Against the Grain V32#6 Full Issue by against-the-grain

c/o Katina Strauch Post Office Box 799 Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482

ALA MIDWINTER issue volume 32, number 6

ISSN: 1043-2094

DECEMBER 2020 - JANUARY 2021

“Linking Publishers, Vendors and Librarians”

Will this Pandemic Ever End? by Bob Nardini (Vice President, Library Services, ProQuest Books) <bob.nardini@proquest.com>

hat wasn’t a question we asked when the pandemic began. Back then, in March, as we were sent home from workplaces, as schools closed, as shopping the grocery aisles was like a treasure hunt, we’d expected to be back in the office by summer; wondered when the spring school term would resume; hoped, at the store, we’d managed to buy enough of the necessities to last. That’s when the idea arose for this issue of Against the Grain. I thought, at the time, that the issue might be a retrospective account of how academic libraries and their parent institutions came through a period of

historic disruption, when everything that had been normal suddenly wasn’t. And that’s partly true; the contributors to this issue do recount the steps libraries took to face COVID-19. How Zoom became their central artery. How their print collection became problematic in ways nobody anticipated. How members of the teaching faculty needed the help of librarians in ways they’d never thought about. But today — in mid-November 2020 — much of this has become routine. The spring’s emergency measures are now daily library S.O.P., the “new normal,” a phrase by now we could all repeat in our sleep, and

If Rumors Were Horses

ello everyone! Happy New Year! This is the very last ATG issue that will be totally in print! See our letter from the editor (p.6) that will explain what’s happening with us at Charleston Hub! Here’s hoping it’s a great new year for each and every one of us! We are planning lots of good changes! Each print issue of ATG in 2021 will be 64 pages only. We will experiment with what should be in the 64 pages. Please let me know if you want to nominate something for print. All issues of ATG will be delivered online but the first 64 print issue pages will be embargoed for This adorable shih tzu mix 6 months. We know that most of you prefer online so is Shilah. She belongs to this is an experiment and we will see how it turns out! Sharna Williams, Registrar Thanks for your perseverance and patience with us! for the Charleston Library Saw the post that unit sales of print books rose Conference. Sharna says 8.2% in 2020 over 2019 at outlets that report to NPD she is about 8 months old in this picture. She is a cutie! continued on page 9

probably do. While the news at last brings encouraging, credible reports of progress in development of an anti-COVID vaccine, case counts and death counts are on the rise, nobody knows how or when a proven vaccine will be distributed, and when it is distributed, how many people will decline to take it. Nobody knows for how much longer campus spaces will be desolate, classrooms will stay locked, libraries operate in a half-closed, halfopen state. Today, when we wonder when libraries will reopen, we also wonder how much of what has changed will never change back. We all sense that we’ve entered a new stage in the history of academic libraries, but none of us knows exactly continued on page 8

What To Look For In This Issue: Web Archiving: The Dream and the Reality ...................................... 24 Prioritizing Digital Collections...... 60 The Used Book Market: Changes for Libraries.................................... 65 Marketing Planning When Nothing Goes as Planned............................. 67 Interviews

Jack Farrell.................................... 25 Rick Anderson................................ 29 Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe.................. 69 Peter Stockmann ........................... 72 Profiles Encouraged

People, Library and Company Profiles............................................ 84 Plus more............................See inside

1043-2094(202012/202101)32:6;1-5

INVEST WISELY BUILD THE PERFECT COLLECTION FOR YOUR SCHOOL connect.acspubs.org/eba

Evidence-Based and Data-Driven Get Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) from select academic publishers in your trusted GOBI® workflow.

EBA programs offer librarians the flexibility to choose broad or granular access to content from a specific publisher, involve users directly in the selection of content, and maintain control of making final, informed decisions. When libraries choose EBA through GOBI, they benefit from the following workflow solutions: Usage statistics, reporting and selection support Deduplication of titles in collection Easy identification of owned or active evidence-based titles Integration with local library system High-quality cataloging records Unlimited DRM-free access

Simplify your library workflow with GOBI. gobi.ebsco.com

Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094) (USPS: 012-618), Copyright 2020 by the name Against the Grain, LLC is published six times a year in February, April, June, September, November, and December/January by Against the Grain, LLC. Business and Editorial Offices: PO Box 799, 1712 Thompson Ave., Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. Accounting and Circulation Offices: same. Call (843-509-2848) to subscribe. Periodicals postage is paid at Charleston, SC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Against the Grain, LLC, PO Box 799, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482.

Editor:

TABLE OF CONTENTS v.32 #6 December 2020 - January 2021 © Katina Strauch

ISSUES, NEWS, & GOINGS ON Rumors.................................................. 1 From Your Editor................................. 6

Letters to the Editor............................. 6 Deadlines............................................... 6

Katina Strauch (Retired, College of Charleston)

FEATURES

Cris Ferguson (Murray State) Tom Gilson (Retired, College of Charleston) Matthew Ismail (Central Michigan University)

Will this Pandemic Ever End? — Guest Editor: Bob Nardini

Associate Editors:

Research Editors:

Judy Luther (Informed Strategies)

Assistants to the Editor:

Ileana Jacks Toni Nix (Just Right Group, LLC)

International Editor:

Rossana Morriello (Politecnico di Torino)

Contributing Editors:

Glenda Alvin (Tennessee State University) Deni Auclair (De Gruyter) Rick Anderson (Brigham Young University) Sever Bordeianu (U. of New Mexico) Todd Carpenter (NISO) Eleanor Cook (East Carolina University) Will Cross (NC State University) Anne Doherty (Choice) Michelle Flinchbaugh (U. of MD Baltimore County) Joyce Dixon-Fyle (DePauw University) Michael Gruenberg (Gruenberg Consulting, LLC) Chuck Hamaker (Retired, UNC, Charlotte) Bob Holley (Retired, Wayne State University) Donna Jacobs (MUSC) Ramune Kubilius (Northwestern University) Myer Kutz (Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.) Tom Leonhardt (Retired) Stacey Marien (American University) Jack Montgomery (Western Kentucky University) Alayne Mundt (American University) Bob Nardini (ProQuest) Jim O’Donnell (Arizona State University) Ann Okerson (Center for Research Libraries) Anthony Paganelli (Western Kentucky University) Rita Ricketts (Blackwell’s) Jared Seay (College of Charleston) Corey Seeman (University of Michigan) Lindsay Wertman (IGI Global)

ATG Proofreader:

Will this Pandemic Ever End? ..................................................................................1

by Bob Nardini — This is an ongoing account of how academic libraries and their parent institutions are attempting to deal with this period of historic disruption when everything that was once normal isn’t anymore.

Why Two-Year and Community College Academic Libraries Will Never Be the Same after COVID-19: An Op-Ed ..........................................................................12

by John Lassiter — Old routines have been modified, but new ones have also taken their place.

COVID and Consortia: Solving our Information Challenges at Scale ...............14 by Kim Armstrong — Kim asks where do we want to be after COVID?

The Small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times of Disruption...................17

by Erin Gallagher and David Isaak — The focus for Erin and David is team leadership, but they touch on all kinds of issues, small and large — to echo the title of their contribution.

COVID-19 and the Bubonic Plague: What Have We Learned? ..........................22

by Gracemary Smulewitz — Plagues have afflicted society throughout history, including in our own time. Gracemary Smulewitz, longtime Head of Collection Services at Rutgers University, now retired, reminds us of this.

Op Ed – Web Archiving: The Dream and the Reality ..........................................24

by Joseph Puccio — As the numbers show, most of the websites that have been created over the past quarter century are now inactive. What significant content has disappeared without being archived?

Back Talk — Key Notes from Charleston Conference .........................................86

by Jim O’Donnell — If we’ve learned nothing in these months, it’s that there are some excellent things that we can do online.

ATG INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Graphics:

Jack Farrell – Managing Director, Jack Farrell & Associates..............................25 Rick Anderson – Associate Dean for Collections and Scholarly Communication, University of Utah, and University Librarian, Brigham Young University........29 Profiles Encouraged..................................................................................................84

Production & Ad Sales:

REVIEWS

Caroline Goldsmith (Charleston Hub) Bowles & Carver, Old English Cuts & Illustrations. Grafton, More Silhouettes. Ehmcke, Graphic Trade Symbols By German Designers. Grafton, Ready-to-Use Old-Fashioned Illustrations. The Chap Book Style. Toni Nix, Just Right Group, LLC., P.O. Box 412, Cottageville, SC 29435, phone: 843-835-8604 fax: 843-835-5892 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Advertising information:

Toni Nix, phone: 843-835-8604, fax: 843-835-5892 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Publisher:

A. Bruce Strauch

Send correspondence, press releases, etc., to: Katina Strauch, Editor, Against the Grain, LLC Post Office Box 799 Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482 cell: 843-509-2848 <kstrauch@comcast.net>

Against the Grain is indexed in Library Literature, LISA, Ingenta, and The Informed Librarian. Authors’ opinions are to be regarded as their own. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This issue was produced on an iMac using Microsoft Word, and Adobe CS6 Premium software under Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Against the Grain is copyright ©2020 by Katina Strauch

Against The Grain

Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews......................35

by Corey Seeman — Two types of reviews in one column. And be sure to check out Corey’s reviewers page at https://sites.google.com/view/squirrelman/atg-readers-roundup.

Collecting to the Core...............................................................................................41 A Case Study in Creating a New Linguistics List by Adam Siegel — Disciplinary trends may shift, but some classics never go out of style.

Booklover — Poetry. Renewal. ..............................................................................43 by Donna Jacobs — Louise Gluck, an American poet, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Oregon Trails — Reading Ulysses ..........................................................................44

by Thomas W. Leonhardt — Don’t postpone your reading out of fear you may never finish it, won’t like it, or you won’t understand it.

ATG Food + Beverage Roundup — Holiday Favorites.........................................82

by Nicole Ameduri and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe — Nicole and Lisa know what to eat and drink!

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

ALA MIDWINTER Issue LEGAL ISSUES

Edited by Bruce Strauch and Jack Montgomery

Legally Speaking — Creative Commons and Infringement.................................45

by Anthony Paganelli — Copyright owners need to be careful and diligent about the terms and conditions within their licensing agreements.

“Linking Publishers, Vendors and Librarians”

Questions and Answers — Copyright Column......................................................47

Bet You Missed It......................................................................................................10 by Bruce Strauch — What do Shere Hite and Traitors and Spycatchers have in common?

And They Were There — Reports of Meetings......................................................49

by Ramune K. Kubilius — In this issue of ATG you will find the final installment of 2019 Charleston Conference reports. Many thanks to everyone who submitted reports for the sessions they attended.

Don’s Conference Notes............................................................................................53

by Donald T. Hawkins — Marketing communications for libraries, SSP and the Charleston Library Conference, activating opportunities, and rethinking the status quo are all subjects from Don’s reports.

BOOKSELLING AND VENDING

Optimizing Library Services ...................................................................................55

Voter Fraud, COVID-19 #VaccinesKill, and Social Media Censoring: How Librarians and Educators Can Combat Fake News and Misinformation by Prof. Nicole S. Delellis and Prof. Victoria L. Rubin — Social media has transformed how we acquire news.

Both Sides Now: Vendors and Librarians..............................................................58

Advisory Boards by Michael Gruenberg — Companies that pay heed to what the customer wants are likely to be more successful.

Biz of Digital — Comparing Apples and Oranges ................................................60

Prioritizing Digital Collections by Mikala Narlock and Peggy Griesinger — This is about the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh library’s attempt to standardize digital collections workflows.

The Digital Toolbox: Case Studies, Best Practices and Data for the Academic Librarian....................................................................................................................63

Academic Libraries Further Embrace eBooks as Demand Increases During COVID-19 Pandemic by Steve Rosato — The closing of physical campuses and libraries had accelerated how academic libraries utilize digital collections.

Random Ramblings — The Used Book Market: Changes for Libraries.............65

by Bob Holley — Overall, the market for used books will continue to decline but will not disappear entirely.

Marketing Touchpoints............................................................................................67 Marketing Planning When Nothing Goes as Planned by Jill Stover Heinze — One of the most immediate and notable effects of the pandemic are the changes in work and services.

Squirreling Away: Managing Information Resources & Libraries .....................80

Puzzling Times: Libraries & Life in the Age of COVID-19 (Libraries & Change Management) by Corey Seeman — Corey talks about puzzling times and how he longs for the libraries of old, when we had more demand than space.

TECHNOLOGY AND STANDARDS

Emerging Tech: To Be or Not to Be ........................................................................69 by Deni Auclair and John Corkery — This includes an interview with Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe.

The Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with Peter Stockmann ...........................72 by Darrell W. Gunter — In this issue Darrell has invited the Managing Partner of Gamut Strategies and SVP of Areopa to discuss managing change.

Let’s Get Technical ...................................................................................................76

Meta-Appearances: Metadata Futures, Collaborations, and Aesthetics by Jesse A. Lambertson — This article calls out opportunities for TS (technical services) to team with PS (public services) for the user.

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Uncommon ...

Against the Grain is your key to the latest news about libraries, publishers, book jobbers, and subscription agents. ATG is a unique collection of reports on the issues, literature, and people that impact the world of books, journals, and electronic information.

Unconventional ...

ATG is published six times a year, in February, April, June, September, November, and December/January. A six-issue subscription is available for only $55 U.S. ($65 Canada, $95 foreign, payable in U.S. dollars), making it an uncommonly good buy for all that it covers. Make checks payable to Against the Grain, LLC and mail to: Against the Grain c/o Katina Strauch Post Office Box 799 Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482 *Wire transfers are available, email <kstrauch@comcast.net> for details, however, credit cards are the preferred alternative to checks ($25 fee applies).

_______________________________________________ City State Zip _______________________________________________ Company Phone _______________________________________________ Email _______________________________________________

PUBLISHING

Name _______________________________________________ Address _______________________________________________

by Will Cross — As always, many relevant questions and answers. Do you need to learn more about Canadian copyright law for education?

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

From Your (adapting) Editor: Dear loyal Against the Grain subscribers! With this letter, we are announcing some radical changes to our publishing strategy! Against the Grain began many years ago (March 1989) as a four-page mimeographed newsletter. Back then the Internet was an idea in Tim Berners-Lee’s computer. But time has changed. I love print over electronic and books over computers, but progress has invaded! • We are now delivering all Against the Grain and Charleston Conference content via Charleston Hub https://www. charleston-hub.com/. • In 2021, we will begin to offer Against the Grain online with a small print issue (64 pages). Against the Grain will continue with the usual content but some of it will be online and some will

be in print. The print issue will be available online along with content that is available only online. • As well as UN and PW access, you will also have access enabled by IP. • Against the Grain will also be indexed on EDS, Ebsco Discovery Service. • We will provide DOIs for our content. • Currently, all of Against the Grain is open access on Charleston Hub. • We will be offering a subscription to Charleston Hub content for 2021. Our subscription prices have not changed in many years — $55 U.S.; $65 Canada; and $95 all others.

Letters to the Editor Send letters to <kstrauch@comcast.net>, phone 843-509-2848, or snail mail: Against the Grain, Post Office Box 799, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. You can also send a letter to the editor from the ATG Homepage at http://www.against-the-grain.com. Dear Tom and Katina: I’m really enjoying seeing how the Charleston Hub is evolving. Hopefully I’ll be able to tell you in person when next November rolls around. All the best, Scott T. Scott Plutchak <splutchak@gmail.com>.

AGAINST THE GRAIN DEADLINES VOLUME 33 — 2021-2022 2021 Events Annual Report, ACRL MLA, SLA, Book Expo ALA Annual Reference Publishing Charleston Conference ALA Midwinter

Issue

Ad Reservation Camera-Ready

February 2021 April 2021 June 2021 September 2021 November 2021 Dec. 2021-Jan. 2022

01/05/21 02/18/21 04/01/21 06/10/21 08/12/21 11/04/21

01/19/21 03/11/21 04/22/21 07/08/21 09/02/21 11/22/21

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT Toni Nix <justwrite@lowcountry.com>; Phone: 843-835-8604; Fax: 843-835-5892; USPS Address: P.O. Box 412, Cottageville, SC 29435; FedEx/UPS ship to: 398 Crab Apple Lane, Ridgeville, SC 29472.

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

• Those who attended the 2020 Charleston Conference virtually will receive a complimentary subscription to Charleston Hub! We have promotions and new staff positions that go into effect over the next few months. Charleston Hub staff: • Leah Hinds, Executive Director, Charleston Hub • Caroline Goldsmith, Associate Director, Charleston Hub • Toni Nix, Advertising Manager, Charleston Hub (including Against the Grain and Charleston Conference advertising) • Kent Anderson, Director and Acquisitions Editor, Scholarly Content, Charleston Hub • Tom Gilson, Managing Editor, Charleston Hub • Meg White, Director of Vendor Partnerships, Charleston Hub • Matthew Ismail, Managing Editor, Charleston Briefings, Charleston Hub • Lars Meyer, Manager, Charleston Proceedings, Charleston Hub • Rossana Morriello, Manager of International Content (Italy), Charleston Hub • Currently seeking, Marketing and Communications Manager, Charleston Hub The Charleston Conference Proceedings will be moving from Purdue University Press to Michigan Publishing. Our previous years’ content will continue to be at Purdue, while future volumes will be available open access on Michigan’s Fulcrum platform and print on demand. I know these are huge changes! We are happy to answer any questions or issues that any of you have. Thanks for your continued help and support! Happy New Year! Katina Strauch, Yr. Ed. <http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Discover

OSA Publishing’s journals account for 39% of total citations and 34% of all articles published in the field of

optics and photonics (2019 JCR).

Ta ke a closer look at.... The CHARLESTON REPORT Business Insights into the Library Market

You Need The Charleston Report...

if you are a publisher, vendor, product developer, merchandiser, consultant or wholesaler who is interested in improving and/or expanding your position in the U.S. library market.

Subscribe today at our discounted rate of only $75.00 The Charleston Company 6180 East Warren Avenue, Denver, CO 80222 Phone: 303-282-9706 • Fax: 303-282-9743

Will this Pandemic Ever End? from page 1 what that means. We know that budgets and staffing are bound to be affected; but to what degree, we don’t know. We know that many people have successfully adapted to remote, online work, teaching, and study; but we don’t know how beneficial that’s been, and we know, too, that many people haven’t done well. We know that electronic resources of all kinds will be the core of teaching and learning; but we don’t know if the structural models of an industry, now so central to higher education, will adapt so that fewer people are prevented from using these resources. We know that print will not disappear, but we don’t know quite what to do about it. We know that the social and racial inequities in society at large are reflected in the world of higher education, and within that in the services provided by libraries; but we are unsure of being able to make a difference. We do know that one day, COVID-19 will be under control. And we know when that day comes something will have changed, for academic libraries and for the larger world. In this sense, the pandemic will never end. 8

As John Lassiter puts it in his contribution to this issue, “Old routines have been modified, but new ones have also taken their place.” John, today the Director of Library Services at Georgia Northwestern Technical College, a multi-campus, two-year college located in Rome, Georgia, has worked in all kinds of libraries over his long career. One thing he knows from those years is that “temporary effects and measures may (and often do) become permanent.” Will the students and instructors who have learned how to operate away from campus, with little or no need for the library, return to their work as they did it prior to COVID-19? Or are they more likely to stay away? Every library, John believes, is going to need to prove its value in a post-COVID world. He has suggestions on that, and ends his contribution with a two-word piece of advice all librarians would do well to follow. If there is a librarian anywhere who has deeper experience with academic library consortia than Kim Armstrong, I’d be surprised. Kim, who has worked for several groups, is today Executive Director of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, an organization based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. For her contribution to Against the Grain, Kim

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

interviewed ten colleagues who direct consortia from coast-to-coast across the country. The pandemic has been a “clarifying event” for consortia, Kim writes, one that will require them to demonstrate their value to membership. In saying this, Kim echoes the advice John Lassiter gives to libraries about their own local communities. “When do we move out of crisis mode,” Kim quotes one of her fellow directors, “and think about our strategic directions? Where do we want to be after COVID?” One thing that will certainly happen, long after COVID, is that librarians who succeed us will sometimes wonder what it was like, in 2020, for a frontline librarian to face this pandemic. One place they will look to find out, or should look, is this issue’s contribution from Erin Gallagher, E-Resources Librarian at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, and David Isaak, Director of Collection Services for Reed College, Portland, Oregon. Erin and David, who formerly were colleagues at Reed, have recorded a conversation with one another that extended from June to September. Curious future researchers will learn a lot from Erin and David, but so will readers today, who will also have the chance, now that it is past, to relive with distance the early, chaotic days of lockdown. Did you realize communication can be more challenging in a small organization, such as Reed, than in a mammoth library, like Florida? Have you been in Zoom meetings with “hot fire in the chat window,” that weren’t “a big happy love fest?” Do you know anyone who used to be “so anti-camera” pre-pandemic, but now is “so happy” on Zoom to see the faces of colleagues? The focus for Erin and David is team leadership, but they touch on all kinds of issues, small and large — to echo the title of their contribution — and I promise you will enjoy reading their joint take on these pandemic months. Because none of us has seen anything like it, it’s natural to think of COVID-19 as unprecedented. That’s not true, of course. Plagues have afflicted society throughout history, including in our own time. Gracemary Smulewitz, longtime Head of Collection Services at Rutgers University, now retired, reminds us of this. She’s based her contribution on a New Yorker interview with Gianna Pomata, an historian who reflected on how the terrible Bubonic Plague of the fourteenth century caused a break with centuries-old ways of thought that led continued on page 9

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Will this Pandemic Ever End? from page 8 in time to the Renaissance. In her own field, the history of medicine, Pomata described how the scholastic medicine of the Middle Ages, based on a fusion of ancient texts and astrology, came to be overturned in favor of an empirical, scientific approach. Waves of new creative thinking will emerge from our own pandemic, Pomata believes. Gracemary thinks that Pomata is right, and concludes her own reflections on a note of promise for academic libraries, where, she writes, we have “a lot to hope for and to work for.”

Rumors from page 1

Online

Books “(…) these broad resources for essays and journal articles, searchable at the full-text level so users can ﬁnd them and details across subject areas, are especially valuable (…). Summing up: Highly Recommended”

SPECIAL OFFER Special prices for recent Backlist Collections (2018-2019-2020) and deep discounts for Archive

(M.C. Schaus, in: Choice)

BookScan. I think that this is great news! https://www. publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/ article/85256-print-unit-sales-rose-8-2-in-2020.html So very sad to learn that the smiling, affable John Laraway born Nov. 1, 1940 in Grand Rapids, MI, passed away January 2 of cancer. After he served in the U.S. Navy, John finished college and began an almost 50-year career in the book business selling to College and University Libraries in the U.S. In 1968, on a blind date he met the “light of his life,” Mariann, and they married on July 4, 1968. They were together for over 52 years. John took up jogging at 40 to lose weight he had gained after quitting smoking. It became a long-time avocation. He ran for almost 30 years without missing a day, all outside in all type of weather. Favorite places were alongside water, whether it be lakes, rivers or oceans. Running alongside the Atlantic in Key West will always standout as a number one favorite. He also enjoyed going to sons and grandkids various sporting events and other activities. Upon moving to south Florida in 1981, he became a big Miami Hurricane fan along with his sons. https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/fort-lauderdale-fl/ john-laraway-9983221

Over 1,900 eBooks in the Humanities Flexible purchase options: entire Collections or tailor-made lists Rich variety of disciplines in the Humanities Book History, Classics, Early Modern Studies, Language & Literature, Music History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, etc. Almost 1,300 titles on Medieval Studies

Perpetual access No DRM: users can download, print and save eBooks

Like a lot of you, I have been spending quite a bit of time reading books that I never got around to reading. Viz — Tom Leonhardt’s column this time about finally reading Ulysses, p.44. I have loved reading David Worlock’s book, Facing Up to Father, the pleasures and pains of a Cotswold childhood. It is a delightful book! Did you see the article by Richard Charkin about it in Publishing Perspectives? https://publishingperspectives.com/2021/01/richard-charkinthank-goodness-for-rule-breakers-covid19/ My husband’s grandfather for many years managed one of the Rockefeller estates in Fayetteville NC. It was sold to the Army ten years ago, but in our early married life we spent some wonderful times at Overhills. It was isolated and wonderfully quiet. My husband Bruce enjoyed growing up riding horses and witnessing fox hunts — many topics that are covered in Facing up to Father. It was a different time. The book doesn’t talk about David’s amazing career in publishing. I hope that he will write a memoir about that as well. Still, we do have David continued on page 13

Bet You Missed It Press Clippings — In the News — Carefully Selected by Your Crack Staff of News Sleuths Column Editor: Bruce Strauch (Retired, The Citadel) Editor’s Note: Hey, are y’all reading this? If you know of an article that should be called to Against the Grain’s attention ... send an email to <kstrauch@comcast.net>. We’re listening! — KS

Let’s Read Paradise Lost Beryl Markham, West With the Night (1942) (lost African Eden); (2) Gregor von Rezzori, The Snows of Yesteryear (1989) (lost Austro-Hungarian Empire); (3) Colette, My Mother’s House (1922) (Colette’s lost childhood); (4) Giorgio Bassant, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962) (Italian Jews in 1938); (5) André Aciman, Out of Egypt (1994) (lost Alexandria). See — Lynn Freed, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12-13, 2020, p.C10. (Lynn Freed is the author of The Last Laugh.)

ObitS of Note Shere Hite (1942-2020) dropped out of Columbia University grad school when told she couldn’t write about female sexuality. A part-time model, she was horrified by an ad she appeared in — “The typewriter so smart, she doesn’t have to be” — joined a protest and became an early member of NOW. A discussion of the female orgasm inspired her to survey 3,500 women and write The Hite Report in 1976. It depicted American women as understimulated and men as riddled with performance anxiety. See — “The researcher who upended views of sexuality,” The Week, Sept. 25, 2020, p.39. Edie Locke (1921-2020) was a destitute teenage refugee from Nazi Germany in 1939 working packing toothbrushes in a factory. She took night classes at Brooklyn College and talked her way into a job at Harper’s Bazaar. Mademoiselle discovered her in the early 1950s, and she became editor-in-chief. She mentored Betsey Johnson, Ralph Lauren, and Donna Karan, and hired Joyce Carol Oates as a book reviewer. She resisted imitating Cosmopolitan’s sex and relationships obsession and was fired in 1980. Mademoiselle died in 2001. She reinvented herself as a TV producer and cable host of “You!” In her 90s, she wrote a newsletter column for her senior living home. See — James R. Hagerty, “Refugee From Nazis, Edited Mademoiselle,” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 3-4, 2020, p.A9.

10 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Let’s Read About Con Artists Herman Melville, The Confidence Man (1857) (a new one for me; trickster on a river boat); (2) Pope Brock, Charlatan (2008) (In 20s & 30s John Brinkley surgically implanted goat testicles in the gullible rich. Used radio for advertising. Made $12 million at the height of the Depression.); (3) Dean Jobb, Empire of Deception (2015) (pyramid schemes during Roaring Twenties); (4) Emmanuel Carrère, The Adversary (2001) (pretend resarcher for WHO; embezzled fortunes); (5) Charles Baxter, The Soul Thief (2008) (novel about a character appropriation). See — Miles Harvey, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 5-6, 2020, p.C8. (Harvey is the author of The King of Confidence.)

Let’s Read About Traitors and Spycatchers Nigel West, Ed., The Guy Liddell Diaries Vols. 1 & 2 (2005) (high MI5 officer; diaries locked away for 50 years); (2) Richard Griffiths, Patriotism Perverted (1998) (pro-Nazis of the Brit ruling class); (3) Rebecca West, The Meaning of Treason (1947) (Rebecca reports the trials of British turn-coats); (4) Henry Hemming, Agent M (2017) (Maxwell Knight, the great MI5 spyhandler); (5) Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm (2009) (MI5’s “carefully tailored” account of the war). See — Tim Tate, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 14-15, 2020, p. C8. (Tate is the author of Hitler’s British Traitors: The Secret History of Spies, Saboteurs and Fifth Columnists.)

Let’s Read About Civil Wars in Families Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire (2010) (American Civil War divides Britain; (2) Nadine Gordimer, Burger’s Daughter (1979) (Afrikaans family split in South Africa); (3) Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King (2019) (Ethiopians split by Mussolini’s invasion in 1935); (4) Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels (1960) (Reds and Nazis in the same family); (5) H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica (1909) (Wells examines the New Woman). See — Rachel Holmes, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 26-27, 2020, p. C8. (Holmes is the author of Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel.) <http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Mindful Drinking The Danish concept of hygge — cozy comfort — is well known. Now we have the Swedish lagom — not too little, not too much. When Vikings passed around a horn of mead, it had to touch everyone’s lips. So you only took an adequate sip. For your guide, seek out Anna Brones, Live Lagom: Balanced Living, the Swedish Way. Environmental sustainability, minimizing waste, embracing foods of the season. And for your drinking guide, there is Selma Slabiak’s Spirit of the North. In it, you will find the Svalbard Sling: ounce of aquavit (or gin or vodka), citrus cordial using the fruit, peel and all. Three ounces of seltzer to top with festive bubbles. Star anise for garnish. See — Kara Newman, “Drink Like A Viking,” The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 26-27, 2020, p.D5. Monetizing Your Blog

As big media melts down, freelance niche media proliferates wildly. Substack is there to get your email newsletter to your market. They handle thousands of newsletters with 250,000 paid subscribers. Spiritual issues, parenting advice, Bitcoin forecasts, sports, witchcraft, cricket, bread baking. All there. Idiosyncratic snacks, dreamy properties in Zillow, beauty, pop culture. Check. The founders view Substack as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. Much as Lyft and Uber have become larger than the older taxi industry, Substack thinks this will be bigger than the older newspaper industry. See — Anna Wiener, “You’ve Got Mail,” The New Yorker, Jan. 4 & 11, 2021, p.70.

Outlaw Influencer

David Lesh was taken as a small child to India by hippie parents where the mother adapted Indian music for the cello and the father made sculpture out of dead animals. He spent his adolescence as a trouble-maker, settled in Colorado where he became skilled on skis, performed aerial tricks for sponsors. Then he founded a mountain sports outwear company called Virtika and sponsored his products on social media. As the image developed, he moved to rally cars, snowmobiles, parachutes, bikinis and hooch. He ran a car through a pile of flaming grocery carts. Then he got into the really outrageous stuff. Patagonia, North Face et al. loudly virtue signal about stewardship of the environment. Lesh decided to court gearheads, teen Internet trolls, and flouters of piety. He filmed himself running snowmobiles through fragile tundra and defecating in a pristine lake. Fact is, the West is getting crowded. The private jet and unoccupied second home crowd is facing off with unemployed miners, loggers and van-living drifters. The latter group likes him snowmobiling off a ski jump. But the eco folks send him death threats. Lesh vows most of the pics are photoshopped, and anyhow, it’s the big ski resorts that wreck the land with their lodges, parking lots and lifts. Meanwhile the Feds are onto him, and he is so rude in court, he faces jail for a misdemeanor. See — Nick Baumgarten, “Bad Influencer,” The New Yorker, Jan. 18, 2021, p. 18.

Download digital publications for free

Why Two-Year and Community College Academic Libraries Will Never Be the Same after COVID-19: An Op-Ed by John Lassiter (Director of Library Services, Georgia Northwestern Technical Institute) <jlassiter@gntc.edu>

n oft-repeated statement I have been hearing with increased frequency among library staff, faculty, students, and colleagues goes something like this: “… I sure will be glad when things get back to normal.” Yes, a little bit of normalcy would be great right about now. However, by “normal” do we mean the pre-COVID status quo of our own particular corner of the academic library world? Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, I determined to shed my normalcy bias and asked myself if two-year and community college libraries would be the same after COVID-19. Academic libraries are a diverse group, as I know from having worked in various capacities for public, research, and two-year libraries for thirty-four years. The current and potential future impact from COVID varies according to their location, type of institution, institutional culture, and other factors. The conclusion I came to was that the systemic changes we were experiencing would ultimately change the library landscape permanently. Before we delve into how things might be different, we will first need to consider some common characteristics that define the culture and academic environment of those institutions. Two-year and community colleges are not research institutions, and typically are non-residential. Many students take their General Education courses there and then transfer to local or regional institutions of higher learning. Outside of General Education courses, programs tend to be very hands-on and vocational in nature. Pre-COVID, many two-year and community colleges were also aggressively pursuing the expansion of online courses, and programs that were completely online. All of these factors, when combined, create an academic environment and culture which trends toward not being library-centric. Under these circumstances, library services and the “library as place” become vital in insuring the library’s role on a a campus. Now that the pre-conditions and caveats are out of the way, we can look at the question so many of us are asking — “What kind of things might be different post-COVID?” I am no prophet, so I will not speak in terms of exact, precise changes in any detail. Rather, I will comment on some of the trends and areas of concern I have witnessed and their possible impact. First on my list of concerns is the possibility that temporary effects and measures may (and often do) become permanent. Lower enrollment leads to budget cuts and furloughs. A reduction in staffing and fewer students on campus leads to reduced operating hours and facility usage. Fewer hours open and acquisitions cuts result in a smaller, less up-to-date collection, with corresponding reductions in physical item usage. The result is much like a combination of the domino effect with a rinse and repeat cycle. For those institutions that are non-residential,

12 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

the effects of COVID-19 combined with a high percentage of enrollment that is exclusively online will, I think, result in a serious evaluation and reexamination of the traditional brick and mortar campus. In some ways, the situation may resemble the decline of brick and mortar retail establishments due to the growth of online shopping. Many of us take for granted that libraries play an integral role in the life of our institutions. We do not worry about losing or even maintaining our relevancy. We do not pursue or contemplate it because we have never really had to. Sadly, not all academic libraries enjoy a high degree of criticality within their institution. Because of COVID-19, academic librarians from all types of institutions will quite possibly experience far more need to assert the value of the resources and services they provide. So how might a librarian in this position go about demonstrating their worth and proving their relevancy? A great place to start is by having direct involvement in teaching and learning, especially when these are virtual. If you currently do not have a place within your Learning Management System (LMS), that needs to change. Librarians must have a seat at the Distance Learning table and take part in that conversation. One component of a stronger presence within your LMS may include new integrations that make it possible to embed library resources and services directly within LMS-based classes. How about “the textbook issue”? That has certainly taken on new urgency and meaning because of COVID. Is your library trying to provide answers and solutions? Academic libraries are greatly in need of a new model for eBook delivery that will directly support teaching and learning. Short of that new model, if your institution is actively pursuing Open Educational Resources (OER), volunteer to serve on the steering committee. Become a provider of the solution to your institution’s online learning resource issues. Because of COVID, we will not be short of new challenges. The challenges will vary by the type and nature of an institution. The challenges will also vary by where the institution is in the reopening process, as well as the degree to which an institution has shifted to online learning. Quite honestly, sometimes remaining optimistic is the greatest challenge of all. Despite possibly sounding like Eeyore, I am really quite the eternal optimist. While not everything will be as it was prior to COVID-19, I believe there will ultimately be enormous opportunities for innovation in small academic libraries. Innovation itself is a challenge, especially on a reduced budget that was probably too small to begin with. How about faculty engagement? My old face to face model of building relationships with faculty is currently on hold, and continued on page 13

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Specialty Journals with IMpact Since 1962

Personal | Professional | Publishing

Part of the

Network

• Available as one-year lease or perpetual purchase 2012 19632012 19722012 1970-

2012 1977-

2012 1962-

2012 19852012 1978-

Volume

Numbe

Janua

ry/Fe

bruar

2012 1971y 2009

SING in ICAL NUR LOG ONTO GER

arch

Rese

JaNua

Ry 2008

| Volume

1, Numbe

h Healt Allied Health g and Home on Nursin are the Medic t of Policy g Home ns from Impac The es: Lesso Ill Nursin nally Servic t g Termi Benefi Amon ge Heart re Ulcers s to Mana Pressu Adult for ents by Older s at Risk Resid ealth Adult Teleh Older lling Use of in its -Dwe e inator Failur g Urban Set Coord ise Amon Exerc Disparities um Data nt h Curre Healt RN Minim the w of xt of ntia Revie nal Conte ior: A with Deme The Work s izatio of Behav Adult Organ vation Older with Obser Direct res for Use Measu

012 008-2

2 -2012

2009

.com

hc.

com

earch

eRes

Nurs

Gero

lated ng-Re fy Runni to Identi Forks of Tuning Study etric Pilot l Use res: A ed Volum Clinica Fractu a Modifi Stress ility of Volumes Reliab d ardize ion and Assess Ankle Precis to the Stand ique se on Score Techn nal Exerci (SAC) of ExertioConcussion of Effects ment Assess

at s

2012 1964-

2012 1976-

Purchase the backfiles today

• Peer-reviewed classic articles going back 50+ YEARS • Impacting the literature, with many Cited in Medline/PubMed Visit www.healio.com/subscribe for pricing information or contact us at customerservice@wyanokegroup.com for pricing details on how your entire institution can access the complete backfiles.

and have access to thousands of articles across the decades.

Megan Stevenson Manager of Customer Relations, Journals

Why Two-Year and Community College Academic ... from page 12 the virtual version is having very mixed results. Some faculty members transition well to a virtual environment, while others are struggling. Lastly, I would like to touch, as an area of concern, upon the habits and routines of faculty, staff, and students. People are creatures of habit. Under intense stimuli or because of fear, those habits change in order to accommodate new circumstances. In response to COVID-19, faculty and students have changed their habits in many ways. Established routines have been broken. Old routines have been modified, but new ones have also taken their place. Where does it leave librarians if faculty and students get out of the habit of going to the campus library? Many other as-yet-unseen factors and trends will conspire to bring about a sea change in how two-year and community college libraries function. The foregoing is strictly my personal opinion on what some of us may be facing very soon, if not already. I feel comfortable, however, in stating one thing as a certainty: The speed of change accelerated dramatically within our profession in 2020. My advice to anyone willing to listen?: Buckle up.

856.848.1000, ext 598 mstevenson@slackinc.com

Rumors from page 9 Worlock.com his wonderful blog which is chock full of all kinds of fascinating information! Continuing with my reading, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is by Nicholas Basbanes who has written many library-related books that have been frequently discussed at the Charleston Conference and on the pages of Against the Grain. Anyway, there are several relevant “tidbits” from the book. Here’s one. “…Obadiah Rich, an expatriate bookseller credited by the bibliographer Nicholas Trübner with having single-handedly created the field of Americana in many stateside libraries; most spectacularly those of James Lenox in New York whose fabulous holdings became the core collection of the New York Public Library… (p.45).” There are many tidbits like this in Cross of Snow (Knopf, 2020). Heard from Rick Anderson! He was asking about Charleston 2021 and if we had plans!? Of course! We are planning to do both in person AND virtual! The 2020 Charleston Virtual Conference was hugely successful (more attendees than ever!)! We can’t give it up! But who knows what the vaccine future holds! Rick was proposing a debate which sounds great! We will do a debate online and hopefully in person. Time will tell! BTW the 2021 Charleston Conference will be November 1-5. Mark your calendars! And be sure and take the vaccine! continued on page 16

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

COVID and Consortia: Solving our Information Challenges at Scale by Kim Armstrong (Executive Director, Orbis Cascade Alliance) <karmstrong@orbiscascade.org>

Scope Writing about the impact of COVID on consortia and longer-term effects on collaboration (staff, programs and services) seemed risky in April when the editor approached me about this article. The country was still watching diagnoses and deaths climb each day, and our educational institutions were scrambling to adjust to online-only environments. What could my consortial colleagues share about their experiences and their predictions for the long-term impact, when most everyone was working on the fly, and remaking priorities and communication channels daily? Now, almost six months later, these questions still remain. How long will our libraries continue with primarily remote workers, and how long will we provide services almost entirely online? Has the pandemic fundamentally changed our priorities? While neither predicted the pandemic, Lorcan Dempsey (OCLC) and Roger Schonfeld’s (Ithaka) recent articles about consortial futures raised questions that are echoed and amplified through the voices of consortia directors in this article. Dempsey’s 2018 series of blog posts, “The Powers of Library Consortia,” lays out areas where consortia leverage scale for capacity, learning, innovation and influence.1 In the posts, Lorcan accurately points out that there is a “cap on what every consortium can do,” and what consortia can do is dependent on available funding and library commitment to collaborative work. Likewise, in Schonfeld’s March 2019 article entitled, “Restructuring Library Collaboration: Strategy, Membership, Governance,” he explains the challenges of adapting existing consortial structures to meet new and emerging priorities. 2 Effectively, the pandemic has acted as an accelerant for all of us working collaboratively to address these issues — funding, willingness to do collaborative work, and how to adapt to new and existing priorities.

ICOLC Community The ICOLC community (International Coalition of Library Consortia) is comprised of intelligent, thoughtful and generous folks, who have a long history of providing guidance and advice when asked.3 The ICOLC listserv this spring was filled with discussions about suspension of print resource sharing; PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) relief funds; financial contingency planning; and publisher free access offerings. The annual North American conference, usually held in the spring, became a virtual conference in July. Key topics over our three days together included: open access and affordable course content, COVID responses, and tips and tools for moving events to virtual. The program also had presentations on transformative agreements; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the consolidation of the ILS market. Those presentations were a 14 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

welcome reminder to keep our collective eyes on longer-term priorities and issues that a pandemic makes no less important. Following the ICOLC conference, I invited consortial colleagues to talk with me one-on-one about their experiences since March. I had no script for the conversations. Rather, I asked each of the volunteers to talk about the ways that their consortia had been supporting member libraries since March. I asked these (mostly) Executive Directors to reflect on the short-term effects of COVID on their organizations, but also to predict what some of the longer-term effects might be. The respondents work primarily for academic library consortia, and the responses will reflect that perspective.

Short-term Consortial Impact I interviewed ten consortial directors, read written notes to the ICOLC listserv, and have included my own consortium’s (Orbis Cascade Alliance) experience in these responses. In the short term, defined here as March-September 2020, several common themes emerged. Consortia quickly created informal opportunities for their member libraries to get together and share information. Zoom became the star and the lifeblood for distributed organizations. The virtual meeting tool gave consortia the ability to connect people, to encourage community engagement, and to foster information exchange in a very fast-moving environment. In some cases, consortia offered specialized/topical virtual events on topics such as copyright consulting, or how to locate online learning resources and tools. Others offered space for peer groups to get together in “birds of a feather,” or “water cooler” events. A second theme to emerge was the suspension of virtually every print resource sharing and delivery program. Before the OCLC/IMLS/Battelle REALM4 study to determine the length of time that COVID survived on materials, the safety of handling and shipping print between libraries was unknown. Library staff raced to get as many electronic materials as possible to fill important course reserve needs. However, in many cases library staff were not in their buildings to pull material for shipping or receipt. The loss of access on faculty and student work has been significant, with tenure clocks being paused and theses and dissertations suspended. Libraries and consortia discovered an immediate and pressing need for online content to support instruction. Streaming media packages were in high demand for faculty who had to redesign courses to go entirely online with little preparatory time. Likewise, libraries sought to replace print course reserves with digital equivalents. The consortium directors expressed frustration and dismay with book and textbook publishers whose inflexible business models were insufficient to meet library demand. The necessity of acquiring content led libraries to take continued on page 15

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

6180 East Warren Avenue • Denver, CO 80222 Phone: 303-282-9706 • Fax: 303-282-9743

Subscribe to The Charleston ADVISOR Today!

The Charleston

ADVISOR

Critical Reviews of Web Products for Information Professionals

comparative reviews...reports from “The Charleston Advisor serves up timely editorials and columns, the field...interviews with industry standalone and comparative reviews, and press releases, among other features. Produced by folks with impeccable library and players...opinion editorials... publishing credentials ...[t]his is a title you should consider...” comparative reviews...reports from the field...interviews with industry players...opinion editorials... — Magazines for Libraries, eleventh edition, edited by Cheryl LaGuardia with consulting editors Bill Katz and Linda Sternberg Katz (Bowker, 2002).

• Over 750 reviews now available • Web edition and database provided with all subscriptions • Unlimited IP filtered or name/password access • Full backfile included • Comparative reviews of aggregators featured • Leading opinions in every issue

$295.00 for libraries $495.00 for all others

✓Yes! Enter My Subscription For One Year. ❏ Yes, I am Interested in being a Reviewer. ❏ Name_____________________________________________ Title_________________________________________ Organization___________________________________________________________________________________ Address________________________________________________________________________________________ City/State/Zip__________________________________________________________________________________ Phone_____________________________________________ Fax_________________________________________ Email_________________________________________Signature_________________________________________

COVID and Consortia: Solving our Information ... from page 14 advantage (when possible) of the Internet Archive Emergency Library, the HathiTrust emergency library, and institutional controlled digital lending (CDL) projects.5, 6 When consortia organized meetings for library leadership, conversations focused on the financial impacts of COVID. These included reduced state funding, reduced income from student tuition and housing, and reduced revenue from programs and services. The consortial response? Keep membership fees flat, reduce consortial costs, and start renegotiating every electronic content package (databases, journals, books, etc.). The renegotiation of pricing is a significant undertaking. Consortia often spend months securing pricing, content, and terms that are acceptable to their members for a single offering. In some cases, publishers acted quickly to announce how they would handle pricing and inflation. Just as many perhaps, disappointingly, are the publishers and content providers who are choosing to work case by case, requiring consortia to provide specific information about library funding reductions during COVID.

Long-term Issues As one consortium director said, “when do we move out of crisis mode and think about our strategic directions? Where do we want to be after COVID?” From an operational standpoint, there are consortia that will lose members, as libraries feel the budgetary effects of the pandemic for some years to come. The Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

consortia whose operations are funded from brokering e-resources offerings are likely to experience reduced revenue to support their infrastructure. Libraries are reporting significant cuts to their materials budgets, making even some of the best deals unsustainable. For consortia that have their origins in print resource sharing, pre-COVID levels of print-sharing activity may not return. Rather, successful collaboration will emerge from improved access to digital materials. The level of consortial activity around controlled digital lending is significant. While currently most CDL activity is limited to a single institution or campus, the extension of CDL to consortial sharing is within reach. Additionally, there are investments being made in technology and infrastructure to support CDL, most notably by Project ReShare.7 Pressure to accelerate the development of, and access to, open materials (OER, articles, books, data, science) will persist. Many state consortia have been very successful in securing project-based funds to develop OER and affordable learning programs. But much more can be done collaboratively to expand the library of open content through digitization, working with publishers on new access models, and directing consortial investments to open access support. The availability of content to support student learning and research is a critical element in equitable education. Even when pandemic conditions are eased, textbook affordability, reducing the amount of content behind paywalls, and the open sharing of scholarship will be necessary elements of libraries’ support for all users. continued on page 16

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

COVID and Consortia: Solving our Information ... from page 15 While there are examples of consortia working together to build and offer shared programs (shared print, resource sharing agreements, accessibility initiatives) post-pandemic collaboration will necessitate that we all find economies of scale for our services and offerings. Leveraging partnerships, or meta-consortial programs, will continue to evolve. Strategic compacts made between consortia to share investment, spread risk, and scale successful programs will be crucial to meet the needs of libraries going forward, and to prove consortial value.

LOUIS (Louisiana Library Network). Amy Pawlowski, Executive Director, OhioLINK. Celeste Feather, Senior Director of Content and Scholarly Communication Initiatives, Lyrasis. Scott Garrison, Executive Director, MCLS (Midwest Collaborative for Library Services). John Burger, Executive Director, ASERL (Association of Southeast Research Libraries). Pam Jones, Executive Director, ConnectNY. Jill Morris, Executive Director, PALCI. Mark Jacobs, Executive Director, WRLC (Washington Research Library Consortium).

Conclusion Overall, the impact of COVID on academic library collaboration has been a clarifying event. We will grapple with reduced budgets, high interest in the development of new services, and how to demonstrate our value to our membership. However, COVID has also made it imperative that consortia and their members be more intentional about committing to cost-effective and strategic areas that will improve access to information. In particular, a move to open scholarship, controlled digital lending, and improved business models for textbooks will shrink the gap between print and electronic, and make equitable and affordable access our collective responsibility. With thanks to consortial directors that participated in interviews: Cynthia Holt, Executive Director, Council of Atlantic University Libraries. Teri Gallaway, Associate Commissioner,

Rumors from page 13 Speaking of which, lovely Ann Okerson posted a Facebook picture of her getting the vaccine. Bruce and I are scheduled to get the vaccine in February. My son-in-law and daughter have already gotten both shots because they are medical personnel. Bruce and I are classified in the “old” category. Oh well. Moving right along, recently got an Epistemology column installment from the tireless Scott Plutchak. Scott and Lynn are fine but the vaccine distribution in Alabama is slow going so they are staying home and practicing patience. Their granddaughter had a brief and mild COVID case last month, but all is well now. The Epistemology column is a review of Fred Dylla’s recently published book of short essays. Coming soon! Oh! Scott’s letter to the editor in this issue gives a shout out to the Charleston Hub team. It has been a huge project by a wonderful team including John Lavender, Leah Hinds, Joshua Dickard, Caroline Goldsmith, Toni Nix, Tom Gilson and Kent Anderson!! charleston-hub.com/ We were telling you that we are hoping/keeping our fingers crossed for an “in person” 2021 Charleston Conference! So — I was interested to see in Trip Advisor that The French Quarter Inn in Charleston, SC was listed. Plus we are signing our usual contracts with Charleston Hotels including the Francis Marion, The Marriott Courtyard, and many others. We are all so ready to see each other! 16 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Endnotes 1. Dempsey, Lorcan. “The Powers of Library Consortia.” Lorcan Dempsey’s Weblog. OCLC Research. Feb 28, 2019. https://blog. oclc.org/lorcand/the-powers-of-library-consortia-1-how-consortia-scale-capacity-learning-innovation-and-influence/ 2. Schonfeld, Roger C. “Restructuring Library Collaboration: Strategy, Membership, Governance .” Ithaka S+R. 6 March 2019. Web. 9 November 2020. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.311147 3. International Coalition of Library Consortia. http://icolc.net 4. Realm Project. http://oclc.org/realm/home.html 5. Internet Archive. http://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/ 6. HathiTrust. https://www.hathitrust.org/ETAS-Description 7. Project ReShare. https://projectreshare.org/products/reshare-controlled-digital-lending/

The law firm that successfully sued Apple and five major publishers for colluding to fix eBook prices in 2011 has now filed a class action suit against Amazon, accusing the company of colluding with the Big Five publishers to eliminate price competition in the eBook market. The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York on January 14 by Seattle-based firm Hagens Berman, comes a day after a Wall Street Journal article disclosed that Amazon was under investigation in Connecticut for potentially anti-competitive behavior in the eBook market. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114006057/en/ Hagens-Berman-Files-Class-Action-Lawsuit-Against-Amazon. com-for-E-Book-Price-Fixing https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/ publisher-news/article/85318-amazon-hit-with-e-book-pricefixing-suit.html Have had several ongoing conversations with Bob Holley about the rare book market. (See Random Ramblings — The Used Book Market: Changes for Libraries, in this issue, p.65.) I believe I have told y’all that my son, Raymond Walser is a rare and used book freak. He wrote some questions for Bob to answer. Watch for the interview on Charleston Hub soon! charleston-hub.com Talk about voice from the past! Got an email from the awesome Helmut Schwarzer (remember him back from the YBP Library Service days and his newsletter DIALOGUE?) Helmut wrote to ask if we had written about Scott A. Smith’s death in continued on page 43

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times of Disruption by Erin Gallagher (E-Resources Librarian, University of Florida) <gallaghere@ufl.edu> and David Isaak (Director of Collection Services, Reed College) <isaakd@reed.edu>

Author Introduction Hello, Readers. We crafted this article based on a series of conversations with one another spanning June to September, 2020, right in the thick of one hot mess of a year. Our initial intent, to unravel and document the realities of leading teams through the disruptive change brought about due to COVID-19, evolved during that time due to the anti-racism uprisings around the country and in our own two cities. We were compelled to discuss the ways we, our libraries, and our institutions responded to global upheaval and how this progressed over a four-month period. We acknowledge the limitations of our individual perspectives and the ongoing work we must do. Erin: Hi, David. Tell me a bit about your institution and your library system in general. David: Sure. I work at Reed College, a small, private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. We have 1,400, mostly undergraduate, students. We have one large library and one satellite library for the performing arts. My department is called Collection Services, which is a combination of technical services and collection development. We have an Electronic Resources Librarian, a Systems Librarian, and three specialists who do cataloging, electronic resources support, and acquisitions and serials. Most of the people are physically located in the central “bullpen” behind the circulation desk of the library. But not everyone actually fits there, so there are some people in farther flung parts of the library. Erin, can you tell me about your library system? Erin: University of Florida is a very large, public, Research 1 University in Gainesville, Florida. We have around 50,000 students and that includes undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral. We support pretty much every degree program and area of research that you could dream up, everything from dance to law to veterinary medicine. With the exception of Law, the library system is under the umbrella of the George A. Smathers Libraries, but we’re very spread out geographically across campus. We have seven physical branch libraries and also high-density offsite storage facilities. Within my realm of work, I manage the Electronic Resources Unit, which is one of three units in the Acquisitions and Collections Services Department. I lead a team of four staff specialists, three who are Electronic Resources Specialists and one of whom is a Metadata Specialist. We’re very close spatially. Our offices are either directly across from or directly next to each other. We’re all on the same floor of the lovely Smathers Library building, which is the oldest library building on campus. David, can you walk me through the logistics of your team’s transition from on-campus to remote work environments? Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

David: It was chaotic because the directions coming down from administration were changing frequently. We would get one set of directives and start planning and then, sometimes just hours later, be told that’s not what we’re doing. The electronic resources team and the Systems Librarian felt comfortable immediately going to remote work. It was more complicated for acquisitions, print serials, and cataloging. We were in the middle of a number of projects that had to do with our physical collection, so we couldn’t just close up shop. As the head of the department, I was the middleman hearing things from both ends. The decisions from the upper administration were not getting communicated clearly to people on the ground level and I had to do a lot of that translating myself. Once the campus started to close ... that was like a snowball rolling downhill very quickly. I think a lot of schools went through this: there was this idea that maybe we’ll close for two weeks ... Erin: ... I definitely thought the same thing! David: The Sunday night before spring break, we started getting emails. For the students it was: you need to leave and not come back this academic year. For the library: you will be closing and going to remote work. It was all very sudden. As a department, we had to decide what was essential. For us that was ordering ebooks, scanning parts of print reserves that were not available as ebooks, and invoicing. Once the library was closed to patrons, the library staff who needed to come into the building didn’t have many concerns about the virus. The building was empty; no one’s touching the public spaces anymore. A few of us have been coming in one day a week, on any given day there are probably four people in the library during working hours. Erin: Wow, thanks. I can relate to a lot of this. David: So, same question for you. What happened on the ground in the transition to remote work? Erin: I was in Austin, Texas at the ER&L Conference when I heard from some colleagues that we might start working remotely. I felt really disconnected that week. The week of March 17th we received a university-wide email from administrators pretty much saying we don’t know what’s going to happen, but if you can do your job remotely, we strongly encourage you to go home and start. We got that message before we heard anything about whether or not the libraries were going to close. And you know what’s interesting, David, is that I had the same thought that you expressed, which was “I’m probably going to be home for a couple weeks.” All I brought home was my laptop and a few notebooks thinking this was going to be very temporary. Then we got the message from our library administration saying we’re closing the libraries. Everyone except essential staff are going to be working from home. I was in a fortunate situation because I have a continued on page 18

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times ... from page 17 good home work environment already. I knew that my staff had some challenges with this. So, over the next couple of weeks, as we realized that this is not going to be temporary and we saw the COVID cases rising here in our county, staff were able to go on campus and take their entire desktop computer setups home. In my unit, we are only dealing with electronic resources. Our jobs can be done quite well remotely with little disruption to the service that we’re providing, but my colleagues in acquisitions and print serials had to think of a way to, you know, keep things going. We’re getting dozens of book shipments every day. What we landed on was having one staff member designated as essential. He came to campus, a few days a week, and helped with unboxing and scanning invoices so that we could then process them remotely. Now that we’re a couple of months out from that initial scattering, some of my colleagues have started going into their offices every now and then. It’s the same thing where you might not see another person the entire day so you can feel relatively safe about it. The first couple weeks when the library shut down our idea was to maintain a shared calendar of who was on campus when. But we realized nobody except this one staff member is going to be there at all. David: Do you want to talk about what the communication was like from university leadership? Erin: Oh, sure. Communication from university leadership has been in the form of standard email announcements at least once a week. And we are fortunate that UF is affiliated with a world-class hospital system. We have faculty and researchers who are experts in epidemiology and public health. So we were also getting regular email updates from UF Health and the tone of those was factual, data-focused, and pretty impersonal. But, the communication coming out of our library leadership has been far more personal. In fact, our Dean of Libraries has been holding a weekly virtual town hall gathering for the whole library. She solicits questions ahead of time. Sometimes we have, like, 200 people on these calls. We never did this before the pandemic. It’s helped to bring us together. And these “town halls” are not always a big, happy love fest; a lot of times they’re tense and there’s some hot fire in the chat window. But I feel like it’s a space where we can be frank about the decisions being made at the top and how we feel about them. And our Dean is transparent about who’s making these decisions because not all the control lies with the library. We’re beholden to what’s coming down from the State and our Board of Governors. So, what has communication been like on your end? David: The library was pretty much omitted from the main communications that were coming from the college leadership. Staff were also frustrated about a lack of library representation on campus-wide working groups like academics, student life, and facilities. At a small liberal arts college, the library plays a role in all of these domains. We’ve done one virtual staff meeting so far, where people submitted questions ahead of time. Most of the questions were about why we don’t have a seat at the table. You know, I don’t really know if there’s an answer to that. I think that at a smaller institution they always circle back to the same people who addressed the last problem. Erin: I never thought of communication being more challenging at a smaller institution! David: So, once your team moved to working remotely were there tasks that you thought couldn’t be done? 18 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Erin: Yes, and the most significant of those was how we were going to maintain work for our student employees. Our students were required to go remote and leave campus at the same time that we were. They weren’t given the option to take their workstations home, and the programs that they need are server-based programs that live on computers in the library. So my initial thought was, okay, we’re going to have to only give them projects that they can do in a cloud-based remote environment, which was very daunting, because our entire ILS is not cloud-based. That was resolved pretty easily by our IT folks setting them up with remote desktop capabilities. That’s been working great. There have only been a couple of hiccups. Beyond that, the nature of the work that we do in e-resources, if I’m just talking operational work, can be done fairly easily. There hasn’t been much that we haven’t been able to figure out in the transition. David: We’ve been with Alma for so long I forgot there would be schools that were on a server-based ILS. The question for us was, how do we manage the physical side of the collection? The biggest issue with not having student workers on site are the 8,000 books that came back at the end of the year that are still not shelved. So, now, when a request comes in for a book, it can take half an hour to find it. Also, in terms of the physical collection, our acquisitions person goes in once a week to do receiving and then our cataloging person will come by once a week after that to move those things through to the next step. Erin: That’s interesting — the perspective from a much smaller institution where you can often equate a certain task or workflow to an individual. It allows you to get things done a bit more efficiently than in a large organization where multiple individuals have to be involved in a single workflow. David: So, what are the main tools and technologies you’ve been using to help facilitate your team working remotely? Erin: A few months before we went remote we transitioned to the new version of Microsoft Office 365. We were slowly transitioning our shared documents into the new SharePoint and exploring the use of the different kinds of apps. When we were working on campus, we didn’t use a shared instant messaging service. We’re all located so closely that this was done by hollering across the bookcase or chatting in the hallway. As soon as we went remote, we realized now is the time to embrace this. We’ve been using Teams most heavily. We have multiple Teams channels that we’re using for our workflows and projects and tasks. So, what we’re trying to do is replicate those over-the-bookshelf pop-up conversations by using Teams while making sure that we still use traditional email for things like major workflow decisions or vendor communication. I’m really enjoying it. The other thing we’re exploring is Planner, which is like Microsoft’s version of a project management board. David: In my department we’ve gone all-in on three technologies. The library already had Slack; but use grew as a replacement for hallway conversations and quick questions. In March, people would say hello at the start of the day in Slack. People don’t really do that every day checking in anymore. I think, as it became more normal to work remotely, they didn’t feel the need to do that. We do a weekly department meeting on Zoom and we spend 15 to maybe 45 minutes just chatting, kind of like around the water cooler. I think people want to do it because they’re not seeing everybody at other times. What you mentioned about using the project planner, we have started using Asana. Staff were in favor of adopting it because we were all experiencing the same problem of losing the thread on where things were on group projects. continued on page 19

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times ... from page 18 Erin: David, one thing that you mentioned was how people like seeing each other on Zoom calls. Before you went remote, did you find yourself doing video calls in other scenarios, like with vendors? David: You know, not nearly as much. And when I did, I almost always had the camera off. Erin: Same here. I did a lot of Zoom and WebEx before we went remote, not only because in our roles we’re meeting with vendors all the time, but because UF is such a massive geographic animal. We would often already have a Zoom component to meetings for people who didn’t want to trek across campus. But I noticed that, almost without exception, people did not use their cameras for those. I never used my camera. I was so anti-camera; but that first day I made a commitment to just do it. You know, especially with leading a team. Now we’re so happy to see each other’s faces. David: I think that it’s now normalized to have the kid or cat or dog interrupting. That’s not a cause of embarrassment. And usually other people react like, “oh, it’s so cute to see them.” Have you found other techniques to help your team stay more connected on that human, emotional level? Erin: Yes, and you mentioned earlier how you felt like people did more of the check in and check out soon after going remotely; I feel that that applies to this situation as well. When we went remote, we were all confused about what this meant for our jobs and our ability to provide a service. But there was also a huge emotional toll on all of us, you know, suddenly we’re all at home and we don’t see each other. And there’s a pandemic and the world is on fire. We reached out to each other more frequently in that first month or so. We had Teams calls every day. “How’s your technology working? How are you feeling? How’s your energy level?” Those were the kinds of questions I was asking my team daily in that first month. That helped us feel connected in that crucial moment where we needed to feel connected. But I’ve noticed that as we’ve started to normalize this working from home situation we do that less frequently. The techniques and methods we’re using to stay connected have risen and fallen with our emotional need. In meetings we now share more about things that aren’t work-related — what’s something that you’ve been reading or podcasts you’ve been listening to or a TV show that you’re bingeing? It turns into more of a fun conversation. One of my colleagues has been posting a daily trivia question to Teams every day. And I’ve been trying to give virtual praise to my team. I feel like we’ve been doing a pretty good job of trying to stay connected, but that it really does ride a wave of what we need right now. David: I think a wave is a good analogy. At first we had the same thing, it was a lot of checking in about technology. Are you actually able to do your work? Do you have child or parent care responsibilities? How is this affecting your work? And then things seemed to settle down. But then, once the police brutality and Black Lives Matter protests started, that was another kind of emotional need. And then as that receded a little bit, it’s the reopening concerns. With all these challenges, it has been about making sure people feel like they’re being heard. Making sure that they know that I’m advocating for them to higher administration. It’s not just one crisis we’re going through. Erin: You’re so right that you feel like you’re getting into a comfort zone and then something else justifiably disrupts that Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

comfort zone. On Teams we create channels that are meant to be safe spaces for our department. And so when George Floyd was murdered and several schools around the country had a day of reflection, instead of spending that day working, we reflected and educated ourselves on institutional racism. We were sharing frank and raw feelings. We shared podcasts and articles and we attended the same ALA presentations and then talked about it on Teams. That day and probably that following week there was a lot of activity and chatter there because we needed to feel connected. But I also see that lessening as the weeks go by and competing priorities creep into our brains. David, how would you characterize the vendor response to the COVID pandemic versus the vendor response to other global or national events of significance, such as anti-racism protests in the U.S.? David: One type of response was just at a surface level. Like, “look how great we are as a vendor”, which they just applied to whatever the national conversation was that week. That’s not helpful for me. And then there is another type of response, “we know there’s something going on right now and we want to use our corpus to be helpful in some way.” JSTOR gave out an anti-racism reading list. With COVID it was the same type of responses. Some of the vendors and publishers acknowledged that this is unprecedented, took down paywalls, and had seamless access: you don’t even need to do anything and your patrons will be able to use everything for the spring semester and it’ll just go away on June 30. And then other ones were like, “we’ll do it, but only after you have to ask for permission.” Those responses were not as helpful. Erin: Yes, the generosity of opening up all this research didn’t unfold in the same way across institutions. It was almost like being given a gift that you want to stop being given at a certain point. I was pleasantly surprised at the flood of offers for expanded access to content that coincided exactly with when our libraries closed. I felt like we could make an impact on our user community and their ability to learn and research and teach remotely. We could do something small in the midst of an uncontrollable situation where we felt very ineffective. We immediately created a LibGuide with links to all the expanded access offers with their expiration dates. Now, what we realized quickly was that this list was getting out of control because we were getting new offers every day. The marketing and communication were so spotty. Best case scenario, like you illustrated, is to receive just one message: tell us what you’re offering, how do we access it, when does it end. But some of them were not as simple. We had well-meaning offers for resources like JSTOR, but only some of the content is open and they don’t have a direct access portal for that open content. Trying to manage linking and user expectations was a challenge. I sound a bit whiny about this because we were given expanded access to content and our vendors have been very understanding that this doesn’t mean that we’re going to buy any of this content. David: I wish that some organizations had stepped in, like SPARC, NASIG, or NISO. It was too much to ask of the librarians and I understand it was too much to ask for the publishers to coordinate; but a bigger organization should have been able to straighten out all the messaging. It was a lot of duplicative effort, figuring it out each time. Erin: You’re right, and I think it was another missed opportunity for our publisher and vendor partners to fail to create the same kind of momentum and urgency around expanded collections or bronze open access collections for anti-racism and continued on page 20

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times ... from page 19 institutional racism studies. You mentioned JSTOR. Project MUSE released a suggested reading list too. But I had a call with a major vendor partner very soon after George Floyd’s murder and asked if they planned on creating some sort of accessible collection of resources and they hadn’t thought about that. I don’t care about their motivation, I just want to see some kind of commitment around the fact that this is also an important national moment. David: It may have come out of the fact that STEM publishers already had a history of making their research available during previous pandemics. It was new for the social sciences and humanities publishers to step in and make resources available. So they did not make the conceptual leap that they should also be doing this around anti-racism. Speaking of vendors, how has the relationship with vendors been going now that it is totally remote? What do you think about in the future if there were no more site visits? Would anything of value be lost? Erin: It already wasn’t unusual to have a Zoom or a web component for a vendor meeting because of the large geographic footprint of UF. But in my role in particular where I do get used to that face to face interaction, honestly, it made me more likely to tell vendors that we didn’t need a meeting. Whereas if I had been approached about a site visit, I would have been more likely to say, sure, come to campus. I’m not sure if that’s because I have a perception that I’m not going to get as much value out of the web call or if it’s because I’m still telling myself that we’re in a weird temporary holding pattern. Unfortunately, I do see some value being lost. Part of that is because I do have a background as a vendor representative and I’ve been on both sides of this desk, and there is no substitute for developing a sustainable, valuable relationship with a human in person. And so I do think that there will be some value lost at first for those of us who are used to face to face. It’s those little things like getting to know about someone’s family or pets or where they live; it’s chatting on the way to the parking lot or in the elevator. These things accumulate into something that goes beyond a buyer and seller relationship and I fear that that value might be lost until we get to a point where it’s just the norm. What do you think based on your experiences at Reed? David: There are some vendors who I really appreciate getting the time to connect with because there’s a lot of value added. The best vendor reps are the ones who have been in a few different places and can bring in multiple library perspectives. For me, those types of really useful relationships have all started face to face. I think it’s harder to get to that point with people remotely. Showing me how to use your product and what’s new in the portfolio — that works fine remotely. But, with the recent staff turnover in my library, some of those vendors had more institutional knowledge of what was going on than anyone in the library. Once we’ve established a relationship, we can move it online. And then we’ll find time in the phone calls for the little asides and things like that. But it’s hard to imagine building it from scratch. Erin: That’s a really good point. You and I are able to have this frank discussion and I understand your facial cues or your body language because we already know each other and we’ve worked together before. Now, if remote work becomes the norm, do you anticipate we’ll be leading teams who might not be located in the same place geographically? 20 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

David: Yes, this is something that I think about a lot: COVID has permanently changed the remote work norms. I can’t imagine after this that most white-collar jobs are going to require you to come in five days a week. I would say of the teams in the library, mine transitioned the best, but we had nine months working together in person. Erin: That’s a good point. My guess is that we’re on the cusp of a cultural change about how we view working on campus in an office and the idea that it’s tied to accountability. The idea that, if you’re not in an office on campus working eight to five or whatever, that we don’t know what you’re doing. You might be at home watching soap operas. I think the last four to five months have shown that that’s absolutely not happening because we’re still getting everything done. I think that will allow us to think more broadly about who we hire and where they live. That sounds like a potentially attractive prospect. But, if I’m in a leadership position, I will not be as effective if I don’t get that face time with my team. And so I feel like I could do the “job” part of my job remotely, but I couldn’t really do the leadership part. Maybe I’m stuck in that mindset. David: I don’t think you’re incorrect, there are so many soft skills in leading a team. I think bringing on a new team leader or a new team member would be hard, but actually stepping into a team leader position remotely ... I would need training on how to do that. And I don’t think a lot of places could give that training very well today. Now, in as much of a nutshell as you can, what are your libraries’ reopening plans (as of September 1st)? Erin: Our libraries officially reopened Friday, August 28th, and yesterday was our first day of classes for the semester. UF is conducting around 35% of classes in person or with a hybrid model and the rest are online only. What that means for our library branches on campus is that we’re operating at a reduced occupancy level. We only have one public entrance for each library branch. We’re checking IDs and limiting to UF affiliates only, which isn’t the norm; we’re usually open to the public. We have a gate count going and we have a nifty live occupancy dashboard that is kind of addictive. It’ll show how many people are in each building and what percentage of occupancy that building is currently at. Everyone is required to wear a mask and we have a security person at every public entrance to the library paired with a library staff member. We’ve made changes like we’re not doing print course reserves. We’re limiting or closing access to the stacks. We re-configured spaces to promote social distancing, we removed a lot of tables, chairs, and computers. No Group Study rooms. And the only food we’re allowing is bottled water. Even Starbucks isn’t allowed. How about you at Reed? David: Sounds pretty similar in a lot of ways. Our main library opened yesterday. We have a count of people entering the building. But, it’s a pretty big space. So we set apart all the seating with a 35-square-foot space around people. And then we counted those seats and that’s how we determined the maximum occupancy. We don’t have a dashboard and I was on chat reference yesterday and had two questions in two hours about capacity. The students have heard about the capacity limit and want to know before they come in. Our stacks are open because there’s no real way to close them in our configuration. For reserves, we moved to a 24-hour loan plus 72 hours of quarantine, so it’s a 4-day reserve cycle. Erin: Today, obviously you’re at home right now, I’m at home right now. Some of our public-facing library employees have gone back into the office, but they go on a rotation to maintain continued on page 22

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

COVID-19 and the Bubonic Plague: What Have We Learned? by Gracemary Smulewitz (Formerly, Head of Collection Services, Rutgers University Libraries, now retired) <smulewi@scarletmail.rutgers.edu> “Great crises tend to bring profound social change — for good or ill.” The author Lawrence Wright offered this statement in a New Yorker article, “How Pandemics Wreak Havoc–and Open Minds.” Wright was introducing his interview with Gianna Pomata, a retired professor of the History of Medicine at the Institute of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Pomata, to Wright, compared the COVID pandemic to the Bubonic Plague of the fourteenth century. The article interested me, as it highlighted what brought society out of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, a rebirth Pomata attributed to waves of new creative thinking. Before this rebirth, the study of medicine, for example, was not empirical. Boccaccio, in the Decameron, witnessed, “The advice of doctors and the power of medicine appeared useless and unavailing.” The overthrow of this approach occurred because doctors, as millions died, put aside scholastic medicine, based on ancient texts and even astrology, in favor of empirical evidence. According to Pomata, refreshing new intellectual perspectives came about not only in medicine, but also in education, the arts, and exploration. Pomata feels that something similar for today’s economy and culture will take place. Especially for education, I share Pomata’s hope.

The Small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times ... from page 20 social distancing. My E-Resource Unit has been told that we can stay at home as long as permitted. And so I might go in, you know, once a week seeing how the semester goes. But we’re still very much at home. David: We’re similar in that public-facing positions are all coming in, but they’ve extended their workdays. They do three shifts now and they’re staggered. Reference and instruction people are basically staying home. In our department, people in electronic resources and systems are staying home and the acquisitions and cataloging staff and I come in about halftime. On any given day there’s probably one to two of us in the department space. One thing I didn’t mention about us not being open to the public is that our whole campus is closed to the public. We actually need to wear our name badges somewhere visible so that Community Safety Officers don’t stop us. Which is a big cultural change, obviously. Erin: Thanks, David. This has been enlightening! 22 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

As I reflected on her perspective, I looked at how all libraries, and Rutgers University in particular, reacted to the need for immediate change at the onset of the pandemic. Rutgers is a university of approximately 71,000 graduate and undergraduate students on three campuses, with two medical schools and a law school. Currently there are 23,600 faculty and staff. Although very large compared to most colleges and universities, we were faced with the same dilemmas as others who are smaller. Like most institutions, Rutgers immediately began work to provide what was essential for faculty, students, and staff to function in the new remote environment. Many webpage announcements were created to guide the library community on how to navigate remotely. Extensive research guides were created to help with the technical changes, such as how to use Zoom and Webex, and how to access course reserves and other Access Services information. From our medical librarians, guides were developed to inform users about COVID. Many other guides and updates were offered to help in the changed environment. The University Librarian routinely posted information on the COVID virus and its effects on the university and specifically the libraries. Pomata spoke about cultural changes, and I reflected on all that was being done that influenced the culture of our libraries during this time. When Rutgers had had an immediate shutdown and everyone was thrown into remote work, folks spoke of feeling isolated. For many at the library, it took time to be comfortable with the format and protocols of online meetings. I was surprised to learn that shortly after the shutdown, the library administration would host a full program on Zoom about the State of the Libraries. State of the Libraries is normally an annual in-person event that is extremely well attended. The event brought the library staff and faculty together online, as a community. The program opened with slides of staff in their makeshift home offices — children, pets, and all. Announcements were made of the many posters submitted by faculty and staff for the program and that the poster session could be found on YouTube. What might have been an uncomfortable remote environment evolved into a familiar one. The human element and the work of the posters showed everyone that our traditions continued and that important things were happening. The program highlighted implementations that made operations possible, displaying posters of projects that would enhance website design, instruction, course reserves, and access in the future; all could look ahead to some exciting developments. All of this was highly informative and stabilizing for our library staff and faculty. continued on page 23

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

COVID-19 and the Bubonic Plague: What Have We ... from page 22 In COVID discussion groups I took part in, I frequently heard similar concerns raised by different libraries. One group, in which libraries from around the world participated, was hosted by Bob Nardini, Vice President, Library Services at ProQuest. Two other programs were hosted by regional and national consortia. The ability to provide online textbooks to students at reasonable prices, or even at no cost; how to enable digital lending; and how to supply digitized monographs for course reserves and for research, all were common threads. What I heard anecdotally convinces me that our current period has the potential for tremendous developments, that there is a hunger for new projects and even new ways of doing business from vendors and publishers. With very large budget constraints, libraries too are looking for more creative, less restrictive business models, perhaps new partnerships that enable shared acquisitions or access. We need, for example, to probe Controlled Digital Lending more deeply, and to encourage its adoption. The frustration of being unable to provide resources to faculty and students because of constraints on digitization was a common thread among the discussion groups. Controlled Digital Lending, if its protocols are followed appropriately, could alleviate much of this frustration. Here is the authoritative 2018 Position Statement on CDL: Properly implemented, CDL enables a library to circulate a digitized title in place of a physical one in a controlled manner. Under this approach, a library may only loan simultaneously the number of copies that it has legitimately acquired, usually through purchase or donation. For example, if a library owns three copies of a title and digitizes one copy, it may use CDL to circulate one digital copy and two print, or three digital copies, or two digital copies and one print; in all cases, it could only circulate the same number of copies that it owned before digitization. Essentially, CDL must maintain an “owned to loaned” ratio. Circulation in any format is controlled so that only one user can use any given copy at a time, for a limited time. Further, CDL systems generally employ appropriate technical measures to prevent users from retaining a permanent copy or distributing additional copies. These guidelines, if followed appropriately, would significantly increase the number of titles available to readers. CDL needs and deserves continued advocacy. Similarly, we should encourage more cost-effective methods for providing textbooks to students. Collectively, libraries and their consortia should be able to influence that market, perhaps partnering with publishers on new, more favorable business models. An article in Library Journal by Matt Enis, “How Vendors are Working with Academic Libraries in their Pivot to Digital” noted that “the current pandemic would likely cause a rethinking of academic instruction, innovations in online learning and a renewed appreciation for the resources provided by campus libraries.” Enis quoted Jeff Wilensky, Vice President of Global Marketing at ProQuest: “We are seeing the need to dig into curriculum analysis. Dig into gaps. Resources purchased

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

for [library] collections are going to need to meet the needs of many” in a time of budget challenges. “These are places that we’re trying to help with. In addition to classic resources, things that drive [student] engagement — diverse voices, video.” An area with explosive momentum in the research and discovery community is work based upon artificial intelligence. The ability to create expansive searches beyond the capability of current discovery tools is impressive. Some AI functionalities already exist in discovery tools, but continued development will certainly lead to greater possibilities. Some areas to highlight related to discovery and analysis: • AI can disambiguate and understand inferences. • AI can use semantic relationships to retrieve relevant information that would seem irrelevant to more basic search mechanisms. • Further, AI can assist research by providing discovery on a vast scale by creating knowledge graphs to show relationships based on context and concepts — going far beyond simple keyword associations. • AI can provide predictive data, e.g., for an academic library, perhaps collections analysis to show relationships to student success. There is so much in AI that would benefit libraries and their communities to explore and perhaps apply. Accelerated development in this area alone would bring about much wider and deeper interest in the resources provided by libraries and the outcomes libraries make possible. Pomata is right. Waves of creative new thinking in all fields might seed another Renaissance. In academic libraries, new thinking could move us to new and higher levels of respect, support, and importance. I will add that courage will be necessary to reach these possibilities. For a better future, despite the damages and losses from this pandemic, we must take every advantage we can of our current environment. If we do, there is a lot to hope for and work for.

References Bailey, Lila, et al. Position Statement on Controlled Digital Lending. September 2018. https://controlleddigitallending. org/statement Enis, Matt. “How Vendors are Working with Academic Libraries in their Pivot to Digital.” Library Journal, September 3, 2020. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=remote-possibilities-how-vendors-are-working-with-academic-libraries-in-their-pivot-to-digital-covid-19 United Kingdom Serials Group. AI: Empowering Libraries & Making it Real. Webinar by Manisha Bolina, Ken Chad, and Ben McLeish. September 24, 2020. https://www.uksg.org/ sites/default/files/2020-10/Q%26A_AI_Webinar.pdf Wright, Lawrence. “How Pandemics Wreak Havoc — and Open Minds.” New Yorker, July 20, 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/how-pandemics-wreak-havocand-open-minds

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Op Ed — Opinions and Editorials

Op Ed — Web Archiving: The Dream and the Reality by Joseph Puccio (Collection Development Officer, Library of Congress) <jpuc@loc.gov>

ere is the web archiving dream. It is a hundred years from now, and a researcher wants to know how all aspects of an important topic from today were understood, communicated and debated. Using a nearly comprehensive collection of archived websites and other content, that researcher is able to be more or less in the moment of a century past and have access to all relevant subject matter. News, published reports and books, videos, podcasts, photographs, journals, music and social media postings are available. Using that access to archived content, the researcher is able to fully understand the contemporary information and communications encompassing that issue. Here is the reality. Although the Internet has now been in wide usage for a quarter of a century, web archiving as a technology and as a means of accessibility to past digital content is still a work in progress. There are many areas that must be improved if we hope to preserve the historical record for future generations.

What Should be Preserved? The landscape is enormous and in a constant state of change. Internet Live Stats reports that there are over 1.8 billion websites, but the majority are inactive. Fewer than 200 million sites are active, according to Netcraft. There is a continuing deluge of new websites being established and existing sites going dark. Individual sites can be very complex — some are fantastically vast. For instance, a Google search of site:espn.com returns millions of results. What portions of this environment should be preserved in its current state for that researcher a century from now? What will be of value? Selecting web content for the future user is a difficult task. Who will do it? The Internet Archive, a non-profit organization, began archiving from the Internet in 1996, stepping in to fill a void by capturing web content and making it subsequently available via its Wayback Machine. It has done far more than any other entity to capture aspects of the web, collecting very widely but not necessarily with a strategic collection development plan. The Internet Archive has also provided an archiving capacity to over 600 other institutions and organizations through its Archive-It program, although many of those partners are using the service to self-archive their own web presence.

Technical Limitations A number of limitations currently stand as challenges to web archiving. One might assume that when a website is crawled, for instance, everything within a domain (such as espn.com noted above) is captured. However, for such sites, it is not possible to crawl their entirety in a single visit. Pages are missed, and the crawler attempts to harvest them on its next scheduled visit, based on a

24 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

pre-determined frequency ranging from daily to annually. Crawlers also can have difficulty capturing video content, the files of which are far larger than textual material and are often embedded as streaming material from other third-party sites. In addition, websites can include a robots.txt file to provide guidance regarding limitations on crawling of the site. Some, in essence, state, “Do not crawl here.” Beyond that, site managers may well monitor and block crawlers at points, given that the load of crawling a site can itself strain the ability of a site manager to provide access to the content. Another impediment to web archiving is that crawlers cannot easily go beyond paywalls and/or sign-ins that are required from many sites. Unless special arrangements are made with the website owner, harvesting from such sites is not possible. Many websites provide access to information within databases, for example a staff directory on an agency’s site. Information from an underlying database is provided on the fly in response to specific search queries. A standard web harvest can only traverse the links provided within a site and cannot capture the database. Sites that continuously add a tremendous amount, such as news websites, pose another challenge for web archiving. Daily crawls of such sites have proven to be inadequate. However, some success has been realized through the archiving of content being distributed through RSS feeds, which for a website provides a continuing stream of new content being added to the site.

Rights Even though many websites are openly available, the content is not necessarily free to use and re-use. Of course, there are sites that are explicitly in the public domain or state that they are free of restrictions on use and re-use. In other cases, it is likely that someone, or some entity, owns the intellectual property rights for the site’s content. Although the Library of Congress has in place a notice and permissions process for its crawling and subsequent display of websites, most other web archiving programs do not follow such a procedure. To date, there has not been a precedent-setting court case in the United States centered on web harvesting and the use of captured content. The risk to collecting institutions that do not use a permissions process is that legal precedent may eventually be set that will severely limit use of captured content. In the meantime, web archiving programs that do not seek permissions respond to takedown requests from content owners as they arise. continued on page 25

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Op Ed from page 24

Coordination between Libraries is Lacking The International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) was formed in 2003 and now has member institutions representing over 45 countries. The IIPC focuses on supporting the acquisition, preservation and long-term accessibility of global web content. Through its working groups and conferences, it offers web archiving practitioners the opportunity to collaborate and share information. It has sponsored the creation of a limited number of web archive collections on Archive-It. A similar consortium of key web archiving libraries has not grown on a national level in the United States, although there have been effective collaborations such as the End of Term Web Archive. Not surprisingly, the web content that has been archived to date by various institutions is not easily located by researchers, despite efforts such as the Memento Project. There is no one source through which it can be determined whether a site is being archived, and, if so, by whom. So, discovery at the site level is problematic. Discoverability of specific content within web archives can be just as vexing.

Achieving the Dream It is our responsibility to ensure that researchers in future generations have access to a wide range of archived web content from our generation and from the web going forward. The content should be easily discoverable. It should include materials that

exist behind paywalls and sign-ins. The functionality of sites that are based on search queries of an underlying database should be preserved. To make this happen will require the collaborative action of major collecting institutions, both within the United States and beyond. A first step on the national level would be the establishment of a consortium of libraries in the United States to: • Support advances in crawler technology. • Expand collecting while strengthening related coordination and communication. • Develop standards for reporting holdings. • Improve searching capabilities across and within web archives. This consortium could also coordinate with website owners to have them employ best practices to enable archiving and to allow for harvesting behind paywalls and sign-ins. As the numbers show, most of the websites that have been created over the past quarter century are now inactive. What significant content has disappeared without being archived? The staggeringly robust counter-flows of new sites being created and existing sites going dead creates a monumental challenge for libraries. No single institution can successfully meet this need. However, an energized consortium of libraries that collect for the long-term can come together and get it done. Now is the time for collaborative action so that libraries can provide a full historical record for future generations.

ATG Interviews Jack Farrell Managing Director, Jack Farrell & Associates by Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu> and Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain) <kstrauch@comcast.net> ATG: Tell us about Jack Farrell & Associates. You started the firm more than 14 years ago. What was it that drew you to executive recruiting as a career and what factors compelled you to start your own company? JF: I was a publishing lifer who spent most of my career creating products for academic libraries and their patrons. After September 11, I started to reassess how I was spending my time and wondered if there was a way to achieve a higher quality of life for our family. I was with McGraw-Hill in New York City at the time. I loved my job but was working long hours with lots of business travel. We had five young children at the time, and my wife was working pretty hard. Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Riding the train home one night I had an epiphany that recruiting was something I could do without a lot of investment or lead time. After twenty-two years as an educational and STM publisher, I always prided myself on my ability to make good hires and enjoyed “schmoozing” and networking with industry colleagues. So, from the train I called my wife and said, “I think I got it…recruiting!” She said, “ok…let’s give it a go.” I left McGraw-Hill in May 2006 and Jack Farrell & Associates (JFA) was born. We are a recruiting firm that brings the best talent to publishers and academic libraries in North America, UK, Europe and Asia. In November, we completed our 592nd continued on page 26

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Interview — Jack Farrell from page 25 hire. Most importantly, the upgrade in quality of life for my family over these years has been incalculable. ATG: We were also wondering about the competition in the executive recruiting space? How many competitors do you have? And what has enabled you to be so successful in spite of all the competition? JF: There are probably a half dozen recruiters that focus on publishing and probably fewer that work in the library space. All of them are quite good. I think two things distinguish us from our peers. The first is that all five members of my team and I were successful hiring managers in publishing who also had close connections to libraries. We can talk the talk here because we’ve walked the walk. Those experiences help us make the winning match for our clients. We align not only skill sets with job requirements but also have a keen sense of chemistry and fit. The result is that over 97% of our placements thrive long past any probation period and become key contributors to their new organization. The second piece is we make every effort to stay atop what’s happening across the publishing and academic library landscapes. We incessantly network with the top talent in each sphere by attending industry meetings, and reading publications like ATG, and following the leading blogposts. As a result, our antennae are attuned to the many factors roiling these worlds. And we know the individuals who are driving these changes and thriving amidst them. In a time of upheaval…more than ever, the BEST TALENT wins. That’s what we deliver. ATG: In looking at your website it appears that your focus is on recruiting and placing executives in the publishing industry and in varying educational fields, including libraries. What are the similarities and differences in your approach as you work with clients in these differing disciplines? JF: Our recruiting approach to both — publishing and libraries — is similar in that we start with our own proprietary database of over 20,000 contacts. About 70% of our wins stem from this outreach. Someone will either be directly interested in an opportunity or refer us to someone who might be. The personal connections

and trust we’ve built with the people in our network are critical to our success. Regarding the differences between the two, since hires within the library environment occur within the university setting there often are more participants in the process so the timeline can be slightly longer. Publishing usually has a flatter decision-making structure…but not always. Another obvious difference is most library hires will occur in synch with the academic year while publishers are not aligned with that cycle. ATG: Jack, can you take us through your process with potential new applicants or firms? In other words, how does executive recruiting at Jack Farrell and Associates actually work? JF: I mentioned the importance of our own network as a starting point. We supplement that outreach via social media channels and job board postings in germane venues. Then, once an interested applicant or candidate emerges the fun starts. We have a series of questions to vet each candidate, making sure her/ his skills align with what the position at hand. I also rely on the experience of my teammates to assess the “chemistry match” between candidate, the position and the hiring party. This is so important. If all the lights are green, we’ll enter that candidate into the process and serve as coach/ colleague/mentor to help her/him succeed. We prepare candidates for their interview and generally serve as catalyst to bring the hiring process to a successful conclusion. Fact is, we represent the client as well, so we attempt to bring both parties to a point of convergence. This will occasionally call for some frank conversations, but the goal is always on turning the right match into a winning hire. ATG What would you say is the key to aligning the right people with the right opportunities? What have been your most effective strategies in matching the right person to the right job? JF: It might sound trite but the key thing about making the right match is listening! On each assignment we spend a great deal of time with the hiring party to understand fully the nuances of the position, the culture of the organization and the pain points they are experiencing. Once that’s digested, it makes the job of gathering a strong candidate pool fairly straight-forward. The same goes for candidates. Our deep experience as hiring managers guides us in asking the

26 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

right questions that reveal a candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and potential fit within a new organization. Another technique we’ll use is to ask the candidate to prepare a cover letter that addresses what impact they might have “on the organization over the next five years.” This can shed light on the candidate’s skill as a strategic thinker as well as their ability to convey ideas in a cogent way. Both can be strong indicators of a potential match. ATG: Overall, how many people has Jack Farrell and Associates placed over the years? And in what kind of positions? What proportion were placed in libraries? What about in publishing? How about in the varying educational fields you work with? JF: As mentioned earlier, we recently completed our 592nd hire. About 15% of those have been in the library setting with 75% in the publishing sphere. The remaining 10% occurred in education technology and medical communications. We are increasing our presence in academic libraries as it plays directly to our strengths. Some of the positions we’ve filled for libraries include Head of Scholarly Communication, Director of Technology Initiatives, Director of Production Services, and Licensing Specialist. We just started a new search for the California Digital Library who is seeking a new Shared Collections Program Director. Interestingly, the winning candidate can either be in CDL’s Oakland office or fully remote. We’re excited to get started. We have also enjoyed great success in university presses — a world that sits at the nexus between publishing and the library. Increasingly, libraries are taking a leadership role here as the synergies between the two are too great to ignore. We have placed more than a dozen Press Directors in recent years which has given us the chance to work closely with library leadership. ATG: In the markets you work in, what are some of the trends you’re seeing across the hiring landscape these days? JF: Without question, the changing models and the migration to more open content is affecting the type of talent that’s in demand. Whether its Plan S, transformative agreements, or open access in general, the ways to create, curate and disseminate content are shiftcontinued on page 28

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Interview — Jack Farrell from page 26 ing. This is having a dramatic impact on publishers and academic libraries alike. The overturning of traditional models requires that talent be more facile, more open and able to find solutions with new partners. This is fueling the demand for those with the skills that can thrive in this environment. I don’t see this trend diminishing any time soon. The other trend I’m seeing is the active drive to assemble a more diverse workforce. This is great news as we believe that a workforce that mirrors the society in which we live is more vibrant and more productive. We are having some real success here as 25% of our hires this year are candidates of color — an alltime high for us. I’m seeing companies commit to this goal at the highest levels, and I believe that’s what’s required to drive this change. JFA is trying to play an active role here as I’ve participated in Career Days at HBCUs and we post jobs to diversity-centric job boards. But most importantly, my team is constantly working to identify candidates of color and move them along their career arc. The last two hires we made were African American women who are well on their way to becoming stars in their respective fields. I’m encouraged by that. ATG: With a global pandemic, 2020 has been a particularly difficult year! How has it impacted you and your firm? What actions have you taken differently? JF: The virus has absolutely had a muting effect on hiring. The biggest enemy to hiring is uncertainty and that’s the overriding sentiment lately. While

the volume of jobs for us is down 50% year over year, we’ve had some success focusing on higher level leadership positions. This has been a fruitful strategy because in times of duress an organization needs a strong leader more than ever. We have actively pursued these opportunities, and thankfully had some big wins here during the year. But, for our palette to be complete, we need an array of mid-level positions too and those have almost completely dried up lately. I’m confident they will return once the world returns to a degree of normalcy in 2021. I can dream…can’t I? ATG: We suspect that a number of our readers will be very interested in the services that your firm provides so we’d be remiss if we didn’t ask about your fee structure. How exactly is Jack Farrell and Associates compensated? JF: Our fee is a percentage of the winning candidate’s annual salary. The rate is confidential, but I like to think it’s fair and represents a very good value for the service and results we deliver. Now…there are two types of searches: contingency and retained. A contingency search is non-exclusive such that several firms could be competing for the hire and the client is likely looking as well. We are paid only if we deliver the winning candidate. Two thirds of our searches fall into this category. On a contingency search, the client is afforded a 90-day guarantee. If the candidate fails during that 90-day period, we will issue a full refund or ideally, find a replacement with urgency. Over 97% of our contingency hires succeed. A retained search is exclusive and typically involves a higher level position or perhaps one with pressing urgency or confidentiality. Success on a retained search is guaranteed…we do

28 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

not rest until the hire is complete. One third of our searches are in this category. A retained search comes with a 180-day review period. We’ve done close to thirty retained searches in recent years and 100% have been successful. Whatever talent needs our clients have, we are equipped to address those quickly, professionally and, always with a smile! ATG: On a lighter note, we always want to hear what fun things our interviewees do in their down time. Are there any leisure activities that you particularly enjoy? Do you have any hobbies that help you relax and recharge your batteries? JF: I used to answer this by saying I spend lots of time with our five kids, but they are big now and seem to need me less and less. Still, spending time with them is great fun. I play keyboards in a local rock and roll band but COVID had put a big damper on that. I’m also head coach of the varsity basketball team at my sons’ high school. I just learned that we WILL have a season this year which is good news. My wife and I try to take walks together most days and that’s always a great tonic. I will say that I enjoy what I’m doing so much that getting lost in it almost feels like a hobby. It’s energizing and keeps me in contact with colleagues whom I treasure. I’m very thankful for that. ATG: Jack, thank you for taking this time to talk to us. We know that you have a very demanding schedule, so we very much appreciate it.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

ATG Interviews Rick Anderson Associate Dean for Collections and Scholarly Communication, University of Utah, and University Librarian, Brigham Young University by Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Library Conference) <leah@charlestonlibraryconference.com> and Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu> The following is a lightly edited transcript of an episode of ATG The Podcast that was posted on August 18, 2020. LH: Hi, I’m Leah Hinds. Executive Director of the Charleston Library Conference and I’d like to welcome you to ATG! The Podcast. This week we have a new interview with Rick Anderson, currently the Associate Dean for Collections and Scholarly Communication at University of Utah and recently named University Librarian at Brigham Young University. I conducted the interview alongside Tom Gilson, Associate Editor of Against the Grain. Join us to hear a conversation about Rick’s transition from University of Utah to BYU, his love of music and his CD HotList website and some recent articles and projects he’s been involved with. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. TG: Rick, first we’d like to congratulate you on your recent appointment as University Librarian at Brigham Young University and, speaking of which, can you tell us a little bit about how it all happened? What led you to apply for the job and what factors lead you to accept? RA: Yeah, so, I actually got my start at BYU. I got my undergraduate degree and my library degree there back when they had a library program and I have just always loved BYU. I’ve always missed it. I’ve always felt a pull back to my alma mater, and over the years, as I’ve come to find that I enjoyed the work of library administration and library leadership, the University librarian job there has sort of become my dream job in my head and the timing in the past had never quite been right. But this time it was, although the circumstances under which the job came open were tragic and very sad for me and for all of us in libraries in the state of Utah with the passing of Jennifer Paustenbaugh who was a friend and a huge hero to all of us. But, when they decided to open up the position again, the timing was finally right for me and I was at a point in my career where it felt like the right move, and so one of the things that really attracts

me about BYU is that I’ve been for the last 13 years at a Research 1 University that is an absolutely wonderful institution and a place where it is just very, very exciting to be, and that’s been wonderful and I’m tremendously grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to be at the University of Utah. But, I’ve got about ten years left in my career before I’ll hit retirement age and I’m really excited about the prospect of spending those last ten years focusing on student success, undergraduate education and basically being of service to BYU students whom I have always loved and continue to love. So I’m really excited to be back on that campus working with the tremendous leadership team at the BYU Library and at a unique and wonderful university that’s focused on undergraduate education and student success. LH: Thank you, Rick. So, according to BYU Academic Vice President Shane Reese it was “Rick’s wealth of experience in libraries” that made you their top choice. As you look back on your past career, which of those experiences do you think best prepared you to take on the challenge of being the University Librarian at BYU? RA: It’s weird because in my mind I’m still kind of 28 years old and for anybody

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

to talk about me having “a wealth of experience” just seems kind of strange. But, the reality is that I’m 55 years old and that as I look back on it I go “Oh, wow, I actually have had a fairly long career already and a wide range of experiences,” and I’ve now worked at three different research universities, in three different research libraries, as well as spending the first four years of my career at what was then called Yankee Book Peddler serving all kinds of libraries as a bibliographer working with approval plans. Each one of those places where I’ve worked has given me experience and exposure to incredibly smart and accomplished, insightful people who have educated me and helped me along my way and all of those experiences have been tremendously important in preparing me to take on leadership in the library at BYU. But, I think the single most important experience and the most important preparation I’ve had for this job has been the last seven years that I’ve spent working under Dean Alberta Comer, who came to us in 2013. I just can’t say enough about not only what a talented leader she is but also what a tremendous example she sets of leadership that is simultaneously empathetic and genuinely caring for the people who work for her and focused on fostering the success of the students and the University. She’s always got that balance in mind and I’ve learned so much from working closely with her at moments when there have been crises or problems, and she’s responded in a particular way and I thought “Dang, I’m not sure that’s how I would have responded, but, that was the perfect way to respond!” And I’ve just sort of grabbed those experiences like a squirrel hunting nuts and cached them away in the tree of my brain and said to myself “I need to remember what I just saw her do, because hopefully someday I’m going to have the opportunity to put those lessons to use in my own leadership experience.” So, again, I think the time that I had to spend with Alberta has been the single most important preparation but certainly everything that I’ve done in small and medium size and large libraries and continued on page 30

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Interview — Rick Anderson from page 29 on the book-selling side have been hugely helpful in preparing me to be ready for this opportunity. TG: Rick, it sounds like having Alberta as a mentor really made a big difference? RA: Oh, absolutely. Her mentorship has been completely invaluable. I can’t say enough about what a great mentor she has been. TG: The one question we feel we need to ask is what do you see as the key challenges that you’re going to face as University Librarian at BYU, and have you any specific strategies in mind as to how you’d address those challenges? RA: I think we’re going to talk about the COVID-19 stuff specifically in a minute, but just in general terms, certainly making that shift from supporting a research-focused university to supporting a student education-focused university is going to require a shift in mindset. I don’t think that’s going to be too hard. I think it’s going to be gradual, but I think it will come more or less naturally as I get acclimated to the new environment. But, I think what’s going to be a bigger challenge is going to be the sheer process of getting to know a new large and complex and diverse staff and organization in the library and then getting to know a large and complex and diverse university organization. Certainly one of the daunting things about being a University Librarian is the thought of having really difficult decisions to make and never really being positive that you’re going to make the right decision. That’s scary. But, I think in the short term the thing that is most daunting to me is the thought of setting foot on that campus and going “Holy cow! Where do I even start?” And because I’ve been thinking about that a lot, I have actually formulated some strategies, one of which is my to “hit the ground listening.” When I get to the library, one of the messages that I will be sending is “do not look to me for major programmatic or organizational changes for the next six months to a year.” Right now, I need to listen. I need to learn. I need to get a sense of what’s going on and why it’s going on and where the issues are and what people think about the issues. I need to take this opportunity to let people tell me what they think and share what their dreams and hopes are for the university or for the library, and what their fears are, and I need to go around campus. I

need to meet with the other deans. I need to meet with campus leadership and say “What are you trying to do?” And then come away from those conversations back to the library and say “Okay, here’s what they’re trying to do in the College of Humanities. Here’s what they’re trying to do in the Equity and Diversity Office. We need to figure out what we can do as a library to help them do those things.” One of the common complaints that my colleagues have heard from me is that in libraries we have a tendency to go out to faculty or student leadership or university leadership and say “What can the library do to help you?” The problem is, it’s not their job to know what the library can do. They don’t know how to answer that. What we need to do is go to them and just figure out what they’re trying to do and ask them questions like “When you try to do this, what kind of barriers do you run into? What are the challenges and frustrations you’re facing?” And then we need to go back to the library and huddle up and say “Okay, they’re facing this kind of barrier. Is this something that we can help with?” And the answer is almost always “yes,” but we have to think creatively in order to figure out how to do it. So, trying to maintain that kind of a mindset in myself, resisting the temptation to swoop in and solve problems that I think I understand because somebody just explained them to me for 15 minutes, and instead just listening, getting my feet under me and getting my brain around the issues that the library and the university are facing as best I can so that when the time comes to make decisions the leadership team and I are doing that with the best possible information. Another strategy that I will be implementing is more of a mindset thing, and that is to keep the university’s mission always in mind. This is another thing that I kind of preach about quite a bit: that the library is an organ of the university. The library exists because the university created the library and the library’s purpose is to move the institution in the direction that it is trying to go. Of course, we have other purposes as well: we need to be a force for good in the larger world of scholarly communication, and there’s all kinds of things that we need to do — but if the university doesn’t see the library as an engine that is moving it forward in the direction that it’s trying to go, the library is going to lose support from the university, and arguably should. So, keeping the mission in mind is another strategy that I’ll be implementing

30 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

and then I think the last thing, and maybe one of the most important things that I’m planning to do, is to really rely on the leadership team that is there that has already impressed me so much. A number of the folks on the leadership team at BYU are people that I’ve known for years and have always been really impressed with, but there are others whom I’ve gotten to know over the course of the interview process and then as we’ve begun having remote meetings together leading up to my move there on September 1st. The more time I spend with them, the more I talk to them, the more I listen to them, the more impressed I am by them and, frankly, the calmer I get because I know that when I walk in there and sit down behind that desk, I know that I’ve got a really tremendous team to work with, and it’s very calming to me to have the confidence in them that I do. LH: Rick, you alluded to this earlier, but on top of taking a brand-new role at BYU you’re also switching jobs in the midst of a global pandemic. So, speaking of being calm, not to alarm you... RA: Wait! There’s a pandemic? LH: So, how would you address the specific challenges posed to the University Library by all of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19? Will students be on campus this fall? Can you tell us a little bit about that? RA: Yeah, so far it looks like they will. But, the library — it’s interesting to compare and contrast what’s happening at the University of Utah with what’s happening at BYU, and for those who may be listening who don’t understand what higher education in Utah looks like, the metropolitan areas of Utah are spread along the foothills of a mountain range called the Wasatch Front, and way up to the north is Utah State University in Logan; about 80 miles south of Logan is Salt Lake City where the University of Utah is and then about 50 miles South of Salt Lake City is Provo where BYU is. And so, these three research universities all work together very closely in a lot of ways, and the libraries in particular have very good relationships (despite the bitter sports rivalry that exists, for example, between the U of U and BYU). So, we are in constant communication in situations like this and we get to sort of see what each campus is doing and that can inform some of the things that we do. At the University of Utah, the libraries closed at the end of March and we’ve been providing all continued on page 31

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Interview — Rick Anderson from page 30 of our services remotely. Patrons have not been able to come into the library. At BYU they’ve never closed the library. Right now, during summer, there are, to my knowledge, two buildings on the BYU campus that are open to the public and one of them is the student union where the campus store is, and the other one is the library. Now, the library is operating on a skeleton staff and they’ve reorganized their furniture in such a way as to facilitate social distancing and they’ve basically told all of the staff and faculty in the library “If you can work from home, please do.” But every day there is a member of the library administration on site and every day there is a skeleton crew of public service folks and others on site. The other thing that’s interesting is that both BYU and the University of Utah — I think this may be true at Utah State as well, but I’m not positive — have so far seen an increase in enrollment for this fall. Now, there are some unique population dynamics in Utah that have led to that and one of them is that the Latter-day Saint missionaries who were serving outside of the state were mostly brought home early when the pandemic hit, so now there’s been this influx of 20-year-old kids going “Oh, wow, okay, I guess I’ll go back to school in the fall.” So, that has really protected both the U of U and BYU from the kinds of enrollment impacts that other institutions are likely seeing. But, both the U of U and BYU right now are planning on a hybrid onsite and remote classroom experience. They are planning for lectures to happen in socially distanced classrooms and also for instruction to happen remotely. They’re both planning to end the in-person instruction after Thanksgiving, so the students who go home for Thanksgiving will stay home for the remainder of the semester and have the rest of their classes online. Obviously, the big challenge, and this is an especially big challenge in the library, is balancing service and safety. The library is, by its nature, a huge enclosed public space and so the challenge that we’re dealing with at the U of U is the same one that we’re going to be dealing with at BYU, and that is how do we make it as easy as possible for students to get the services and access that they need while keeping them from getting themselves and others sick? And so, we at the U of U are taking the same kinds of steps that they are

taking at BYU: reconfiguring furniture, putting up plexiglass shields at public service points, putting tape and decals on the floors to illustrate where people should stand if there’s a line, limiting the number of people that can be in a room at a time and, you know, all of the standard sort of CDC, science-directed precautions that anybody would take. Masks are going to be required inside. Enforcing that is going to be difficult. That’s one of the big challenges that we’re all trying to anticipate how we’ll deal with; you know, there’s an old phrase from military theory that says “No battle plan survives the encounter with the enemy.” And I think about that all the time. We’re going to come up with all these plans, then those plans are going to encounter the real-world COVID situation and the plans are going to be adjusted. I think another thing that’s going to be critical is clear, broad and constant communication about what’s going on, what’s expected, how we’re going to deal with imposing the rules that are put in place, and how we’re going to deal with exceptions where exceptions need to be handled. There are times when as an administration or as a leadership you can’t talk openly about everything. There are times when you’re dealing with confidential situations. You’re dealing with people’s health problems or whatever and you can’t explain everything to everybody perfectly but in the vast majority of cases you can. And erring on the side of open, transparent and clear communication is especially important in a situation like this. So, that’s one of the guiding principles for me. And then the other thing is we in the library have been supporting online access to services and content for decades now. We have to do that even better than we did it eight months ago and we’ve got to figure out new ways that we can support online teaching. One of the things that I was very upfront about in my job interview with BYU is, I told them Look, I am not a very creative thinker. I’m an analytical thinker and I’m pretty good at that. I’m good at the linear logic, the ‘if this is true, then that must be true’ type of stuff.” When it comes to the “art of the possible,” that’s when I turn to the people around me and say “Who’s a really good creative thinker?” And, so, we as library leadership and management are going to have to think in really creative ways about new things that we can do to make the online instruction experience better for both students and faculty, and I’m really going to be counting on the very, very smart and creative people in the library to

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

come up with great ideas that then I can support and champion and push forward and help to realize. TG: Rick, on a lighter topic, in addition to your day job as University Librarian, you are a talented musician, music critic, a self-proclaimed roots reggae fanatic. You play the banjo, right? RA: I do. TG: What other instruments do you play and what are your favorites? RA: Boy, it depends on how loosely you define the word “play.” I am a very good clawhammer banjo player. Clawhammer banjo is a style of five string banjo playing that predates bluegrass — the fancy three fingers super-fast stuff. I’m a good guitarist. I’m a good bass player. The string bass is actually the instrument in which I have some formal training. I play string bass and electric bass. I’ve actually been learning mandolin during the pandemic. That’s been one of my stay-at-home activities. I’ve always wanted to learn the mandolin since I was like 13 or 14 and it finally occurred to me that I had no excuse not to. I play a little bit of Irish flute. I play the bodhran, which is an Irish frame drum. I think of all of those instruments I’m probably best at clawhammer banjo and bass. Unfortunately, bass is not really an instrument that you can enjoyably play a lot by yourself at home during a pandemic. Bass you really need to be playing with other people for it to, in my opinion, for it to be really, really fun and enjoyable, but I think in an ensemble bass is my favorite instrument to play and otherwise clawhammer banjo. It’s just an instrument that I’ve loved since I was 14 and it’s still the thing that most feeds my soul, I think. So, that’s what I do. TG: Wow, that’s really incredible. When we meet in Charleston next we will have to get you to perform. RA: I am a terrible solo performer and I’m very uncomfortable performing solo but if you can find me a fiddler that I can stand next to and a little bit behind, I love to play as an accompanist. I hate to play as a soloist. But, getting up on stage with a fiddler is tons of fun for me as a banjo player and standing at the back of an ensemble playing bass is also very... TG: Well, it sounds like we need to get a Charleston Conference bluegrass band going. RA: Yeah. That would be fun. TG: Alright. continued on page 32

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Interview — Rick Anderson from page 31 LH: We need to work on that for sure. So, as a follow up to that, speaking of your love of music, we understand that you’ve decided to keep your CD HotList website going. So, for our listeners who may not know about it, can you fill us in on what it is and how it got its start and where you hope to take it in the future? RA: CD HotList is a website that I put together back in 1999 and the reason I did it was I had been, I started writing music criticism back in 1990. And I wrote for a local newspaper and then I wrote for a couple of small syndicates and I’ve written for a variety of outlets over the years, and after I had been doing that for some time — and I remember I was actually in the shower when this, because the only good ideas that I ever get come either while I’m in the shower or while I’m running — and I was in the shower and I thought “You know, I keep seeing new releases that come across my desk,” and it will occasionally occur to me this would be a really good addition to an academic or public library collection. And I thought “What if I were to just once a month recommend 12 or 15 new releases that I think would be of particular interest to libraries?” Maybe it might be a world-premiere recording of works discovered by an important composer or it might be an important album that’s been out of print for years and now it’s been reissued, or it could be anything. So, this was in the very early days of the World Wide Web. So, I actually coded, I just learned some very basic HTML code, created a website of my own and a template for it and that was what I did: every month I had five genre categories: Classical, Jazz, Folk/ Country and Rock/Pop and World/Ethnic. And every month I just recommended a handful of releases in those genres with a little one paragraph review explaining why I thought this would be of interest to libraries. And then when each issue went up every month, I would put a note out on several library listservs saying “Hey, if anybody’s interested, here’s the new issue of CD HotList.” It’s weird that it’s called CD HotList now because that really dates me, but the fact is libraries are still collecting CDs and still need physical formats that they can lend, so I haven’t changed the name of it. Anyway, over the years it has gone through different phases and different manifestations. For a while it was spon-

sored by Baker & Taylor and we expanded the coverage to 35 to 40 releases a month and I had several writers who worked with me. But, now it’s back to being just something that I do. Since 2012 I’ve been doing it on a blog platform. It’s free. I don’t make any money off of it anymore but I get a lot of free music and getting free music has been sort of the primary motivator for years. It’s how I managed to build this huge collection of music that I have. So, yeah, so when I accepted the job at BYU I thought “Oh, there are a number of things that I’m going to have to cut back on. I’m going to have to be on fewer advisory boards. I’m probably going to have to travel less and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to spend as much time writing about music as I did.” And I was thinking “Well, it’s been 21 years. Maybe the time has come to just retire CD HotList and be done with it,” but the more I thought about that, the more I just couldn’t imagine my life without writing about music. And so, I decided instead of retiring CD HotList I’m just going to keep it going at a scaled back level. So instead of writing 25 to 30 reviews a month, which is what I’d been doing, I’m just going to do 10. I’m going to do 2 in each of those five genre categories and if that turns out to be sustainable then I’ll do it indefinitely and if it’s not sustainable then I’ll have to stop. TG: Rick, you’re also one of the chefs at the Scholarly Kitchen and you write regularly for them. Your most recent post was entitled “cOAlition S’s Rights Confiscation Strategy Continues.” And it generated some good discussion. Can you tell us a little bit about the article and the addendum of the announcement for the European Research Council? RA: Yeah, so, for those who aren’t familiar with it, and I would imagine most people who are listening to this probably will be familiar with it, but, cOAlition S is an organization of funding agencies in Europe that all got together and they said “Okay, look, we want to help move the world towards a universal open access environment where nobody will have to pay for access to scholarly content and where scholarly content will be freely available for people to reuse in any way they want.” And, so, toward that end they all got together and said “Okay, we’re going to form this organization called cOAlition S, and we’ve put together what we call Plan S, under which all of us as funding agencies agree that if you get research funding from us you have to

32 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

make your work freely available as soon as it’s published and you have to make your work freely reusable in any way a member of the public might want to reuse it.” So, freely available to access, freely available to reuse without having to ask the authors’ permission, which is fine. There are other funding agencies that have done this and there are governments that have done this and certainly increasingly publishers are getting on board with open access and either creating fully OA journals or giving authors the option of publishing in their existing journals on an OA basis if they want, usually by charging them a fee upfront that covers the publisher’s costs. And then there are other organizations that have created Open Access journals that don’t charge anybody. They just absorb the cost of publishing the journal institutionally. And there are funding agencies in the U.S. like the Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation, very large and significant grant funding organizations that have adopted similar policies that say “if you take research funding from us, that’s fine, but when you write up your research and publish it you have to make sure that it’s freely available.” cOAlition S — I mean, I’m on the record as being in favor of OA but also being in favor of discussing very openly and upfront the fact that OA, like closed access and any other model, has got both costs and benefits associated with it and we need to be able to talk about the costs and the benefits, not just say “Well, I advocate for ‘X’ and therefore I’m only going to talk about its benefits.” And one of the problems that we have in the Open Access movement is that there is an unwillingness generally, culturally, within the movement to talk about any of the downsides or disadvantages of various Open Access models. So, one of the things that cOAlition S has recently done is they have tweaked their policy and this tweak they are referring to as a “Rights Retention Strategy.” What they mean by that is they are requiring that the author of a funded article retain the copyright in her work and then make the work available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Only License, and the Creative Commons Attribution-Only License, commonly known as CC BY, basically says “I am still technically, in legal terms, the copyright holder but all of my rights as the copyright holder are now given away to the general public. For all functional purposes, the work is now in the public domain and anybody can treat the work as if it were not under copyright continued on page 34

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Interview — Rick Anderson from page 32 at all.” The point of the article that I wrote for the Scholarly Kitchen last week was to point out that calling this a “Rights Retention Strategy” amounts to Orwellian doublespeak on the part of cOAlition S. They are, in fact, doing the opposite of what could reasonably be called a “Rights Retention Strategy”; in reality it’s a rights confiscation strategy. They are saying “If you take our money to do your research then you have to give away all of your rights.” You have to remain the copyright holder in name, but you don’t get to keep your rights as a copyright holder. You have to give them all away. So, basically what they’re saying is “In return for the money that we provide, we confiscate your rights and give them to everybody in the world.” Now, reasonable people, as I said in the piece, can either agree or disagree with that policy. That’s fine. We can talk about what’s good and bad about that policy. What’s not okay, in my view, is to call it a “Rights Retention Strategy” and advertise it that way and proclaim this so that people will go “Oh, this is awesome! cOAlition S is helping authors retain their rights!,” whereas in fact you’re doing the exact opposite of that. That’s what I object to and that was the point of that article. And there has been some good discussion, as I knew there would be, and that’s great. That’s one of the reasons that I write for the Scholarly Kitchen; it provides a forum for people to then come in and say “well, wait a minute, you said this and what about that?” Honestly, I think the discussions that happen in the comments in the Scholarly Kitchen are at least as valuable as the essays that are published there. But, anyway, you mentioned the recent announcement from the European Research Council. The European Research Council is one of several organizations that joined cOAlition S in the early days because they agreed with the stated principles and purposes of cOAlition S, but have since said “You know, actually, we are no longer fully on board and we’re going to step out of cOAlition S and we’re going to pursue our Open Access goals in our own way.” And I don’t know, whenever something like this happens there will be people on the outside who point and gleefully go “Ahh! The coalition is falling apart!” I don’t know if the Coalition is falling apart, but it is certainly true that we’re seeing more people stepping away from cOAlition S than we see joining

cOAlition S, and I suspect that cOAlition S’s future is going to look quite a bit like its recent past rather than growing and becoming the standard program for Open Access. Other countries are going to do things in the ways that make more sense for them. There has certainly not been a groundswell of organizations rushing to join cOAlition S. If anything, the net change has been in the opposite direction. TG: It is a very complicated issue, and we appreciate you giving us your take on explaining the situation from your vantage point. Thank you. LH: So, we’re kind of bouncing around a little bit between professional and more personal interest questions, but you mentioned earlier that travel is one of the things that you’re considering possibly cutting back on with taking on your new role. You’re normally a frequent flyer. You’re somebody that travels a great deal to industry conferences and events throughout the year. Have you enjoyed the time off from your usual busy schedule during the quarantine or are you itching to get back out there when it’s safe to do so? RA: A little of both. I think in the last two or three years especially I’ve had this sneaking feeling that I’m spending too much time on airplanes, and I think this new position will give me a good — I was going to say “excuse,” but “excuse” isn’t the right word. It will give me a good opportunity to sort of reassess how much of that I do, what things I say “yes” to and what things I don’t. I’m certainly going to cut back on the number of advisory boards that I serve on. I feel like advisory boards are a really valuable use of my time and of librarians’ time generally, but it’s time to cull those back a bit. I do miss it. I love going to new places and meeting people from libraries that are very different from mine and cultures that are very different from mine. I do love that, and I have really missed that, but I have to confess: I’ve enjoyed being home and sleeping in my own bed every night, and I’ve got a tenmonth old grandbaby who lives nearby and being close to her is certainly better than any kind of travel I can think of. And I love waking up in my own bed next to my wife every morning and I’ve really had complicated feelings about travel since it has been so radically curtailed. On the one hand I miss it, but on the other hand I have just really enjoyed being at home. LH: And it doesn’t hurt that you’re in a beautiful state like Utah. I was out there a couple of summers ago. We were on an extended camping trip and we visit-

34 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

ed a lot of the national parks in the area. We were at Arches and Canyonlands and Capitol Reef and Zion and you’ve just got such a wealth of natural beauty around. I don’t know if you get the chance to do much of that during the quarantine, getting out and seeing some of that, but it’s a beautiful place to be. RA: Yeah, and actually just a couple of weeks ago my wife and I went “glamping.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with that concept, but we went to a fancy — I’m not a very enthusiastic camper. I love the outdoors. I love going out and hiking. I love doing all the outdoor stuff. But at the end of the day I then want to take a shower and go to sleep in a bed. And we went down to the Capitol Reef National Park which is not one of the more heavily visited but it’s a really, really great national park with amazing hiking and beautiful views, and we went and we stayed at a place that had cabins and teepees as well as more traditional hotel rooms, and we stayed in a teepee with air conditioning and a queen-size bed and a 45 inch TV and wifi, and a private bathroom and shower, and it was fantastic. That was my kind of camping. It was great. But, yeah it has really taken a bit of the edge off of this COVID situation that our house is almost directly at the foothills of the Wasatch Range and in 15 minutes we can grab our dog and be up in the foothills hiking up a canyon. We are tremendously blessed to be where we are and we feel very fortunate. TG: It’s a really beautiful part of the world. It really is. I’ve been out to Zion a few times and driven around in Utah and it’s just fantastic. You do live in a beautiful place. Rick, we know that it’s got to be a very busy time for you right now and we really want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I learned a lot. I’m sure Leah would say the same. It was very interesting and a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed it, so, thank you. RA: Thank you. It was a pleasure for me and I’m honored to have been invited. LH: Thank you for joining us. Be sure to tune in again next week for more content from the world of libraries, publishing and scholarly communications. We’d love to hear from you. If you have questions or comments about today’s show or suggestions for speakers or topics for future shows you can use the contact form on the podcast website at atgthepodcast.com.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; Phone: 734-764-9969) <cseeman@umich.edu> Twitter @cseeman Column Editor’s Note: There are so many parts of being a book review editor for Against the Grain that I really enjoy. There are days when having a bit less work might be nice. Also, when you have a completely digital library, managing incoming and outgoing print volumes that are stacked in my office is a strange twist of irony. However, the reason I love doing this is when I get to work with an excellent group of librarians who span the country and beyond. I also love working with publishers as they are sending me information about new titles. So even during a year when nothing is normal, especially having participated recently in the virtual Charleston Conference, a series of book reviews that cover newer titles in library studies and library reference seems like a great way to find just a little bit of…say…2019. But this column is one that I am most happy with. We have a nice balance of books on the profession as well as library reference works. The reference topics seem to be everywhere you look: women’s health, United States Government, civil rights, global resources, and the intersection of comics and librarianship. The professional works explore how to conduct research and reference interviews, the history of our profession and programming for teens. All in all, a very nice a diverse set of works that we are happy to showcase for the Against the Grain readers. I am so appreciative of my great crew of reviewers. Participating in this issue’s column are return reviewers: Janet Crum, Presley Dyer, Julie Huskey, Joshua Hutchinson, Mary Catherine Moeller, Michelle Shea, and Steven W. Sowards. Joining the ranks of reviewers is Rachelle McLain. If you would like to be a reviewer for Against the Grain, please write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you are a publisher and have a book you would like to see reviewed in a future column, please also write me directly. You can also find out more about the Reader’s Roundup here — https://sites.google.com/view/squirrelman/ atg-readers-roundup. Happy reading and be nutty! — CS

Buratovich, Michael A. (ed.) Salem Health: Women’s Health. Ipswitch, MA: Salem Press, 2019. 978-1-64265-046-4 (hardback); 978-1-64265-047-1 (eBook). 2 v. (978 p.), $275. Reviewed by Janet Crum (Director, Health Sciences Library, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ) <janetcrum@arizona.edu> Practically every library should provide resources on women’s health, especially for patrons trying to understand concepts at a basic level. As the editor’s introduction notes, “Women make 90% of household healthcare decisions” and “account for 93% of all over-the-counter pharmaceutical purchases” (ix). Women also have unique health care needs, and diseases and conditions may manifest differently in women than they do in men (ix). The internet is rife with misinformation and outright falsehoods about Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

women’s health, so a reliable source of accurate, easy-to-understand information is most welcome. This two-volume encyclopedia from Salem Health partially fills that bill, covering a wide variety of health topics affecting women from childhood to old age. The information is generally current, accurate, and accessible — but with a few significant omissions and problems. The set contains nearly 300 articles (400-2000 words each) on female anatomy and physiology, reproductive health care, diseases specific to women, conditions with distinct manifestations in women, conditions more common in women, and psychological and sociological conditions and issues affecting women. Each article begins with the topic name and category and a glossary of key terms. Entries are signed with the author’s name(s) and credentials and conclude with a short list of further reading. The introduction and publicity material indicate that the target audiences are high school, undergraduate, and public library patrons as well as premed students. In keeping with the stated audience, entries use accurate, appropriate medical terminology that is accessible to educated lay readers but would be challenging for readers with lower education or literacy levels. A review of selected topics reveals some variation in the depth of coverage as well as some significant omissions. Topics covered especially well include: • Gender identity: Coverage is extensive, accurate, and affirming. The article on gender confirmation surgery is especially good, offering clear, detailed information on surgical options with a reassuring, patient-friendly tone. • Sexual assault: The topic is covered thoroughly and in a variety of contexts, including date rape and issues faced by women in the military. • Reproductive health: Topics covered include (but are not limited to) abortion, contraception, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, newborn care, and menopause. Information provided is generally accurate and nonjudgmental, though one article on breastfeeding somewhat overstates its benefits. Significant omissions include: • Sexual harassment is mentioned only briefly, with very little detail, and impacts to physical and mental health are not addressed. • Gender discrimination and health disparities based on gender are not listed in the contents or index. These seem like significant omissions, given the well-documented incidence of sexism and differential treatment women experience when seeking health care. • Race is also not listed in the table of contents or index, which seems like another significant and disconcerting omission, given the prevalence of race-based health disparities and the physical and mental health impacts of racism, including impacts specific to women (e.g., maternal mortality). Race is mentioned in some articles, continued on page 36

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Reader’s Roundup from page 35 usually when it is a risk factor for a condition. However, in at least one case, the approach taken is concerning. The article on adolescent pregnancy prevention refers to Native Americans as American Indians, an outdated term, and recommends changes to Native culture to decrease adolescent pregnancy rather than addressing the significant health, education, and income disparities expereienced by Native Americans. In addition to the omissions and concerns listed above, the subject index seems incomplete and inconsistent. For example, the index contains entries for both birth control and contraception, but they do not list the same pages. The index contains no entries for post-traumatic stress disorder, though the work contains two articles on the topic and several references in other topics (e.g., the article on rape and sexual assault). Illustrations are simple black and white diagrams. Most are easy to understand, but some are fuzzy and lack sufficient contrast between the diagram itself and the arrows and labels, making it difficult to associate structures with names or see detail in structures. Appendices include a list of relevant government agencies with phone numbers and web links; a list of crisis organizations and hotlines; and a glossary. Access to the online version appears to be included with the purchase price and appears to be available to a purchasing library’s entire patron base rather than being restricted to a single user. The online version was not reviewed, but access via keyword search would go a long way to make up for the indexing deficits noted above. This set is recommended with reservations for high school, public, and undergraduate libraries. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Guide to the ATG Reviewer Ratings The ATG Reviewer Rating is being included for each book reviewed. Corey came up with this rating to reflect our collaborative collections and resource sharing means and thinks it will help to classify the importance of these books. • I need this book on my nightstand. (This book is so good, that I want a copy close at hand when I am in bed.) • I need this on my desk. (This book is so valuable, that I want my own copy at my desk that I will share with no one.) • I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.) • I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.) • I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this is a useful book for my library or my network.)

Dean, D. Alan. Encyclopedia of the United States Cabinet. Third edition. Armenia, NY: Grey House Publishing, Inc, 2019. 9781642650990. xxii, 1835 pages, $275.00. Reviewed by Julie Huskey (Head of Cataloging, Tennessee State University, Brown-Daniel Library, Nashville) <jhuskey@tnstate.edu> Dr. Alan Dean takes over from another professional writer, Mark Grossman, for the third edition of this popular reference work from Grey House. (The first and second editions were published in 2000 and 2010.) The first volume opens with several essays on the nature and evolution of the cabinet (George Washington’s first cabinet, for instance, had only three members), including a piece on the British cabinet, as well as a section on those who served under the Articles of Confederation. The preliminary material is effective in placing the American cabinet in its historical context. The main portion of this two-volume set includes a chapter for the cabinet of each presidential term (so a two-term president would have a chapter for each term separately). The section for each presidential term follows the same pattern: an “Essay on the cabinet” followed by profiles of each cabinet secretary, arranged chronologically. Entries, that range from approximately five hundred to approximately twelve hundred words, follow the same pattern: early life and education, environment around appointment, an assessment of their time in office, and their career after leaving the cabinet. A bibliography follows each entry. The first entry is for John Jay, who served as Secretary of State from April 1789 to March 1790 under the Articles of Confederation; the most recent profiles are for those who took office in July 2019. Many entries — perhaps too many — open with some variation of “the secretary is almost forgotten today”, yet most profiles are quite comprehensive. Those profiled range from the extremely well-known (e.g, the eight future U.S. presidents who served in the cabinet) to the rather obscure (such as John Palmer Usher, Secretary of the Interior from 1863 to 1865). One appendix reprints some primary documents pertaining to the cabinet (such as correspondence and newspaper articles), but with only fourteen entries, the researcher might wish for it to be more extensive. Other appendices include lists of those who held more than one office, Congressional Representatives chosen for the cabinet, and minorities who served in the cabinet. It is followed by a bibliography that is heavy on memoirs, government documents, and dissertations, as well as an alphabetical index of cabinet secretaries. The inclusion of the cabinet of the Confederate States of America is an interesting touch. Although vice-presidents are sometimes classified as members of the cabinet, this work does not include them. Considering how unknown some vice-presidents remain, it would be beneficial to include them. The bullet-listed “Historical snapshot” pages, common in Grey House works, seem haphazardly inserted and serve little purpose. The Encyclopedia of the United States Cabinet is likely to be most useful to undergraduate libraries where interest on the influence of the cabinet on American policy is likely to be high. The bibliographies alone provide avenues for further research. Since early cabinet members are covered fairly well elsewhere, continued on page 37

36 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Reader’s Roundup from page 36 and presidential libraries (the online versions of which often offer extensive access to primary documents) exist for Herbert Hoover and later presidents, the work may be especially helpful for researching the period from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Although tangible reference works have been called obsolescent, this title makes an argument that a physical reference shelf still has a place in the academic library. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Grandmougin, Anne-Cécile. Lucien Herr: Socialist Librarian of the French Third Republic. Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books, 2020. 9781634000949, 136 pages. $18.00 (Tegan Raleigh, trans.) Reviewed by Joshua Hutchinson (Cataloging and Metadata Librarian, University of California, Irvine) <jchutchi@uci.edu> This biography of a late 19th and early 20th century French librarian shows the reader what 21st century librarians have in common with our previous colleagues as well as what we can learn from them. Rather than focusing on that which makes us different, instead author Anne-Cécile Grandmougin shows what hasn’t changed about the profession of librarianship and through those similarities describes just what the libraries were like where Lucien Herr worked. An intellectual first and foremost, Lucien Herr was librarian at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure from 1888 to 1926. He played an important role in shaping not just that library but also the intellectual development of many of the students who passed through that institution while he was there. He saw the role of librarian to be an active one — to direct not just the library collection, but also the research of the students studying in it. Herr was also friends with many of the important thinkers and academics of his time, and a prolific reader and reviewer. Grandmougin’s level of archival research is impressive, apparent for instance when comparing the prodigious quantity of reviews that Herr wrote on an annual basis with the books that he purchased for his library. Herr appears to have truly believed that he needed to read the books that he was purchasing for his library so that he could best help his patrons. He was a bibliographer conversant in many fields — not only was he able to read and review many or most of the books that came into the library, he also knew many of the intellectual luminaries of his time, such as Jean Jaurès (along with whom he was a co-founder of the newspaper L’Humanité), Léon Blum and Charles Peguy. In addition, Grandmougin describes how Herr was intimately involved in the Dreyfuss Affair. The ways in which Herr’s practice of librarianship are mirrored in today’s libraries — even those in a different country, different century and different context — are both amusing and illuminating. He had difficult budgetary constraints and struggled because the fiscal year imposed upon him “did not correspond with the natural rhythm of acquisitions in the library” (pp 58-59). Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Serials accounted for a large share of the acquisitions budget, which meant that he was unable to be as flexible or complete in his monographic purchases as he would have liked. He had to regularly justify the library’s budget to administrators, and he dealt with the advent of new formats (such as slides and film reels) in libraries, and struggled (both in terms of budget and policy) with how they fit within the collections. These are just a few of the ways in which Herr’s librarianship was similar to the practice of librarianship in the 21st century, and also in which 21st century librarians can study and learn from him. As a book, this is extremely readable. It’s fairly short — with the main text only a little bit more than 100 pages — but much is packed into those pages. For readers who are already aware of the social and historical context, it will prove to be an illuminating biographical sketch. For those who don’t have a deep knowledge of France from the 1880s to after the First World War, it provides an introduction to the period while telling an interesting story about the history of libraries. The translator has a note at the beginning explaining some of the decisions made throughout the work, and the translation itself is very impressive — the text reads smoothly and clearly. This work, a translation of Grandmougin’s Mémoire d’étude (or dissertation), is a work of scholarship in both library science and French history. There is also a significant aspect about the history of teacher training, because Herr was director of the main teacher training library. Grandmougin is currently Conservateur des bibliothèques at Université Paris XIII. The French original is available online at the enssib’s institutional repository. Because of this book’s cross-disciplinary interest, the translation is certainly worth having available, particularly for those with strong programs in library science and/or 20th century French history. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Madsen, Marianne M. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Global Resources. Ipswich, Massachusetts: Salem Press. 2019. 978-1-64265-056-3, 1576 pages. $395 Reviewed by Michelle Shea (Education Librarian, Texas A&M - Central Texas) <m.shea@tamuct.edu> This four-volume set is republished every decade with partially updated content and tables. As would be expected in an encyclopedic text, subject terms follow the standard alphabetical format. While general reference works may provide short descriptions of natural resources, this product prioritizes in-depth exploration of sustainable materials, environmental legislation, and cross-national initiatives. Photos, diagrams, and charts are also included sporadically to clarify or illustrate concepts throughout the text. In this third edition of the work, readers will find some additional terms linked to energy sources and companies, but most entries have been updated to carry over from prior printings. Chemical and physical substances are organized under headings that describe primary uses, technical definitions, historical background, and sourcing information. Individuals who profited from or defended natural resources are given short biographies, continued on page 38

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Reader’s Roundup from page 37 which focus on social, economic, and scientific impacts. Some nations, such as France and Mexico, are also assigned sections to highlight products, industries, and geographic access to materials. While only about 40 countries are individually emphasized, the locations are diverse enough to shed light on resource distribution across the continents. Lastly, a few specific programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (p. 203) and various United Nations Conventions (pp. 1268-1283), are defined with enough detail for interested readers to understand the issues. Publisher Salem Press relies on three-prong distribution through print, eBook, and database resources. Their content is primarily a mix of humanities and science texts, as an imprint of Grey House Publishing. Marianne Madsen, a writing and rhetoric studies professor at the University of Utah, is the editor of this edition. As an instructor for scientific writing, she appears well-versed in organizing non-fiction texts. Most entries were written or revised by separate authors, who are acknowledged before each term’s bibliography. The collaborative effort results in a well-researched text with a multitude of perspectives. Table of contents catalog each volume and the set as a whole. Additionally, volume four has a serviceable appendix, which includes elemental data, mineral lists sorted by state and country, a timeline for resource creation or discovery, a glossary for commonly used scientific terms, and recommended websites. For researchers, the final book’s end pages also provide category-based bibliographies, which cover topics from “Conservation” to “Hydrology” (pp. 1445-1467). At the end of many entries, related subjects are referred to with the term “see also”, which could help a reader navigate the volumes in a more intentional manner. A useful index spans over 100 pages to assist those who are looking for terms embedded within larger topics. Since page numbers run continuously between volumes, this book is best maintained in a viewing-only reference area for patrons to consult. Academic libraries on campuses with environmental management or sustainable ethics classes may be interested in purchasing this collection. To serve digital users, an activation code for an electronic copy is included at the end of the first volume. Libraries that already have earlier editions might prefer to use their borrowing network for this third iteration, unless students are consistently requesting updated information in this subject area. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

O’Neal, Michael J. (Ed.) Civil Rights Movements: Past and Present, 2nd edition. Amenia, NY: Salem Press, 2020. 9781642654059, 2 Volumes, 788 pages. $195.00. Reviewed by Presley Dyer (Catalog Librarian, Tennessee State University Libraries) <adyer4@tnstate.edu> Civil liberties have played a significant part of American history since our country’s foundation. We, as Americans, cherish our Bill of Rights to ensure that individuals have the freedom to exercise their rights regarding speech, press, and religion, among others. While these Rights carry significant meaning and appear 38 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

nicely on paper, our reality looks quite differently. History has illustrated that these rights do not always protect every individual, especially when the individual is defined by groups of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. The voices and activism of these groups seeking to create a more fair and equitable union can be found in the two volume set of Civil Rights Movements: Past and Present, edited by Michael J. O’Neal. Published by Salem Press, Civil Right Movements is the second edition of Magill’s Choice: The Civil Rights Movement. While the first edition specifically focused on Black America’s civil rights struggle, “the current edition widens the focus to include entries on the quest for equal rights among women, the LGBT community, ethnic minorities, the disabled, and other groups” (IX). In addition to updating older articles with new bibliographical information, 64 new articles have been added. Covering four centuries worth of civil rights material, the set is arranged alphabetically by related topics and terms. Volume 1 starts with “Abolition” and ends with “Ku Klux Klan Acts.” Volume 2 picks up with the letter L terms, beginning with “Labor Movement” and concluding with “Zoning.” Each entry includes an introduction with an overview of the topic, a detailed essay body with historical and cultural implications, a further reading list, and a “see also” section that provides the reader with direction to other related material. For instance, the first entry, “Abolition,” provides an historical overview of the abolition movement with further emphasis on “Garrison Ethics” and “African American Abolitionism.” The “see also” section suggests for readers to look at the “American Anti-Slavery Society, Emancipation Proclamation, Liberator, and The Slave Rebellions” entries for further relevant information. After the entry discussions, the volume includes an in-depth bibliography, which is organized by its covered topic such as “African American History” and “Women’s Rights.” Next, it features a “Notable Civil Figures” section that contains brief biographical information related to prominent civil rights figures including “Ralph David Abernathy” and “Muhammad Ali.” The volume ends with a timeline that consists of historical dates starting with the first African indentured servants in 1619 and ending with the U.S. Supreme Court case, Flowers v. Mississippi, in 2019. As indicated, this reference set is well-organized and easy-to-follow. It covers a lot of material that an individual might not otherwise think about in relation to civil rights such as the AIDS Crisis and disability rights. Since it is a two volume reference set, it contains of a lot of information in a concise manner. The contributors have done an excellent job providing a starting point for the initial reader and scholar. The publication release date was January 2020, so this present year’s impactful events regarding the movements, specifically with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, are not discussed. As a result, I am sure there will be more of an in-depth analysis of the BLM movement with added entries for the deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and Breonna Taylor. In addition, an entry about “cancel culture” will likely be discussed. Such recent events illustrate the importance of civil rights and its supporting voices. The fight for civil rights and injustices never end. Civil Rights Movements: Past and Present is a great reminder that we must never forget these fights. For this reason, I recommend it for a library’s reference collection. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.) continued on page 39

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Reader’s Roundup from page 38

Piepmeier, Olivia and Stephanie Grimm (Eds.) Comics and Critical Librarianship: Reframing the Narrative in Academic Libraries. Sacramento, Calif.: Library Juice Press, 2019. 978-1-63400-080-2, 378 pages. $45.00. Reviewed by Steven W. Sowards (Associate University Librarian for Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, East Lansing MI) <sowards@msu.edu> Canon (noun): writings or other works that are generally agreed to be good, important, and worth studying. — Cambridge English Dictionary The library’s work of selection and curation has a strong connection to the idea of a “canon” — identifying, preserving and promoting the right set of representative or exemplary works from an author or community, or about a topic. Given that works of popular culture often fall outside “the canon” as traditionally defined, what does it mean to work with a collection of canonical “best” works in a genre like comics? Is there a canon for the non-canonical, a “best” list for the disrespected? Arguably, such a canon has emerged for contemporary comic art: one can point to works by Will Eisner (for pioneering publications like A Contract with God), R. Crumb (famous or infamous for Zap Comix and Fritz the Cat), and Art Spiegelman (best known for Maus), which consistently turn up in discussions and collections. This volume extracts elements that relate the writing and publishing of comics to the work of judging importance and understanding essential features. Editors Olivia Piepmeier and Stephanie Grimm employ critical librarianship as “an intentional engagement with the political and social dimensions of libraries and librarianship, including ideas of neutrality, authorship and authority, and the histories of censorship and affirming cultural divides within our own profession … an approach to the practice of library work that centers social justice principles” (p. 4). Given the marginalization of comics, comic authors and comic readers, and the wide diversity of communities that interact with comics, critical librarianship offers a well-suited method. Considered here, comics are the basis for case studies about insiders and outsiders in publishing and libraries. Because comics are “transgressive” they are always at risk of censorship and marginalization. Critical librarianship shows how to work with marginalized materials, authors, readers and communities. This book will yield insights for readers who are interested in critical librarianship, because the study of comics and their place in the academy gets to the heart of discussions about privilege and marginalization in library practice. This book also will yield insights for readers who are interested in comics, because the toolbox of critical librarianship offers useful ways of thinking. Take-aways range from the practical to the conceptual: how to buy comics at conventions (bring cash), and how to account for a multitude of Batgirls under library cataloging rules. Nineteen chapters are grouped into five sections about The Basics of the Comic Medium; Collecting; Organizing; Teaching; and Reaching. There is a strong focus on pedagogy, looking at critical librarianship in the classroom, tools for teaching, information literacy, and the teaching philosophy of Lynda Barry. Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

A second thread follows the history of comics, going beyond familiar stories about the Comics Code censorship of the 1950s, the radical underground “comix” of the 1960s, and the emergence of the Marvel and DC franchises. A third thread uncovers the diversity of comics by citing examples of rich work coming out of feminism, indigenous communities, the AfroFuturist movement, and international markets such as South Asia. This is a book aimed at academic librarians. The 37 contributors are librarians and curators in American and Canadian institutions. The two co-editors are working subject librarians with experience in building up comic collections. The essays are supported by contributor biographies, an index, and a glossary (distinguishing among comics, graphic novels, comic books, manga, comix, and comic strips). Suggested readings follow each essay. Tables, lists or appendices identify AfroFuturist authors, illustrators, and titles; institutions with large comic collections; and notable African-American comic publications. Comic book covers, comic book panels, and library displays appear as illustrations. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick, Kirsti Nilsen and Marie L. Radford. Conducting the Reference Interview: Third Edition ALA Neal-Schuman, 2019. 9780838917275, 320 pages. $84.99 Reviewed by Mary Catherine Moeller (Assistant Librarian, Kresge Library Services, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) <mcmoelle@umich.edu> The reference interview is a skill that is central to librarianship. Sussing out the true needs of a patron is essential to finding them the information they need, but this is often easier said than done. For the successful librarian, this requires finesse, patience and excellent communication skills. Conducting the Reference Interview is a How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians written by a group of authors who have researched these skills and shared their findings and expertise with the readers. Authors Catherine Ross and Kirtsi Nilsen from the University of Western Ontario in partnership with Marie L. Radford from Rutgers University consolidated their research on communication theory and reference interactions to come out with this third edition of Conducting the Reference Interview. The authors have varied reference experience and research interests but combined their knowledge to create a well rounded guide for conducting an excellent reference interview. The world we live in is becoming increasingly more digital and so virtual reference service skills are becoming vital for librarians (especially now during COVID-19). The chapter on virtual reference covers everything from chat to texting to email and compares similarities and differences between services as well as their benefits and drawbacks. With virtual reference in particular it can be very difficult to build rapport with the enduser. The authors acknowledge that and give insight into what interpersonal communication should look like in a digital context. I can see this chapter in particular being very helpful for helping students navigate this more complicated side of library services. continued on page 40

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Reader’s Roundup from page 39 This book does a good job of catering to students, professors and library staff all at the same time. There are sections that tackle the more basic aspects of reference interactions, exercises that professors can use with their students and sections that are geared toward continuing education for library staff. As someone who has worked in training our student reference assistants at my library, I particularly appreciated the section about training staff for the reference interview. It included useful exercises and insight into how to do an effective group training session. I can definitely see myself using some of the exercises when I am training student assistants in the future. This would be the perfect textbook for an introductory reference class. The exercises and quick tips would be valuable to students working to hone the art of figuring out what patrons are really looking for. While there is also value in this book for library staff and library professors, library students and newly minted librarians stand to benefit the most from Conducting the Reference Interview. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Staines, Gail M. Social Sciences Research: Research, Writing, and Presentation Strategies for Students, 3rd edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. 9781538122419, 97 pages. $27.00. Reviewed by: Presley Dyer (Catalog Librarian, Tennessee State University Libraries) <adyer4@tnstate.edu> As librarians, we know the research process never ends. In fact, the research process gets more complex with the addition of new information technologies and electronic references at our disposal. The access to this extensive amount of information indeed feels overwhelming, especially when librarians are considered the first responders to the world of information. Not only must we know the research process for ourselves, but we must teach students the process as well. Many questions run through our minds as instruction librarians: Where do I begin? How can I teach these new research skills to social science students? How do I build upon these skills? Thankfully, the answers to these questions and more can be found in the new revision of Gail M. Staines’ Social Sciences Research: Research, Writing, and Presentation Strategies for Students. Gail Staines is a librarian at the University of Central Missouri and has a Master of Library Science degree and a Doctor of Philosophy in High Education Administration degree from the University of Buffalo. In addition to earning leadership positions across private and public universities, Staines has specialized in research areas relating to information literacy, leadership, and the academic library environment. As a result, Staines knows the research process and knows what it requires to become a skilled master in finding and abstracting quality information to create a well-written research document. Therefore, Staines acknowledges that “this manual continues to be designed as a resource for students, as well as their instructors, 40 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

to help students succeed in carrying out library research [and its presentation] in the social sciences” (vi). The third edition of Social Science Research delivers noticeably clear and concise instructions with an updated emphasis regarding electronic sources guidelines. It consists of 10 chapters covering a wide variety of content such as creating a well-constructed research question, conducting an adequate search, and evaluating the information. It also includes well-organized appendixes with examples of social science research questions, a sample paper, 11 practice worksheets (e.g., “Selecting a Topic” and “Scholarly versus Popular Literature”) and citation forms with blank spaces for jotting down information needed to create citations. Since Social Science Research is only 97 pages, it obviously does not go into a tremendous amount of detail regarding the research process. She has narrowed down the material to what we absolutely need to know because she understands how cumbersome research can be. The only section that I would likely consult another source for further information would be Chapter 7: “The APA Format: Writing and the Use of an Appropriate Format.” Although Staines does a good overview of the APA format style, I would suggest individuals refer to the APA Style Manual for more in-depth instructions. Social Science Research then should be used as a starting point, which one can expand upon with more knowledge and understanding. As Staines concludes, “The process of scholarly research, writing, and presenting provide students with a number of skills for life… we encourage you to persevere” (63). ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Wyckoff, Amy and Harris, Marie. Career Programming For Today’s Teens: Exploring Nontraditional and Vocational Alternatives. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2019. 9780838917596, 200 pages. $56.99 Reviewed by Rachelle McLain (Collection Development Librarian, Montana State University Library, Montana State University, Bozeman) <rachelle.mclain@montana.edu> Amy Wyckoff, currently a youth services senior librarian at the Beaverton (Oregon) City Library, and Marie Harris, library branch manager for the Charlotte (North Carolina) Mecklenburg Library, have written a step-by-step guide for librarians helping teenagers in their communities navigate nontraditional and vocational paths to careers. The book not only offers several chapters that detail handson activities, but also provides an update on vocational school trends, current career programming happening at the library, ideas for evaluating outcomes of library events, extensive collection development tools, and five appendices. The appendices include sample documents they’ve used in their library programming, including: workshop flyer; workshop evaluation; examples of emails they have written to various stakeholders; and a sample workshop-planning document. The last appendix is a list of State-Based Worker’s Resources. The entire first chapter is devoted to trends in vocational careers. The authors include current data to support their assertion that there is an upward trend showing a need for employees in middle-skill-level jobs in the United States. Data presented incontinued on page 41

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Reader’s Roundup from page 40 cludes faster growing occupations; earning potential of careers that don’t require a four-year degree; currently available certificate programs; reasons teens are choosing vocational programs; and types of vocational programs available in the United States. Through their experiences planning programming in their own public libraries, the authors provide a plethora of programming ideas and resources for library staff to use. Programs they created and executed include a “Meet a Professional” Workshop Series; Internships at the Library; a Trade School Fair; and “Teaching to a Career” in the Library. Additionally, the authors write about the importance of partnering with other organizations and schools in their communities to offer programming together. Wyckoff and Harris identify what draws teens into their programming, what doesn’t, and what helps their teen patrons return. Food, giveaways, competitions, hands-on activities and offering group presentations are at the top of their list for successful programming. They not only elicit teen feedback to aid in planning their programs, it was also exciting to read that they encourage their teen patrons to create, market, and facilitate career workshops at their own community library. Even if you have not engaged your community as such, it is useful to see how librarians serving two different communities have done so. The last two chapters are dedicated to the importance of ongoing evaluation

of library programming as well as collection development tools to aid library staff in the creation of that programming. The authors include specific ways of measuring the impact the programs have on their communities. They offer concrete ways of collecting community feedback and survey data. The collection development chapter lists specific book titles that aid both library staff in providing teen services and program planning but also titles meant for teens who need guidance and advice in pursuing a path after high school. All of the books listed as resources have been written within the last ten years, most within the last five years. Wyckoff and Harris identified a need among their teen patrons and their parents for vocational career planning assistance at the public library. In particular, they became aware of their teen patrons who were not interested in attending a traditional 4-year college after high school. They recognized that high school counselors cannot possibly keep up with helping an entire school population of students and their varied needs when it comes to career and education planning. The public library can fill this gap by providing relevant programming to their teen users. By sharing the successful and not-so-successful programming executed by the authors over the years at their public libraries, they have highlighted the fact that public library staff can play a key role in helping teens figure out what they want to do after high school. ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Collecting to the Core — A Case Study in Creating a New Linguistics List by Adam Siegel (Researcher Services Librarian, University of California, Davis; Linguistics Subject Editor, Resources for College Libraries) <apsiegel@ucdavis.edu> Column Editor: Anne Doherty (Resources for College Libraries Project Editor, CHOICE/ACRL) <adoherty@ala-choice.org> Column Editor’s Note: The “Collecting to the Core” column highlights monographic works that are essential to the academic library within a particular discipline, inspired by the Resources for College Libraries bibliography (online at http://www.rclweb.net). In each essay, subject specialists introduce and explain the classic titles and topics that continue to remain relevant to the undergraduate curriculum and library collection. Disciplinary trends may shift, but some classics never go out of style. — AD

reating a new subject bibliography for Resources for College Libraries (RCL) is both an honor and an opportunity to assess (or reassess)

one’s field, and one’s relationship to it. Title lists, because they are created with a specific audience in mind, are selective by nature, and hence evaluative. How to select the scholarly works that both serve the needs of contemporary libraries (and their users) and provide a bibliographic history of a discipline in six hundred titles (or less) is a challenge. The first task I faced when developing a new title list in Linguistics for RCL was how to review the existing subject literature. I elected to analyze the linguistics holdings of a sizable sample of American and Canadian college libraries to determine by consensus, as core works should (in the main) be represented in the holdings of most college libraries. My initial

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

searches included Library of Congress call number ranges and subject headings, including LC call number ranges P-PN, E, and G and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) such as “Linguistics,” “Phonetics,” “Semantics,” Grammars,” etc. During this first pass, I exported the bibliographic records and populated a spreadsheet. Once I had de-duplicated (noting which titles were most widely held), around 4,000 titles remained. Because I had exported relatively complete MARC records, I was able to sort and filter by format (for instance, journals, sorted by ISSN, were moved to a separate sheet since RCL focuses primarily on monographs). continued on page 42

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Collecting to the Core from page 41 At this point I began to review the title list somewhat impressionistically for retentions and removals, checking authors and titles against an internal understanding of the curriculum in the discipline. Many of the initial “discards” were titles that were arguably too marginal, specialized, or niche for the putative college library. Justifications for marginality included language (for an undergraduate library collection, English-language materials were a priority), publisher (a number of linguistics publishers’ annual output exceeds the scope of an RCL list), or publication type (conference proceedings were often struck for this reason). Throughout the initial review and deselection process, I aimed to be broadly inclusive of the field as a whole, remaining conscious of my own training as a linguist and the potential biases of my educational experience, which is to say I strove to be as respectful and inclusive of the various strains, movements, schools, and tendencies in the modern language sciences as possible. This meant acknowledging not only the centrality of the Chomskyan turn in theoretical linguistics to the subsequent growth of the field, but also ensuring that other theoretical approaches (particularly functionalist approaches such as Halliday) were included so as to properly represent the breadth of the field.1 I felt confident making broad-based decisions as to representative authors and titles: seminal titles are easy to spot, given one’s own disciplinary reading and checked against citation indexes. When in doubt, I used both quantitative and qualitative measurements: I consulted title holding counts (is this title currently widely held?) and standard reference works (e.g., Strazny’s Encyclopedia of Linguistics).2 Now I was reviewing two different sheets: a core list of around 250 titles identified as absolutely essential to any college library collection, including works that broadly covered all aspects of linguistics and the science of language, and a secondary comprehensive list with the 500 or so titles remaining after my initial review and removals. Next came the development of a unique subject taxonomy, informed by and representative of the undergraduate curriculum. While this task seemed daunting initially, prior experience devising taxonomies and extensive experience working with linguistics taxonomies, both LCSH and Linguistics

and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA), informed my efforts. The broad major subjects — phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics — along with applied topics like psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, language acquisition, etc., were easy to identify and relatively easy to incorporate into the overall RCL taxonomic subject scheme. With a draft taxonomy developed, the challenge was assigning subject headings to all titles — both the core titles and the broader title list. At this stage, selection and analysis consisted of an iterative sorting by subject, author, publisher, publication year, edition, print status, etc. This classification stage also provided an opportunity to consolidate both lists, resulting in a draft title list of around 500 monographs. After multiple rounds of adding, deleting, assessing, and classifying, it was time to send the draft subject bibliography — title list, scope note, and subject taxonomy — out for peer review. When the comments came back, I was gratified to learn that I had largely succeeded in my bibliographic endeavor: the reviewers in the main approved the title selections, and in several instances recommended new titles, older works, key web resources, and revised editions for further consideration. They also suggested lacunae in the subject scope that I addressed by a focused review of the relevant areas. This led to the inclusion of a number of additional titles, which also suggested revisions to the taxonomy, particularly as imbalances emerged (e.g., some subject headings contained a single title, while some contained thirty or more); I was able to consolidate some headings and expand others. I also reviewed publication dates and print availability, in some cases affirmatively retaining out-of-print titles based on their continued importance. As it stands, less than 10% of the titles in the current subject bibliography are out-of-print. The final title list — published in July 2020 — represents an extraordinarily small-c catholic collection of significant works in the language sciences from the 19th century to the present. It covers philology, historical linguistics, paralinguistic fields (folklore, poetics, semiotics), typo-

42 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

logical surveys and grammatical descriptions of the world’s languages, important theoretical approaches to language, works at the intersection of other disciplines (cognitive and computer sciences, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, education, etc.), standard reference works, and, most saliently for college libraries, an excellent selection of introductory works (e.g., Leonard Bloomfield’s Language) and a number of respected t e x t b o o k s . 3-4 The scholarly impact of structuralism throughout the twentieth century is acknowledged by the presence of Saussure and his intellectual successors.5-6 The centrality of the generative approach to language in North American linguistics necessitated the inclusion of classic works in syntax (Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures), phonology (Chomsky and Halle’s The Sound Pattern of English), and philosophy of language; the centrality of analytic philosophy to both the generative tradition and pragmatics likewise necessitated the inclusion of many classics works in speech act theory, such as Austin’s How to Do Things with Words.7-9 Throughout the development of the core bibliography, my iterative method was guided by the principles of exhaustion and balance: I reviewed as much as I could, and as many titles as I could, then culled and refined with an eye toward equipoise and consistency, until I had reached a collection size of roughly 600 titles. And the best thing about this title list is that, like all RCL lists, it is subject to ongoing review and refinement. Creating a new subject list in linguistics was an incredibly valuable exercise for me, as it challenged me to be aware of (and hence able to recreate) a thorough, nuanced, and disinterested approach to selection. In turn, I feel the title list will be incredibly valuable as well to selectors and patrons across a wide range of libraries. This is the final column in the “Collecting to the Core” series. Appearing in ATG since 2011, RCL subject editors have contributed 59 bibliographic essays, covering essential works on diverse topics from American crime fiction to youth sports. Thank you for reading. — AD endnotes on page 43

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Booklover — Poetry. Renewal. Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

olitics and the pandemic have dominated every fiber of current life. Which is why the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature was a breath of calming air. Once again a poet was chosen. Not without note, this is the third Booklover column in a row dedicated to Laureates whose language is given to us in the form of poetry. Poetry and the poetic form have always been somewhat of a mystery to me. There are sonnets and limericks and haikus. There are lyric poems, narrative poems, and dramatic poems. There are rhyming rules, rhyming structures, iambic pentameter, alliteration, metaphor usage and onomatopoeia, just to name a few terms. Even some of these terms sound poetic when spoken. I’m drawn to events that feature poetry like the Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poetry Series held in May as part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, the Free Verse: Charleston Poetry Festival organized by Marcus Amaker, the Poet Laureate of Charleston, and Ukweli: Searching for Healing Truth organized by Horace Mungin. This word craft of poetry is complicated yet inviting to read and even better to be heard. One is often forced to reflect, to

contemplate, or on occasion smile from the skillful use of the poetic form. Louise Glück, an American Poet, was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” This accolade of Nobel Laureate can be added to her list of recognitions that include: the Pulitzer Prize, The National Book Award and the position of U.S. Poet Laureate. Yale University is fortunate to have her serve on their faculty as a professor of English. A notable observation associated with the timeliness of her award is her subject matter of radical change — “where the leap forward is made from a deep sense of loss.” The epic disruption of life caused by this pandemic has forced everyone to reconsider what day-to-day even means. Terms like loss, rejection, and also hope and renewal have been used to describe Glück’s works of poetry. All fitting descriptions for poems that could help guide thought during these most unusual of times.

Collecting to the Core from page 42 Endnotes 1. Halliday, M. A. K. Explorations in the Functions of Language. New York: Elsevier North-Holland, 1977.* 2. Strazny, Philipp, ed. Encyclopedia of Linguistics. 2 vols. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005.* 3. Asher, R. E., and Christopher Moseley, eds. Atlas of the World’s Languages. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007.* 4. Bloomfield, Leonard. Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.* 5. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.* 6. Jakobson, Roman. The Framework of Language. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1980.* 7. Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. 2nd ed. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002.* 8. Chomsky, Noam, and Morris Halle. The Sound Pattern of English. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.* 9. Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1975.* *Editor’s note: An asterisk (*) denotes a title selected for Resources for College Libraries.

The Wild Iris (1992) collection of poems won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. In this collection is a poem ”Snowdrops,” where “she describes the miraculous return of life after winter.” It seemed a fitting way to introduce her poetry in hopes that from the peril of this pandemic there will be a miracle that renews the spirit of life in all of us: “I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in the cold light of earliest spring – afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy in the raw wind of the new world.”

Rumors from page 16 March of 2018. Well, I have tried to search the ATG archive and haven’t found anything yet. I know we never got an obit which I generally try to get. I do remember Scott and his Timberline Conference well. Scott and I visited with his mother in Ohio several years ago. I am sorry that I can’t find anything now, but I can’t believe that I didn’t mention his death in Rumors?! Could this be? Many thanks to Helmut for pointing this out. Helmut says he is reasonably well at 82 and enjoying his (late) autumn years in New Hampshire! And — The Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge (Mt. Hood, Oregon, a breathtakingplace!) began in 2000 to provide an opportunity for acquisitions and collections librarians to meet and discuss continued on page 48

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Oregon Trails — Reading Ulysses Column Editor: Thomas W. Leonhardt (Retired, Eugene, OR 97404) <oskibear70@gmail.com>

n the summer of 1966, I was fresh out of the Army and working as a desk clerk in Yosemite National Park. I had just read Dubliners and was low on reading matter. I had read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man while in high school and Ulysses was a logical next step (I was unaware of Exiles), so when our resident pastor asked if anyone needed anything from Fresno while he was there, I requested a copy of Ulysses. When he returned, I paid him for the book that still sits on a shelf in my office. I’d like to say that by the time I left Yosemite that September, I’d finished or read most of that great book, but I did not. My interest in it waxed and waned over the years but I never finished it. Until now. In 2016, yes, fifty years after my proxy purchase of Ulysses, I decided that I would start over, go back to stately, plump Buck Mulligan and his shaving bowl and not stop until the end, “yes I said yes I will Yes.” And finish it I did but not until 2017 after some purposeful preparation. First, I re-read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. They were familiar, even after fifty years, but fresh, too, and I was more appreciative of them and understood them, if not better than before, from a different perspective that only time can provide. Next, I read James Joyce’s Ulysses, by Stuart Gilbert and A Key to the Ulysses of James Joyce, by Paul Jordan Smith. I would have been better served had I read those interpretations and guides after I’d finished the novel. Each of these books uses the 18 Episodes of Ulysses to guide and enlighten the reader (Episode 1, Telemachus … Episode 18, Penelope) with Gilbert’s explication running 405 pages, Smith, a mere 89. Both authors worked from the first edition of Joyce’s novel and had not the benefit of a corrected edition but for their purposes, it does not really matter. And for the purposes of someone setting out on this literary voyage and wanting a chart to help plot the course, the Smith book is preferred for its simplicity and layout. Over the years I had formed a spotty and rather undefined picture of James Joyce heavily influenced by A Portrait…I wanted to know more and I had two books on my shelves, unread, to choose between: James Joyce (178 pp.) by Edna O’Brien and James Joyce (756 pp.), by Richard Ellman. Once again, I chose brevity while reserving the right to read the Ellman treatment later. O’Brien was informative enough and I came away with a greater appreciation of Joyce the artist while better understanding Joyce the person. To help me better understand the novel I was about to begin, I acquired a copy of Notes for Joyce: An Annotation of James Joyce’s Ulysses by Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, divided into the 18 sections of the novel. Each section begins with an inset from a map of Dublin, ostensibly current on June 16, 1904, the day in which we follow Bloom and Daedalus through the streets of their city. The annotations are indexed to the page numbers of both the old (1934) and the revised and corrected (1961) editions. In the introduction, the authors offer good advice about how to use to best advantage their guidebook. The annotated passages are presented in sequence — not unlike the footnotes at the bottom of the pages of an edition of Shakespeare or Milton; thus the book is designed to be 44 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

laid open beside the novel and to be read in tandem with it. Tandem reading has, however, its disadvantages. It threatens a reader not only with interruption but also with distortion because details which are mere grace notes of suggestion in the novel may be overemphasized by the annotation. Several compromises suggest themselves here: one is to accept an interrupted reading and to follow it with an uninterrupted reading; another is to read through a sequence of the notes before reading the annotated sequence in the novel. Perhaps the best approach would be a compromise: to skim a sequence of notes, then read the annotated sequence in the novel with interruptions for consideration of those notes which seem crucial and then follow with an uninterrupted reading of the sequence in the novel. For what it’s worth, I must have, without having read that introduction, tried each of those approaches before settling on reading the annotations first and then the novel itself. Towards the end, I began to skip the annotations as “…I …succumbed to the power and sweep of Ulysses; [came] to reckon it one of the most significant books of this age.” (p. 59, A Key to the Ulysses of James Joyce). More important to my success in finishing Ulysses was my commitment to do so. Each evening after supper I would sit with the novel in my hands and the annotated guide on the end table next to me. I developed a rhythm and then varied the rhythm as I became more absorbed in the story and less worried about understanding every little detail. I find that I share with Paul Jordan Smith other opinions of Ulysses: But when one has spent a two weeks’ [I spent far more time than Smith] continuous reading of the book itself, one is forced to a realization of its formidableness and of the essential genius of the author. Moreover, one finds that there is a story, compact, realistic and compelling. Once one is immersed in the thing, there is not a dull page or paragraph. P. 60 Don’t postpone your reading of the thing out of fear that you may never finish it or that you won’t like it or that you won’t understand it. Don’t worry about not being able to match the action in Ulysses with that of The Odyssey. Don’t put a lot of stock in understanding all of the allusions and asides and puns — you’ll get more than you might think and you can learn more once you have finished “the thing” as Smith called it. However, having never read The Odyssey, I was curious enough to read it straight through after reading Joyce’s parallel tale. It’s a pretty good yarn, too, though bloody, but not once was I reminded of Joyce’s novel. Rather than reading The Odyssey, I recommend that you read A Portrait… and Dubliners. You won’t meet Bloom in either of them, but you will come to know Daedalus very well and come away with a feel for Dublin and the politics, religion, talk, and music of the city. In addition to reading The Odyssey after finishing Ulysses, I finally read Exiles. If you want further proof of the genius of James Joyce, read Exiles. I didn’t need a book of explications or annotations to feel the power and beauty of that work and that has inspired me to begin Finnegan’s Wake with A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake at the ready. <http://www.against-the-grain.com>

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

Legally Speaking — Creative Commons and Infringement by Anthony Paganelli (Western Kentucky University) <Anthony.Paganelli@wku.edu>

n 2001, the Creative Commons, a non-profit organization, has given the public an option to access and utilize copyrighted works within the terms of the license from the copyright owners and their terms. The system is a way for both parties to agree upon the use of copyright-based works that are defined by the terms of the distribution and re-use of creative works, which includes the conditions of Attribution, Share Alike, Non-Commercial, and No Derivative Works. There are seven licensing types that are used. The easiest type is the use of creative works that are in public domain. Second, a license where the creative works can be used even for commercial purposes if the author is given credit (CC BY). Third, a user can reproduce a work that includes derivatives, but the work must have the same licensing agreement (CC BY-SA). Fourth, a work can be reused, without modifications and must give credit to author (CC BY-ND). Fifth, the person using the creative work can display the work in a non-commercial way and give credit to the author (CC BY-NC). The sixth condition states that the work can be used and modified in a non-commercial way with credit to the author and license new works with same licensing agreements (CC BY-NC-SA). The final condition allows works to be downloaded to share the work with credit to the author, but the reuse is not for commercial profit and it cannot be altered (CC BY-NC-ND). This licensing system between the user and the copyright owner appears to be a system that is beneficial to both the user and copyright owner. The users can use the copyrighted materials within the licensing terms given by the copyright owner. In addition, the copyright owners can have some control of those that are utilizing their works. However, this licensing system is not a substitute for copyright law, which has created legal issues for the court systems.

