oregon Trails — Reading ulysses

from Against the Grain V32#6 Full Issue

back Talk — Key Notes from Charleston Conference

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

In 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 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.

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>

In 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, 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

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 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/.

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 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

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. 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.

Rumors

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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. 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/ https://www.businesswire.com/ news/home/20210119006142/en/ Wattpad-Board-of-Directors-Approves-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 pub-

lishing 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

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 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

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>

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.)

NEAPOLITAN FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

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

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

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 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>

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).

CONCURRENT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

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

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

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>

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.)

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

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

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

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

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.

See the full report at https://www.charleston-hub.com/2020/12/

dons-conference-notes-the-art-and-science-of-marketing-com-

munications-for-libraries-a-webinar/.

SSP and the Charleston Conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair

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.

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

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 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.

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 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.

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 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

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

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.

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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.

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.

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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

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.

Literature Review

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.

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

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.

Integrating with Workflows

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

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.

Category Definitions and Guiding Questions

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

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>

While 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 reportshines 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.

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

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. 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 separatecollections 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.” https://www.infodocket.com/2021/01/14/histor 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. https://www.mpdl.mpg.de/ueber-uns/nachricht 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

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>

The 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 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.

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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 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.

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>

In 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 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

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 scheduledZoom 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 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. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=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. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=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

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

Because 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 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

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 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

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 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.

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. https://www.powells.com/book/powells-unisex-fragrance-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 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

The Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with Peter Stockmann

Column Editor: Darrell W. Gunter (President & CEO, Gunter Media Group) <d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com>

Well, 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.

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

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 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

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?

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)?

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 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?

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. :)

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 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.

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

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:

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

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.

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

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.

continued on page 78

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).

“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).

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).

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 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.

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

As 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 suggested 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!

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

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.

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

Next Article

back Talk — Key Notes from Charleston Conference

LEGAL ISSUES

References

Questions & Answers — Copyright Column

QUESTION: An academic publisher asks, “What new works are entering the public domain this year?”

QUESTION: A history professor asks, “What new DMCA exemptions are on the horizon?”

QUESTION: An academic librarian asks, “What is happening with the Georgia State case?”

QUESTION: A Canadian librarian asks, “How can I find out more about Canadian copyright law for educators?”

Rumors

This is from Choice Academic pub-

Reports of Meetings — 39th Annual Charleston Conference

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

CORRECTED CONCURRENT SESSION REPORT FROM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019

NEAPOLITAN THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019

CHARLESTON PREMIERS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2019

PLENARY FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

NEAPOLITAN FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

CONCURRENT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

NEAPOLITAN SESSIONS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019

Don’s Conference Notes

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

dons-conference-notes-the-art-and-science-of-marketing-com-

SSP and the Charleston Conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair

SSP

Charleston Library Conference

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

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

com/2021/01/dons-conference-notes-the-computers-in-libraries-internet-librarian-connect-2020-virtual-conference/.

Optimizing Library Services — Voter Fraud, COVID-19 #VaccinesKill, and Social Media Censoring: How Librarians and Educators Can Combat Fake News and Misinformation

Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation

Introduction

Background

Evolution of the Conceptualization of Information Literacy (IL)

Resistance From Academia

Interested in learning more or reading the full chapter?

References

Recommended Readings

8 Library Services That Will... Make You Smile.

Both Sides Now: Vendors and Librarians

A Guide for Information Professionals and Salespeople to

gruenbergconsulting.com

Biz of Digital — Comparing Apples and Oranges: Prioritizing Digital Collections

Introduction

Literature Review

Creating the Rubric

Revision Process

Integrating with Workflows

Future Work

Conclusion

Appendix A: DCOT Prioritization Rubric

Category Definitions and Guiding Questions

Uniqueness/Rarity:

Relation to Research Needs:

Upcoming anniversary, event, or milestone:

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

Methodology and Demographics

Benefits of eBooks in Academic Libraries

Budgeting for eBooks on College Campuses

increased compared to what they were spending three years

Data Drives Acquisition Decisions

The Future of eBooks in Academic Libraries

Endnotes

Library Deans and Directors of the BigTen Academic Alliance

Random Ramblings — The Used Book Market: Changes for Libraries

The Shift to Digital

Declining Sales and Prices

Amazon and Other Internet Vendors

Conclusion

Endnotes

Marketing Touchpoints — Marketing Planning When Nothing Goes as Planned

A Value Proposition Tested

Experiments in Service Design

From Marketing Communications to Marketing Dialogues

Marketing is Iterative. The Basics are Constant.

Endnotes

Emerging Tech: To Be or Not to Be? — Privacy and Secure Access: An Interview with Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe