a state “shall not be immune, under the Eleventh Amendment [or] any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court” for copyright infringement.

In March, a unanimous Supreme Court decided Allen v. Cooper, Governor of North Carolina, holding that Congress lacked authority to abrogate the states’ immunity from copyright infringement suits in the CRCA. Writing for the Court, Justice Kagan noted that the Eleventh Amendment has generally been understood to bar federal courts from hearing a suit brought by any person against a nonconsenting state but that suit may be brought when two factors have been met. First, Congress must have enacted “unequivocal statutory language” abrogating the States’ immunity from the suit. In addition, “some constitutional provision must allow Congress to have thus encroached on the States’ sovereignty.”

The CRCA clearly included unequivocal statutory language abrogating state immunity, so the core question was whether Congress had the constitutional authority to do so, either under Article I or the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court rejected both, in large part based on its 1999 decision in Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, an analogous case considering state sovereign immunity for patent infringement claims. Concluding that Florida Prepaid “all but prewrote” the Court’s decision, Justice Kagan held that Congress did not have the authority to limit sovereign immunity in cases of copyright infringement. North Carolina may rely on sovereign immunity and thus it remains a bar to Allen’s suit.

While Justice Kagan wrote for a unanimous court, two justices did write concurrences. Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Ginsburg, noted that he disagreed with the decisions in both Florida Prepaid and in this case but, “recognizing that [his]longstanding view has not carried the day,” he joined the opinion. Justice Thomas also wrote a concurrence noting that, while he agreed with the decision itself, he did not feel bound by the precedent of Florida Prepaid in the way that the majority or Justice Breyer did. These concurrences offered two distinct approaches to the importance of reliance on precedent and may signal a deeper disagreement on the Court, as we shall see in the other major copyright decision this term, discussed below.

For librarians, scholars, and publishers, this case is important primarily as a reaffirmation of sovereign immunity. If you follow copyright in higher education, you may remember that sovereign immunity plays a critical role in the (still ongoing, twelve years later) Cambridge University Press v. Patton case regarding fair use of electronic course reserves at Georgia State University. Because Georgia State was able to rely on sovereign immunity the plaintiff publishers were not able to sue for damages, only injunctive relief. This meant that the court did not adjudicate the original copyright policy, which the court held to be moot. Instead, the case has been contested primarily based on a revised and more pragmatic policy. So, while Allen v. Cooper was decided on federalism grounds, it casts a long shadow over copyright policy and practice for all state institutions, particularly in the way they understand and calculate risk when relying on fair use.

QUESTION: A legal publisher asks, “What does the recent Supreme Court decision about who owns copyright in Georgia’s law mean for us?”

ANSWER: In another technical but highly important case this spring, the Supreme Court considered whether annotations to Georgia’s statutes could be protected by copyright in light of the “government edicts doctrine.” Grounded in the bedrock principle that citizens must have free access to the law if they are presumed to know it, the government edicts doctrine holds that government officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot generally be the copyright holder of works they create in the course of their official duties.

In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, the Supreme Court considered the copyright status of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA). Assembled by a Georgia state entity called the Code Revision Commission, the Code includes a set of annotations developed by Matthew Bender & Co., Inc., a division of the LexisNexis Group, pursuant to a workfor-hire agreement with the Commission. The annotations include resources such as summaries of judicial decisions, opinions of the state attorney general and relevant scholarly and reference materials. Under this agreement, Lexis enjoyed the exclusive right to publish, distribute, and sell the OCGA. continued on page 54

Relying on the government edicts doctrine, the nonprofit Public.Resource. Org (PRO) argued that the OCGA was not protected by copyright and posted a digital version on various websites where it could be downloaded by the public without charge. In response, the Commission sued PRO on behalf of the Georgia Legislature and the State of Georgia for copyright infringement. While PRO argued that the OCGA was not eligible for copyright under the government edicts doctrine, Georgia argued that the annotations should not be covered by the doctrine and were eligible for protection because they did not have the force of law and were drafted by a private party.

Writing for the Court, Justice Roberts concluded that, “in light of the Commission’s role as an adjunct to the legislature and the fact that the Commission authors the annotations in the course of its legislative responsibilities, the annotations in Georgia’s Official Code fall within the government edicts doctrine and are not copyrightable.”

Where the Blackbeard case was written by a unanimous Court, this case was decided by a narrow 5-4 majority. Justice Thomas, joined by two others, returned to the theme he sounded in Cooper, lamenting that “an unwillingness to examine the root of a precedent has led to the sprouting of many noxious weeds that distort the meaning of the Constitution and statutes alike.” Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justice Breyer, affirmed the importance of precedent but dissented on other grounds.

This case is great news for libraries, publishers, and everyone who values access to the law. Taking a step back, however, both this and the Blackbeard case suggest that a significant schism is growing on the Court related to how much deference should be given to precedent — previous decisions made by the Court on relevant issues. As these battle lines are drawn in copyright cases, it will be worth watching to see how a crop of newer Justices defers — or does not defer — to precedent in high-profile cases revisiting issues that had been considered settled for many years.

ATG Special Report — Does the Repository Reflect the Institution?

by Gail McMillan (Professor, University Libraries, Virginia Tech) <gailmac@vt.edu>

Author’s Note: Gail McMillan is a professor on the faculty of Virginia Tech Libraries and Director of Scholarly Communication. Correspondence concerning this article should be emailed to <gailmac@vt.edu>. — GM

Abstract

The IR gives the university both a digital library and a showcase so the IR should accurately reflect its home institution. Assessing IRs from the perspective of its resources, however, is an as yet unused frame of reference. The goal of this initial study was to investigate whether the IR represents the scholarship and activities of its home institution by comparing a microcosm of the IR to the same microcosm at the institution. The IR can be correlated with the university by using a controlled vocabulary to search each source and comparing the percentage of hits. This study looked at VTechWorks, the IR at Virginia Tech, as a whole and through three lenses, that of graduate students’ ETDs, the faculty’s scholarly publications, and the academic units’ web-accessible publications. Using the LGBTQ microcosm, the percentage of hits for a controlled vocabulary showed a good correlation, demonstrating that the IR is representative of the university for this microcosm. Can we extrapolate and say this IR accurately represents its university?

Does the Repository Reflect the Institution?

Since institutional repositories (IRs) 1 have been in use for about 20 years, it’s time to address how well they reflect their home institutions. Within the wealth of articles about IRs, there is little attempt to assess the relationship of IR content to the scholarship and activities of its institution as an indicator of the value of the IR. We do not know if IRs have attained Clifford students — both research and teaching materials and also documentation of the activities of the institution itself in the form of records of events and performance and of the ongoing intellectual life of the institution.” (2003, p.2) Assessing IR content now is also appropriate in light of the COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories, 2017, p.4) recommendation that “The next generation repository... is resource-centric, making resources the focus of its services and infrastructure.”

Among my responsibilities at Virginia Tech Libraries, I oversee the IR, VTechWorks, established in 2012. VTechWorks had about 70,000 items at the time of this study (April/May 2019). About 96% of those items were publicly available and about 85% were textual. Members of the university community largely created these works, but about 10% were created by others about Virginia Tech (e.g., Condolence Archives) or related to university interests (e.g., New River Symposium). VTechWorks is highly focused on research and scholarship, but also hosts academic unit publications, governance and historical documents, etc. Most items were born digital, but many items have been scanned and OCR’d.

IRs have not been developed like library collections by subject experts. IRs are not dependent on money to purchase items, but on people’s time to locate, deposit, and describe items. VTechWorks has been populated in a variety of ways. For example, Lynch’s vision of hosting “the intellectual works of faculty and

some faculty voluntarily deposit directly or through integrated systems (e.g., Elements). Mandatory ETD (electronic theses and dissertations) deposits come through the online graduate school system, and some courses require students to deposit final projects. VTechWorks staff deposit through casual (e.g., reading VT news) and organized systems (e.g., OA Subvention Fund and SWORD protocol-captured articles). continued on page 55

To determine whether VTechWorks is representative of Virginia Tech, I chose to study a microcosm 2 of VTechWorks, anticipating that it might encapsulate the characteristics of the repository as a whole. The microcosm I chose to study was influenced in part by articles and presentations I read and heard that addressed questions about diversity within the academy. At the 2017 CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) fall membership meeting, Amanda Rust from Northeastern University Library, presented “Design for Diversity,” a grant funded project that focused on ways in which information systems embody and reinforce cultural norms (e.g., data models that enforce strict gender binaries) and addressed designing systems that account for diverse cultural materials.

In “The Hubris of Neutrality in Archives,” Sam Winn (2017, p.2), at Virginia Tech Libraries, made several salient points, including “Archivists contribute to the omission or erasure of historically marginalized groups in the archives.” And, a “radically inclusive historical record” will not happen by accident.

Rebekah Scoggins (2018), a librarian at Leander University, authored “Broadening Your Library’s Collection: Implementing a LGBTQIA Collection Development Project.” She determined that her library was not meeting the needs of its users because the LGBTQIA collection was out-of-date and incomplete. It struck me as a well-aimed study but one that was limited because it only considered the traditional library collection, that is purchased books, serials, multimedia, etc., but did not consider the content of the IR. 3

Because of these works and the dearth of articles about IR content assessment, I chose to conduct a study that might also help me learn whether VTechWorks was contributing to the omission of works of marginalized people or providing an inclusive record. I analyzed the microcosm of LGBTQ works and compared the IR findings to the output of the university as indicated by its website.

I created a list of search terms by compiling terms and phrases from academic and community resources. [Appendix A — see http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085] I eliminated some terms that historically had different meanings (e.g., gay and queer) or that were too broad (e.g., discrimination). However, I did not discard biological terms because, though they sometimes refer to plants or animals, they appeared in each studied collection. The resulting list had 155 terms. 4 [Appendix B — see http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085]

To refine my investigation, to help understand who was doing the scholarship and research in the LGBTQ microcosm, and to help put the data in context, I searched the terms across the university, the IR and within three of the IR’s actual and virtual collections: graduate students’ ETDs, peer-reviewed faculty publications, 5 and academic units’ (called “colleges” at VT) web publications. These collections targeted the scholarship of graduate students and faculty as well as information often aimed at the general public or alumni from the colleges and the university. 129 of the 155 terms searched got 21,455 hits in the 71,734 items in VTechWorks (VTW). To search the university website, I entered the terms directly in Google (i.e., www.google.com) by using this search strategy: [term] site:vt.edu -site:vtechworks.lib -site:theses.lib.vt.edu. In what I’m calling the “VT collection” (VTC), 109 of the 155 terms got 84,793 hits.

I did not compare the number of hits per se because of the radically different sizes and ages of the collections. For example, the ETD collection had 32,557 works with LGBTQ terms dating from 1910. In the virtual faculty research collection (FRC) of 3,870 items, these terms dated from 1989, and in the virtual college collection (CC) of 14,590 items, these terms dated from 1972. Because of these discrepancies and for comparison purposes, I calculated the percentage of hits for each term within each collection.

An example of the beginning of the alphabet displaying the percentage of hits in VTC and in the three targeted collections in VTW when the term was found is available at http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085 (Table 1).

In FRC, 40 of the 155 terms got hits, with the top 10 terms getting 86% of the hits. There were two outliers in FRC. “Gender bias” was used much more (9.3%) by faculty than any other collection (.6% and 1.9%). FRC used “sexual orientation” twice as many times as ETDs (5.9% v 2.9%). However, CC and VTC, the most public-focused collections, used it much more (13.8% each).

In CC, 89 of the terms got hits, with the top 10 terms getting 81% of the hits. “Sexual orientation” got more than twice the hits as FRC and more than four times the hits as ETDs. VTC, however, used “gender identity” and “gender expression” about twice as often as it was used in CC, FRC, and ETDs.

The term “gender” got nearly 50% of the hits in ETDs, leaving the remaining 114 terms with between 3.5% and 0.01% of the hits. “Gender” also got about 50% of the hits in FRC and CC, though only 39% in VTC and VTW overall.

The same five terms got the most hits in VTW and VTC. Only eight terms got more than 2% of the hits in VTC. Gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression — the top four terms, were the only terms in VTW that got more than 2% of the hits. The top 20 hits in VTC varied by <2% with VTW, except for “sexual orientation” which got 4.7% more hits in VTW. See http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085 for Table 2 comparing the 20 most used terms in VTW and VTC.

VTC had three terms that did not appear in VTW: gender expansive, homonormative, and gender creative. At http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085 see List of the 23 terms used in VTW but not in VTC. Ten of these terms only appear in ETDs. Two terms, cisnormative and diverse sexualities and genders, appeared only in CC. Analyzing the terms that did not appear in a collection was not necessarily meaningful due to the very low number of hits (1-2).

Using VTC as the measure of scholarship and activities at the university, and comparing the percentage of hits in VTW with the percentage of hits in VTC, the data provides some evidence that there is a positive correlation between the IR and the university, at least, when studying the LGBTQ microcosm.

To speculate how well VTechWorks represents the scholarship and activities of Virginia Tech, I considered, first, a difference in frequency of <1% to indicate that the works in the IR’s LGBTQ microcosm appropriately represent the university for this microcosm. VTechWorks and VTC had 109 terms in common. Only four terms appeared slightly more frequently in VTC: lesbian (+1.2%), “gender identity” (+1.3%), gender expression (+1.5%), and LGBTQ (+1.6). 95% of the terms appeared in both collections with about the same frequency (i.e., <1% difference in hits), which may indicate that the IR’s LGBTQ microcosm adequately represents the university’s scholarship and activities in this microcosm during this study. continued on page 56

• ETDs and VTC had 99 terms in common. 89% of the terms appeared with about equal frequency. • FRC and VTC had only 40 terms in common, with 73% of the terms appearing with about equal frequency. • CC and VTC, the two most public-oriented collections, had 85 terms in common. 87% of the terms appeared with about equal frequency.

If instead of a <1% difference, we consider <2% difference to be about the same frequency of appearance, no terms appeared more frequently in VTC than VTW. One term appeared more frequently in VTW. Therefore, 99% of the terms appeared with about the same frequency so the IR’s LGBTQ microcosm is representative of the university’s scholarship and activities in this microcosm during this study. • ETDs and VTC: 97% of the terms appeared with about the same frequency. • FRC and VTC: 90% of the terms appeared with about the same frequency. • CC and VTC: 95% of the terms appeared with about the same frequency.

As a digital library and a showcase for the university, the IR should accurately reflect the scholarship and activities of its home institution. This study was a preliminary investigation into whether the resources available from VTechWorks are aligned with scholarship and activities at Virginia Tech. Not finding any guidance in the literature for assessing the contents of institutional repositories, I chose to investigate whether comparing the percentage of hits on a common list of terms used by authors at the university website and the IR would indicate a correlation and, therefore, a true reflection of the institution by its IR. Looking into the LGBTQ microcosm also gave me a chance to see whether an unconscious bias had crept in. With a 95% - 99% correlation, I feel confident saying that in the LGBTQ microcosm, VTechWorks accurately reflects Virginia Tech.

This preliminary investigation should be followed by studies of other microcosms in other IRs and universities as well as VTechWorks, before speculating that the IR truly reflects the university. The information community will need to agree on what percentage of similarity indicates a high enough correlation to consider the IR representative of its university. Readers feedback on the research methods as well as potential collaborators who would consider conducting similar studies at their institutions and comparing results among institutions, would be very welcome.

References

Confederation of Open Access Repositories. (2017). Next Generation Repositories. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https:// www.coar-repositories.org/activities/advocacy-leadership/working-group-next-generation-repositories/.

Crow, Raym. (2002). “The case for institutional repositories: A SPARC position paper,” SPARC. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/papers-guides/ the-case-for-institutional-repositories (brief) http://sparc.arl. org/sites/default/files/ir_final_release_102.pdf (full version).

Lynch, Clifford. (2003). “Institutional repositories: Essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age,” ARL Bimonthly Report 226. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https:// www.cni.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/02/arl-br-226-LynchIRs-2003.pdf.

Plutchak, T. Scott and Moore, Kate B. (2017). “Dialectic: The aims of institutional repositories.” Serials Librarian 72. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0361 526X.2017.1320868.

Rust, A. (2017). Design for diversity: Towards inclusive information systems for cultural heritage. Coalition for Networked Information [presentation] Dec. 9, 2017. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://www.cni.org/topics/assessment/design-for-diversity-towards-inclusive-information-systems-for-cultural-heritage.

Scoggins, R. (2018). Broadening your library’s collection: Implementing a LGBTQIA collection development project. C&RL News, 79(3), 114-116, 126. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.3.114.

Winn, S. (2017). The hubris of neutrality in archives. On Archivy. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://medium.com/ on-archivy/the-hubris-of-neutrality-in-archives-8df6b523fe9f.

Appendix A — Sources of LGBTQ Vocabulary

County of San Mateo [California], LGBTQ Commission. LGBTQ Glossary. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://lgbtq. smcgov.org/lgbtq-glossary.

Scoggins, R. (2018). Broadening your library’s collection: Implementing a LGBTQIA collection development project. C&RL News, 79(3), 114-116, 126. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.3.114.

SumOfUs. Progressive’s Style Guide. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://www.alumni.vt.edu/.../Diversity%20Language%20Style%20Guide.pdf.

Virginia Tech. Safe Zone [Training 101]. Core Vocabulary. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://ccc.vt.edu/resources/ safe_zone.html.

University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Stonewall Center. LGBTQIA+ Terminology. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://www.umass.edu/stonewall/sites/default/files/documents/ allyship_term_handout.pdf.

Please Note: This article was originally intended to be part of Against the Grain’s IR themed issue “IRs R Cool Again,” ATG v.31#5, November 2019.

Endnotes

1. I prefer Clifford Lynch’s broad definition: “a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members.” (p2) to Raym Crow’s: “digital collections capturing and preserving the intellectual output of a … university community.” (brief, p1) 2. “a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much larger” from Dictionary, an Apple Inc. application for macOS. 3. I later learned that Leander University does not have an IR. 4. In an attempt to reduce wordiness in this article, when I use “terms,” I mean both terms and phrases. 5. Articles are from Elements, SWORD and those supported by our Open Access Subvention Fund.

Reports of Meetings — 39th Annual Charleston Conference

Column Editors: Ramune K. Kubilius (Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>

and Sever Bordeianu (Head, Print Resources Section, University Libraries, MSC05 3020, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001; Phone: 505-277-2645; Fax: 505-277-9813) <sbordeia@unm.edu>

Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition, “The Time has Come ... to Talk of Many Things!” Charleston Gaillard Center, Francis Marion Hotel, Embassy Suites Historic Downtown, and Courtyard Marriott Historic District — Charleston, SC, November 4-8, 2019

Charleston Conference Reports compiled by: Ramune K. Kubilius (Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>

Column Editor’s Note: Thanks to all of the Charleston Conference attendees who agreed to write short reports highlighting sessions they attended at the 2019 Charleston Conference. Attempts were made to provide a broad coverage of sessions, but there are always more sessions than there are reporters. Some presenters posted their slides and handouts in the online conference schedule. Please visit the conference site, http://www. charlestonlibraryconference.com/, and link to selected videos, interviews, as well as to blog reports written by Charleston Conference blogger, Donald Hawkins. The 2019 Charleston Conference Proceedings will be published in 2020, in partnership with Purdue University Press: http://www.thepress.purdue. edu/series/charleston.

Even if not noted with the reports, Videos of most sessions as well as other video offerings like the “Views from the Penthouse Suite” interviews are being posted to the Charleston Conference YouTube Channel as they are completed, and are sorted into playlists by date for ease of navigation.

In this issue of ATG you will find the third installment of 2019 conference reports. The first two installments can be found in ATG v.32#1, February 2020, and v.32#2, April 2020. We will continue to publish all of the reports received in upcoming print issues throughout the year. — RKK

Library Collections: Creatively Adjusting Budgets to Irvine), Roger C. Schonfeld (Ithaka S+R), Tom Hickerson

LIVELY DISCUSSIONS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2019

I Don’t Want to Go Among Mad People: Adventures in Establishing Good Communication Between Subject Librarians and Technical Service Departments in a Large

Academic Library — Presented by Jennifer Mezick (University of Tennessee), Elyssa Gould (University of Tennessee) — https://sched.co/UZRN analytics and visualization, digitization, metadata, rights man

Reported by Chris Vidas (Clemson University) <cvidas@clemson.edu>

The fun and provocative session title suggested that an engaging and informative session would follow, and the presenters did not disappoint. Gould and Mezick tackled several serious issues surrounding communication between library departments, but they incorporated a refreshing amount of humor into the responses from the audience members in real-time. It was reassuring to learn that many libraries are encountering similar problems, and it was beneficial to hear the perspectives of the presenters as well as those in attendance. This approach made it clear that librarians within distinct units often make assumptions or have false impressions about the work and the roles of colleagues within other units. The discussions that occurred during the question and answer portion provided some valuable insight, but throughout their presentation, Gould and Mezick highlighted a few key concepts to help overcome feelings of separation between siloed departments. Training goes a long way toward learning more about the work that colleagues perform to help eradicate negative or flawed attitudes. Any opportunity to meet with colleagues will further strengthen relationships between units and enhance collaborative endeavors. Lastly, it is important to recognize that most library units are equally busy, and delays in workflows can often be traced to issues occurring outside the library. Communication issues are not limited to large academic libraries, so the guidance offered by the presenters should prove to be beneficial for any libraries that are attempting to address these difficulties. (The session’s slides and a handout can be found in Sched.)

