LAUC Blog

NGTS Update: August 2011 Power of Three Groups Launched

2011-08-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

The NGTS Management Team has held kickoff conference calls with POTs 2 through 7 to review their charges and provide an overview of the interdependencies between groups. Charges have been revised and reposted to the SOPAG website. We fully expect the charges for each of these groups will continue to be refined as work proceeds.

The POTs are currently developing high-level task lists and timelines as well as identifying what lightning teams will be needed. These will be submitted to the Management Team in early September. Once they have been reviewed, an overall implementation timeline will be shared with the UC Libraries community.

Keep up-to-date on developments and ideas posted on the NGTS blog.

You can also subscribe to the RSS feed or track #ucngts on Twitter.

Speaker video from 2011 LAUC Assembly - Gene Lucas, EVC-UC Santa Barbara

2011-03-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

Gene Lucas, EVC Santa Barbara and Chair of SLASIAC, on SLASIAC draft documents and discussion prior to Interim Report to full SLASIAC committee on March 14, 2011.
719 Mb abruptly ends at 15 minutes MPEG-4
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waic7m3LYaM

LAUC 2011 Assembly playlist

Speaker video from 2011 LAUC Assembly - Bruce Miller, UL-UC Merced

2011-03-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

R. Bruce Miller, UL Merced, on Librarian Distinguished Status and Next-Generation Technical Services (NGTS2).
2.83 Gb 50:38 running time MPEG-4
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywgpA-T66vo

LAUC 2011 Assembly playlist

Breakout Sessions

2011-03-10T15:09:00.000-08:00

ADMINISTRATION

- Future administrations should be good at brokering resources- including human resources
- Concrete suggestions for library admin. to compete for funds- quantify the value of the library. Collect meaningful data & present it in a meaningful way
- Measure impact of library on things like student outcomes & faculty research-
- Research funds- university skimming some money off the top- even a small portion of this going to libraries can help

OUTREACH

Question- to which new groups should UC libraries be reaching out & to what end?

They felt this was extremely different by UC library & not easy to answer.
Subject librarians- at what point do the liaison activities end & the outreach librarian picks up?
Start a listserv to get each other involved on this topic.
Good targets for outreach: students that work in the libraries, library staff- involving them more & drawing on their expertise
All the outreach efforts that are done are very important & bring good attention to the libraries- help people to understand what libraries do & what they can offer

INSTRUCTION

Where do we see instr. services headed in the future & what skill sets are needed by librarians?

Strong foundation in pedagogical theories & knowledge of the resources
strong knowledge of reference resources
Some competing pressures: need to make instruction scalable, how can we also make instruction more integrated? Where do we get the skill sets to produce things like online tutorials & mobile apps?
Need to be more prof dev opps to help keep up with the technological expectations of the students & keep the skill set strong.
Generally feel did not receive a good foundation in learning instruction in library school

USER SERVICES

Are user expectations increasing? Given the shrinking budget situation

Users want to communicate via email, chat, virtual reference, all hours/times of the day. Want their answers immediately. Want more access from home & more convenience in terms of research assistance.
Users also have an expectation of receiving specialized consultations w/ librarians. Especially grad students- how do we provide those services if there aren't enough subject specialists or generalists?
How do we address these needs/improve our skills? Being flexible as much as possible, learning innovative approaches, the CDL cataloging materials online- having access to this is helpful.
Merging the desk with information & reference/research assistance. A shared service desk.
At UCSC- completing a renovation- there will be a shared service desk for circ/reference services. Working to set standards for patron expectations, how the work will be shared & referred, how do we schedule/train all people that will work at the desk?
Need to get direct feedback from our users.
Important to ID the methods for identifying & interpreting user expectations. Conducting regular surveys, student/faculty focus groups.

COLLECTIONS

Binding & preservation. Given the new next gen climate, how do you know what to bind? How do we plan for that?
Subject specialists systemwide, rather than on each campus
Summing up our role- we need to be promoting open access publishing, shared collections, e-books to faculty, admins, publishers. But we also need to determine how to make it work so that they don't lose out, given the changes & budget problems libraries are facing.

TECHNICAL SERVICES

The skills a cataloger will need in the future....what qualities.
flexibility, project management skills
Skill set- moving from traditional cataloging to metadata cataloging
Use the current expertise to help build efficiency standards for best practices
Transferrable skills that we current have. Collaborating catalogers/curators/subject specialists

TECH & DIGITAL INITIATIVES

the needs in the future to have more digital curation skills to help facilitate digital archiving
skills in metadata & deal with metadata standards
raising overall literacy in the profession, dealing w/ apathy & technology phobia among colleagues- helping others to learn
assessment- when to decide how to stop supporting something if it's not working
administration- how do we operationalize digitization on a large scale? The idea of the systemwide repository- we need a solution- can't support 10 dig. repositories.
we need to be ok with non-perfection, and launching products even if they aren't 100% ideal
- There needs to be some kind of incentive for librarians to learn new technology skills
- we need to share best practices in technology among each other.

SLASIAC Library Planning Task Force: Gene Lucas

2011-03-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

Gene Lucas is the Executive Vice Chancellor, UCSB and SLASIAC chair. SLASIAC is the Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information Advisory Committee; read more about them here.

The task force was charged by the Provost of the University:

Greater systemwide or regional consolidation of library services and systems
Systemwide strategies for developing and managing both print and digital collections
Greater reliance on open-access materials
Reduced expenditure on high-priced serial publications
Overall use of library space

Task force members were administrators, faculty members, and ULs from throughout the UC system, plus the program officer from the Mellon Foundation and the Director of Libraries from MIT.

Context of the problems: anticipated budget reductions, increasing costs (esp. journals), employer contributions to benefits (esp. pensions), and running out of shelf space. Between 2006-07 and 2017, there's a projected drop of $52 million in the total UC library budget. The reduction in the acquisitions budget for all the UCs (21%) is bigger than the total materials budget for UCD and UCI combined. A 21% cut in the operations budget (in terms of FTE is nearly as large as the total staff of the UDSB and UCD libraries.

Cost-saving strategies include:

Shared library services (already resulting in current annual savings of $114 million per year). Not just shared digital initiatives like NGM, but shared services to conserve space: avoiding unnecessary duplication of new print materials, removing unnecessary duplicate copies in existing print collections, trying to acquire e-journals and e-books wherever possible. Removing unnecessary duplicate copies of print backfiles of journals reliably available in digital form will add as much as 13 years to capacity of existing campus and regional facility stacks, but costs money (in the millions of dollars) to implement. However, this is considered relatively inexpensive. Identifying and removing unnecessary duplicate copies of books is less effective, takes more time, probably not as high priority as removal of serial backfiles.

Shared licensing of digital collections - already saves us $55 million a year. More than 25 candidate projects are described and prioritized in the NGTS initiative.

Possible future developments: systemwide approval plan, systemwide shelf-ready processing, expansions of shared cataloging, avoiding duplication of foreign-language materials. Graph of how the system might save $52 million through 2014, in three phases.

How does this fit into the UC "Working Smarter" initiative? This is the library's contribution to Working Smarter [maybe not the only contribution, I'm not clear on this].

Next steps: next week, consult with SLASIAC. March-April: finalize interim report and submit to the Provost. March-June: consultation with Academic Senate, campuses. April-September: Council of ULs oversees additional detailed planning and analysis. Sept-Oct: Results of consultation and detailed planning incorporated in Final Report. Fall-Winter 2011-2012: implementation begins.

Issues for continuing discussion: financing (funding sources? Loan financing?) and governance. Existing systemwide bodies may need to have their roles defined or redefined, including the Council of ULs, SLASIAC, Shared Library Facilities Board, LAUC, Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication. New governance structures may need to be created, if required.

Summary:
Libraries will be out of shelf space in 5-7 years, likely operating budget reductions of up to 21% ($52 million).

The solution: shared services to help conserve space, achieve efficiencies, continuing and accelerating the libraries' Next Generation initiatives. During 2011, consultation continues, the Council of ULs will oversee detailed planning and analysis. Continued discussion is encouraged about financing and governance.

Gene Lucas, SLASIAC Chair

2011-03-10T13:55:00.000-08:00

Findings & Recommendations of the Library Planning Task Force

This is the 1st group slasiac is talking to about the results of this task force. Appreciate any & all feedback.