For instance, if a copyright owner claims a user has broken the licensing agreement, then the issue can either be resolved out of court or decided through the courts. Since 2001, Creative Commons has provided a licensing platform for users and copyright owners, which has also created issues for copyright infringement suits. Herr (2020) stated that “Creative Common’s strategy of deploying the current copyright regime cannot succeed unless courts enforce the licenses” (p. 2). She also identified several issues involved in the court’s interpretation of creative commons, such as “fair use, attribution, remedies, commercial use.” Therefore, this enforcement and interpretation of copyright laws and licensing agreements are conflicting. Herr noted the scholars researching creative commons have noted three legal issues. First, “Creative Commons grant the creator rights, notably attribution, which U.S. copyright doesn’t recognize.” Secondly, the issue with the licensing agreement of Share Alike that involves a third-party, which the third-party also has to abide to the original license agreement even if there is a derivatives of the work. This concept makes it difficult for the enforcement of the licensing agreement. Finally, users that implement other works or individual works with licensed works that may conflict with the original licensing agreement. The concern that users should be aware of are the enforcement of the Creative Commons licensing agreements. According to Herr’s research, the federal courts have upheld these agreements. These decisions were based on certain issues,

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

such as fair use, attribution, commercial use, whether the work was copyrighted, and remedies. There are the four reasons from the U.S. Copyright Law § 107 of fair use the courts use to decide in favor of a copyright owner seeking claims against the users. Based on these federal court decisions that lean more in favor of the copyright owners, the users need to adhere to the strict rules of the licensing agreement and copyright laws. In most cases, once the licensing agreement has been broken by the user, the copyright owner has the option to seek financial reimbursement and other financial losses. Due to the advantage towards the copyright owner, the federal court systems are addressing these copyright infringement issues that began with the Creative Commons licensing agreement. One particular copyright owner has utilized the federal court systems to resolve licensing issues. Photographer Larry Philpot has filed several lawsuits against users in violation of the terms of his licensing agreement. According to his website, there is a licensing section regarding the use of his photos. For free, users can use his photos “with the exception that attribution must be given, and must state; “Photo credit: Larry Philpot, SoundstagePhotography.com.” Commercial Licensing starts at $3,500. Please contact me with your needs and any questions you have.” (Philpot, 2020). While this simple licensing agreement statement would appear to be easy to understand and to follow, the creative commons licensing statement does not continued on page 46

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Legally Speaking from page 45 secure that both the copyright owner and the user will be able to avoid a lawsuit. For instance, Philpot’s lawsuits have gained attention by users, attorneys, and the federal courts. In his recent lawsuit. Larry G. Philpot v. L.M. Communs. II S.C. filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, Central Division, Judge Claria Horn Boom noted, “Plaintiff has filed countless similar suits across the country, leading other courts to label him a ‘copyright troll.’” It is noted in the document that since 2016, Philpot had filed at least 15 copyright cases. In addition, the judge added, “Plaintiff’s own description of his business practice shows that he is more in the business of litigation (or threatening litigation) than selling his product or licensing his photograph to third parties.” Due to Philpot’s frequent lawsuits, those seeking to use copyright works need to clearly understand that the courts are recognizing Creative Commons licenses and how these can lead to copyright lawsuits. To be fair, not all copyright owners are seeking to file lawsuits for copyright infringement for those using their works through a creative commons license. In fact, copyright owners also have the struggles of users abusing the licensing system, which can be legal despite the licensing agreement. For example, Apple Academic Press published the Epigenetics, Environment, and Genes in 2013 that mostly used articles from open access journals (Harrington, 2020). One particular article was first published in the BioMed Central publication that was included in the book. Apple Academic Press stated that the publishers gave credit to the authors and their works could be reused based on the Creative Commons license BY, which is that the works could be used commercially if the author was given credit. Technically, Apple Academic Press was within the legal contract to publish and sell the book for a profit. The reason that the publishing company was able to utilize the work was based on the licensing agreement that the author agreed upon for the open access journal BioMed Central. Therefore, the company utilized a resource that was legally available to them. Unfortunately, the authors were unaware of the license agreement, which allowed publishers to reuse their

works for a profit. Of course, scholars were upset with the work and encouraged others to be aware of the terms for open access journals. Harrington (2020) provides awareness for authors, “An author deserves to be able to make an informed choice to publish based on the rights they want associated with their content, and to do that they need help understanding their rights.” These issues with the licensing agreements are easily contributed to the idea that the agreements are simple and plain, yet they are more complex and can cause legal issues. As noted by Koscik and Savelka (2013), “Free licenses are still considered by many to be something grand and their promotion an act of generosity and devotion while recently, it has become obvious that they have settled firmly in our everyday lives; thus, and careful assessment of their legal implications, or ‘delimitation of rights,’ to the tiniest detail is inevitable.” A mistake that Koscik and Savelka (2013) mentioned is “that a significant group of users does not understand the legal concept of Creative Commons licenses and uses them incorrectly.” This is also a mistake that copyright owners can make by applying Creative Commons licenses wrongly to their works that would allow users to misuse their works. Two other common mistakes noted in the licensing agreements are the combination of other Creative Commons licensing works with different agreements and not stating the name of the author or creator of the work. A brief survey of Google searches by Koscik and Savelka (2013) located 200 sites that utilize Creative Commons licensing that have three issues: “It is obvious what work is covered by a license,” “The author is known,” and “Suspicion of copyright violation.” Approximately, 59 percent of the sites were obviously covered by the licensing; 79 percent of the sites the author is known; and 17 percent had a suspicion of copyright violation. The most common mistake made by the users was not giving the proper credit to the author of the work. However, the authors mentioned that only 20 percent of the websites had the name of the author in the licensing statement, which makes it difficult for the users to provide the proper attribution. The authors did note that this was not a scientific study. Yet, subjectively this brief survey does indicate that Creative Commons licensing is not a full proof agreement between the copyright owner

46 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

and the user. As indicated in this study, users can easily mistake the terms of the agreement due to the copyright owner’s licensing statements. Due to these Creative Commons licensing agreements, the courts are being asked to enforce these agreements and make decisions regarding copyright violations through these agreements. Therefore, the best practice in Creative Commons would be to clearly understand and abide by the licensing agreement, ensure the use of the work is approved by the copyright owner, and use the work within the guidelines of copyright law. In addition, copyright owners need to be careful and diligent about the statements and terms for usage of their works within the licensing agreement.

References Carroll, M. (2013). Creative Commons and the openness of open access. The New England Journal of Medicine, 368(9), 798-791. Hagedorn, M. (2011). Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. ZooKeys, 150(150), 127-149. Harrington, R. (2020). Copyright, Creative Commons, and Confusion. The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved from https:// scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/04/20/ copyright-creative-commons-and-confusion/. Herr, M. (2020). The interpretation of creative commons licenses by U.S. Federal Courts. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. acalib.2020.102227. Koscik, M. and Savelka, J. (2013). Dangers of over-enthusiasm in licensing under Creative Commons. Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, 7(2). Larry G. Philpot v. L.M. Communs. II of S.C., 2020 US District Court. Civil Action No. 5:17-CV-173-CHB. Retrieved from Lexis 85901. Philpot, L. (2020). About Me. Soundstage Photography. Retrieved from https://www.soundstagephotography. com/.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

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: An academic publisher asks, “What new works are entering the public domain this year?” ANSWER: As a reminder, this is the third year we have celebrated a new annual class of works entering the public domain and after the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms for 20 years. With the exception of some unpublished works, most works that were scheduled to enter the public domain over the past two decades simply did not. In recent years, however, we have welcomed works that included Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young, and Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. On January 1, 2021 we again celebrated Public Domain Day and welcomed thousands of new works into the fold including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and many songs by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, W.C. Handy, and Fats Waller. A more complete list of notable works entering the public domain is available from Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain at: https:// web.law.duke.edu/cspd/ publicdomainday/2021/. It is really exciting to welcome so many works into the public domain, but Public Domain Day is also a nice opportunity to reflect on the changing duration of copyright. The Center for the Study of the Public Domain site notes that under the laws that were in effect until 1978, thousands of works from 1964 would also be entering the public domain. Indeed, under the original 1790 Act a renewable term of fourteen years could have placed materials from the 1990s and 2000s in the public domain as well. Of course, calculating the public domain status of a particular work can be particularly complicated. Many works created or published after 1925 are in the public domain due to failure to comply with the formalities that were once required for copyright. Some unpublished works created before 1926 may also still be protected. While many of the global

copyright rules have been harmonized by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, huge nuances and technical issues remain and those can be substantial barriers for assessing the status of a work. In the past I’ve pointed to excellent resources to understanding the public domain and to calculating the rights status of particular works including Laura Gasaway’s “When Works Pass Into the Public Domain” chart and Cornell’s similar chart at: https://copyright.cornell. edu/publicdomain. This year, I’m happy to share a new resource from ALA, the Public Domain Slider: https://librarycopyright.net/resources/digitalslider/index. html. Whatever tools you use, I hope you will join me in celebrating the public’s ability to use this new class of works. QUESTION: A history professor asks, “What new DMCA exemptions are on the horizon?” ANSWER: Along with a new class of public domain works, 2021 also brings a new set of exemptions that permit socially valuable use of works that are in-copyright. Generally speaking, section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits the circumvention of Technical Protection Measures (TPM) used by copyright owners to control access to their works. This means that a scholar, student, or librarian is generally prohibited from breaking digital locks in order to use a work they have bought, even for lawful uses such as those permitted under fair use. In order to address this issue, the DMCA also provides for a triennial rulemaking process to grant temporary exemptions to these prohibitions. In past years, exemptions have been granted for uses such as repairing digital devices, use video clips for education, and security research. In preparation for the 2021 exemptions the Copyright Office has released a notice (https://www.federalregister.gov/ documents/2020/10/15/2020-22893/exemptions-to-permit-circumvention-of-access-controls-on-copyrighted-works) calling for petitions for the renewal of

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

exemptions that were granted during the last triennial rulemaking along with petitions for new exemptions to engage in activities not currently permitted by existing exemptions. In June of 2020, the Office released a call for renewal of existing exemptions and received thirty-two petitions to renew, including at least one petition to renew each currently adopted exemption. The Office also received twenty-seven petitions for new exemptions and categorized those petitions into seventeen proposed classes of works from criticism and commentary of audiovisual works to gathering data from medical devices. Initial comments were submitted to the Copyright Office on December 14th, with written responses due February 9th and subsequent replies to those due March 10, 2021. The Office will hold public hearings in the spring and readers are encouraged to review the proposals and offer your own comments as the process moves forward. QUESTION: An academic librarian asks, “What is happening with the Georgia State case?” ANSWER: As a reminder, the case of Cambridge Univ. Press v. Becker (and later Patton) considered a lawsuit filed by three academic publishers, and financed by the Copyright Clearance Center, against Georgia State University’s electronic reserves system for “pervasive, flagrant and ongoing unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials.” Originally filed in 2008, the case raised significant questions about the application of the fair use doctrine to library activities as well as the scope of permitted academic support for teaching and learning. In 2012 the District Court found that fair use generally supports the practice of making limited portions of works available in this way and that the GSU Library had mostly been acting in good faith. That remains the core takeaway from the case today but a series of appeals and subsequent decisions in 2014, 2016, and 2018 wrestled with questions about how to put those principles into practice, with the Eleventh Circuit repeatedly holding that applying bright line rules such as “no continued on page 48

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Questions & Answers from page 47 more than 10%” were inappropriate when considering fair use. In 2020, twelve years after the original complaint, the case seems to finally be over. On March 2, the District Court issued its final opinion, noting that the “bottom line” for the Eleventh Circuit was that the Court “must eschew a quantitative approach to the weighing and balancing of the fair use factors and give each excerpt the holistic, qualitative and individual analysis that the Act demands” and found only ten infringing uses. Six months later, the Court issued its final order, awarding declaratory relief on ten copyright infringement claims and holding that Georgia State prevailed on the remaining 89 claims. The court entered an injunction directing Georgia State to maintain copyright policies which are not inconsistent with the rulings of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and to inform all professors and other instructors in writing of these rulings. All of the opinions, as well as a timeline of the case, a set of articles on the case, and related content can be found at the GSU LibGuide: https:// libguides.law.gsu.edu/gsucopyrightcase. After more than a decade of back and forth, however, many questions about hosting course readings remain unanswered. Many of the old sources of conventional wisdom, like the Classroom Copying Guidelines which provided nonbinding bright-line rules such as “no more than 10%” or “no more than 250 words from a poem,” have been discredited.

Rumors from page 43 pertinent trends and issues was canceled in 2020 but is hoping for an Institute in 2021! Acquisitionsinstitute.org According to BusinessWire, Wattpad Board of Directors has approved an Agreement to be acquired by Naver, the South Korean Internet Conglomerate and Home of WEBTOON, a Leading Global Digital Comics Platform. The acquisition will align Wattpad and WEBTOON, two leading comics, entertainment, and storytelling companies, with a combined global monthly audience of 160M people.

Similarly, the so-called “Coursepack” or “Copyshop Cases” from the early 1990s have been rightly distinguished from the type of noncommercial academic work done here. Unfortunately, even as this fair use folklore has been set aside, it has not been replaced by clear rules that can easily be followed by a lay audience. For institutions that can afford to have copyright expertise in the library, the affirmation of fair use as a powerful and flexible exception has been reassuring and often quite empowering. For those without access to that expertise, however, the issues can seem daunting. In many cases, the pandemic in 2020 only exacerbated this uncertainty as libraries were asked to rely on these cases as they navigated relatively uncharted territory of social distancing and sudden moves to digital-only access. Resources such as Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research (https:// tinyurl.com/tvnty3a) helped address some of this uncertainty and the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (https://www.arl. org/code-of-best-practices-in-fair-usefor-academic-and-research-libraries/) remains a critical source of principled guidance in this area. Nevertheless, these issues remain vexing, especially when compounded by the move away from owned physical materials and into licensed resources, as described by the Guelph Statement on Textbooks in the Virtual Environment: https://www.lib. uoguelph.ca/news/commercial-textbooks-present-challenges-virtual-environment. More than two decades after

the Georgia State case began, the legal challenge may be over, but the questions remain very much alive, particularly for those without in-house expertise. QUESTION: A Canadian librarian asks, “How can I find out more about Canadian copyright law for educators?” ANSWER: There are many excellent sources for Canadian copyright information to support those looking to build up their own expertise, but I would specifically like to highlight the Canadian Association for Research Libraries (CARL), which recently released the Copyright Open Educational Resource for University Instructors and Staff (https://www.carl-abrc.ca/ copyright-open-educational-resource/). This open resource includes a series of video-based modules and quizzes designed to educate instructors and staff at Canadian universities about copyright. The resource was developed by an impressive set of Canadian copyright experts from across the major research institutions and, as of this writing, has been endorsed by 16 Canadian universities. It also represents a model for the intersection of copyright and open educational resources (OER) — openly-licensed materials designed to support teaching and learning. The resource presents free, high-quality materials that can be used to learn more about copyright as well as being easy to update, translate, and remix. It also serves as a model for using copyright and open licensing to develop new resources. In 2021, I will be excited to see more openly-licensed copyright resources released.

The cash and stock transaction valued at more than an estimated USD $600 million will fuel continued global growth for Wattpad. The company will remain headquartered in Canada under the continued leadership of founders Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen. https://www.businesswire.com/news/ h t t p s : / / w w w. b u s i n e s s w i r e . c o m / n e w s / h o m e / 2 0 2 1 0 11 9 0 0 6 1 4 2 / e n / Wa t t p a d - B o a rd - o f - D i re c t o r s - A p proves-Agreement-to-be-Acquiredby-Naver-the-South-Korean-InternetConglomerate-and-Home-of-WEBTOON%E2%84%A2-a-Leading-Global-Digital-Comics-Platform

This is from Choice Academic publishing weekly — Streaming video usage saw a huge uptick last year, and not just on Netflix. Kanopy, a streaming service for libraries, released a report with over 700 librarians detailing their institutions’ usage, trends, and spending choices. Almost 50 percent of participants said “streaming video budgets will increase in 2021 and 71 percent expect an increase over the next three years.” Almost 60 percent said that patrons used streaming not just for entertainment, “but for other purposes such as personal enrichment and class assignments.” As virtual learning appears here to stay in 2021, experts expect the demand

48 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

continued on page 64

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

And They Were There 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 final installment of 2019 conference reports. The first four installments can be found in ATG

v.32#1, February 2020, v.32#2, April 2020, v.32#3, June 2020, v.32#4, September 2020, and v.32#5, November 2020. Watch for reports from the 2020 Charleston Conference to begin publishing in the February 2021 issue of ATG. — RKK

CORRECTED CONCURRENT SESSION REPORT FROM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019 A Comparison and Review of 17 E-Book Platforms — Presented by John Lavender (Lavender Consulting), Courtney McAllister (Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library) — https://sched.co/UXrg Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu> McAllister provided a librarian’s perspective on eBook assessment criteria after Lavender reported on a study he undertook at the behest of the University of Michigan Press, with support from the Mellon Foundation. (The presentation slides attached in the SCHED provide much more granular detail that could not be appreciated in viewing presentation slides in the Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

large session room). Functionality, not content, was the focus of the study. Some of the features sought and analyzed included: filtering, browsing, search prediction, highlighting of terms, ranking, indexing, downloading by chapter or book. Not all eBook platforms licensed by (or familiar to) audience members were represented in this study, but it still served as a reminder to all that these platforms are scrutinized, analyzed, and compared against others. (Lavender’s and McAllister’s slides are available in Sched.)

NEAPOLITAN THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019 Copyright: Do Librarians Matter — Presented by Ann Okerson (moderator, IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations), Ruth Okediji (Harvard Law School) — https://sched.co/UXvA Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu> Okerson introduced Okediji, a 2018 conference plenary speaker on copyright, who this year presented on a work in progress, so her presentation featured no visuals (and would feature no recordings). She continued speaking on thoughts begun during her 2018 Charleston Conference keynote and answered the question posed in her 2019 session title with a “yes” (librarians DO matter). Her comments, focused on interplays between libraries, society, and the law, kept audience interest and generated varied questions at the end. Copyright laws historically have been for the public good and have the capacity to guide society, but somewhere, she feels, librarians have not been and still are not in the ecosystem, while teachers and others have carved out a space. The 1976 law can be incompletely envisioned without a historical context, and fair use is complicated, not global, but uniquely American doctrine. Contracts and licenses become difficult tools. Librarians have become passive gatekeepers. Sympathy was extended to a Canadian librarian at the audience microphone (he has to understand not only Canadian but also U.S. copyright law). Towards the end, the speaker compared copyright law to a parking garage sign that indicates “we are not responsible.” Many in the audience continued on page 50

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

And They Were There from page 49 probably eagerly anticipate mulling Okediji’s arguments over again once they are published.

The Future of Subscription Bundles: Big Deal, No Deal, or What’s the Deal? — Presented by Beth Bernhardt (moderator, Oxford University Press/ Previously at UNC Greensboro), Roger C. Schonfeld (Ithaka S+R), Tim Bucknall (UNC Greensboro), Mark McBride (SUNY System Administration) — https://sched.co/UXvD Note: Tim Bucknall did not present. His statement was read by Beth Bernhardt. Reported by Roger Cross (UNC, Pembroke) This session discussed the benefits and/or perils of the Bundled Big Deal. The panel members represented a spectrum of views on this topic. Bucknall argued that for all the perils, bundles are still a good deal and used as an example the experience of Carolina Consortium, which has a loose and voluntary structure. Per Bucknall, CC had ensured better terms with each new round of negotiations. He warned against sweeping assertions about both the supposed decline of subscriptions and the supposition of bundled subscriptions declining usefulness for academic libraries and universities. Rather, these packages have provided good value to universities and especially to smaller institutions that otherwise would not be able to afford such packages. McBride, representing the large state-wide perspective, covered the pragmatics and difficulty of negotiating and maintaining these large bundled licenses. One hurdle a system-wide consortium like SUNY faces is negotiating a license only to see one school after another drop out of the agreement due to the inability or unwillingness of those institutions to commit to another long-term contract. McBride said we need to ask ourselves what we hope to get out of the partnership with vendors? Finally, Schonfeld spoke of concern over the future of these Big Deals in general. He argued that we must ask not just whether the content was declining in value, but also about the future of both packages and vendors. He noted that vendors were trying to portray their product as “platforms” in which they are providers, rather than simply as publishers or distributors. He mentioned the rise of internet sites that provide free, often pirated, research papers and articles. As more “free” resources become available, will vendor packages hold their content value as measured by usage? This in turn highlighted a discussion of Open Access that, as McBride noted, really is not “free.” He pointed out that some of the larger vendors like Springer and Elsevier were significantly investing in OA. This leads to the question of why they are doing so? In the end, might we not be fostering the continuation of vendor consolidation even as we attempt through Open Access to avert it?

CHARLESTON PREMIERS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019 Charleston Premiers — Presented by Trey Shelton (moderator, University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries) — https://sched.co/UXvJ Note: The product, McGraw Hill Professional, Medical: Teaching Cases, was listed in the schedule but was not presented. Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu> The popular annual session, “Five minute previews of the new and noteworthy,” scheduled late in the conference day, was organized and moderated by Shelton. It featured brief five-minute presentations on new products or services, from familiar and less familiar names in the scholarly publishing world — JoVE, Casalini, McGraw-Hill, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), Cambridge University Press, University of Toronto Press, JSTOR, Atypon (two new products!), Morressier, and Our Research (known through mid-July 2019 as: Impactstory). Library-led projects include: Casalini Libri’s Torossa; JSTOR’s Collaborative Open Access ebook pilot. Product for libraries: Our Research’s Unpaywall Journals. For the non-academic market: New Jewish Press by University of Toronto Press. Addressing scholars’ and society members’ needs are: Morressier’s Early-stage research discovery product to frame posters into the scholarly process; Atypon’s free tool (Manuscripts), an authoring tool for complex documents; also — ACM Digital Library; CUP’s Open Engage. Educational needs are addressed: JoVE Core; McGraw-Hill’s AccessEngineering and AccessScience. Cutting edge technology is used by Atypon’s Scitrus paper discovery tool that uses artificial intelligence. The audience voted and selected winners in three categories. Best Design was won by Cambridge University Press, for its product, Cambridge Open Engage, presented by Brigitte Shull. Most Impact was won by company, Our Research, for its product: Unpaywall Journals, presented by Jason Priem. Most Innovative was won by Atypon, for its product: Atypon Manuscripts, presented by Matias Piipari. The Charleston Conference blog report about this session by Donald Hawkins can be found at: https://against-the-grain. com/2019/11/charleston-premiers-4/.

PLENARY FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019 The Long Arm of the Law — Presented by Ann Okerson (moderator, IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations)), Michelle M. Wu (Georgetown University Law Center), William M. Hannay (Schiff Hardin LLP) — https://sched.co/UXvS Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu> continued on page 51

50 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

And They Were There from page 50 Okerson introduced conference regular, Hannay, whose presentation was preceded by lawyer-librarian Wu. She concentrated on controlled digital lending (CDL): the four prongs, the nature and amount of work, and the market effect. The true power of CDL is cooperation and Wu highlighted two cases of interest: ReDigi and Georgia vs Public Resource, Inc. Hannay summarized and updated 1) The Right to Be Forgotten, including some recent developments in the European Court of Justice; and 2) Pornography is not Education (parents dropped the lawsuit, but not before about 150 librarians cancelled the product), then moved on to 3) Researchgate vs ACS and Elsevier; 4) Rubber duckie (copies or not); 5) Dark Horse vs Joyful Noise (song influences or not). Discussion and questions to the speakers led to quotable quotes such as “Even if there is a change in legislation, there will be litigation”…The annual session provided a useful legal update, and again showed that, with the right presenters, the law has a sense of humor (or a humorous side). The Charleston Conference blog report about this session by Donald Hawkins can be found at: https://against-the-grain. com/2019/11/the-long-arm-of-the-law-6. (The session’s slides can be found in Sched.)

to EBSCO’s development of FOLIO and working closely with university presses. Jeff Grossman (Xavier University) asked about challenges caused by the upcoming demographic cliff of student enrollment, to which Kroes Li responded that an anticipated rebound in library budgets is now unlikely, and vendors may need to start unbundling things and offering smaller units of value. Way added that there will be winners and losers from this financial reality, which will in turn drive further consolidation.

Trimming the Sails: The What You need to know about Transformative Agreements — Presented by Athena Hoeppner (moderator, University of Central Florida), Chris Bennett (Cambridge University Press), Colleen Campbell (Open Access 2020 Initiative, Max Planck Digital Library), Curtis Brundy (Iowa State University) — https://sched.co/UXvb Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>

Good, Bad or Somewhere In-Between: The Impact of Market Consolidation on Libraries and Universities — Presented by Meg White (moderator, Rittenhouse Book Distributors), Roger C. Schonfeld (Ithaka S+R), Kara Kroes Li (EBSCO Information Services), Doug Way (University of Kentucky) — https://sched.co/UXvV

Transformative agreements were woven into a number of 2019 Charleston Conference sessions. In this Neapolitan session, panelists represented different stakeholder groups (publisher, library, consortium), and their views, interpretations, visions of the transformative agreement landscape and beyond. From a publisher’s view, for example, Bennett observed that there is a need to centralize funds, it is optimal to keep authors’ workflows as straightforward as possible, but there will be author choices on licenses, embargoes, and those may differ by discipline. Not an easy landscape to understand, it was observed during the question and answer session at the end — the time to experiment is now, not only in publishing, reading, but also learning environments (e.g., OER-Open Educational Resources).

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

CONCURRENT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

White served as moderator of this frank panel discussion, and Way opened with a pessimistic view of the library marketplace, seen as dominated by ProQuest and EBSCO, riddled with pricing inequities, driven by profit motives, and also occupied by a couple of bad actors, particularly in the streaming video space. Schonfeld noted that consolidation of content has proceeded onto consolidation of platforms, services, and tools. Kroes Li observed that the rate of technological change makes it hard for small companies to keep up, but that their acquisition has a net result of preserving a product or service that would have otherwise disappeared. White asked if there were any positives to consolidation, and Way offered the streamlining of workflows and investments into products, such as EBSCO with YBP/GOBI, but also cautioned about vendor lock-in. From the audience, Bob Sandusky (University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)) asked if anything in vendor culture prevents working together, sharing data, and strengthening interoperability, and Kroes Li noted that there are financial incentives to create closed systems and not be interoperable, but also pointed

Interpreting Analytics for Open Access Books — Presented by Rupert Gatti (Open Book Publishers), Sven Fund (Knowledge Unlatched), Kathleen Folger (University of Michigan) — https://sched.co/UXvz

NEAPOLITAN FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Reported by John Banionis (Villanova University) <john.banionis@villanova.edu> Folger opened this session with considerations for libraries to review before supporting an OA book initiative, including quality of content, alignment with campus programs and mission, cost for participation, campus and peer support, staff time for managing discoverability, and confidence in the business model. Gatti continued by discussing challenges in gathering OA book usage, highlighting what information can be gleaned through usage data (engagement levels, format preferences, geographic reach), and cautioning against the data providing a false sense of accuracy (considering continued on page 52

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

And They Were There from page 51 removal of bot traffic, session definitions, and variations between COUNTER and Google Analytics counts). Fund closed with a reminder that OA usage metrics are not an exact science but rather an indication of impact, and that raw numbers without a reference or context become unintelligible.

O Oysters You’ve Had a Pleasant Run: Three Viewpoints on EBAs in Long-Term Collection Development Strategies — Presented by Arielle Lomness (University of British Columbia), Robert Tiessen (University of Calgary), Sara Forsythe (moderator, Cambridge University Press), Louis Houle (McGill University) — https://sched.co/UXvw Reported by Janice Adlington (McMaster University) <adling@mcmaster.ca> Representatives from three CARL/ARL libraries outlined the rationales behind their very different approaches to eBook collections. Calgary abandoned DDA and print approval plans in 2015, due to budget constraints, and has since experimented with adding and cancelling EBAs from multiple providers. During the same years, British Columbia enhanced their eBook package purchases and subscriptions with EBAs from three major publishers, all of which are continuing. By contrast, McGill’s section, provocatively titled “EBA: Why Bother?,” analyzed usage of package purchases to project the costs and number of titles that would be owned had their complete packages instead been evidence-based. Overall, the session emphasized the complexity of the current landscape for both libraries and publishers, and the different priorities that influence decisions, even for seemingly similar institutions. One warning concerned the management of collections via knowledgebases, and the risk of losing access during protracted negotiations. (Slides and detailed analyses are available from the conference Sched website.)

NEAPOLITAN SESSIONS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019 Canceling the Big Deal: Three R1 Libraries Compare Data, Communication, and Strategies — Presented by Adam Chesler (AIP Publishing), L. Angie Ohler (University of Maryland), Karen Rupp-Serrano (University of Oklahoma), Leigh Ann DePope (University of Maryland College Park), Joelle Pitts (Kansas State University) — https://sched.co/UXwB Reported by John Banionis (Villanova University) <john.banionis@villanova.edu> After Chesler introduced the panelists, Ohler provided a combined overview of the three institutions’ Big Deal commitments as of 2017. Pitts continued with Kansas State University’s approach to significant cancellations planned for 2019, which involved a strong communication plan backed by data analysis and visualization using Power BI. Some positive 52 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

impacts included the creation of a scholarly communications task force, a new hire in data analysis, and a surprisingly low impact on ILL requests, though this may increase over time as perpetual access coverage wanes. Rupp-Serano presented a more sobering story from University of Oklahama, where an even larger budget cut for 2019 prompted Big Deal cancellations from three publishers. An additional negative impact of these cuts has been a general reluctance for library budget advocacy from campus constituents due to a fear that their own programs may see cuts instead. Lastly, DePope highlighted the experience at University of Maryland, where after a Big Deal cancellation, ILL requests for the same journals were only equivalent to 2% of the previous year’s usage, and the library is now achieving better negotiations with other publishers. The results of a web survey were also shared, indicating that budget remains the primary driver behind Big Deal cancellation decisions. (The session’s slides can be found in Sched, along with results from the survey linked to from Sched prior to the conference.)

The Time Has Come…to Talk About Why Research Data Management Isn’t Easy — Presented by Anthony Watkinson (moderator, CIBER), Carol Tenopir (University of Tennessee), Robert Sandusky (University of Illinois at Chicago), Jordan Kaufman (University of Tennessee), Mark Cummings (Choice/ACRL), Anthony Paganelli (Western Kentucky University Libraries) — https://sched.co/UXwE Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu> The panel reported on a survey (white paper later released in December 2019: https://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/ archives/18655) that used a 2012 ACRL study as a baseline for comparison. Speakers summarized 2019 survey findings. Tenopir provided an overview — respondents were North American (186 in total with 20 follow-up interviews) who work at 2 year through ARL R1-R2 level institutions. Research data support by libraries varied: information services to metadata standard development. Technical support ranged: hands-on direct support to deaccessioning data. Kaufman highlighted challenges. Not surprisingly, staffing was #1, then: funding, infrastructure, faculty awareness and interest, and institutional support. Sandusky highlighted staffing — sole or combination responsibility, and strategies: re-assigning existing staff, hiring, planning to hire, plans to re-assign. Training included: conferences, workshops, courses, in-house, collaboration with other academic programs. At the end of the panelists’ training opportunity list (Linked In Learning and the ESIP-Data Management Training (DMT) Clearinghouse), audience members contributed other sources useful to them — books, SIGs, boot camps, communities… Per Tenopir, research data management was “shiny new” in 2012, compared to 2019, with its reality and difficulties. She shared some of her research data challenges and hopes that libraries would see their role as similar to the one already played in the institutional repositories realm. Someone opined later that RDM is not just about creating repositories. continued on page 53

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

And They Were There from page 52 The Charleston Conference blog report about this session by Donald Hawkins can be found at: https://against-the-grain. com/2019/11/why-research-data-management-isnt-easy/. The video of this session can be viewed at: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=RbPuvXM_W48.

CLOSING SESSION and POLL-A-PALOOZA FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019 Closing Session and Poll-a-Palooza — Presented by Anthony Watkinson (moderator, CIBER Research), Stephen Rhind-Tutt (Coherent Digital, LLC), Erin Gallagher (University of Florida) — https://sched.co/UXwH Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University, Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu> After a tasty buffet lunch, Watkinson introduced the final 2019 conference session and turned the microphone over for the second year to Rhind-Tutt, who provided a brief version of “Stephen’s Takeaways” before leaving the session for the airport. He presented an analysis of the 2019 conference schedule and reminded attendees about the Gartner hype curve. What’s new that’s new, and what do we have to give up?

The Charleston Conference blog report by Donald Hawkins about this part of the session can be found at: https://against-thegrain.com/2019/11/stephen-rhind-tutts-conference-summary/. Gallagher commented that the 7th time is a charm, remembering the first poll-a-palooza in 2012 with 12 attendees (and no food). She shared slides of perceived trends and word clouds from previous years, before posing some questions open for participant input…Some phrases and words (serious and tongue in cheek) that came up in 2019: abracadabra, balance, bright idea, consequences, de-colonization, interoperable future, together we see clearly, “untransformative,” work-life. Gallagher jokingly shared that she pulls together her own reading lists from favorite books people share, a list that this year included: Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From their Mistakes; Educated: A Memoir; Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life; The Future of Another Timeline; Thinking, Fast and Slow, and many more. The audience participated not only electronically through the polling software, but also in person at the mike. Will the concluding session attendees inspire the 2020 (40th conference year) theme? That remains to be seen. Gallagher’s portion of this year’s session (including a few screen shot title captions incorrectly labeled to predict 2019, rather than 2020) can be found at: https://against-the-grain. com/2019/11/poll-a-palooza-2/. Well this completes the reports we received from the 2019 Charleston Conference. Again we’d like to send a big thank you to all of the attendees who agreed to write short reports that highlight sessions they attended. Presentation material (PowerPoint slides, handouts) and taped session links from many of the 2019 sessions are available online. Visit the Conference Website at www.charlestonlibraryconference.com. — KS

Don’s Conference Notes by Donald T. Hawkins (Freelance Editor and Conference Blogger) <dthawkins@verizon.net> Column Editor’s Note: Because of space limitations, the full text of my conference notes will now be available online in the issues of Against the Grain on Charleston Hub at https:// www.charleston-hub.com, and only brief summaries, with links to the full reports, will appear in Against the Grain print issues. — DTH

See the full report at https://www.charleston-hub.com/2020/12/ dons-conference-notes-the-art-and-science-of-marketing-communications-for-libraries-a-webinar/.

The Art and Science of Marketing Communications for Libraries: A Webinar

Attending the Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse), the publishing industry’s largest trade show, is an experience that every information professional should have at least once. One of its features is a concurrent conference featuring a wide variety of topics, and this year the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) and the Charleston Library Conference participated.

This webinar was presented by Kathy Dempsey, who has had a long career in library marketing and is owner of her own marketing consultancy, Libraries Are Essential, and author of “The Accidental Library Marketer” (Information Today, 2009). She noted that marketing is more influential if one considers the art of language and its intersection with the science of psychology, which is where people can be influenced. She also presented a “Cycle of True Marketing” showing the steps in developing a marketing plan. Other considerations in marketing include placement of signs, personalizing the message, focusing on the benefits, and email marketing. Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

SSP and the Charleston Conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair

SSP SSP presented a panel of four “chefs” from the Scholarly Kitchen discussing “Food For Thought: Building Back to More Than the Core.” The panel examined the way forward continued on page 54

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Don’s Conference Notes from page 53 from the COVID-19 pandemic: what will remain the same and what will have to change. We do not want to return to “normal”; we want to go back better. What have we learned about access and what can we make better? Promising initiatives include single sign on, controlled digital lending, data sharing improvements, and special journal issues to accommodate a large number of articles on COVID. eBook delivery systems and pricing models need to be improved.

Charleston Library Conference Seven information professionals gave presentations on topics of current interest: • State of the academic library today and importance of digital content, • Features and the future of monographs, • Changes in traditional approaches to collection development, and libraries moving from information acquirers to disseminators, • Developing marketing plans for libraries and changes in their value proposition, • Complex issues of copyright and educating students and researchers about them, • A review of artificial intelligence (AI), its capabilities and limitations in publishing, and its human aspects, and • Approaches to text and data mining, and tests for Fair Use. See the full report at https://www.charleston-hub. com/2021/01/dons-conference-notes-ssp-and-the-charlestonconference-at-the-frankfurt-book-fair/.

Responding to Challenges, Activating Opportunities, and Rethinking the Status Quo: A Charleston Pre-Conference Roger Schonfeld from Ithaka S+R reviewed the state of higher education in times of uncertainty and instability. Immediate challenges are caused by large uncertainties and variations in market segments. Issues that must be solved are: • Library budgets are tapped out. Academic libraries will have budget cuts as book prices increase. • Trust and review must be improved; peer review is not rigorous and too slow. • The value of libraries and their traditional roles must be reassessed. • In spite of the exposure of bad culture and practices, how will our organizations be reviewed? • We must adapt to global shifts, especially the US-China split. A discussion by several panelists followed on topics such as the increase in articles on COVID, effects of people working from home, lack of personal interactions, role of preprints, managing

54 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

workflows to be ready for any upcoming crises, and the form of conferences in the future. See the full report at https://www.charleston-hub.com/2021/01/ dons-conference-notes-responding-to-challenges-activatingopportunities-and-rethinking-the-status-quo-a-charlestonpre-conference/.

The Computers in Libraries/Internet Librarian (CIL/IL) Connect 2020 Virtual Conference Information Today’s first virtual conference was a week-long event that attracted over 1,000 attendees. It had many of the features of previous traditional conferences, including an exhibit hall, help desk, chat function that allowed session attendees to ask questions of the presenters, and networking events. The COVID-19 crisis had a major impact on this conference, and most speakers made some reference to it or its effects such as shutdowns, effects on library services and operations, and libraries’ places in their communities. Other major issues addressed were working at home, fake news, the role of technology, and what the “new normal” will look like. The opening keynote was by Lee Rainie from the Pew Research Center, who noted that we are a nation in the midst of convulsions, with many job losses and little trust in the Federal government or large corporations. The way out of these difficulties will be more face-to-face conversations and libraries functioning as important resource centers. Other features of CIL/IL included a series of discussions about interesting libraries around the world, presentations of digital library branches, library competitors, futurizing facts, AI, library systems, digital asset management, learning with laughter, literacy and innovation in libraries (a discussion by top executives of organizations), open access, eBook issues, safety of library users, web archiving, institutional repositories, and the future of libraries. The closing keynote was a panel of four library executives discussing current and future challenges for libraries. See the full report at https://www.charleston-hub. com/2021/01/dons-conference-notes-the-computers-in-libraries-internet-librarian-connect-2020-virtual-conference/. 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.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Optimizing Library Services — Voter Fraud, COVID-19 #VaccinesKill, and Social Media Censoring: How Librarians and Educators Can Combat Fake News and Misinformation by Prof. Nicole S. Delellis (University of Western Ontario, Canada) <ndelelli@uwo.ca> and Prof. Victoria L. Rubin (University of Western Ontario, Canada) Column Editors: Ms. Brittany Haynes (Marketing Coordinator, 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: With recent news of the U.S. Presidential election, #BlackLivesMatter protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic and its vaccine, we have seen an increase in the spread of misinformation across social media and news platforms. Understanding librarians are key in educating their patrons on information literacy (IL), find below a complimentary chapter, “‘Fake News’ in the Context of Information Literacy” by Profs. Nicole S. Delellis and Victoria L. Rubin from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, which describes a study that interviewed professors and librarians on ‘fake news’ and IL in the context of their educational roles. This chapter is featured in Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World (IGI Global). — BH & LW

Introduction Social media has transformed how we acquire news. The blending of traditional news outlets and user generated content procured through social media has influenced how individuals inform themselves (Chen, Conroy, & Rubin, 2015). News stories presented through social media are often decontextualized from their originating source. Decontextualization of news can result in information being “delivered to and received by us in video clips and sound bites, often forward without filter or review through social networks from one screen to another in a matter of minutes” (Frederiksen, 2017, p. 104). Canadian internet users are aware of the ‘fake news’ problem. In a recent survey, most Canadian internet users (87%) agreed “the spread of fake news on social media is a problem”; “75% say they come across fake news at least sometimes, and 57% have been taken in by a fake news item” (CIRA, 2019).1 Under such conditions, decisions informed by online content require individuals to be capable of critical assessment. The Canadian education system plays a role in developing students’ critical thinking skills in assessing online content. If Canadian students are lacking critical skills, they are predisposed to believing “problematic information” that is “inaccurate, misleading, inappropriately attributed or altogether fabricated” (Jack, 2017, p. 1). Information literacy (IL) education has been utilized and proposed as a key foundation of teaching students how to assess information. What does it mean to be critical of information? The answer to this question has changed over time. As conceptualizations of information shift and the technologies humans use to communicate change, so does IL education. To participate in society is to learn how to critically engage within societal discourse, that is, to be able to evaluate discourse despite the overwhelming Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

abundance of information. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL’s) shift from standards to frameworks emphasizes the need for critical assessment of social, political, and economic dimensions of information. Researchers have been quick to promote the value of IL as a potential remedy for the “fake news epidemic.” Few studies have assessed perceptions of how individuals directly involved in implementation of IL education perceive the value of incorporating segments on “fake news” within IL curriculum. The objective of this chapter is to provide a broader in-depth assessment of IL and to capture empirically what educators think about it as a potential inoculation against “fake news.” The first section overviews key literature, emphasizing the criticism for the Standards for Higher Education Information Literacy Competency, and how the field of information science has adapted to a new perspective on information. The next section describes the one-on-one structured interviews and their analysis methods. The results delineating educators’ perceptions follow. The final section of the chapter concludes with discussion of best IL practices, underscoring the importance of triangulating IL education efforts with automation (i.e., developing and introducing assistive technologies to automatically detect various “fakes” in the news) and regulation (i.e., governmental restrictions and industry “pollution controls” for news propagation media).

Background The problems associated with information overload and citizens’ limited critical reasoning abilities have been raised since the invention of the printing press and remain to be a societal concern. To participate in society is to learn how to critically engage with societal discourse, to be able to evaluate discourse despite the overwhelming abundance of information. William Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802) wrote a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor (p. 563). In Wordsworth’s view, information overload at the time not only dulled the senses and produced a lethargy of the mind but resulted in a mental inactivity devoid of critical reasoning capacity for the masses. Wordsworth’s critique pointed to early perceived complications of the bombardment of advertisement and media. The critical ability to assess information is a skill that is lacking from innate human and thus needs active development. continued on page 56

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Optimizing Library Services from page 55 The work of Andersen (2006) attempts to place information seeking skills within a broader societal context. For Andersen (2006), to be adept at “information seeking competence is a sociopolitical skill, like reading and writing skills, connected to human activity” (p. 213). It is essential for citizens to be able to not only locate required information but to be able to critically assess information as a production of society. No matter how obtuse a chosen presentation of information may be, citizens must be able to critically assess how and why said information was created to participate within society. The ability to critically assess information has been paramount since commodification of information became a driving force in most economies. Being information literate is “not a matter of following a standard” or to “be evaluated by one but to be able to discursively act upon a society configured and mediated by discourse” (Andersen, 2006 p. 215). This conceptualization of IL as a sociopolitical skill was not originally reflected in initial IL teaching standards.

Evolution of the Conceptualization of Information Literacy (IL) In 1989, the American Library Association (ALA) defined IL as an essential set of life skills that enables individuals “to find, evaluate, and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision — whether the information they select comes from […] any number of possible resources.” This definition regarded IL as a set of static skills that could be acquired; it led to the development of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 2000 Standards for Higher Education Information Literacy Competency (standards). The ACRL’s publication included six standards or skills which any information literate individual should be able to perform: 1. “Determine the extent of information needed. 2. Access the needed information effectively and efficiently. 3. Evaluate the information and its sources critically. 4. Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base. 5. Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose. 6. Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally” (p. 2-3). The standards conceptualized IL as an entity that could be measured with specific goal outcomes, which had important implications for how IL was taught.