Invest in Open Content and Research Infrastructure — Presented by Julia Gelfand (University of California, (University of Calgary), Barbara Dewey (Penn State University) — https://sched.co/UXst

Reported by Susannah Benedetti (University of North Carolina Wilmington) <benedettis@uncw.edu>

Academic researchers’ needs are changing rapidly, moving beyond library collections and services to expertise with new tools to mine, access, and create new forms of data through curation, discussion. They used polling software to collect and display

agement and dissemination, and collaborative spaces. How can libraries meet these needs? Collection budgets are being tapped as the definition of “a library resources” evolves, but funds are also needed for skills training, positions, equipment, and spaces. Sources include personnel budgets, campus budgets, grants,

continued on page 58

development funds, and advancement campaigns. However, if libraries remain in big deals and pay the same publishers through different channels, are they exacting real change towards opening up research content? Is a more intentional strategy to leave the big deals and redeploy funds straight to new tools and support for university presses and campus publishers to provide OER and OA services? Libraries also face reorganization to shift value from access to knowledge creation. Librarians have concerns, not able to see their professional role “on the other side.” New roles will not replace traditional tenets, but they will grow and afford libraries the opportunity to support unmet faculty research needs and expand libraries’ value in an age of increasingly open content and infrastructures.

Print Collections as Battleground? Replacing Conflict with Conversations in the Use of Library Spaces — Presented by Sarah Tudesco (Yale University Library), Brad Warren (University of Cincinnati), Boaz NadavManes (Lehigh University), Michael Meth (Florida State University) — https://sched.co/UZR8

Note in Sched: Georgie Donovan, Associate Dean, Collections and Content Services, William and Mary, also contributed to this session but was unable to attend and present in person.

Reported by Jeanne Cross (University of North Carolina Wilmington) <crossj@uncw.edu>

Each of the presenters described projects involving weeding or moving print collections as a result of proven space needs in their libraries. The session focused on pushback and communication problems encountered during the projects and steps that were taken to resolve conflict. Fifteen minutes were saved at the end of the presentations for a lively question and answer section.

Themes of feeling under attack were discussed. Despite due diligence, some imagine disasters occurring, taking projects that were not supposed to be a big deal into unexpected areas. A seemingly small project can morph in the minds of others into a symbol reflecting larger campus problems. Misunderstandings and the spread of misinformation can be frustrating, but time, patience, and dialog are keys to smoothing the way for successful change.

Specific recommendations came out of these experiences. Engage your communities as early as possible. Keep messaging simple. Consider external politics as well as internal politics. Finally, find allies and create many opportunities for conversation and communication.

Questions after the presentation included discussion of communication and events around library collections and questions about long-term strategies for print collections. The Future of Print project at

Arizona State University

https://lib.asu.edu/futureprint was referenced.

The Scholarly Kitchen Live-Chat With the Chefs — Presented by Lynnee Argabright (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Todd Carpenter (National Information Standards Organization (NISO)), Melanie Dolechek (moderator, Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP)), Joe Esposito (Clarke & Esposito), Gwen Evans (OhioLINK), Jasmin Lange (Brill), Judy Luther (Informed Strategies LLC) — https://sched.co/UZRc

Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>

The session, moderated by Dolechak, featured a scripted questions and interactive discussion with a number of the “Chefs” who write regularly for The Scholarly Kitchen blog of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP). In one round, Carpenter talked about the interactive digital ecosystem, transformed by the research data landscape. Increasing numbers of repositories (research data sets, etc.). Publishers don’t serve their community if they limit to journal articles. Per Lange,disciplinary distances sometimes mean that bells and whistles desired in one discipline are not needed in another (for example, humanities projects may not fit into a box or platform). New research questions generate new tools: fund and invest in collaboration and open science. Argabright, a library school student and guest blogger, already attended the SSP conference as a guest and was now in Charleston. She shared that library schools emphasize system analysis and user experience. Products should be useful and productive to stakeholders; vendors should collaborate, not overlap. Per Esposito, tools that tie into content are mostly commercial, though some independent consortia develop some. Per Evans, format, not discipline is the driver. In her consortium (OhioLink), supercomputers are in play and they require security experts. Luther talked about next content forms, and later-about scenarios seen in Retraction Watch, e.g., a society that took three years to retract a publication. Discussion time was lively: about scholarly communication (with no global systems) and scholarly communities (with loosely connected networks). Comments with future debate potential: Skepticism about new roles for librarians (Evans comment); Open Access: Is it the “Jonestown” of libraries? (Esposito comment); does OA go against library self-interest? Never dull, the session with the chefs is a welcome (now annual?) addition to the Charleston Conference menu.

A Springboard to OER Success: How One State’s Higher Education Agencies and Academic Libraries are Working in Tandem to Create Greater Awareness of the Value of OER — Presented by Jennifer L. Pate (University of North Alabama), Ron Leonard (Alabama Commission on Higher Education), Katherine Quinnell(Athens State University) — https://sched.co/UZQz

Reported by John Banionis (Villanova University) <john.banionis@villanova.edu>

In this interactive session, Pate and Quinnell explained how they worked with Leonard to secure grant funding supporting OER initiatives at their respective campuses during

the 2018-2019 academic year. At University of North Alabama, the grant funding was used to encourage faculty to adopt or create OERs for their Spring courses, and student satisfaction measurably increased with the OER used in the Spring compared to the traditional textbook used in the previous Fall. Additionally, funding was used to sponsor OER presentations and workshops for faculty, including an ACRL Roadshow presentation from Will Cross of North Carolina State University (NCSU). At Athens State University, the grant funding was spent on staff time supporting the creation of OERs based on freely available online medieval manuscripts as source material. At both institutions, survey statistics, data on OER efforts, and projected student savings were used to justify additional funding requests from internal and external sources. Attendees offered a lively exchange of questions and their own OER successes, including partnering with university presses, creating OER repositories, and using OER for tenure and promotion considerations.

The Time Has Come for eBooks, or Has It? — Presented by Gabrielle Wiersma (University of Colorado Boulder), Leigh Beauchamp (ProQuest) — https://sched.co/UZQt

Note: Two student eBook users joined the panelists Sai Gunturu, an undergraduate at the University of Michigan Flint, and Emmie Mai, a graduate student at The Citadel.

Reported by Jennifer Fairall (Siena College, Standish Library) <jfairall@siena.edu>

The panelists discussed the past, present, and future of eBooks. Although eBooks try to replicate their print equivalents, eBooks can vary quite a bit from the print version in pagination, fonts, conversion of footnotes to endnotes, platform, availability, licensing, compatibility, DRM, and other nuances that affect the content. The student panelists shared perspectives on their own eBook versus print usage. Generally, students prefer print for textbooks and leisure reading because they tend to focus and concentrate better. They will use eBooks on their laptops or library desktop computers for research papers but tend not to download eBooks on mobile devices. Students prefer not to sign up for individual platform accounts to take notes or use other eBook features like highlighting, not because of privacy concerns but because they are not sure how to get back to those notes, do not want another password to remember, and do not want more emails. ProQuest collaborates with libraries and end-users to add or remove features to improve the platform. Has the time come for eBooks? It depends on what the book is being used for. Print books and eBooks go hand in hand.

The Value of Video: Accessibility, Streaming, and the 21st

Century Library — Presented by Kerri Goergen-Doll (Oregon State University), Chris Dappen (Kanopy), Ryan Wilkins (Kanopy) — https://sched.co/Uy8C

Note: Shannon Spurlock, (Sales Director, Kanopy) spoke in place of Chris Dappen (Director of Customer Success, Kanopy).

Reported by Kelly Singh (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University) <robinsk2@erau.edu>

Goergen-Doll, Spurlock, and Wilkins presented on the benefits and challenges of providing streaming video through the library. While streaming video was merely a blip on the radar of libraries ten years ago, today many librarians find that demand of streaming content outpaces budgets. Spurlock outlined research on streaming video, noting a 256% increase in demand for Kanopy content from 2016 to 2019. Research additionally shows that video supports learning outcomes and learning memory. Goergen-Doll reported that the successful streaming video collection at Oregon State University (OSU) mirrors these findings. OSU relies on streaming video to support users on their large e-campus and finds that streaming video provides needed accessibility options and supports multiple learning modalities for all students. Wilkins next shared an analysis of how users at OSU interact with streaming offerings, with statistics showing that users are watching videos that correspond to curricular offerings at OSU and enhance their educational canon. Panelists concluded by discussing budgeting for streaming video. Spurlock suggested partnering with others on campus, such as disability services, individual colleges, or faculty to provide streaming content. Kanopy reported that they are exploring a price-capped program to keep streaming costs for libraries stable.

CONCURRENTS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Begin at the Beginning: Revamping Collection Development Workflow — Presented byJennifer Mezick (University of Tennessee), Elyssa Gould (University of Tennessee) — https://sched.co/UZSF

Reported by Alexis Linoski (Georgia Institute of Technology) <alexis.linoski@library.gatech.edu>

This session presented how the University of Tennessee restructured their collection development workflows to better meet the needs of the library. Based on feedback from within the library and observed needs, a Collections Committee was established with the charge of reviewing new resources, large one-time or recurring resources and questionable resources. The Committee has two co-chairs and representatives from the various subject areas. Resources over $3,000 are reviewed by the committee, which also maintains a list of priorities, but available funds can affect what gets purchased, sometimes overriding the priority.

A standard process was established for requesting new resources (managed via a form), regular communications to the

library were established (with a standard format) and a vendor information form was developed to be sent to vendors to request all needed information for trials and purchases.