Resistance From Academia The field of information and media studies responded to the standards with numerous critiques centered around the ACRL’s conceptualization of what it meant to be information literate. Jacobs (2014) was concerned that these standards “position students as information consumers: they select, access, evaluate, incorporate, use and understand information” (p. 194). For Jacobs (2014), the standards place information users as passive rather than active creators of information and this perceived passivity results in IL being taught in ineffective rote-style tutorials focused on guiding students through resources. The standards disregard the complex relationship individuals have 56 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

with information, as both users and consumers. The standards present a vague outline on what analysis of information ought to be, without an explicit execution plan of how these skills can be successfully developed. Criticism raised within the library and information science field (Jacobs, 2014; Swanson, 2004; Kapitzke, 2003) exemplify the demand for an IL approach that reflects the complex dynamics of the use and creation of information in the modern age. Interested in learning more or reading the full chapter? Read the full complimentary chapter at www.igi-global.com/ free-content/249504 or view the Column Editors’ End Note below for additional information.

References Albitz R. S. (2007). The what and who of information literacy and critical thinking in higher education. Portal (Baltimore, Md.), 7(1), 97–109. American Library Association. (1989). Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report. Washington, DC: American Library Association. Retrieved from http://www.ala. org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential. Andersen J. (2006). The public sphere and discursive activities: Information literacy as sociopolitical skills. The Journal of Documentation, 62(3), 213–228. 10.1108/00220410610653307 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ informationliteracycompetency. Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). (2015). Framework for information literacy for higher education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ ilframework. Batchelor O. (2017). Getting out the truth: The role of libraries in the fight against fake news. RSR. Reference Services Review, 45(2), 143–148. 10.1108/RSR-03-2017-0006 Bauder J., and Rod C. (2016). Crossing thresholds: Critical information literacy pedagogy and the ACRL framework. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 23(3), 252–264. 10.1080/10691316.2015.1025323 Bergstrom, C., and West, J. (2017). Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning for the Digital Age. Retrieved from http://callingbullshit.org/index.html. Burgess C. (2015). Teaching students, not standards: The new ACRL information literacy framework and threshold crossing for instructors. Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 10(1), 1–6. 10.21083/partnership.v10i1.3440 Chee, F. Y. (2019, February). Google, Facebook, Twitter fail to live up to fake news pledge. Retrieved from https://www. reuters.com/article/us-eu-tech-fakenews/google-facebook-twitter-fail-to-live-up-to-fake-news-pledge-idUSKCN1QH1O5. Chen Y., Conroy N. J., and Rubin V. L. (2015). News in an online world: the need for an automatic crap detector.Proceedings of the 78th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community. American Society for Information Science, 81. 10.1002/pra2.2015.145052010081 Cooke N. (2017). Posttruth, truthiness, and alternative facts: Information behaviour and critical information consumption for a new age. The Library Quarterly, 87(3), 211–221. 10.1086/692298 continued on page 57

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Optimizing Library Services from page 56 Creswell J. (2013). Qualitative inquire & research design: choosing among five approaches (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications. Derakhshan M., and Singh D. (2011). Integration of information literacy into the curriculum: A meta-synthesis. Library Review, 60(3), 218–229. 10.1108/00242531111117272 El Rayess M., Chebl C., Mhanna J., and Hage R. (2018). Fake news judgement. RSR. Reference Services Review, 46(1), 146–149. 10.1108/RSR-07-2017-0027 Frederiksen L. (2017). Best of the Literature: Fake News. Public Services Quarterly, 13(2), 103–107. 10.1080/15228959.2017.1301231 Freire P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Glaser B. G., and Strauss A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine. Habermas J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jack, C. (2017). Lexicon of lies: terms for problematic information. Data & Society. Retrieved from https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh/ DataAndSociety_LexiconofLies.pdf. Jacobs H. L. M. (2014). Pedagogies of possibility within the disciplines. Communications in Information Literacy, 8(2), 192–297. 10.15760/comminfolit.2014.8.2.166 Kapitzke C. (2003). Information literacy: A review and poststructural critique. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 26(1), 53–66. Lanham A. R. (1995). Digital Literacy. Scientific American, 273(3), 160–161. Mulhern M., and Gunding B. (2011). What’s critical about critical literacy? English Quarterly Canada (Online), 42(1), 6–23. Pérez-Rosas, V., Kleinberg, B., Lefevre, A., and Mihalcea, R. (2017). Automatic detection of fake news. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.07104.pdf. Powell R., Cantrell S., and Adams S. (2001). Saving Black Mountain: The promise of critical literacy in a multicultural democracy. The Reading Teacher, 54(8), 772–781. Simmons M. H. (2005). Librarians as disciplinary discourse mediators: Using genre theory to move towards critical information literacy. Libraries and the Academy, 5(3), 297–311. 10.1353/pla.2005.0041 Sullivan M. C. (2018). Why librarians can’t fight fake news. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. doi:10.1177/0961000618764258 Swanson T. A. (2004). Applying a critical pedagogical perspective to information literacy standards. Community & Junior College Libraries, 12(4), 65–77. 10.1300/J107v12n04_08

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

The SCONUL Seven Pillars of Information literacy. (2011). Core Model for Higher education. Retrieved from https://www.sconul.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/coremodel.pdf. Walsh J. (2010). Librarians and controlling disinformation: Is multi-literacy instruction the answer? Library Review, 59(7), 498–511. 10.1108/00242531011065091 Warnick B. (2002). Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric and the Public Interest. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wiggins G., and McTighe J. (2004). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved from https:// www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/siteASCD/publications/ UbD_WhitePaper0312.pdf. Wordsworth, W. (1802). Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems. In (Eds.), Introduction to Theory and Criticism, (pp. 559-579). New York: Norton & Company.

Recommended Readings Chiluwa, I. E., and Samoilenko, S. A. (2019). Handbook of Research on Deception, Fake News, and Misinformation Online. IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-8535-0 Dalkir, K., and Katz, R. (2020). Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World. IGI Global. http:// doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-2543-2 Holland, B. (2021). Handbook of Research on Library Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. IGI Global. http:// doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-6449-3 Joe, J., and Knight, E. (2019). Social Media for Communication and Instruction in Academic Libraries. IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-8097-3 Management Association, I. (2021). Research Anthology on Fake News, Political Warfare, and Combatting the Spread of Misinformation. IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-79987291-7 Column Editors’ End Note: This chapter is also included in the source publication Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World, which provides the latest information on legal or policy changes, information literacy workshops, algorithms that can detect fake news, and more. To learn more or purchase this publication, which is available in print and electronic format (ISBN: 9781799825432, EISBN: 9781799825456), visit www.igi-global.com/book/236998. Note: all IGI Global publications in electronic format feature unlimited simultaneous access at no additional cost. For questions about this publication or IGI Global content, contact IGI Global’s Customer Service Team at <cust@igi-global.com>.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Both Sides Now: Vendors and Librarians — Advisory Boards Column Editor: Michael Gruenberg (Managing Partner, Gruenberg Consulting, LLC) <michael.gruenberg@verizon.net> www.gruenbergconsulting.com

f you cannot figure out how to solve a problem by yourself, who do you call? Publishers and aggregators in the information industry are constantly being challenged to improve existing offerings while at the same time, there is a constant pressure to bring new products to market. In an all-encompassing marketing phrase, these publishers and aggregators are all trying to build “the better mousetrap.” New products that are successfully launched breathe new life into the sales team, create more revenue for the company and show the marketplace that the business is vibrant. A vibrant business ensures current profits and an influx of cash in the future by investors. A successful new product launch sounds like a “win-win” when done right. Because when done right the new offering will help many elements. The customer wins by acquiring a new source of information to better serve their constituencies. The sales force wins by obtaining a new product in their bag of sellable goods. Sales of the product will produce more commissions. Furthermore, by buying a new offering, the customer now becomes more closely tied to the company and will probably cause the client to look more often to the sales rep to be the source of exciting new offerings in the future. And finally, the company wins by developing a new source of revenue and rising above their rivals in an extremely competitive environment. Companies in every industry spend huge sums of money to hire the best marketing people to staff their marketing department. The job of the marketing group is to develop the products that the salespeople will ultimately present and hopefully sell to their customers and prospects. Moreover, the job of the marketing department is to position the company’s products, determine the funds needed for advertising support and develop a clear direction as to why the company’s product is superior to anyone else’s’ offerings. In short, “the marketing department uncovers customer’s needs and sales fills those needs.” To effectively bring a new product to market, or even revive an existing one, takes a significant amount of effort for any marketing department. They cannot do it alone. Internally, a wise marketing Director will solicit the opinions of the sales Director whenever new offering are contemplated or even when poorly selling products need a boost. It makes good sense for these two individuals to work in concert. Many a new product offering has failed because the sales department had not fully bought into the worth of the latest whiz-bang deal dreamt up by a seemingly overzealous marketing Director. Or failure may be blamed on a lackadaisical group of currently employed salespeople. To avoid such characterizations of why we failed, it is better to celebrate why we won. To do this, sales and marketing need to work together. The reality of introducing new products in any industry is akin to understanding that such machinations are much like a three-legged stool. It takes all three legs of that stool to stand. 58 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Removing any one of those legs will surely ensure that it will fall to the ground. We know that two legs of the stool are marketing and sales. Therefore, the third leg of the stool involves the customer. Yes, the customer. Over the years, I have witnessed a number of vendors in the information industry come to market with what seemingly was a “can’t miss” product only to find that the library community was unable to embrace it. And that is simply because the company did not actively solicit the opinions of the very people who would ultimately buy and use the product. No matter the industry; no matter the product, if you do not actively solicit the opinions of the eventual users of the product, odds are, it will fail on delivery. Companies invest significant sums of money developing new products. Unfortunately, sometimes that development is done within a vacuum. All around the company headquarters people are raving about the new offering. Was a customer called to find out their opinion? If not, success will be fleeting. Therefore, Customer Advisory Boards are so important in the successful launch of a new product. Several years ago, I called on a customer at a major University. They were a significant customer of the databases my company was offering. As is so often the case, the librarian and I spoke about some of the mutual friends that we have in common in our community. She mentioned that she would be seeing some of those mutual friends at an upcoming meeting sponsored by a vendor, who was a major competitor of ours. She went on to say that a group of librarians would be travelling to a city, taken out to dinner, be given hotel accommodations and the next day would talk about issues such as customer support, new product ideas, etc. She went on to say that was an annual event and all the participants were grateful for the opportunity to give their comments and suggestions and looked forward to this get together every year. Whether or not the host company actually acted on the suggestions of their guests is debatable. What is not debatable is the good will that this exercise created. No matter the cost, the information gathered at the dinner and subsequent meeting the next day was far beyond any dollar value that you could assign. The money needed to organize and bring the parties together was money well spent by the company. Of course, given the current limitations on travel as dictated by COVID-19, groups of librarians flying to cities, staying at hotels and spending the day in a meeting room is no longer viable. We are all thankful for Zoom. So, what does the Advisory Board really do? In it’s most basic of terminology, the board serves as a conduit from customer to vendor to advise on product and company direction. Questions like: • We have developed this new database, are these data points that would interest your users? continued on page 59

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

NOTE: This is the version without the landing page URL

8 Library Services That Will...

Make You Smile. 1) Publishing Sources - Almost 200,000 at our disposal 2) New Title Selection Plan - Immediate notiﬁcation 3) Electronic Ordering - Simple online ordering system 4) Early Release Program - Immediate availability guarantee 5) Cataloging - We do the busy-work for you 6) Comprehensive Reporting - Up-to-the-minute

“ Things always go smoothly with Emery-Pratt. Their people are knowledgeable, and always provide friendly, rapid service.” Cameron University Lawton, OK

order status

7) Duplicate Order Alert - We’re on guard, you avoid hassles

8) Paperback Reinforcement & Binding Avoid expensive wear & obsolescence

For more details, visit: emery-pratt.com

Dependability. Reliability. Smileability. 1966 W M 21, Owosso, MI 48867-9317 Phone: 800 248-3887 • Fax: 800 523-6379

emery-pratt.com

Both Sides Now: Vendors and Librarians from page 58 • Product XYZ is not selling well. What are your thoughts as to why this is occurring? • Our market strategy is _____. Does that make sense to you? • We are pricing product ABC at $___. Is that reasonable to you? • Are there any new databases that we should develop? • How does your acquisition budget look for this year and next? • Can we count on your renewals? The list of questions can be quite extensive. There are few boundaries in the topics chosen to discuss. Finance, renewals, customer service, technology updates and more all have a place when the company convenes a meeting of the Advisory Board. A wise Product Manager once said to me a long time ago that he followed the advice that said “The customer is always right. And if the customer is wrong, our job is to figure out how to make the customer right.” Advisory Boards do just that. They help to make the customer right by confirming that the company’s path is a correct one. And if by some chance, the customer is upset, the board helps iron out those complaints and resolves those issues, as well. Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

In today’s fast pace of publishers and aggregators competing in the information space, it is important to give the customer what they want, not what the company thinks they want. One of the best ways to obtain that market intelligence is through an active Advisory Board that has been given free rein to voice their opinions. Companies that pay heed to those opinions are the ones who will likely be the most successful in our industry. Mike is currently the Managing Partner of Gruenberg Consulting, LLC, a firm he founded in January 2012 after a successful career as a senior sales executive in the information industry. His firm is devoted to provide clients with sales staff analysis, market research, executive coaching, trade show preparedness, product placement and best practices advice for improving negotiation skills for librarians and salespeople. His book, “Buying and Selling Information: A Guide for Information Professionals and Salespeople to Build Mutual Success” has become the definitive book on negotiation skills and is available on Amazon, Information Today in print and eBook, Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, Kobo, Apple iBooks, OverDrive, 3M Cloud Library, Gale (GVRL), MyiLibrary, ebrary, EBSCO, Blio, and Chegg. www. gruenbergconsulting.com

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Biz of Digital — Comparing Apples and Oranges: Prioritizing Digital Collections by Mikala Narlock (Digital Collections Librarian, Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame, 427 Hesburgh Library, Notre Dame, IN 46556; Phone: 574-631-5058) <mnarlock@nd.edu> and Peggy Griesinger (Head, Metadata Initiatives, Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame, 429 Hesburgh Library, Notre Dame IN 46556); Phone: 574-631-3197) <mgriesi2@nd.edu> Column Editor: Michelle Flinchbaugh (Acquisitions and Digital Scholarship Services Librarian, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250; Phone: 410-455-6754; Fax: 410-455-1598) <flinchba@umbc.edu>

Introduction

Literature Review

This article will discuss a multi-year effort by the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries to normalize, standardize, and productionize its digital collection workflows. The Hesburgh Libraries provide resources and services in support of the research and intellectual pursuits of a private, Catholic university with a population of over 12,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students as well as 1,400 instructional faculty.1 The Libraries are managed by a team of nearly 200 faculty and staff who steward over four million titles.2, 3 In terms of digital collection stewardship, the Libraries employ four individuals across three units who are tasked with the creation of digital collections using rare, unique, and/or high-interest materials held by the Libraries. Our University Archives (UNDA), Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC), and Digital Access, Projects, and Outreach Services (DAPOS) units collaborate regularly to create facsimiles for digital exhibits and provide virtual access to rare and fragile collections. Due to the limited time and resources available for digital collection stewardship, the Libraries charged an internal team with documenting, implementing, and managing new and existing workflows, which initially led to the creation of a case manager model in 2018. This model is predicated on the idea that digital collection projects benefit from having a single point of contact that can customize existing workflows to accommodate unique projects, and shepherd those customized workflows throughout project design and implementation.4 The case managers are tasked with overseeing the workflow in production, ensuring smooth handoffs between departments, and promoting an overall project experience of transparency, timeliness, and accountability. This model was successful and quickly adopted by library colleagues; shortly after its creation, it grew into the collaboration-focused Digital Collections Oversight Team (DCOT). With comprehensive representation across library departments, this team was charged with providing support for digital collections by clarifying roles and responsibilities and creating critical documentation.5 Included in these efforts was the creation, testing, and implementation of a digital collection prioritization system. This tool was designed to ensure that collections could be assessed, rated, and compared, an especially important factor when considering the need to balance an increase in digitization requests with a stable and finite amount of resources. This case study will describe the steps taken by the Hesburgh Libraries’ DCOT in order to design this low-tech tool, including the creation of the rubric, the revision process, integration into production workflows, and planned future work.

The concept of prioritization rubrics is well-established in library science literature, with a number of peer institutions making their rubrics publicly accessible. Of these, there were two that were most helpful in our endeavors: the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection Project Proposal guidelines6 and the University of Maryland’s Digitization Initiatives Committee’s Criteria for digital collections.7 These rubrics helped us address ongoing questions of prioritization in the Libraries. While our current digitization requests were manageable, the formation of DCOT led many to ask how we would handle competing requests in the future. Additionally, we anticipated that, as our process increased effectiveness in digitization workflows, there would be an influx of digitization requests. Lastly, while unanticipated, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting stagnation in levels of staffing and funding indicated a need to quickly and strategically deliver digital facsimiles of collection materials with limited resources. The existing rubrics of peer institutions helped to lay the groundwork for our own rubrics.

60 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Creating the Rubric As we began working on our own version of a prioritization rubric, we ignored the layout and format of the example documents that surfaced in our literature review, and focused on how these institutions chose to categorize factors for prioritization and the ways in which those may or may not be relevant to the needs of Hesburgh Libraries. Many of the rubrics emphasized certain characteristics, such as metadata preparedness, physical condition, copyright information, and current or anticipated use in teaching and research. However, as each institution has unique expectations and requirements, there were some components that did not align with our current practices. For example, the University of Maryland prioritizes projects that are a continuation from the previous year over new collections; while this is both logical and understandable, we do not demarcate our digital collection projects by fiscal year, so we decided to not include that factor in our prioritization rubric. Using these existing assessment tools as a guide for determining our own prioritization categories, DCOT created a spreadsheet to test our proposed rubric against the Libraries’ digital collections that were already undergoing digitization. During this activity concerning issues emerged, such as confusing categorization and vague language that even the rubric creators could not parse out. This test run allowed us to resolve those issues with an improved prioritization rubric that would be better able to facilitate testing as a potential tool. continued on page 61

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Integrating with Workflows

Biz of Digital from page 60

Revision Process This method of assessing digital collections, especially assigning a score to projects, was new to Hesburgh Libraries. While prioritization had always informally guided the decisions of digital collection managers, the formation of DCOT and an increased focus on transparency highlighted the need to document and formalize project requirements and digital collection priorities. Moreover, given our efforts to standardize digital collection best practices and encourage adoption of the rubric throughout the Libraries, it was critical that we vet the rubric with our subject selectors and key stakeholders. In order to accomplish this, we organized small focus groups. While the primary demographic was subject specialists in our Rare Books & Special Collections department and subject liaisons, we also included digitization specialists, copyright experts, and other user advocates. Over the course of these focus groups, we made minor adjustments for clarity and explored extensive revision suggestions, such as the addition or removal of a category. This resulted in significant changes to the categories selected; for example, an early iteration of the rubric included a category determining whether content was already available online. During stakeholder discussions it became clear that this category was not only confusing, but it also demonstrated a lack of understanding of the basic best practices of the subject selectors, who noted that looking for online access to content was one of the first things they did when writing a new digital collection proposal. By including it on the rubric, we were unintentionally suggesting they were not doing their jobs and exposing our own ignorance of their work. In addition to content changes, we also revised and simplified the layout of the rubric, building it to serve as an educational tool for our subject selectors and curators. Early drafts of the rubrics had multipliers for weight, and a lengthy list of categories. With each iteration, we streamlined the process by combining categories, removing the multipliers, and building the value into the groupings. While this helped, subject selectors still noted that, in terms of using the rubric, categories like “Relation to teaching priorities” and “Conservation need” were too broad to be helpful. In response, the category names were clarified (e.g., “Conservation need” became “time-sensitive conservation or preservation need”). We also added guiding questions to the end of the document that were designed to help selectors and case managers discuss the particulars of a project and how that might affect the overall score. Lastly, at the end of the document, we added helpful information, like contact information, the digital collection request form, and links to frequently used resources, such as the DCOT LibGuide.8 Expanding the form beyond the needs of DCOT has facilitated new collection proposals and resulted in incoming requests that more comprehensively address digitization concerns. When selectors are considering projects and creating their requests, they can use the rubric, guiding questions, and helpful resources to understand how DCOT is assessing collections. This has resulted in clearer and more comprehensive digital collection proposals, and it has also increased awareness throughout the library of the wide-ranging work that goes into digitizing a collection. Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

As the revision process continued, it quickly became clear that we needed to clarify how to use the rubric, both from the subject selector perspective as well as for DCOT members. During the consultation process, when a case manager discusses the project goals, timelines, and expectations with the selector, the rubric was used as a discussion piece, guiding the conversation and exposing potential roadblocks to digitization that may not have been anticipated based on the initial project request. In order to ensure selectors remained informed about the score of their collection, we moved beyond simply discussing the rubric and integrated the actual assessment into the consultation. In this process, as the case manager and requester discuss the particulars of the collection, they can agree on scores together, and write the scores on a physical copy of the rubric. The rubric is then scanned and added to the documentation for the project, so that all current and future workflow participants can see how and why the collection received its prioritization ranking. Filling out the rubric in such an open and accessible way has led to increased transparency and understanding of the digital collection prioritization process.

Future Work While we are excited that the rubric has been embraced by the Libraries and integrated into existing workflows, we want to ensure the model is sustainable. To achieve this, we have identified three areas as key next steps. First and foremost, we would like to take the burden off of subject selectors and case managers to assign the values in the rubric. While this has been a helpful way to encourage buy-in and engagement with the rubric, ideally the individuals responsible for the work and with the appropriate expertise will assign the relevant scores. For example, someone in Metadata Services would assess and assign the score for metadata completeness. This will require updating our workflows slightly to ensure that appropriate parties are called upon to assess the proposal. This has been embraced by Case Western Reserve University, which has found this to be a successful method for retaining investment in a comprehensive digital collection vision while centering the humans responsible for the work.9 Similarly, our team also wants to evaluate the current governance related to maintaining the rubric and discuss new strategies for integrating the rubric and collection proposal into project management software. For this, we look to the University of Virginia, which recently embarked on a similar process and developed a holistic approach to managing both the digital collection process and the digital collection workflows.10 Given a recent library reorganization and uncertainty regarding future hires due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is unclear when this work might happen, but it remains an essential part of plans for the sustainable future of case management at the Libraries. Lastly, we would like to expand the focus of this rubric to include content considerations. It currently focuses on the technical elements of digital collections, such as metadata completeness, physical preparedness, and copyright restrictions. While these remain critical components of digital collections, content considerations must be given significant weight as well. Although Hesburgh Libraries does not have an explicit collection continued on page 62

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Category Definitions and Guiding Questions

Biz of Digital from page 61 development policy, the rubric could be expanded to more clearly articulate our implicit digital collecting goals.

Conclusion By conducting an extensive review of the many existing digital collection rubrics and assessment tools accessible online, adapting the categories for our specific needs, and revising the tool with key stakeholders, the Hesburgh Libraries’ Digital Content Oversight Team was able to build buy-in to the digital collection building process throughout the institution. Moreover, by integrating the rubric into the workflow and collaborating with selectors to assign scores, the rubric serves to not only assess the collection, but also as an educational tool to highlight the necessary components of digital collections. The future work required to comprehensively overhaul digital collections work at the Libraries remains large, but the prioritization rubric has provided us with a strong foundation from which to build those structures.

Appendix A: DCOT Prioritization Rubric This rubric is used to help the Hesburgh Libraries’ Digital Collections Oversight Team (DCOT) Case Managers prioritize collections that are submitted through the request form. This rubric will not be used to approve or deny digitization requests, but rather to help prioritize and assess incoming projects. After a digitization request is received, a Case Manager will sit down with the selector to go through this rubric and collaboratively assign values. Subject selectors and liaisons may use this rubric to help guide their proposals, and can even consider this to be a checklist and utilize the helpful resources listed at the bottom of this document.

Relation to Teaching Needs: This material will be used as soon as it is made available online by a teaching faculty member or a researcher. Questions to consider: Will this be actively used in an upcoming class? Will this be used repeatedly in upcoming semesters or years? Relation to Library or University Priorities: The relation of this material to current library priorities, such as grant initiatives, strategic initiatives to expose digital collections, or collaborations with external partners. Questions to consider: Is this related to a strategic initiative or grant? Does this relate to the Transformative Research Library priorities? Does this relate to the University’s priorities and mission? Uniqueness/Rarity: Questions to consider: Is the content available digitally elsewhere? Is this material unique to Hesburgh Libraries or, is it held by only a few American libraries? If so, how many?” Relation to Research Needs: Questions to consider: Is this often requested by researchers? Is there a faculty member in the library or on campus who will use this in their research? Has a subject selector identified this material is at the crux of an emerging research trend or does this material contribute to a lesser known narrative? Conservation/Preservation Need: The preservation need of the physical media, including born-digital content that is in danger of bit-rot, degradation, or obsolescence. Questions to consider: Is digitization the only way this material will be preserved or accessible? Is the physical media in danger of bit-rot, degradation, or obsolescence? Will digitization actually harm the item? Metadata preparedness: The material has item-level descriptive metadata appropriate to the proposed access systems, or the selector is willing to assist in the description. Questions to consider: How thoroughly is this described? Will there need to be additional work to make the items truly discoverable? Where is the metadata stored currently, and in what format? Upcoming anniversary, event, or milestone: Questions to consider: Will this material be used in or is it related to an upcoming anniversary, event, or milestone? Is there sufficient lead time to accomplish the request in time for the event? Funding need: The amount of funding that will be necessary to complete this project, either due to equipment needs, staff/ student labor, or outsourcing. Questions to consider: Will this material need to be outsourced for digitization or description? Do we have the equipment necessary to digitize the media? Will there need to be a considerable investment of time or other resources to complete the request, such as with migrating legacy born-digital media? endnotes on page 64

62 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Digital Toolbox: Case Studies, Best Practices and Data for the Academic Librarian — Academic Libraries Further Embrace eBooks as Demand Increases During COVID-19 Pandemic Column Editor: Steve Rosato (Director and Business Development Executive, OverDrive Professional, Cleveland, OH 44125) <srosato@overdrive.com>

hile academic libraries have been slower to adopt eBooks than their public library counterparts, more and more colleges and universities are turning to a variety of digital content to support their academic mission. And because of the distance learning requirements brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of eBooks has increased further. This is demonstrated in the results of Ebook Collection Development in Academic Libraries: Examining Preference, Management, and Purchasing Patterns, a newly released study co-sponsored by ACRL Choice and OverDrive Professional. Get the full report here: https://pub.e.overdrive. com/ACRL_Report.

Ebook Collection Development in Academic Libraries offers a comprehensive view of academic libraries’ attitudes toward eBooks and audiobooks — including both academic and curriculum-based materials as well as popular fiction and nonfiction — and how they implement the purchase of these titles into their collection development workflow. Based on survey results from academic librarians, this report shines a much-needed light on the ways academic libraries are responding to the increased demand for digital content.

Methodology and Demographics The survey, conducted in March and April 2020, examined the state of eBooks in academic libraries both before COVID-19 and at the onset the pandemic. ACRL Choice collected responses from 253 academic library professionals working in a variety of roles. Librarians from public and private institutions made up the bulk of survey respondents (97%).

State of eBooks and Audiobooks in Academic Libraries Overall, 98% of survey respondents reported providing eBooks at their college or university. Furthermore, eBooks make up an average of one-third of surveyed academic libraries’ monograph collections. Most librarians surveyed believe readers are “format agnostic,” and acquisition models focus on the content, not the format. As such, the monograph collections of surveyed librarians now reflect a mix of print and eBooks, with 43% of respondents saying their overarching acquisition model favors eBooks over print. In terms of content, the overwhelming majority of survey respondents (89%) cite academic titles as the type of eBook content they are purchasing and will continue to purchase. Popular subject categories surveyed librarians are purchasing in eBook form include social sciences, humanities and physical sciences. This data point reflects academic libraries’ print collections, with 92% of librarians reporting that less than 10% of their print monograph collections is dedicated to popular fiction and pleasure reading. Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Benefits of eBooks in Academic Libraries Over 93% of survey respondents cited anytime, anywhere access as the key advantage to offering eBooks to students, faculty and staff. Other major benefits include: • Multi-user access • Enhancement of distance and online education • Does not take up physical space in the library • Meet patron demand Academic libraries’ ability to provide titles to their community regardless of a user’s location proved vital in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic when access to the physical library may be limited or students are learning remotely.

Budgeting for eBooks on College Campuses While the breakdown of budget allocation varies, a vast majority (82%) of respondents noted their eBook spending has increased compared to what they were spending three years ago, and 61% of respondents indicated they plan to increase their eBook purchasing budget in the coming year.

Data Drives Acquisition Decisions One advantage eBooks have over print is powerful data — such as circulation and average waiting time for holds — that librarians can leverage to make purchasing decisions. As noted in the Ebook Collection Development in Academic Libraries report, “With eBooks, libraries have the potential to harvest data about [title] usage at a granular level.” The preferred primary acquisition model for eBooks is title-by-title, with 81% of respondents indicating this is the most-widely used purchasing method. Combining title-by-title purchases with data-driven decisions, academic libraries can build an eBook collection that best meets the needs of their school.

eBook Acquisition in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic In a short follow-up survey conducted in June 2020, a smaller group of respondents was asked about how, if at all, their eBook acquisition model has changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the sample is small, their answers indicate a powerful shift toward eBook adoption in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of respondents (74%) reported they would be buying more eBooks due to the pandemic. When asked for the reason behind the increase in eBook purchasing, 95% of respondents said it would better support online teaching, while 85% attributed it to direct requests from faculty or students. continued on page 64

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Digital Toolbox: Case Studies, Best Practices ... from page 63

The Future of eBooks in Academic Libraries While eBooks were steadily gaining popularity in higher education prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the follow-up survey signals that the closing of physical campuses and libraries and resulting shift to online learning accelerated how academic libraries adopt and utilize digital collections. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, OverDrive had seen 20% annual growth in the academic market over the last few years because of the convenience, access, choice, cost, and flexibility that digital offers. This trend is sure to continue and should be compared to the accelerated marketing trajectory of Zoom, Apple, Salesforce, and Netflix. Get the full report here https://pub.e.overdrive.com/ACRL_ Report. For more information about ACRL Choice, visit http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/. For more information about OverDrive Professional, visit https://company.overdrive.com/ academic-libraries/.

Biz of Digital from page 62 Endnotes 1. Notre Dame at a Glance. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www. nd.edu/about/. 2. Hesburgh Library. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://library.nd.edu/ hesburgh. 3. Morris, S. and Roebuck, G., comps. and eds. ARL Statistics 2017–2018. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2019. https://publications-arl-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/ARL-Statistics-2017-2018/. 4. Narlock, M., Lawton, P. and Rader, P. (2019). The Rise and Fall of Favor-Based Digitization: Workflows Taste Better on a Cake. Midwest Archives Conference Newsletter 47 (2). doi:10.7274/ r0-9cnw-w345 5. Narlock, M., and Griesinger, P. (2019). “Case Management: Or, how we learned to stop worrying and love workflows.” DLF Forum, Tampa, FL, 2019. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/E5R9Q 6. “Submitting a UW Digital Collection Project Proposal.” Accessed September 2020. https://www.library.wisc.edu/digital-library-services/uwdcc/submitting-a-project-proposal/ 7. Pike, R. (2016). “Managing Digitization Priorities with Metrics.” Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference. http://hdl.handle. net/1903/18092 8. “Building Digital Collections.” Accessed October 2020. https:// libguides.library.nd.edu/digital-collections 9. Becker, S. (2019). A Vision for Kelvin Smith Library’s Digitization Program. http://hdl.handle.net/2186/ksl:2006056360 10. Roper, J., Bartczak, J., Cooper, J., Deane, C., Durbin, M., McClurken, K., Wilkinson, E., Work, L. (2020). Chaos to consensus: a team based approach to developing holistic digital workflows. In Boff, C. and Cardwell, C. (Eds.), Leading Change in Academic Libraries. ACRL.

Rumors from page 48 for streaming options to only continue. https://choice360.us8. list-manage.com/track/click?u=11f1458611be04f9d5f1e4a10& id=4b9e355e52&e=83a938bbbf The Great Gatsby has officially entered public domain, already spawning a flurry of new editions and adaptations. The 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald classic is slated to be reimagined as a graphic novel, refitted with new illustrations, and reinterpreted as, what else, a zombie-story. One adaptation that’s garnered some buzz is Nick from Little, Brown and Company, an exploration of the narrator pre-Jay Gatsby. Often interpreted as a stark look at the “American Dream,” the book, with its Roaring 20s opulence and tragedy (spoiler-alert), clearly still strikes a chord today. https://choice360.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=11f1458611be04f9d5f1e4a10&id=8385f39f17&e=83a938bbbf From Infodocket — “In a historic and unprecedented maneuver for a group of independent universities, the University Library Deans and Directors of the BigTen Academic Alliance (BTAA) have committed to managing the separate collections of Big Ten university libraries as a single collection. “The objective of the BIG Collection is to create an environment for Big Ten faculty, staff and students in which content will be universally available to all without regard to which institution produced or purchased the resources and materials. The BIG Collection will be supported by interoperable services and system.” h t t p s : / / w w w. i n f o d o c k e t . c o m / 2 0 2 1 / 0 1 / 1 4 / h i s t o r ic-move-big-ten-libraries-commit-to-managing-separate-collections-as-single-collection-the-big-collection/ Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. and Max Planck Digital Library have entered into a three-year Read & Publish Agreement. Covering all Mary Ann Leibert, Inc. journals previously subscribed, the transformative agreement covers the cost for open access publishing of all articles by corresponding authors affiliated with the Max Planck Society, eliminating APCs (Article Processing Charges) for authors. In addition, researchers at all Max Planck Institutes will have full access to licensed Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. journal content. The Read & Publish agreement with the Max Planck Society is the first transformative open access agreement for Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. h t t p s : / / w w w. m p d l . m p g . d e / u e b e r - u n s / n a c h r i c h t en/652-mps-mal-transformative-agreement-de.html Even though the 2020 Charleston Conference was virtual, we had fun anyway! Beth Bernhardt’s Trivia Night was a huge success. Don’t miss it next year! Also attendees who visited the Charleston Vendor Showcase exhibits could get points and win prizes! Our Grand Prize winner was Judy Lee, LRC Director at St. Paul’s School of Nursing. Our 2nd Runner Up was Scott Pope, Continuing Resources Librarian at Texas State University. And our 3rd Runner Up was Michele Gibney, Head of Publishing & Scholarship Support at the University of the Pacific. Honorable mentions go to Edward Lener (Virginia Tech), and Tamara Bozich (UC San Diego Geisel Library). Congrats to all of you, and thanks for playing! Pictures are here https://2020charlestonconference. pathable.co/game. continued on page 71

64 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Random Ramblings — The Used Book Market: Changes for Libraries Column Editor: Bob Holley (Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University, 13303 Borgman Avenue, Huntington Woods, MI 48070-1005; Phone: 248-547-0306) <aa3805@wayne.edu>

he impetus for this column arose when I accidently came across the PowerPoint slides that I used for an ALCTS webinar, October 2010, on the used book market.1 One presentation dealt with buying books in the used book market while the other focused on how libraries could sell unwanted gifts and discards. A lot has changed in the last ten years, but I found surprisingly few recent articles on these two topics in Library & Information Source. The decline has been especially swift for buying such materials but less for selling since many libraries, more often public than academic, continue to sponsor book sales and offer books on the Internet to generate revenue, albeit at a reduced level.

The Shift to Digital Buying. The growth of digital availability in the last ten years has had multiple effects upon library purchasing. While digital has not eliminated print, the availability of eBooks had changed buying patterns even before the arrival of COVID-19 that has caused many physical libraries to restrict access. The effect has been more pronounced for academic libraries. eBooks are easier to manage and to circulate than physical objects in the stacks. They are significantly more available for online students. Many libraries or their host institutions want to reuse the space that has been allotted to the less popular print materials. The academic library also has more control over its patrons and can tell students and faculty that the choice is an eBook or simply not purchasing the item. Finally, the HaithiTrust, the Internet Archive, and digitization projects, including making backlist titles available from university presses, have made it easier for academic libraries to find digital copies of older materials. Public libraries, except for the largest one, have always had less interest in purchasing used books. Most patrons want current materials. Unlike academic libraries, they do have to keep their patrons happy by providing both an eBook and print copy of many titles but will purchase both formats new. Selling. While both types of libraries can and do sell used books, the practice is more firmly established in public libraries since they can draw upon the free labor of Friends groups to solicit, organize, and manage these sales. The shift to digital has lessened the supply of print materials though some libraries may have a temporary increase as some users offload their print collections after going digital. The demand for print books is also reduced since some who have turned to eBooks have dropped out of the market. In my own area, public library book sales have become less frequent and less well attended. As further proof, many charitable bodies that used to sponsor annual sales no longer do so or offer a much smaller stock as part of a general rummage sale.

Declining Sales and Prices Prices have declined significantly, based upon my own experience and comments from others on the Amazon forums, though I haven’t been able to find official statistics for this trend. As a very small hobby seller, my experiences may be atypical; but I believe that they reflect general trends. The high point for my Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

sales was 2009. In 2019, the number of books sold was 37% of this figure. The dollar amount was 35%. The average profit per sale, however, remained relatively constant. This reduction in volume and revenue occurred even as I substantially increased my inventory that now stands at about 8,000 items. Since each book I add to inventory must meet certain standards for profitability, I find myself culling many more books than in the past. I’m also finding it much more difficult to find items that might be profitable because the days of purchasing a box of books for $5 have disappeared with the decline of charity book sales as mentioned above. I believe that the shift to eBooks explains only a portion of this decline in sales for individual sellers. Another major factor may be the increase in the number of sellers with the resulting competition. Making money on used books was easy in 2009. Beyond my own experience, I had a former student tell me that he made $83,000 annually then but shuttered his business later as conditions changed. As with any successful money-making activity, books and articles appeared about how profitable and easy selling books online could be. My search today in Amazon on “selling used books online” brought up over 2,000 results. Titles from the first page include HOW I MAKE $4,000 A MONTH PART-TIME SELLING USED BOOKS ONLINE and Make $1000+ A Month Selling Used Books Online WITHOUT Amazon: Easy Ways to Make Extra Money With Websites That Pay Cash For Books! Market entry is quick and simple since setting up an Amazon account isn’t all that complicated. A retiring professor who wishes to sell her private collection wouldn’t need much effort to get started. Many individuals have succumbed to these promises of easy money and started listing their books. Libraries and thrift stores have also entered the market in greater numbers. They have the advantage of getting their books free through donations and often having volunteer staff to process the items for sale on the Internet. Looking at sellers on Amazon, it’s possible to find many offerings from such institutions, often at the lowest price. The negative for libraries is the need to constantly monitor for sales, pack and send the items quickly, deal promptly with customer inquiries and complaints, and have space to store unsold inventory. Nonetheless, selling online is often the best way to maximize revenue since many items that may be less desirable to average book sale patrons may sell well to niche buyers in the broader national marketplace. Libraries have also indirectly increased offerings and thereby competition on the Internet by sending their items to be sold by organizations like Better World Books, Thrift Books, and Alibris. These companies pay the libraries an agreed upon commission for any sales. These companies then sell items through multiple used book vendors in addition to having their own web sites. Libraries can also sell their more desirable items to vendors who offer fixed prices, but prices offered are normally low since the vendor takes the risk of not selling the item and of receiving books in less than good condition. continued on page 66

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Random Ramblings from page 65

Amazon and Other Internet Vendors I know Amazon best and will focus my comments on this vendor. This emphasis is justified by the fact that Amazon is the dominant player in the book market, including used books. Peter Hildick-Smith, the president of the book audience research firm Codex, is quoted on the Wired web site as saying that “Amazon’s market share by default, we estimate, will grow to at least 70 percent of the market on the basis of the month of April, up from just over 50 percent in the pre-Covid period,” (https://www. wired.com/story/coronavirus-book-sales-indie/) Yet Amazon has changed significantly in ten years. It is no longer a company with a predominant focus on selling a wide array of books from its inventory and through third party sellers to a site interested more in third party sellers who sell larger quantities of brand-new items in all categories. I recognize that Amazon would probably like me to disappear as a low volume used book seller. Since I started selling used books on Amazon in 2009, third party sellers have had to agree to more restrictive rules. Anyone who sells on Amazon today quickly learns that its objective is increasing its own profits by creating a positive customer experience even if doing so makes life difficult for third party sellers. Perhaps the most frequent complaint on the Amazon seller forums is forcing sellers to accept refunds even with strong evidence of buyer fraud. For more detail, this web site lists multiple buyer scams: https://feedvisor.com/resources/e-commerce-strategies/how-to-handle-buyer-violationsand-fraud-on-amazon/. Any library that sells books should be aware of these scams and also understand Amazon’s rules and follow them meticulously, especially if the library is selling an expensive item. (I understand that third party sellers also scam customers, but this isn’t a topic for today’s column.) Amazon has also taken other actions to increase its profit. I’ve already written an ATG column about the 2017 major increase in fees for selling books. (https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7730&context=atg) This increase included charging fees on shipping costs that made the $3.99 books with free shipping unprofitable for even the largest sellers. In addition, charging a fee on shipping makes selling abroad with its high mailing costs nearly impossible. As a professional seller who pays a $39.99 monthly fee to avoid the $1 per book supplementary fee, I have to price an item at $2.50 plus $5.60 shipping to make my $1 minimum profit if I sell 40 items per month and ship the under one pound book with USPS media mail, currently at $2.80. Other Amazon strategies to increase its profit include showing items on my seller’s page suggesting that I lower my price to meet the competition and suppressing items that Amazon believes are priced too high, even when they aren’t. Overall, Amazon wants it third party sellers to sell more expensive items at lower prices to increase its revenue. Another major site for used books, Half.com, disappeared when eBay closed it down in August 2017. The site functioned very much like Amazon today including taking care of collecting the purchase price from the seller but sold only books, media, and games. I started selling on Half.com in 2005 since this site was then more popular and less threatening than Amazon. My sales

66 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

figures reflected the increasing pressure from Amazon since they declined to 51 items sold in 2016, the last full year of operation, even though most of my items were dually listed on both sites. (In 2016, I sold over 800 items on Amazon.) Sellers can still offer books on eBay; but most sources recommend Amazon since books sell faster there because of its reputation as the best place to buy books, higher web traffic, and ease in listing items for sale. The negative for Amazon is a higher commission, but sellers still make more money for their effort. Amazon may also be more attractive for buyers because of its focus on ease of ordering and excellent customer service. (https://flipthosebooks. com/faq/amazon-or-ebay/) Two additional sites are worth mentioning. First, AbeBooks, a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008, is the better place to sell rare and collectible items. Alibris is of interest because of the special services it offers to libraries. “Alibris for Libraries consistently delivers value to existing and new library customers in many ways, including free services like Collection Reports and Want List Matching, informative case studies about library successes, low-priced alternatives to interlibrary loans, and flexible billing options (including purchase orders).” (https://www.alibris.com/ about/021709-alibris-redesigned-site-libraries#:~:text=Libraries%20have%20long%20turned%20to,and%20available%20 for%20online%20submission) Note that the last time I checked, these services required libraries to pay a slightly higher price.

Conclusion The used book market wasn’t all that important to libraries ten years ago. Its importance is even less today. On the buying side, most public libraries focus on current materials, whether print or digital, with the need to buy used books limited to the uncommon purchase of older, out-of-print items. Academic libraries are turning to eBooks to simplify operations, support remote users, and free up space. Many also have access to large collections of digitized older items including university presses that have converted their entire backlists. COVID-19 has accelerated the move to eBooks for both types of libraries and prompted many patrons to switch to digital resources. On the selling side, public libraries face declining revenues from selling used books directly or indirectly through resellers. Both demand and supply are reduced as fewer people buy or donate print used books. Prices have gone down for used books because of increased competition from more sellers and less demand from buyers. The same is true for the small percentage of academic libraries that do the same. Amazon has become less friendly to used book sellers, including libraries, since it has raised its commission rates and changed its focus to favor third party sellers who sell new items in larger quantities. The library or hobby seller who lists a single copy of each book no longer fits its corporate model. Overall, I predict that the market for used books will continue to decline but won’t disappear entirely just as movie theaters have persisted in the face of so many alternative viewing options. Endnotes 1. Recordings of the two webinars can be found here http:// www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/coll/102710gift and here http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/ coll/100610oop.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Marketing Touchpoints — Marketing Planning When Nothing Goes as Planned Column Editor: Jill Stover Heinze (Sr. Product Researcher, Founder, Saddle-Stitch Marketing LLC, Charlottesville, VA 22902) <jill@SaddleStitchMarketing.com>

n October, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking on a Charleston Conference panel for the Frankfurter Buchmesse. The topic was marketing planning for times when it seems anything but possible to plan — a situation that, unfortunately, is too familiar to many of us these days. As you might expect, my talk surfaced examples of library marketing adaptations spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic, but being flexible in the face of change is a skill we should hone continuously. Here, I’ll share highlights from the talk that I hope will give you a boost of marketing inspiration to help you be prepared for the unforeseeable.

A Value Proposition Tested

Certainly, no one wishes for a global health crisis to give us a creative jolt, but we would be remiss to ignore the resiliency and creativity librarians, publishers, and other information professionals have demonstrated over the past nine months or so in spite of exceptionally challenging circumstances. In fact, many of their efforts exemplify good marketing in action, whether planned or unplanned, and serve to show that starting from a place of good intention is an excellent marketing practice. I can hardly think of a time when the very core of libraries’ value propositions have been challenged as during the pandemic. Generally speaking, librarians pride themselves on physically bringing together communities, creating places of inclusion, preserving and stewarding cultural resources, while also often being deeply embedded with their constituencies. In fact, many of us would identify these actions as fundamental to librarians’ professional identities. And then came Covid. All of a sudden, the notion of libraries as community gathering places became fraught with concerns of spreading disease. Once welcoming to all, librarians suddenly had to turn people away from physical locations and restrict access to all of those resources so carefully maintained for public use. Even the cornerstone of library collections, the printed volume, took a hit as circulation was paused and supply chains were upended.1 People’s emotional and practical needs changed on a dime, and information professionals couldn’t afford to wait for a thoroughly vetted plan to react. Amazingly but not surprisingly, those core values found a way through the disruption to express themselves in librarians’ and publishers’ nimble actions as evident during the spring lockdown. Critically from a marketing standpoint, these responses were quick and substantive. For example, publishers offered temporary emergency access to textbooks and teaching materials,2 while librarians maintained outdoor WiFi access when their library buildings closed. Contrast these efforts with messaging coming from businesses in other industries that were sharply rebuked for being tone-deaf by moving ahead with ads featuring large crowds and parties.3 These examples teach an important marketing lesson: during emergencies you get one chance to set the right tone. Do so by being quick, empathetic, and guided by your institution’s core values.

Experiments in Service Design

As I reiterate to anyone doing marketing, all good marketing starts with having a good product (or service). When the Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

unexpected confronts us, it’s worthwhile to view the situation through the lens of how our services need to adapt to meet new needs. With Covid, for instance, library services and products were almost completely upended. Procedures were outdated almost overnight as librarians had to think of new ways to get materials to people safely and contact-free, and as patrons demanded different formats and public health precautions. As an example of just how dramatic and sudden these changes were, Maureen McMahon was quoted as saying in a Library Journal article, “About five minutes ago, we thought ebooks were boring and that they had plateaued. Now they’re our heroes.”4 From a marketing perspective, you can easily see how promotions and messaging need to reflect these new needs and showcase different aspects of collections. Librarians’ service responses boldy illustrate why continually realigning services with needs is such an important marketing imperative. Take this example of a Twitter post from a library at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

The post reads: “Our library team (@uonlib) is always up for a challenge! To keep staff and students safe while accessing essential materials on campus, they’ve set up a virtual help desk using #Zoom.”5 Pictured is a still from a video in which a patron continued on page 68

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Marketing Touchpoints from page 67 approaches a service desk staffed by a smiling, waving face on a computer monitor. In this case, the entire service experience, including guiding users how to interact to get help while maintaining social distance had to be rethought in short order. Making service changes is among the most difficult of marketing imperatives. It’s easy to get attached to the way things have always been done. But one lesson a crisis can teach is that we are capable of making dramatic change when needed. Why not apply that sense of creativity and experimentation to services when things are more stable? After all, change is always happening, whether slowly or quickly, and our services shouldn’t stagnate. In marketing, it’s not enough to talk about how great the things are that we do; We have to do great things to have something worth talking about.

From Marketing Communications to Marketing Dialogues One of the most immediate and notable effects of the pandemic, and the changes in work and services it brought, is the need to reimagine how we communicate with our colleagues and patrons. No longer could we depend on chance encounters and impromptu conversations to keep us connected. Rather, many of us have had to adjust our social norms and preferred methods in order to communicate at a distance. What once took place in a meeting room or cafe now happens in scheduled Zoom meetings. This change in venue exposes inequities in who participates in conversations, as those with accessibility needs, caregiving responsibilities, and lack of technology often bear a disproportionate burden in replacing in-person contact with online channels. The added complexity of communicating motivated librarians to seek creative approaches to internal and external information-sharing, including strengthening channels that could be leveraged more fully. Examples abound of how librarians managed to keep communication lines open. Take, for example, Jill Wurm, associate director of marketing and communications for the Wayne State University Library System. According to Wurm, “As the experts in communication, a lot of the responsibility to share information has fallen to us, but in a much more extreme way than pre-pandemic. Where we used to research stories and interview people, now we might be researching information or using our communicator contacts to better understand what’s going on in other parts of the university so we can share with our own groups.”6 In another example, through interviewing 20 academic and public library leaders, OCLC found that these leaders are relying more and more on consortia, professional associations, and local businesses to collaborate during the pandemic.7 Perhaps one of the most vivid examples of rethinking both internal and external communications strategies comes from Cornell University Libraries (CUL). Scrappy CUL librarians quickly formed the Digital Reference Group back in March, and pulled together through a series hybrid in-person and online

68 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

meetings to “provide a level of service patrons expect on campus in the digital realm.”8 The result of their effort was to expand the integration of their virtual chat service throughout their website. In a marketing triumph, the group succeeded in achieving 1,283 chat sessions between March and May, with just under half coming from the new chat implementations. Moreover, CUL expanded the two-way communications it had with users during a critical time, demonstrating a service- and dialogue-oriented approach to connecting with users.

Marketing is Iterative. The Basics are Constant. The unwelcomed and tragic Covid-19 pandemic has shocked all of our systems, be they medical, emotional, financial, educational, governmental, or business. The seriousness of the losses many are experiencing is profound. It therefore seems a bit trite to say we can learn from this tragedy. Yet, it is also true that many information professionals are expressing their values and commitment to helping others through their innovation, and those are important efforts to take with us as we move into the future. We never know what the future is going to bring, but we do know we’ll always have to adapt to change, and that those cycles of change are getting shorter and shorter. Our services, and by extension, our marketing activities, should embrace nimbleness even in the absence of dramatic disruption. Developments on the horizon like artificial intelligence, pressures on the higher education model, environmental changes, and more should help us keep a sense of urgency to continue innovating and iterating when we have the luxury to prepare. Keeping in mind marketing fundamentals, like those covered here, such as putting people first, experimenting with service design to suit new needs, and maintaining resilient and varied internal and external communication channels can all contribute to marketing readiness even when we feel anything but ready.

Endnotes 1 . h t t p s : / / w w w. l i b r a r y j o u r n a l . c o m / ? d e t a i l S t o r y = covid-19-BISG-book-industry-Survey-NPD-Bookscan-Barnes-Noble-CEO 2. The Association of American Publishers lists publisher’s Covid-19 responses: https://publishers.org/aap-news/covid-19-response/. 3. https://time.com/5814509/coronavirus-marketing/ 4 . h t t p s : / / w w w. l i b r a r y j o u r n a l . c o m / ? d e t a i l S t o r y = covid-19-BISG-book-industry-Survey-NPD-Bookscan-Barnes-Noble-CEO 5. https://twitter.com/uni_newcastle/status/12451385716794859 52?lang=en 6. https://today.wayne.edu/news/2020/09/17/storytellers-campus-communicators-find-innovative-ways-to-engage-inform-campus-39198 7. https://hangingtogether.org/?p=8049 8. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=expanding-chat-reference-during-covid-19-peer-to-peer-review

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Emerging Tech: To Be or Not to Be? — Privacy and Secure Access: An Interview with Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe Column Editors: Deni Auclair (Editorial Director, Humanities and Social Sciences Journals and U.S. Partnerships, De Gruyter) <Deni.Auclair@degruyter.com> and John Corkery (Client Engagement Director, LibLynx) <john@liblynx.com> www.liblynx.com

ecause of increasing attention to privacy and secure access, I decided to interview Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, a practitioner and expert on the topic. Lisa is Professor/Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the University’s School of Information Sciences. Lisa served as the 2010-2011 President of the Association of College and Research Libraries and has served on numerous American Library Association (ALA) and division committees. In her role as ACRL president, Lisa instituted an initiative supporting academic libraries in their compilation of data on how libraries have an impact on student learning and success, as well as how to communicate to institutions the impact they have on student learning and success. It enables libraries to use evidence-based decision-making to create and run their programs and use that data for evidence-based advocacy to communicate to the institution their budget requests. It indicates the institution’s return on its investment in the library. In order to do that, they have to collect data about users/students so they have to be very attentive to the data and how it’s collected, secured, and managed. Deni Auclair: To start, a basic question: Why are privacy and access areas of concern, specifically to librarians? Lisa Hinchliffe: Fundamentally it is well-reflected in a phrase that people in the library field have used for decades: Free People Read Freely. In order to have intellectual freedom, to inquire into those issues that are important to us, we have to be free from scrutiny for those inquires. This is true for all libraries, not just academic; it’s also true for public libraries. We are trying to create spaces and places of intellectual freedom where people can make inquiries into topics that interest them. We believe this is fundamental to a free society and ultimately to a democratic society. The notion attaches itself to some very important and bedrock values in the library profession. Our current practices particularly emerged in the era of McCarthyism when libraries would be visited by various agents who would want to inquire into the reading habits of certain individuals, and libraries held the line and said this isn’t freedom. To be agents for intellectual freedom, we developed local policies and programs and also advocated for legal protections. Because of this advocacy, in most states there’s something called the Library Records Confidentiality Act (or something similar) that enshrines into state law that people using libraries have

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

freedoms and protections when they are doing that. It’s state level law in most states, but not all. The real challenge is that it was about check-out records for books because those were the records libraries had. Fast forward a few decades and with the Internet, we are all leaving a trail of data as we use every information resource, every tool, and since libraries are the enablers to provide online resources, we’ve had to think about what it means to create spaces of intellectual freedom when using technologies inherently captures everything somebody does. So we have decades of figuring out how to do that like with book checkout records — in most systems now, when you return the book it purges the record that says you checked it out, but there are certain services that users might like such as…well, a list of what books they’ve checked out. So with these tools — in the print era there wasn’t a record to do that, just the card in the back of the book — but with electronic records there can be opt-in services to keep a record and keep it private, but libraries then have to say that it can only be kept private to the extent allowable under law. (They can’t be obligated to share a reading list if they don’t have it anymore but if one is kept then it can be subpoenaed!) The real importance emerging is the notion of user agency, which is there are private paths, paths with data destruction, but that users have agency to choose alternative paths and libraries must educate them about the implications of those alternative paths. What libraries are now navigating is how to protect private pathways and how to protect privacy so it is available to users, but to also then avoid paternalism where we limit what they’re able to do by their own choice. So what libraries are now doing is working to say: here’s the kind of data that needs to be tracked in order for a system to work — like a back button will only work if the server keeps track of your last screen — so there’s some data capture necessary for these online systems to work. Is that data, if you will, ephemeral? It comes into existence but then is gone — versus what is stored. What is stored in a way that provides a customized user experience? For example, you and I don’t have the same Google search experience as each other because we’ve created searches in the past and Google captures those past records to provide value to us by learning about our search patterns and habits. It isn’t perfect, but many find value in that kind of personalization. Libraries would advocate for more opting in than a lot of commercial actors would prefer. We definitely want opt-out in continued on page 70

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Emerging Tech: To Be or Not to Be? from page 69 our systems; most problematic are services that provide no opt-in or opt-out. But the only way to get value from many systems is to allow some kind of tracking. This is more an issue in something like a Facebook environment, but even in a scholarly or library environment there are a number of platforms librarians would see as capturing more data than is necessary and without the user opting in. There are debates within the profession — some librarians believe these tools shouldn’t allow you to opt in to capture your historical record (i.e., it’s not something we should support at all) and others who have no problem with the data capture if it is the user’s choice. The bulk of librarians probably fall in the middle: seeing value coming from data capture but not feeling comfortable with the degree to which users currently have control over their own data. We’d like to see more user agency within these systems. DA: You said in a recent webinar that librarians’ approach to attitudes about privacy and access can be “befuddling to people outside of an MLS or library program.” You also said: “Privacy is about protecting intellectual freedom, which is ultimately about protecting democratic societies.” Please elaborate on that — what is privacy from a librarian’s perspective and how does it relate to access? LH: The American Library Association (ALA) defines privacy: “The right to privacy includes the right to open inquiry without having the subject of one’s interest examined or scrutinized by others, in person or online.” We want people to be free from scrutiny because we want them to be able to inquire freely because that is a component of intellectual freedom and ultimately being able to be a freely inquiring citizen in a democratic society. The idea of privacy for librarians is deeply embedded in our professional acculturation. It is a fundamental value, crucial to intellectual freedom (another fundamental value), and because it’s a fundamental value of the profession, it can be befuddling to those who aren’t in the profession. They haven’t had the opportunity to think about and explore the degree to which privacy is something that enables the kind of free inquiry we want to see, and how it connects. When you access information, your privacy is a component of how you engage with that information. If you’re inquiring into a topic and your search strategy is going to be broadcast — e.g., you’re searching and it’s displayed on a screen over your head in the middle of a meeting — you’ll probably search differently than if you’re only able to see it yourself. What if it’s being captured, say as a young adult, and it’s being sent to your parents? Sometimes you’ll think it doesn’t make a difference — but free people should be able to search and inquire freely and shouldn’t feel they have to change their behavior because it’s being scrutinized. There are many things we search for that are innocuous, but there are others, perhaps related to health or that of a loved one, or maybe we want to understand the different viewpoints different groups have on a particular topic — I might be looking up a topic that may be quite abhorrent to me, but I want to understand it to engage in a dialogue with people who hold that view. That was a main issue about McCarthyism — people may have wanted to educate themselves about Communism for a variety 70 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

of reasons. Now, college students, for example, are exploring many issues of identity, many possible career paths, negotiating adult relationships for the first time in their lives — figuring out whether a relationship is healthy, for example. It also helps them to negotiate a relationship on their own, including issues of sexual harassment or assault, and library resources are used to figure out what is happening to them and what to do about it. So, given that not all searches are innocuous, we need privacy so the ones that are sensitive are protected. The only way for that to happen is for all of them to be protected. The reality is these platforms and library resources are digital and we can’t withdraw from the digital world to protect privacy, so we have to figure out what it means to create privacy in the digital world that is reflective of our values while recognizing that the context is different. DA: In the ALA Bill of Rights, you pointed out a particularly important tenet, specifically, Article VII: “All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.” Please explain the ways librarians can effectively support the Article, given the resources (or lack thereof) typically found in library systems. LH: Privacy is what every library user deserves for their information seeking, and confidentiality is the responsibility librarians have that protects that privacy. They’re often paired because users deserve privacy and confidentiality is how libraries should act. The reality is librarians do know what is checked out — when it is checked out, what is done with that data point? Librarians protect that information and keep it confidential — it is only used to provide services to users. Secondarily it can be used, according to ethical guidelines, to improve those services. The Library Bill of Rights is a statement of what users can expect. There’s also the ALA Code of Ethics, which is how library workers must approach their work. They work together to create the overall ethical framework of libraries and librarians. This gets tricky because in the digital world there are also third parties with access to library user data because the library is enabling access for users to, for example, scholarly journals, but the access takes place on the publisher platform. This is where we need to work in partnership with our library business community — vendors, publishers, platform providers — so that their systems are designed to also create an environment where users have the privacy that we expect them to have in a library environment. Of course, if they’re using something on a publisher’s platform, the publisher is going to have access to that data. What is expected of the publisher and/or the platform is that they will treat that data the way the library treats that data — they won’t disclose it to third parties, and only use it for the provision and improvement of services to the user. For example, we would consider it out of bounds for that information to be used to present third-party advertising to patrons on the publisher’s platform. That would mean the platform is taking the data someone is searching for, taking it out of the context of their search and combining it with advertising data, in order to market something back to the user. continued on page 71

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Emerging Tech: To Be or Not to Be? from page 70 This is where the work on the NISO Privacy Principles that I was involved with comes in. It’s an attempt to bring together various stakeholders — libraries, platform providers, publishers — to work together to articulate a set of consensus principles so that libraries could say “yes, if you’re following these principles, we would say you’re trying hard to protect privacy for our library patrons when they use your platforms.” And for publishers, it’s a way to say “okay, so this is what it would look like” — it provides them a blueprint to aspire to. It’s a very important set of dialogues, to have out there a set of consensus principles. It doesn’t mean everyone is happy with those principles. There are some who are not happy with how they came out — because, after all, another word for consensus is compromise — so those principles aren’t fully implemented across the ecosystem. But it’s something to strive for and a common language to use. It’s an articulation of how the library principle of privacy could be approached in this digital environment and, because librarians and vendors came together in order to articulate those principles, it represents a consensus viewpoint about the ways that privacy should be approached in these digital platforms. I’m grateful to Todd Carpenter’s leadership in developing those principles through the NISO community as NISO is a place where those stakeholders come together. DA: Given all of the above, how do librarians choose and work with technology vendors that best support the tenets advocated by the ALA as well as those of their own institutions? LH: The principles are now guiding how librarians decide which vendors they work with. These are decisions libraries have to make and conforming to the NISO privacy principles help them evaluate who is aligned with our values. Of course, they don’t always have the choices we would like. Librarians are also in a mode of advocating with existing vendors. In many cases, the relationships have existed for years, platforms develop, and librarians continue to advocate and explain our expectations and how we’d like to see these platforms work. Ultimately, libraries are the customers, even if not the ultimate

Rumors from page 64 Lorcan Dempsey <dempseyl@oclc.org> sends word that beloved Portland indie bookseller Powell’s Books is selling a unisex fragrance that smells like a bookstore. h t t p s : / / w w w. p o w e l l s . c o m / b o o k / p o w e l l s - u n i s e x - f r a grance-1110000347670 https://kottke.org/20/11/powells-books-is-releasing-a-fragrance-that-smells-like-a-bookstore If you can’t get your hands on Powell’s scent, you have other options. Demeter makes a fragrance called Paperback that’s available in a variety of formats (cologne, shower gel, diffuser oil). Visit https://demeterfragrance.com/paperback.html. And Christopher Brosius offers a scent called In The Library in Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

users, and some libraries are beginning to take a more aggressive look at privacy. Stanford University libraries have a strong statement about how they will consider privacy in the contracts they have with different platforms, but there’s a lot libraries are balancing because their users need access to content. So we’re often in more of an advocacy role for platforms we’re contracting with, not necessarily being able to say “no,” but more to say “we want to buy your content, but here is what we want to see.” Not unlike advocacy libraries do with respect to access for people with disabilities and ensuring platforms are compliant, or how we’ve advocated that publishers should have a preservation program so a digital copy remains perpetually available. Besides platforms that publishers contract with to provide content, libraries also contract for other services like citation management systems like Mendeley or EndNote — many times they come from the publisher, but not the content end of the publisher — or we might purchase content hosting services for our own digitized content, like institutional repositories. We are also looking for those platforms to have privacy protections as well. Technically, you can just use the word “platforms” rather than “platforms and publishers,” but I tend to distinguish between when we’re getting content from an organization vs getting some other service by saying “platforms and publishers.” DA: Is there anything else you’d like to add on this topic, anything I should have asked? Any major takeaways you’d like readers to have? LH: The one thing I’d like to say is that platforms and publishers have really come to a new level of understanding in the past couple of years about the importance of this issue and come to see as well that it is in their business interest to attend to this because having personal data is a liability for them. We’re seeing increased attention to this just because there’s increased societal attention to it. In my experience, I’m involved with the Seamless Access group, the GetFTR group, I was on the NISO Privacy Principles, I’ve presented on webinars, etc. I am heartened by the renewed interest I’m seeing from the platform and publisher community, that they’re looking to partner with libraries both to provide high quality services to library users but also to be attentive to the need to protect information privacy.

his shop — visit https://www.cbihateperfume.com/shop-vpwdj (via moss & fog), or https://mossandfog.com/powells-bookscaptures-the-essence-of-a-bookstore-and-bottles-it. Laura Dawson <ljndawson@gmail.com> says that Etsy also has a large range of candles scented to resemble libraries, headmaster’s office, etc. Loads of bibliophile scents available there. And!! Attention!!! RED ALERT!! Attention 2020 Charleston Conference Attendees: Remember that you have access to the full conference event website for one year, through the end of October 2021. Watch video recordings with transcripts (located in the “Files” tab) for all conference sessions. Browse the vendor showcase booths with videos, downloadable materials, and more. Send chat messages to other attendees, ask vendor reps questions, and contact speakers for more information on their presentations. Be sure to check continued on page 85

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with Peter Stockmann Column Editor: Darrell W. Gunter (President & CEO, Gunter Media Group) <d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com>

ell, I am so happy to have Mr. Peter Stockmann, who is the Managing Partner of Gamut Strategies and SVP of Areopa, to discuss managing change. Peter, welcome to the Innovator’s Saga. PS: Oh, Darrell, it’s great to be here. Thank you. DG: So I’m really thrilled that you’re here to talk about a chapter that you have written for a book, in all spirit of transparency, that I am publishing with IGI publishing. The name of the chapter is “Best Business Practices for Incorporating Change” in the forthcoming book titled “Transforming Scholarly Publishing with Blockchain Technologies and AI.” And so, also, in addition, Peter we’re going to get your views on leadership as well. Before we jump into Change Management and the best practices, if you could you please share with our audience your extensive background and education and experience, which is extremely impressive. PS: I went to St Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, in the early 60s. From there, I started with Ford Motor Company in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Sharonville Transmission Plant. While at Ford, I went on to continue my education. I went to the University of Cincinnati, and Central Michigan, to complete my master’s degree. I then did some postgraduate courses at the University of Michigan and Wayne State. When I got out of St. Joe, I started working at Ford. I worked for Ford for 36 years. I spent my first 12 in the finance areas, working on strategic planning, plant operations and product acquisitions. That is where I gained knowledge in budget, business plan and the managing of operational facilities. It was a great learning experience to me. I remember my first day at Ford, I was part of the Transmission and Chassis Division and the first thing they had me do was take apart and put together a transmission. DG: Really? Wow! PS: You know, Ford had their act together. If you’re going to represent our product, you need to know what they are and how they work. For the first 12 years I worked in the financial areas, the second 12 years I worked in product development, traveling back and forth between Detroit, Germany, and England. I was working on the first “World Car.” It was the new Ford Taurus, and it had common parts with all countries. In my last 12 years I ran their training program. I was in charge of executive, mid-management, and hourly training. I put together a training program for Alex Trotman who was president at that time. And we built a 300,000 square feet training facility. DG: Wow! PS: We trained 1,500 to 2,000 people a day. And I had the opportunity, before we built it, to travel the world and benchmark other corporate training facilities. While benchmarking these corporate training facilities, I met a lot of great people and still keep in contact with some of them— Coca Cola, IBM and Motorola University were the leaders in corporate training. 72 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

I gained a lot of friends and knowledge during my 36 years at Ford. I retired early, at 55, because I wasn’t really happy with the new president that was replacing Alex Trotman. DG: Right. PS: I started my own company. I started PJS Associates, 3P Business Solutions, which were business and hospitality consulting companies. Then I got into PatentBooks, where I met you. And from there, we left PatentBooks and we started Gamut Strategies and AREOPA. It’s been a long journey, but it’s been a lot of fun, and we continue to learn. DG: Yeah, and that’s the thing that I appreciate from our time of working together at PatentBooks, where you’re so collegial, but also focused on the overarching goal. And as you know, as the story goes, the executive committee selecting you to be the CEO, to let the other CEO go into the chairman’s role, simply because he probably wasn’t showing the best leadership to us. So it’s been — this is such a great partnership. And so, let’s talk about Change Management in business. You know, with all that’s going on with COVID right now, everyone is talking about Change Management. You know, how do we deal with the new situation that we have here. Why is it so important to have good Change Management methodologies and to either build your business or to grow your business? PS: Business is starting to understand without embracing change they will be left behind. For an example, Kodak. You know, Kodak was great in the film making and processing business, but they never picked up digital technology, when everyone else did, and they were left behind. You have to have the philosophy that you can and must always improve. You always have to keep looking out there at the future to understand where you could be next. That’s why change is important. However, people just think it’s just going to happen. Change does not just happen. It has to be planned. It has to be supported. And it has to be executed, and then measured. It’s a process. It’s like anything else in business. If you have a process and you follow the process, it’ll work. DG: And so when you think about Change Management, what are some of the key principles of the Change Management methodology? PS: We’ll talk methodology principles. First, the 10 Key principles include — (1) Understanding Human Capital, (2) Speak to each Individual, (3) By-in and support of the leadership, (4) Involvement of everyone, (5) Making a compelling case for the change, (6) walking the Talk, (7) Communicate, Communicate, Communicate, (8) Understand the Culture landscape, (9) Address Culture Explicitly and (10) Prepare for the unexpected. I think the most important one is Understanding Human Capital. You know, when you make a change in an organization, your people are the ones that are making it happen. And you need to continued on page 73

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Innovator’s Saga from page 72 understand where they’re coming from. You need to understand the human side of change. That’s the biggest. Typically, when you want to make a change, 25% of the people will support you, 50% are on the fence, and then 25% will resist. Human nature, you’ll find that is the average on any change program. The next is Speaking to the individual. Change is both an institutional journey and a very personal one. People spend many hours each week at work; many think of their colleagues as a second family. Individuals (or teams of individuals) need to know how their work will change, what is expected of them during and after the change program, how they will be measured, and what success or failure will mean for them and those around them. Team leaders should be as honest and explicit as possible. People will react to what they see and hear around them and need to be involved in the change process. Highly visible rewards, such as promotion, recognition, and bonuses, should be provided as dramatic reinforcement for embracing change. Sanction or removal of people standing in the way of change will reinforce the institution’s commitment. The next is By-in and Support of the Leadership. Because change is inherently unsettling for people at all levels of an organization, when it is on the horizon, eyes will turn to the CEO and the leadership team for strength, support, direction and understanding. The leaders themselves must embrace the new changes first, both to challenge and to motivate the rest of the company. They must speak with a united voice and model the desired behaviors. The executive team also needs to understand that, it is composed of individuals who are going through stressful times and need to be supported. Executive teams that work well together are best positioned for success. They are aligned and committed to the direction of change, understand the culture and behaviors the changes intend to introduce, and can model those changes themselves. The next is Involvement of Everyone. As transformation programs progress from defining strategy and setting targets to design and implementation, they affect different levels of the organization. Change efforts must include plans for identifying leaders throughout the company and pushing responsibility for design and implementation down, so that change “cascades” through the organization. At each layer of the organization, the leaders who are identified and trained must be aligned to the company’s vision, equipped to execute their specific mission, and motivated to make change happen. The fifth is Making a Compelling Case. Individuals are inherently rational and will question to what extent change is needed, whether the company is headed in the right direction, and whether they want to commit personally to making change happen. They will look to the leadership for answers. The articulation of a formal case for change and the creation of a written vision statement are invaluable opportunities to create or compel leadership-team alignment. The next one is Walk the Talk. Leaders of large change programs must overperform during the transformation and be the zealots who create a critical mass among the work force in favor of change. This requires more than mere buy-in or passive agreement that the direction of change is acceptable. It demands ownership by leaders willing to accept responsibility for making change happen in all of the areas they influence or Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

control. Ownership is often best created by involving people in identifying problems and crafting solutions. It is reinforced by incentives and rewards. These can be tangible (for example, financial compensation) or psychological (for example, camaraderie and a sense of shared destiny). The seventh one is Communicate, Communicate, Communicate. Too often, change leaders make the mistake of believing that others understand the issues, feel the need to change, and see the new direction as clearly as they do. The best change programs reinforce core messages through regular, timely advice that is both inspirational and practicable. Communications flow in from the bottom and out from the top and are targeted to provide employees the right information at the right time and to solicit their input and feedback. This requires overcommunication through multiple, redundant channels. The next one is Understanding the Cultural Landscape. Successful change programs pick up speed and intensity as they cascade down, making it critically important that leaders understand and account for culture and behaviors at each level of the organization. Companies often make the mistake of assessing culture either too late or not at all. Thorough cultural diagnostics can assess organizational readiness to change, bring major problems to the surface, identify conflicts, and define factors that can recognize and influence sources of leadership and resistance. These diagnostics identify the core values, beliefs, behaviors, and perceptions that must be taken into account for successful change to occur. They serve as the common baseline for designing essential change elements, such as the new corporate vision, and building the infrastructure and programs needed to drive change. Number nine is Address the Culture Explicitly. Once the culture is understood, it should be addressed as thoroughly as any other area in a change program. Leaders should be explicit about the culture and underlying behaviors that will best support the new way of doing business and find opportunities to model and reward those behaviors. This requires developing a baseline, defining an explicit future-state or desired culture, and devising detailed plans to make the transition. Company culture (Intellectual Capital) is a mixture of shared history, explicit values and beliefs, and common attitudes and behaviors. Change programs involve creating a culture, combining cultures or reinforcing cultures. Understanding that all companies have a cultural knowledge center — the place of thought, activity, influence, or personal identification — is often an effective way to jump-start culture change. And the last one is Prepare for the Unexpected. No change program goes completely according to plan. People react in unexpected ways; areas of anticipated resistance fall away; and the external environment shifts. Effectively managing change requires continual reassessment of its impact and the organization’s willingness and ability to adopt the next wave of transformation. Fed by real data from the field and supported by information and solid decision-making processes, change leaders can then make the adjustments necessary to maintain momentum and drive result Now, just to explain where all this came from. There’s probably 10 Change Management philosophies that are out there. We used Marsh McLennan Global at Ford and that was the one I was trained in. I actually became a Change Master at Ford. And I’ve learned a lot of this stuff, and my passion started with that program. But there are some other ones out there. So what I’ve done is I’ve taken concepts from all the different change programs, and I developed, “best practices.” I picked the ones continued on page 74

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Innovator’s Saga from page 73 that would demonstrate how — if you were to do this today, you wouldn’t have to do all the research, everything is right there. DG: So let’s talk about human capital and culture. There’s a phrase that we’ve all have heard that, you know, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast every morning.” Because if you got a great strategy but the culture is not in line with that strategy, it’s just not going to happen. So when you think about human capital, what is some of the best practices that a leader should consider when they’re looking to build their team? PS: Well, if you break your human capital into two pieces, one is knowledge carriers. These are people that build out knowledge in the process. They’re the guys that, from experience and from doing hands on work, actually will develop a knowledge base that you don’t want to lose. Then, you have the non-knowledge carriers. And these are the people that, you know, do routine work. It’s the knowledge carriers that are usually the risk takers. They’re usually the ones that will try something new. And so those are the people you need to target to help you with the change. And again, human capital, it’s the experience that comes with it. You know, there’s probably 10 or 15 attributes. You know, it’s age, it’s maturity, it’s the skill level. It’s, you know, do they have leadership skills? Do they have communication skills? If you were to rate each one of those skill levels on a 1-5 rating, then you can start to develop — where human capital is? What’s my human capital worth? Areopa is looking at how to take sports figures and putting a value, based on a number of criteria — not only their skill level, but their activity in the community, their activity with family. All of those things are criteria that they’re using to develop a human capital base. Again, that’s the important thing to understand. And each one of your employees has a different human capital contribution, and you need to understand what those are. They will be the ones that help you on change implementation. DG: So, again, looking at human capital and culture. When you have a company like Kodak, unfortunately, that totally missed the digital opportunity — and from what I understand, Kodak actually had the technology in their shop, but I guess their culture was, you know, we like selling film and we like having film developed, so that’s going to be our way to go forward. PS: They were a very conservative company. They were not willing to take the digital risk. The risk takers are the ones that innovate, fail, innovate, fail, innovate, and keep moving ahead. Kodak wasn’t that company. DG: Every company is looking to how can we change, and we’re talking about the best practices. And Peter, in the paper that the chapter that you have written, you had a nice graphic that talked about managing the change and it had five attributes, and it talked about identifying the change, prepare the change, plan the change, implement the change, and then sustain the change. What, in your experience, have you seen — in your vast experience — where companies have failed to truly embrace these five steps? What advice would you give to a manager who is right now in the thick of this COVID situation as to how they should implement this? 74 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

PS: Darrell, if they follow the five-step process and the 10 principles they should be successful. The five steps are, (1) Identify the Change, (2) Prepare for the Change, (3) Plan the Change, (4) Implement the Change and (5) Sustain the Change. In step one, Identifying the Change you need to detail, (1) the Current State — how things are done today. It is the collection of processes, behaviors, tools, technologies, organizational structures and job roles that constitute how work is done. The Current State defines who we are. It may not be working great, but it is familiar and comfortable because we know what to expect. The Current State is where we have been successful and where we know how we will be measured and evaluated. The Current State is known. (2) The Delta State is messy and disorganized. It is unpredictable and constantly in flux. The Delta State is often emotionally charged — with emotions ranging from despair and anxiety to anger, fear or relief. During this state, productivity predictably declines. The Delta State requires us to accept new perspectives and learn new ways of behaving, while still keeping up our day-to-day efforts. The Delta State is challenging. (3) The Desired State is where we are trying to get to. It is often not fully defined and can actually shift while we are trudging through the Delta State. The Desired State is supposed to be better than the Current State in terms of performance. The Future State can often be worrisome. The Desired State is unknown. In the next step Preparing for Change you need to define roles and responsibilities: (1) Sponsors — A sponsor is often viewed as the figurehead of a change management initiative. But, is figurehead the correct term? Particularly when a sponsor needs to play a very active role on the project? Project sponsorship means much more than the occasional speech or signature. For a project to truly achieve it’s anticipated benefits, real change needs to be embedded within an organization, and this can only be achieved with a pro-active sponsor. Unfortunately, some sponsors make the mistake of not getting involved and remaining distant from the project team and the people affected by the change. Some of the key traits of successful sponsors include: (2) Change Agents — A change agent is a person from inside or outside the organization who helps an organization transform itself by focusing on such matters as organizational effectiveness, improvement, and development. A change agent usually focuses his efforts on the effect of changing technologies, structures, and tasks on interpersonal and group relationships in the organization. The focus is on the people in the organization and their interactions. (3) Targets — Understanding who you want to target for change can be relatively simple or more difficult. The factors to consider are Culture, History and potential Resistance. Companies have to manage three targets of change and ask three questions to make change happen. Individual Change: change has to capture something inside your soul/habits. Initiative Change: making change happen on projects. Institutional Change: how do we change culture/identity of the firm? Key Questions to Address at Each Level of Change: Why should we change? What should we change to? How (e.g., how do you prioritize)? continued on page 75

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

The Innovator’s Saga from page 74 Step three is Planning the Change. As you move to the planning stage it is important to understanding that this stage is one of the keys to success. Doing your homework (information gathering and analysis) and using the various change management process models will keep you on the right path. Companies should establish and designate a room (War room) to hold their change meeting. Use the walls to display to do list, timing charts, and other key items. Some of the effective tools include: Meeting Schedule, To Do Lists, Critical Path Timelines, Communication Plans, Learning and Development Plans, Reward System, Process Performance Dashboard and a Governance model. Step four is Implementation of the Change. This should include a road map. To do assignments, key milestones. It is critical that the team has weekly status meeting to report on progress and discuss and manage any outstanding issues. The last step is Sustaining and Reinforcing the Change. From a change management perspective, reinforcement can be difficult because once a change is finished, we are often moving straight onto the next change. It takes concerted effort and time to make sure a change “sticks,” and given the scarce resources and change saturation that many organizations face, reinforcement efforts can often fall short. We see this scenario playing out in the data. A little more than half of organizations are planning for reinforcement and sustainment activities, but fewer than half are dedicating resources to this effort. The data is clear: organizations that are planning and resourcing for reinforcement are more likely to meet or exceed project objectives than organizations that neglect this critical step in the change process. The change process is not new. I have collected some of the best information from the leaders in the change methodology. Some of the key lessons learned are: (1)Treat the changes you manage as a process, and not as a single event or series of events. (2) Individuals experience change as a process. Evaluate and focus your change management activities based on where each individual is in the change process. One size does not fit all. (3) No one experiences the change process the same. Understand what your employees want from the change. What is the reward that will motivate them? (4) Your organizational change management efforts need to be tied to where you are in the change process. People are change-weary, yet changes are often in response to a world that is changing even faster. If we want to continue to be ahead of the curve, becoming more effective and accelerating change will continue to offer a competitive advantage. Following the 10 guiding principles and the 5-step change process will improve our chances of success. DG: You know, it is interesting. During the 2008-2009 situation in our economy, General Motors found themselves to be in “quite a pickle.” And I guess the Union had done such a great job of negotiating the contract that the contract which provided people with whatever benefits after they retire, it was crippling General Motors to the point where General Motors would be no more. So that’s a situation where you see that you can say, “Okay, we’re going to hold on to this contract.” But at some point, there’s no more business, which means there’s no more contract versus “Let’s renegotiate this contract, so that the company can still survive.” During — being that you are from the automobile Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

industry, were you working within the automobile manufacturers at that time? And did you happen to encounter… PS: Well, we actually had a very similar process. You know, one of the things that kills large companies over time is legacy costs. And you know, that was one of Ford’s problems. I retired with a substantial severance package and retirement package. So legacy cost was a killer, but what they did is they came up with some alternative solutions. I got a letter from them, probably five years after I retired. Ford gave us the option of cashing in our pension at a 15% over present value. This was a win-win for both the company and the employees. DG: Wow! So, let’s talk about Gamut Strategies. What is the focus of Gamut Strategies and what sets Gamut Strategies apart from the thousand other consulting firms out there? PS: I think it’s our network and relationships that we have. We will put together the right people at the right time for the right job. We are a “just in time” consulting company, and we try to keep current with what’s going on in the industry. That is why we wanted to know more about Areopa. We got involved to understand what they’re doing, and then, we’ve got two or three other clients that popped in on our screen. And we found out there’s a great fit with Areopa. I think it’s understanding what is needed in the marketplace and in fitting the right people together. It’s, kind of cool. It’s like being a matchmaker. DG: Exactly. You know, in Areopa, Ludo Pyis who is the founder of Areopa, has a very interesting concept which, of course, we both — appeal to both of us. And that is understanding the intellectual capital of a company. Tell us more about — share with our audience your thoughts about the value of intellectual capital and why you feel that that is going to be such a huge factor in business here in the United States going forward. PS: Well, they’ve been doing this in Europe for about eight years now, and intellectual capital is made up of basically four areas. Human capital, structural capital, customer capital, and Supplier/Partner capital, or any alliances that you have. And they have never been included in a balance sheet or the company’s worth. When normally you’ll look at the financials of a company, and they have a balance sheet and X number of dollars, and that’s the value of the company on the balance sheet. So, an example of intellectual capital. If you take Apple. The difference between the present market value and the balance sheet value is the intellectual capital value. It’s everything that people think that they have that you can’t put a dollar figure on. So now financial institutions are starting to realize that there is a value in understanding what intellectual capital is worth. And Areopa has developed a process, and there’s 950 plus steps for the evaluation. And they have banks in Europe that will lend you money based on your intellectual capital value. With this methodology — innovative startup companies will be able to get money, based on their intellectual capital. What you have is you have a product, you might have a patent, but you have all this intellectual capital that you know you can’t take to the bank. It’s going to be a whole new concept of the way companies can move forward. DG: That is very exciting. That is very exciting. Peter, believe it or not, we’re winding down to the end of the interview, but I wanted — before we go, I wanted to get your views on leadership. And what do you feel are the key traits of being a good leader? continued on page 79

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Let’s Get Technical — Meta-Appearances: Metadata Futures, Collaborations, and Aesthetics by Jesse A. Lambertson (Metadata / Digital Resources Librarian, D’Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago) <lambertson@uchicago.edu> ORCID: 0000-0001-8105-1800 Column Editors: Kyle Banerjee (Sr. Implementation Consultant, FOLIO Services) <kbanerjee@ebsco.com> www.ebsco.com www.folio.org and Susan J. Martin (Chair, Collection Development and Management, Associate Professor, Middle Tennessee State University) <Susan.Martin@mtsu.edu>

Introduction This article is based on a lightning round session presented as part of the ALCTS/LITA/LLAMA collaborative conference, The Exchange in May 2020. It aims to develop the session and call-out opportunities for technical services (TS) to team with public services (PS) for the best user interactions with the interfaces in discovery: Dublin Core, MARC, or Linked Open Data. This is an “activist” moment with case-examples exhibiting how colleagues might work together for all to benefit, as well as provide a spotlight on how metadata and aesthetics enable folks to access resources. Riffing off Jorge Luis Borges’ story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” the plot-within-a-plot, I want us to think about the “click” and — eventually — the aesthetic of the clicked-upon. There is a plot-within-a-plot involved with click-after-click (aka: “gardenof-forking-clicks-on-the-internet”), where we click and follow opportunities for clicking open before the web-surfer. This aspect of the “click” is clearly represented in Wikidata, or Linked Data. There will be more on Linked Data later, but it is this metaphor that guides metadata futures. My allusion to Borges is a fun way to tether the “garden-of-forking-clicks-on-the-internet” to the aesthetic elements of metadata presented to the user. :)

computing: “A collection of related records stored for use by a computer to be processed by it.” OED also defines “file” [a variation on the verb] as “to place (documents) on a file; to place (papers) in consecutive order for preservation and reference.” We think of “document filing” as about paper...In computers, we just note: ordering of files and scripts is essential for delivery of results to a searcher. I took this aside so we better understand the examples below and because these files and programming that interact are moderated by decisions people make when designing systems — and for the purpose of this article — also the aesthetics when delivered. Files and scripts represent the “invisible” part of the gardenof-forking-clicks I jokingly mentioned a few paragraphs above.