These forms and the communication template were uploaded to Sched and are well worth a look.

“The Evolution of Ebook Collections: Learning Something New Every Day” – Presented by Jack Montgomery (Western Kentucky University Libraries), Glenda Alvin (Tennessee State University) — https://sched.co/UZRu

Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>

Veteran librarians Alvin and Montgomery highlighted eBook collection building and management strategies during university landscape changes (i.e., drops in budget, staffing, and/or enrollment), emphasizing the need to adapt, change, and evolve. Alvin shared scenarios of “errands in the wilderness” and “down the river and through the valley,” as it became necessary to finesse internal business practice fund assignments for eBook expenditures, in order to satisfy single title purchase needs for curricular programs. One lesson learned? Optimally, have eBook licenses in place with vendors and platforms, even before it might become necessary to use them.

Montgomery began his presentation about the realities of operating in a tight fiscal environment with a corporate sector quote: “Companies that change may survive, but companies that transform thrive.” eBook adoption, begun in 2002, was spurred as a way of finding better book expenditure value, and ventures evolved across platforms, collections, and DDA. Not all library team members embraced the transition to eBooks, nor did some younger generation library users who still prefer print. eBook collection building now is done using a team approach, with a default of “eBook preferred,” with plans for more expansion into DDA, as well as weeding of older eBook editions. Other “search for tomorrow” plans: seek new models for usage analysis, and overall, continue to work towards a more responsive, fluid organization structure that is adaptable to future institutional changes.

Piloting the Surge: Streaming Video and Academic Libraries — Presented by Anita Foster (The Ohio State University), Azungwe Kwembe (Chicago State University), Joanna Kolendo (Chicago State University), Charlene Snelling (Chicago State University) — https://sched.co/UZSd

Reported by Jeanne Cross (University of North Carolina Wilmington) <crossj@uncw.edu>

This session was broken into two parts. The librarians from Chicago State University presented first, followed by the librarian from The Ohio State University Libraries.

Kwembe, Kolendo, and Snelling described Kanopy’s DDA model, the process of acquisitioning a resource for the library at Chicago State University, and the promotion and marketing that was done for Kanopy by the library. The library had a small fund for their initial trial of this resource, but they were pleased overall with the results.

Foster’s presentation, additionally titled From Trickle to Torrent, detailed three, 3-year pilots of streaming video packages. Docuseek2, Kanopy DDA, and Swank were chosen for review. Use of all packages started out slow the first year, increased in the second, and had taken off by the third year. The task force evaluated the resources based on use, subject coverage, and satisfactory user experience. In the end, they decided to continue to provide access to packages from all three vendors.

Discussion after the presentations focused on unsustainable costs of streaming videos and how to place limits and/or gain some control over budgets for what is clearly a high demand area.

State of the Academic Library: Results from the 2019 Academic Libraries Survey — Presented by Oren BeitArie (ExLibris), Dr.Dennis M. Swanson (University of North Carolina at Pembroke) — https://sched.co/UZSj

Notes: Shlomi Kringel (Corporate VP of Learning and Research Solutions, ExLibris) joined the panel as a speaker and Bob Banerjee (Director of Marketing, Ex Libris) served as moderator. Oren Beit-Arie (Chief Strategy Officer with ProQuest) was originally scheduled but did not present in this session.

Reported by Roger Cross (University of North Carolina at Pembroke) <Roger.Cross@uncp.edu>

Banerjee introduced this session which reviewed the “Ex Libris Library Journal report,” a survey of 244 Academic Libraries, on the impact of academic libraries in educational institutions. If based on annual budgets and campus awareness of the library’s role, the overview is negative because budgets have continued to decline, and the library’s role on campus and for research seems to have declined with it.

Swanson believes this trend will worsen as declining demographics will mean continued declining library budgets. Enrollment will fall for the next few years and universities funded by tuition should prepare for worsening conditions. In addition, Swanson noted, there has been a national trend in which administration and non-academic costs in Higher Education has increased while library funds have decreased.

Kringel pointed out that when our users, faculty and students alike, do not understand where the resources they use originate, then they tend to devalue the library. Thus, libraries need to publicize the value of the scholarly tools the library provides. The library has faded from view in the plethora of online resources.

The report also that shows most librarians believe they can “justify budget increases by demonstrating increased value,” and much of the remaining part of the session was devoted to discussions of how to demonstrate value to universities; this including course packs, affordable learning initiatives, Open Access, and even mission statements.

The survey results themselves are available for viewing at the following url: https://page.exlibrisgroup.com/library-journal-report-download. continued on page 64