Technological Context The Internet’s portrayal of metadata is contextually determined by code, scripting languages, and files that control design when delivered to the user. These terms are explored next in order to prepare my analysis. Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “metadata”: “data whose purpose is to describe and give information about other data.” Metadata professionals understand this to mean that we structure statements about resources according to standards; OED defines “code”: “Any system of symbols and rules for expressing information or instructions in a form usable by a computer or other machine for processing or transmitting information.” We can understand from this an abstract definition that compiles symbols and rules that work together, contextually, to produce actionable objects by computer or AI. Metadata has to be processed in some elaborate ways to be queried, weighted, stored, processed, and delivered to a searcher in the networked environment. Much of this work is handled by code and programming languages. OED defines, “programming language” as, “a system of precisely defined symbols and rules devised for writing computer programs.” To be honest, that definition of “programming languages” sounds like some kind of self-referential-loop. Have no fear! This is not at all a how-to-code lesson. But, like the understanding of language itself, we need to understand the concrete aspects where files, code, and programming languages operate to store, process, and deliver metadata. OED defines “file,” relative to 76 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Metadata is produced in many situations. For instance, on Twitter, #hashtag is used to order (or collocate) information. Library people have considered the possibility of permitting users to add tags to resources at the discovery side. There is a long list of metadata schemas in use and development today. For example, Dublin Core (simplified or qualified); MARC, currently the most widely supported within cooperative cataloging environments such as OCLC’s Worldcat; and BIBFRAME, the ontology in development at-scale by Library of Congress as well as Linked Data For Production (LD4P), now currently in Phase 3 [Closing the Loop], is suited for Linked Data. No matter the schema or context, the textual nature of metadata (cataloging) belies the way we interact with it at scale and discovery. This information is ideational and is to be read. Though, all metadata, when presented on the Internet, will have a “look” to it. Please keep “ideas” and “aesthetics” in mind as we consider examples. continued on page 77

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Let’s Get Technical from page 76 In my examples of the “garden-of-forking-clicks-on-theinternet,” I examined metadata for a map in the University of Chicago Library’s collections and some Linked Data from search-to-specific-result. From the “19th-Century Maps of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia” collection, looking at map G7210: “The Russian official map of Central Asia...”; the metadata is Dublin Core and is simply listed (G7210):

With the LUNA digitized-object view, metadata is portrayed in a different platform and looks different: The lower image reveals the “discovery-side.” The record has been processed by design files that present fonts, bolding, and hyperlinks. One can see programming and files are interoperable when cataloging is finished, that metadata is brought to the searcher in VuFind wherein said searcher follows the garden-offorking-clicks (re: Borges). The choice of fonts and blue links are arbitrary. That is the point I want to draw attention to — we can work together and elaborate, for local needs, the aesthetics of the metadata used for our collections and for the people who use them.

Linked Data That map’s MARC in the catalog has the raw MARC and the presentation via discovery (in VuFind):

To connect the dots between searches, metadata’s appearance, and how opportunities open for the “garden-of-forking-clicks” of metadata-futures (Linked Data), I examine a Google search example for work by Jorge Luis Borges. These searches were in fact run from Google’s single-search-box. The inclusion of the domain in the search forces Google to limit its query to ONLY the domain included — as opposed to “the whole Internet.” One can thus leverage Google’s index to increase precision. The examples reveal the computational underpinnings of indexed information, results, and presentations to a searcher. People search for information on Google Search...of course. The example(s) below, using Google, queries the UChicago Library, Library of Congress’s ID service, and the Swedish National Library’s catalog, LIBRIS. The results reveal differences to which I will draw attention with comments.

One notes MARC tags and subfields (delimiters) — none of which are visually distinguishable other than with number and topography. How does the human read this information? The MARC itself is a binary file — designed to be processed by machine.

continued on page 78

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Let’s Get Technical from page 77

Comments: 1. UChicago’s Library provided zero results because the data is not configured as such to enable its exposure with a web search. 2. ID.LOC.GOV, however, reveals the Authority Data has been enabled for web searching as Linked Open Data but not bibliographic results. 3. LIBRIS, however, is different. This query reveals the global and international Google index and clearly exhibits that infrastructure differences between the three queries are not the same. Those technical things I mentioned near the beginning are shown here: the files, programming, etc. There is a clear evolution in this search from zero results to only authority data exposed to complete bibliographical exposure-asLinked-Open-Data because the underlying data is configured differently. If one clicks one result from libris.kb.se, the design is slightly different from what we expect from library catalogs and from Worldcat. I point this out not because one is superior. Not at all. The design decisions teams make are arbitrary and are decided by a number of factors: past experience, culture, language, etc. These decisions are made by people who took the time required to build, adapt, and create a system full of structured metadata that interacts fully with search and design elements. This click through Google’s LIBRIS results to the catalog exhibits this point. The aesthetic is different. The other point that must be drawn together with aesthetic potential is that Linked Data provides a scenario in which metadata is prepared or processed for searchers and computers outside the library’s catalog.

Conclusion In my original lightning-round presentation, I asked what working with metadata and their aesthetic entails. I joked that the work involves people and computers but not cyborgs. The technology should be able to serve our communities, the searchers, and enable our various systems to work together. In this scenario in which library workers and users find themselves, metadata, irrespective of schema, meet the internet, search engines, and discovery aggregators of all types, including non-library-specific tools. This scenario provides an opportune situation for significant collaboration between PS and TS staff. It is true that TS can get quite technical. Due to the changes coming to metadata in which the potential opens up for users to come to resources from any number of origins on the web via Linked Open Data (“garden-of-forking-clicks”), the array of aesthetic possibilities grows. I simply want to advocate for metadata people and PS to get together and discuss. Not just to get searchers to the items they are looking for...but rather, to enable a conversation in which those technical aspects of TS are better understood. I propose that these landscapes for metadata, its use, and its aesthetic provide a fantastic opportunity to develop better technical vocabulary for those who don’t normally work in this area. Part of this conversation would increase efficiency for all parties to be able to speak much more quickly to each other in order to accomplish changes, customization, and to communicate suggestions to those who make those technical changes. I hope this article has contributed to this conversation in a not-too-technical way.

Reference List Words: “catalogue, n.” OED Online. June 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/ Entry/28711?rskey=Vvml7h&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed September 04, 2020). “code, n.1” OED Online. June 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/Entry/35578?rskey=NIEBbU&result=1 (accessed September 04, 2020). “collocate, v.” OED Online. September 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/ Entry/36399?rskey=VwnLOU&result=2&isAdvanced=false (accessed 09 September 2020). “file, n.2” OED Online. September 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/ Entry/70155 (accessed 09 September 2020). “file, v.3” OED Online. September 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/ Entry/70163 (accessed 09 September 2020). West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. S.v. “filing.” Retrieved 09 September 2020 from https://legal-dictionary. thefreedictionary.com/filing. “hashtag, n.” OED Online. September 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/ Entry/59371427?rskey=Y47Xn3&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed 09 September 2020). “metadata, n.” OED Online. June 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/view/ Entry/117150?rskey=T81OPs&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed 04 September 2020). continued on page 79

78 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Let’s Get Technical from page 78 “Programming language, n.” OED Online. June 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/ view/Entry/152232?redirectedFrom=programming+languages (accessed September 04, 2020).

Other Resources G7210, no 2 in 19th-Century Maps of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, lib.uchicago.edu/e/collections/maps/ middleeast19/ https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/collections/maps/ middleeast19/ (accessed 10 September). Borges, Jorge Luis. 1993. “The Garden of Forking Paths” in Ficciones. New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A Knopf. Pages 67-78. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1964. “The Analytic Language of John Wilkins” in Other Inquisitions 1937-1952. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. Pages 101-105. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative website, “Metadata Basics.” dublincore.org https://www.dublincore.org/resources/metadata-basics/ (accessed 09 September 2020).

The Innovator’s Saga from page 75 PS: Well, you know, I think my philosophy, this is — and I’ll tell you a quick story. When I had my first supervisor’s job at Ford, I had no training. I thought my job was to just check everything they did. I read all their reports. I change and I read everything. I spent hours and hours. When my boss came to see me, and he says, “Pete, if you remember one thing. As a leader in Ford Motor Company what your prime job is, is to teach everyone enough knowledge so that they could take your job.” So that’s been my philosophy. Share everything that I’ve learned with my employees. I could walk out the door, I could go on vacation, and I’m more than comfortable that they would be able to do my job so that’s been my leadership philosophy. That’s a good leader. One of my favorite leaders that I followed was Jack Welch. You know Jack was known as a not-so-nice guy, but I actually experienced Jack in the pit in General Electric out in Croton. His philosophy and what he’s acomplished — he truly believed in his people. He was the kind of guy that would walk — he never stayed in his office, he was always out talking to his employees, and he would talk to the hourly people and he would talk to any employee, he was just that kind of guy. I think that that’s important. You have to be a walk around manager. You can’t just sit in your office and read reports and expect people to know and understand you and respect you. You know, it works both ways. DG: And how would you describe your leadership style? PS: Well, I think I try to follow Jack’s style and my fatherin-law, Dean Fite who was a VP of Procter and Gamble. Throughout your career you run into executive with different leadership styles. You look at people that you want to be like, and I can remember a couple people in Ford I didn’t want to be Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Lambertson, Jesse A. 2020. “Metadata Futures, UI, and Discovery Creativity.” The Exchange. 06 May 2020. https:// exchange2020.learningtimesevents.org/lightning-2/ (requires conference login). Library of Congress MARC21 Bibliographic website, “Introduction.” loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ https://www.loc.gov/ marc/bibliographic/ (accessed 09 September 2020). Linked Data For Production webpage, “Closing the Loop (LD4P3).” https://wiki.lyrasis.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=187176106 (accessed 09 September 2020). Luna website. lunaimaging.com/software http://www.lunaimaging.com/software (accessed 22 September 2020) OCLC Worldcat website. oclc.org/en/worldcat.html https:// www.oclc.org/en/worldcat.html (accessed 09 September 2020). WikiData landing page. https://www.wikidata.org/w/index. php?title=Wikidata:Main_Page&oldid=1086709037 (accessed 04 September 2020). Wikipedia contributors. 2020. “Linked data.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (Date of last revision: 23 August 2020 06:22 UTC). https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linked_ data&oldid=974464741 (accessed 04 September 2020).

like. You know, I didn’t like their style. So those are the kinds of things as you move through an organization. DG: Mm-hmm. PS: You know, you understand who they are. Now, when I worked in the training center at Ford, I’d go in at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, do all my email, all my desk stuff. So when the first employee came in, I was at the door and said, “Hi.” You know, had coffee and lunch with him. It was my style just to be in contact with all my employees. You know, I’d be invited to their family birthday parties. That made being a leader fun. DG: Wow! Well, you know, I want to thank you, Peter, for being interviewed for the The Innovator’s Saga, but I do want you to leave us with some words of wisdom. PS: Well, you know, one word of wisdom is I read Jack Welch’s book, Winning, the ultimate business knowhow book. Leadership is about helping others be successful. If you do that, you will be successful. DG: Wow! Well said. Well, I want to thank you, Peter, for coming on our program. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re here with Mr. Peter Stockmann. He’s Managing Partner of Gamut Strategies and SVP for AREOPA. Peter, thank you for making time for this interview. PS: Darrell, thank you very much. And you have a wonderful and safe day. DG: Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, that wraps it up this week on Leadership with Darrell W. Gunter on WSOU 89.5 FM, and streaming on the net at wsou.net. Remember, have a great weekend. But Leadership Begins with You. WSOU 89.5 FM.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Squirreling Away: Managing Information Resources & Libraries — Puzzling Times: Libraries & Life in the Age of COVID-19 (Libraries & Change Management) Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; Phone: 734-764-9969) <cseeman@umich.edu> Twitter @cseeman

Cosmo’s Tail is the Biggest Obstacle to Completing a Jigsaw Puzzle — August 2020

s I am typing this essay, I am looking around an empty space. From my desk and through the plexiglass barriers that were setup over the summer, I can see four of the six study rooms that make up the bulk of our student space at Kresge Library Services at the Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan. Each room has a single student in them. Normally, we would be disappointed if there was only one person in these group study rooms. This year is anything but normal. Instead of telling students they should be used for group work — right now they are at the occupancy limit of one. Students normally crowd our public spaces, but this year, they are few and far between. It makes you really long for the libraries of old, when we had more demand than space. These days, it is very much the opposite. When we were planning for this Fall Term at the University of Michigan, we had thought that we could move very easily into supporting students from our remote locations scattered around Washtenaw County. When we became the “ethereal library” back in 2014 with the removal of our student space and print collection, I long thought that we could do our work from anywhere. This came in handy during construction work and the polar vortex closures of a few years back. I never thought this would come in handy during a pandemic — but it works equally well there. So eight months ago in March 2020, when we were told to “shut it down” as COVID-19 reared its ugly head across the United States, we were able to move quickly into a remote mode. In planning for Fall Term 2020, I worked under the assumption that we could follow the same basic direction of services, even though the Ross School of Business was seeking a hybrid approach with classes both in person and remotely delivered. When I shared that vision with the Ross Leadership Team, I was asked if there was a way for us to have some level of staff in the building. Without a print collection to manage or student space to open or close every day, the need for people did not make sense in a traditional manner. The Leadership Team sug 80 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

gested that while our services would be available remotely, we could have reference in the building. I suggested that since we have an almost entirely digital collection and can do that work from anywhere, we needed to kick around other ideas. So we regrouped and all 18 people on our team were asked if they were comfortable coming into work periodically. About one-third of our team said that they would be willing to do that, so we created a new service for the library — Kresge Office Hours (KOH — a name I like because it honors one of my favorite professors from Library School, Dominican University’s Dr. Gertrude Koh). The purpose of KOH was to have a person available in our suite to help students navigate through a variety of questions they might have. The key aspect was to have a person available to students as we all tried to figure out what Fall Term was going to look like. With the exception of the first week of classes, we would staff the service three our four days a week from 10am to 2pm. One person would work an entire four hour shift, taking breaks as necessary. That shift would represent their entire day worked, to acknowledge them coming into the building. We were using “tourist store” hours — so they were more or less only guidelines. If people needed to leave early, there were no worries. We had no idea what to expect in regards to the type of questions that we would answer. Given the relatively few people in the building this year, our usage has been relatively modest. There were a few weeks where we had about one question a day. Of all the questions we were asked, only one (maybe two) was really related to the library. Most of the questions were about printing, room reservations, supplies and other issues. This week, we were asked if we had a charger for a Mac laptop (no we did not, but they might have one in Lost and Found at the main desk), and help reserve a room for study. While our numbers are low, the students we helped appreciated our efforts. I believe that the Ross Leadership Team did as well, because they knew that these were instances where students felt they had someone to ask a question. And for everyone who does think it is important to answer questions such as “where is the restroom?” — it might be the most important interaction a librarian makes during the day!

continued on page 81

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Squirreling Away from page 80 When we look back at our response to COVID-19, the numbers of students who we interacted with at the Kresge Office Hours will not blow anyone away. In fact, this might be all we do at this service point as our building has just been closed off to students (with the latest COVID-19 order from the State of Michigan) until December or January, rendering the physical service point unnecessary. As administrators look at our impact, they may question why we did this at all. That might be the central puzzle of our day as we are figuring out what our role should be during dramatically changing times.

Accountability and Change So it’s time for my fifth main column on change management in libraries. I have long thought about this as an important topic that seems to be under-appreciated and under-explored in the professional library literature. As a structure for these articles (and hopefully something a bit more), I have broken down change management into six key terms: inevitability, rapidity, flexibility, hospitality, accountability, and empathy. These terms are particularly important to use in the context of your institutional culture and identity. Through these six terms, I hope to explore how to best manage your operation in less than optimal conditions — and let’s face it, most libraries are operating in exactly that “place.” For this column, I am going to write about accountability and what it all means at individual libraries, especially for those who are going through change. And because this is 2020, I will be focusing on how we can explore the world of libraries today when we are continuing to operate in a fashion that (for most of us) is different than we are designed. Normally, I start the column with something that has nothing to do with libraries. This time, I am mixing it up. Why? It’s 2020 — that’s why. I love the idea of focusing on accountability as the way that we can make the argument that we are being good stewards of our organization’s resources. Accountability can be a puzzle where we use numbers and stories to show outsiders our effectiveness in running our organization. That accountability might take place in the form of statistics that showcase solid performance year in and year out. For libraries, our favorites often tie to our physical spaces. We love gate count numbers, circulation figures and the number of students that we have connected with at sessions. We also love numbers that grow from year to year. When numbers that we point to as showing our value and impact to our school or our community drop from year to year, that is less positive for sure. I am using this term, but can easily replace accountability with assessment. As libraries go through changes, either voluntary or involuntary like we are all seeing via COVID-19, our numbers and statistics need to be adjusted to reflect our new reality, rather than the library we once were. As we assess this year in libraries and try to make sense of the impact that we have had, we should not be focused on the measures that we used in the past. Circulation and gate count numbers will be meaningless this year and may be as well for 2021 and/or 2022. The same would be true in many industries, especially in hospitality where hotels, airlines, restaurants and cruise ships have a fraction of their 2019 business. How to tell your story when everything else is changing could and should be the central preoccupation of librarians and administrators everywhere. The same could be said for our partners in publishing, where they are seeing dramatic changes as well. Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

The Puzzle of it All So at the beginning of this column, you might have seen a picture of our cat Cosmo and a jigsaw puzzle. This is the pithy part of the column and it will (I hope) come together, so please bear with me. As a big fan of puzzles, I have been working on solving them most of my adult life. We are challenged with puzzles in every dimension of life, though the ones printed on paper seem to have the lowest consequences for us. So if there is a way to explore accountability and assessment in libraries this year, it definitely is with puzzles. I have been a long-time fan of sudoku puzzles. These are logic puzzles where you typically fill in numbers on a 9x9 grid that has 9 3x3 subgrids. Each row, each column and each subgrid may have only a number once. The puzzles range from easy (with more of the numbers already filled in) to difficult, with fewer given to you. These are the variables that determine the degree of difficulty for the puzzle. While the complexity might vary from puzzle to puzzle, the reality is that they only have one correct answer. I have long argued that library problems are not sudoku puzzles and in fact have many, many answers. When we think about the variables that might arise in a puzzle, jigsaw puzzles present a whole different set of issues. Like many people in the world of COVID-19, we have been very excited about doing jigsaw puzzles again for a variety of reasons. First, it is a nice throwback to an earlier — and simpler time. Second, they are just plain enjoyable. And third, they provide some much needed time away from a screen. So if we think about jigsaw puzzles, there is a common set of elements that provide the degree of difficulty that the person(s) will face in putting it together. How many pieces are there? What is the general size of the pieces? How difficult is the picture (too much blue sky can be very challenging). These would be the elements that would apply to everyone who opens up the same puzzle box. Additionally, there are different ways that we work through puzzles. Some of us work from the edges first while others look for large graphic elements and work out from there. What is fascinating is that each piece looks different when alone than it does next to its mates. This provides the context for seeing each piece as part of the bigger picture. However, there are added problems that are unique to each place where the puzzles are assembled. For example, do you have a large and/or dedicated flat surface where you can build the puzzle? An extra table would be very useful here. More critically, are the next three questions. Do you have a cat in your home? Do you have a dog in your home? And how delicious are the pieces? (Yes. Yes. Very). In our home, Cosmo the cat loves to flick pieces on the ground with his paw or his tail. Runyon the dog loves to chew on the pieces that fall on the ground. One of the puzzles that we have not been able to figure out is actually how many hiding spaces he has in his mouth. So in every way possible, there are the challenges that come from the puzzle manufacturer and designer...and the ones that are introduced in our homes by our legion of helpers. And while we can be assured that our cat and dog are conspiring together to ensure that our puzzle is never complete, we recently set a milestone in completing three puzzles in a row. But that all being said, a jigsaw puzzle can be a very enjoyable activity, even if it is incomplete. Sometimes those pieces are just gone, sometimes they are more than slightly chewed up, and sometimes they surface months after you think you finished the puzzle. And as we aspire to pull together a continued on page 83

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

ATG Food + Beverage Roundup — Holiday Favorites Column Editors: Nicole Ameduri (Licensing Manager, Springer Nature) <Nicole.ameduri@springernature.com> and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe (Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) <Lisalibrarian@gmail.com>

Nicole’s Picks — Holiday Staples These are three of my cold-weather staples that I make throughout the holiday season.

Biscuits Makes 12 biscuits 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder 1 tablespoon sugar ½ teaspoon cream of tartar ¼ teaspoon salt ½ cup butter ¾ cup heavy cream Preheat oven to 450 degrees In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, cream of tartar and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour to form coarse crumbs. Make a well in the center of the ingredients and pour in the cream. Lightly blend with your hands, being careful not to overwork the dough. Place dough onto a floured surface and make into a smooth ball and then roll out until about 1 inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out as many biscuits as possible. Gather the dough, reroll and cut more biscuits. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes.

7 inches in diameter. Brush off any excess flour and place on a large baking sheet. Filling In a large bowl, toss the apples with the brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour. Make sure the apples are evenly coated. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Divide the apple filling into 4 equal portions. Place 1 portion of the apple filling into the center of each dough circle. Decoratively arrange the apples, leaving a 3/4-inch border all the way around. Fold the border over the apples along the edges, pinching edges together as necessary. I like to save the left over dough and cut maple leaves out of it. You can be creative.

Apple Tarts Makes 4 tarts Dough 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces 1/3 cup ice water Filling 2 ½ cups peeled and sliced Granny Smith apples ¼ cup light brown sugar ¼ cup sugar ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg (I highly recommend grinding your own nutmeg. The taste will be much more vibrant than if you buy ground nutmeg.) 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons butter Dough In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt and refrigerate to chill. Starting with cold ingredients will yield the flakiest crust. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or fork. Add the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing with a fork until the mixture forms a dough. If the dough is too dry and crumbly, add an additional tablespoon of ice water until it comes together. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour. Cut the dough into 4 equal portions. Use a rolling pin and a small amount of flour to roll out each piece into a circle roughly 82 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

Maple-glazed Root Vegetables Makes 4 servings 1 cup peeled and large-diced parsnips ½ cup large-diced turnip ½ cup peeled and large-diced carrot 1 cup peeled and large-diced golden beets 3 tablespoons maple syrup 1 tablespoon melted butter ½ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the parsnips, turnip, carrot and golden beets in an 8 x 8-inch glass or ceramic baking dish. Drizzle the syrup and butter over the vegetables. Sprinkle the rosemary and a pinch of salt over the vegetables as well. Stir to incorporate. Bake until all the vegetables are tender, about 40 minutes.

Lisa’s Picks — Coffee to Cocktails … Mailed to Your Home I’ve learned many things in the past few months but the pile of boxes in my garage evidences my newly discovered pleasure continued on page 83

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

ATG Food + Beverage Roundup from page 82 in the range of items one can have shipped to their home. One senses how wonderous the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalog was for those in a previous era! In addition to subscriptions to a couple of newspapers and magazines that I used to read in airport lounges during layovers, I’m also enjoying three beverage subscriptions: coffee, wine, and cocktails. I started the Trade Coffee subscription when I decided to learn how to brew my own iced coffee. Think of this as my version of learning to make sourdough … you leave it alone to do its thing for hours, never quite sure if it will be the same as the last, and celebrate when it turns out as you hope, sublime in its simplicity. The Trade Coffee website walks you through a quick interview on your level of experience with coffee, your intended brewing method, whether you add cream and/or sugar to your coffee, your preferred roast, and your preferred taste palette in order to make recommendations. Subscription options include one or two bags per order, whole bean or ground, and shipping frequency of every one to six weeks. I’ve enjoyed all of the coffees that have been selected for me by the algorithm and it has been fun to learn more about what I think makes a good iced coffee vs. hot brewed. Website: https://www.drinktrade.com/ I have my local “wine guy” who makes excellent recommendations, honed by my many years of attending his weekend wine tastings (sigh, a casualty of the pandemic). So, though Todd’s Wines at Art Mart (http://smilepolitely.com/food/interview_with_todd_fusco_art_marts_wine_buyer/) is my go to for bottles, I needed a different sort of service when some friends and I set up a weekly happy hour over the summer and wanted to incorporate a wine tasting component into it. We needed a way

Squirreling Away from page 81 complete puzzle, we find that our aspirations are often greater than our reality. The same can be said about libraries, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our reality is less than ideal. Instead of missing pieces, we are managing with flat (if we are lucky) budgets, empty positions and new responsibilities. So in many regards, it is difficult to measure accountability or assessment when each of our libraries are dealing with dramatically different conditions. We are often measuring our libraries against peer institutions or, worse yet, the fantasy of an optimal situation. I have often been tasked with exploring what peer institutions are doing, but that does not tell the entire story. Just like if you have a cat with a jigsaw puzzle, you might have a furry friend who really can’t be bothered to knock the pieces on the floor. Some cats are too lazy to even bother with puzzles. With all that being said, our job in libraries is not simply to complete the puzzle, but to take the pieces that we have and create the best puzzle that we can. Our job is to consider that a puzzle is made up of discrete pieces that combine to make a larger picture. The same is true in our libraries. We offer up a number of resources and services, when taken on their own, cannot truly be completely useful to many people. But taken Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

to have more than one wine per happy hour without ending up with multiple open bottles and for our geographically dispersed selves to all have the same wines. Happily, we found Vinebox. On a quarterly basis, we each get a shipment of nine vials of wine and a booklet with tasting notes and recommended food pairings. And, if you really like something you taste, there is of course the option to buy full-sized bottles as well or follow Vinebox’s recommendations for other wines you might like to order. Website: https://www.getvinebox.com/ Finally, there is Cocktail Courier. I must confess — this subscription has been long-standing. I started it in 2016! This subscription can be set for weekly, every other week, or monthly and I particularly valued (in before pandemic times) that during heavy work travel times you can also skip a delivery or pause your subscription. After you set your delivery pattern, you also choose which spirits you like. I have mine set to whiskey, cognac/brandy, and aperitif/digestif right now but I can also change that if, for example, I want to add gin during summer months. Each shipment comes with all the alcohol, mixers, etc. needed to make appropriately 8-12 drinks, including fancy garnishes, and detailed directions for execution. And, just like you might have a favorite bartender, you may find yourself with a favorite Cocktail Courier mixologist. I have come to know that I will always enjoy any concoction dreamed up by Laila Grainawi (https://www.cocktailcourier.com/bartender/laila-grainawi-2/)! Note: If alcohol cannot be shipped to your state, there is a “Just the Mix” at a lower price point option as well as mocktail options. Website: https://www.cocktailcourier.com/ Let me add a final comment. As is the way of Internet commerce, I have referral and discount codes for all of these services as a subscriber. Email me if you are interested in trying any of them and I can generate a code for you!

as a whole, it provides a more complete picture of information resources and services that our community uses. And much like every piece of a puzzle that Cosmo knocks on the ground and essentially into Runyon’s waiting mouth, librarians are left to figure out how to manage and create the best picture possible when not all the pieces are there. With budget constraints and position freezes in nearly every library across the country (and maybe across the globe), we must all figure out how to do the best when we do not have all the pieces we need. That should be the measure of accountability in libraries that we embrace. Let’s not compare against our peers or our better days. Let’s figure out how to deliver the best service we can during the time that we live in. And for God’s sake, wear a dang mask. Corey Seeman is the Director, Kresge Library Services at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is also the new editor for this column that intends to provide an eclectic exploration of business and management topics relative to the intersection of publishing, librarianship and the information industry. No business degree required! He may be reached at <cseeman@umich.edu> or via twitter at @cseeman.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Jack Farrell Managing Director Jack Farrell & Associates PO Box 1241 Princeton, NJ 08542 Phone: (609) 945-2330 <jack@jackfarrell.com> www.jackfarrell.com

Joseph Puccio Collection Development Officer Library of Congress 101 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20540 Phone: (202) 707-1413 • <jpuc@loc.gov> Library of Congress website: www.loc.gov Library of Congress Collection Development website: https://www.loc.gov/acq/devpol/

Born and lived: Born Point Pleasant, NJ, lived: Toms River, NJ, Worcester, MA, Glen Ridge, NJ, Philadelphia, PA, Hoboken, NJ, New York, NY, and Princeton, NJ.

Born and lived: I was born and raised in Philadelphia and received

Early life: Spent carefree in Toms River, NJ. Professional career and activities: Started as a sales per-

Professional career and activities: I have served in a num-

Family: Married with five children ages: 24, 22, 21, 20, and 18. In my spare time: I read books, coach basketball, take walks with my

Family: My wife Barbara and I have one daughter, Katy, who works at

son in publishing in January 1984, moved to marketing then ultimately to a publisher position. Left publishing after 22 years to start a recruiting firm that focuses on publishing and academic libraries.

wife, care for an aging but very cute yorkie.

Favorite books: Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter, anything by Daniel Silva.

Pet peeves: People who don’t use their blinkers. Philosophy: Keep your head down, work hard, treat others with respect, be not afraid.

Most memorable career achievement: Surviving my first sales conference as a new marketing manager for W.B. Saunders in summer 1986.

Goal I hope to achieve five years from now: Be tuition free.

How/where do I see the industry in five years: I see the

publishing and library landscape cooperating in dynamic ways to bring open content to more users than ever before. Hopefully, the economic models behind it all allows all parties to thrive.

my undergraduate degree and MLIS at the University of South Florida, Tampa. Since starting at LC in 1983, I have lived in Maryland.

ber of positions at LC, starting as a temporary intern, then moving on to a permanent position as a serials reference specialist. Since 1989, I have been in various management positions, including Public Service Officer, Head of the Acquisitions Fiscal and Support Office, and Collection Development Officer. the Washington Research Library Consortium. She is also completing her MLIS at Drexel.

In my spare time: I love to bicycle and write (not at the same time). I

also spend lots of time watching my two favorite teams – the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Favorite books: I read too many books about popular music and about baseball and not enough on serious subjects. Pet peeves: Disorganization (typical for a librarian, I would think). Philosophy: Try to have fun in everything you do. Most memorable career achievement: Serving for 18

months as the acting Associate Librarian for Library Services, with oversight of LC’s largest service unit and its 1,200 staff.

Goal I hope to achieve five years from now: Have suc-

ceeded in rallying together librarians to improve the state of web archiving.

How/where do I see the industry in five years: Libraries

will continue to increase their digital services, but traditional services, such as the lending of print books, will still be hanging in there for a significant segment of users.

LIBRARY PROFILES ENCOURAGED Library of Congress 101 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20540 Phone: (202) 707-5000 www.loc.gov

Background/history: The Library of Congress, established in 1800, is the largest library in the world and the de facto national library of the United States. The collection of more than 170 million items includes more than 39 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 73 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world’s largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings. The Library is also the main

84 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.

Number of staff: In fiscal year 2019, the Library employed 3,210 permanent staff members.

Overall library budget: The Library’s total fiscal 2019 appro-

priation was $696 million, including the authority to spend $55 million in offsetting receipts.

Types of materials you buy (eBooks, textbooks, DVDs, video streaming services, databases, other): The Li-

brary acquires a wide range of materials in many formats as it continues to build a universal (subject) collection. continued on page 85

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

ATG Profiles Encouraged from page 84 Does your library have an ILS or are you part of a collaborative ILS? Our current ILS is Voyager. Do you have a discovery system? Yes – Primo Central. Does your library have a collection development or similar department? Yes! If so, what is your budget and what types of materials are you purchasing? Print or electronic or both? In FY 2019, over $18 million was budgeted for purchase acquisi-

tions, both in traditional physical formats and in digital formats. Purchases account for about a quarter of all incoming receipts. Other modes of acquisition are gifts, Copyright Office deposits, Cataloging in Publication program deposits, exchange materials and transfers from other government agencies.

What do you think your library will be like in five years? We will be achieving our vision, “All Americans are connected

to the Library of Congress.” As such, there will be a new in-person visitor experience. In addition, a greater portion of our collections will be digitized and will be openly available online. Researchers will also be offered a growing array of digital resources.

COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED Jack Farrell & Associates PO Box 1241 Princeton, NJ 08542 Phone: (609) 945-2330 www.jackfarrell.com

Officers: Jack Farrell, Managing Director.

Association memberships, etc.: Currently member of Socieity for Scholarly Publishing and ALPSP.

Key products and services: Recruiting services for publishing

and academic libraries.

Core markets/clientele: Professional and scholarly publishers

and academic libraries.

Number of employees: 7

Back Talk from page 86 tine and the standard operating procedures we know all too well and to stay focused on the challenges of building communities connected by solidarity and respect. How do we take that step beyond and get away from being bound by individual and local motivations and patterns into a space where we can make a difference for the better for one another? Lewis was thoughtful, reflective, and ultimately reassuring, all qualities that were very welcome on that stressful morning. I took his words as a challenge always to pull back from the transactional tasks in front of us (for even strategic priorities quickly become transactional tasks) and to keep in mind that we need to nourish and sustain healthy communities as a condition of being able to do anything else effectively or well. As I think about the lines I’ve written, I realize that there’s not a lot in what I’ve said about libraries or library issues — nonetheless, there was a great deal of importance and value for all librarians and information professionals in those virtual Charleston days.

Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

History and brief description of your company/publishing program: Jack Farrell & Associates (JFA) has become a

leading recruiting firm in publishing and academic libraries. Started in May 2006, the company recently completed its 592nd hire. With key personal situated in Los Angeles, Chicago, Princeton, New York and London, the JFA team taps its talent pool of over 20,000 individuals and fills position from mid-level up to the C-suite. The retention rate on our placements is above 97% and each hire comes with a money-back guarantee. We are eager to partner with you to bring difference-makers to your team.

Is there anything else that you think would be of interest to our readers? Each member of the JFA team was a

highly successful hiring manager in publishing and had close affinity with academic libraries during his/her publishing tenure. The upshot is a well developed talent network at our disposal and the experience to match this talent to the broad needs of our clients across the world.

Rumors from page 71 out the recordings of the Vendor Info Sessions for the latest offerings of new products and services. Look through the posters and watch the video presentations on the Morressier platform, which is linked on the top navigation menu on the conference site. You can also find open access full issues from Against the Grain, The Charleston Advisor, and The Charleston Report linked on the front page. There’s a whole lot of content and functionality here that lasts the whole year long, not just the week of the conference! And Vendor Showcase Participants: Remember that you can make updates and additions to your virtual booths and interact with conference attendees all year long as well! Visit https://2020charlestonconference.pathable.co/ and log in to access all of the 2020 Charleston Conference content and features. Contact <info@charlestonlibraryconference.com> with any questions. Until next time ... everyone stay healthy and be happy! Yr. Ed.

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Back Talk — Key Notes from Charleston Conference Column Editor: Jim O’Donnell (University Librarian, Arizona State University) <jod@asu.edu>

o we missed the friends, we missed the food — but we didn’t really miss the Charleston Conference itself. In fact, with registrations at an all-time high, the conference this year was in some ways even richer and more valuable than usual. With the good (fingers crossed!) news about vaccines, we can start dreaming about future Charlestons when we’re back in the city — but, but! If we’ve learned nothing else in all these months of COVID, it’s that there truly are some excellent things we can do online — like including more people in conversations without the barriers of cost and time that keep many away from an event like the Charleston Conference. If we’re smart, we’ll find ways, when “normality” returns, to hold on to as many as we can of the good things we’ve learned along this way. That’s where my thoughts were going when the conference ended earlier this month, and as I looked back, I thought I saw a theme. They keynote events were especially valuable for me and I was glad to see that with the rise in numbers they probably had more attendees per session than ever before. And all of them were focused, in a way that made sense — because we’ve all been feeling so cut off and isolated this year — on building richer, more expansive, more inclusive communities. Wherever we are at the moment and whatever our individual responsibilities may be, bringing more people into our

professional activities and conversations seems obviously and importantly preferable to cutting out people or reducing conversations to people who already know each other. So start at the end of the conference (Friday): “The Long Arm of the Law” ran its eleventh annual session and it’s a great recurring conference event. Most conference-goers aren’t lawyers, but the workings of the law affect us all, so it’s been powerful to have attorneys who know the information world interpret the legal world to us. This year, we missed the legendary Bill Hannay, whose insights and songs had animated almost all the earlier events. (Bill’s “greatest hit,” if you ask me, was his reworking of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” from a couple of years back, and we had the fun of ending the session this year with a video rerun — the altered lyrics reminding us that we rarely own anything in that space and always have to navigate the terms of use that the real owner controls.) But the phrase “Long Arm of the Law,” as impresario and host Ann Okerson reminded us, goes back to the seventeenth century, and the Kenny Rogers song is about a story of a wicked judge abusing his authority to keep a fine young man (a coal miner) from courting his daughter: a reminder, if we needed one, that the power and majesty of the law can be abused — and even when it isn’t, can be used to the advantage of the powerful. This year’s session

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX 33

Accessible Archives

87 Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press

The MIT Press

ACS Publications

59 Emery-Pratt

OSA – The Optical Society

ATG

GOBI Library Solutions

13 SLACK Incorporated

9 Brepols Publishers

INFORMS

The Charleston Advisor

International Monetary Fund

The Charleston Report

Midwest Library Service

For Advertising Information Contact: Toni Nix, Ads Manager, <justwrite@lowcountry.com>, Phone: 843-835-8604, Fax: 843-835-5892.

caught two threads from that skein: Nancy Kirkpatrick of OhioNET modeling for us how to think about and wrestle with the recent Presidential Executive Order that sought to demonize and interfere with diversity training (even legally required training!) in our institutions, while Pam Samuelson of the Berkeley Law School explored the domain of controlled digital lending to show us just how that model of resource sharing can and should prevail in the face of legal objections. You could go away from such a session heartened that people are fighting these battles with such smarts and at the same time puzzled why the resistance to things that are smart and wise can be so strong. The day before (Thursday), John Palfrey, whose career has taken him from the exalted rank of librarian to his current role as President of the MacArthur Foundation, gave us insights into the world as it appears from a philanthropist’s perspective. Palfrey is a long-time believer in libraries — particularly digital libraries — and a fan of the “superpower” of librarians. He reminded the audience to press forward with innovation and scaled up activities, such as controlled digital lending and the Digital Public Library of America. The library profession’s power and future is in envisioning and building the future for the benefit of society. But the week’s sessions began on the morning after the election (Wednesday), at an hour when everything was genuinely up in the air and nobody was quite awake. In spite of that, 1,700+ people logged in to hear Earl Lewis, former president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, former provost of Emory University, and a distinguished American historian now back at the University of Michigan directing their Center for Social Solutions. I have known Earl for twenty years and confess I was particularly pleased to be able to help him join us in Charleston, where there is always a hunger to hear a broader perspective and to think about how we can best serve our communities. Lewis’ topic was “Leading in a Age of Chaos and Change: Building a Community of Grace.” It could not have been more timely. In a moment of polarization and dangers on all sides, he focused on what it takes to think beyond the everyday roucontinued on page 85

86 Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021

<http://www.against-the-grain.com>

Against the Grain V32#6 Full Issue

Articles inside

Profiles Encouraged

oregon Trails — Reading ulysses

back Talk — Key Notes from Charleston Conference

ATg Food + beverage Roundup — Holiday Favorites

booklover — Poetry. Renewal

Collecting to the Core

Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews

university of utah, and university Librarian, brigham Young university

The small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times of Disruption

CovID-19 and the bubonic Plague: What Have We Learned?

Jack Farrell – Managing Director, Jack Farrell & Associates

CovID and Consortia: solving our Information Challenges at scale

op Ed – Web Archiving: The Dream and the Reality

same after CovID-19: An op-Ed