-Work of the task force builds on the UC libraries' Next gen initiatives

- Take force was charged by the university Provost:

- greater systewide or regional consolidation of library services & systems

- systemwide strategies for developing and managing both print & digital

-greater reliance on open access materials

-use of library space

-meeting fairly frequently since early summer

-Context of the problem(s)

-anticipated budget reductions

-increasing costs

-acquisitions

-employer contributions

-2016-17 projects to have less than 200 Million for total UC Library budgets (w/ estimated effects of retirement contributions & proposed state fund reductions)

-We will run out of space by 2016/17 for physical collections, unless we do something soon about this.

- To reduced 21% FTE equals the library staff FTE for UCD and UCSB

The University & its Libraries Can Act Together to:

- more effectively manage shared services

- support the faculty in addressing the rising cost of academic publications

Shared Library Services:

- are a proven strategy, already resulting in current annual savings of 114 million/yr

- build on the solid foundation already est. by the ULs w/ the next gen initiatives

-appear to be capable of immed. savings of about 15 mill/yr, while addressing the space problem

-have potential to address entire 52 mill shortfall

- require libraries to conduct additional detailed planning

- To conserve space (1)

-acquire digital formats when possible

- coord. collection dev. & acquisition processes to avoid unnecessary duplication of new & current materials

-(2)

-removal of unnecessary duplicate copies of print backfiles of journals reliable avail in digital form

-relatively inexpensive

-minimum academic impact

- implement only as space needs require, after assessing impact of prospective strategies

-could add as much as 13 yrs to capacity of existing campus & regional facility stacks

-ID and removal of unnecessary duplicate copies of books

-expensive

-less effective- frees less space than academic journals

Shared Services to Increase Efficiencies (1)- current initiatives

(2)- possible future developments

-systemwide approval plan

-systemwide shelf-ready processing

-expansion of shared cataloging

these 3 come out to about 14 million

Next Steps

-Consult 3/14/11 with SLASIAC

-March-April finalize interim report & submit to provost

-march-june, consultation w/ academic Senate, campuses

-April-Sept, Council of ULs oversees additional detailed planning & analysis

-Sept-Oct, results of consultation & detailed planning incorporated in final report

-Fall/Winter 2011-2012- Implementation begins

Issues for Continuing Discussion

-Financing- IDing funding sources, assessing feasibility of loan financing, capturing savings & cost avoidances

-Governance- reviewing functional requirements (see interim report), (re)definig roles of existing systemwide bodies (council of ULs, slasiac, shared libraries facilities board, lauc, academic senate committee on library & schol comm), IDing requirements (if any) for new governance structures.

Summary

- The problem

-libraries out of space in 5-7 yrs

-likely operating budget reductions of up to 21% (52 million)

-Shared services to help conserve space, achieve efficiencies

-builds on past success

-continues & accelerates the libraries' next gen initiatives

-during 2011

-consultation continues

-council of ULs oversees detailed planning & analysis

-continued discussion is encourages

-financing

-governance

NGTS report, Bruce Miller (University Librarian, UCM)

2011-03-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

Brian Schottlaender, UL of UCSD, was supposed to be the main speaker for this presentation but was unable to attend. Miller gave the presentation instead.

Talking about report: The University of California Library Collection: Content for the 21st Century and Beyond. NextGen Melvyl is "not trivial, but is a huge strategic platform that we need to move ahead."And so is NGTS (NextGen Technical Services). "We're through talking about this. We're not interested in anybody's opinion about the reports any more. We are
implementing." (General manner from outset is that of a school principal addressing a group of recalcitrant students.) "These groups have been discharged, the reports are final. The recommended changes are being implemented."

SOPAG is charged with implementing the recommendations issued by the NGTS report. Cost savings and cost avoidance are strategic, but they don't completely solve the budget problems. Current focus is on implementation and action. Want to have some quick wins early. Continuous vetting must happen throughout this process. Always thinking in terms of systemwide benefit; want to continuously assess, revise and adjust the implementation.

Rough draft of where we are right now with implementation of NGTS recommendations: Within SOPAG, an NGTS Management Team will be created -- 5-6 members, membership will include 2-3 SOPAG mmebers, the past chair of the NGTS steering committee, a project manager, and a communications manager. Will provide overall steering for the implementation of NGTS. Then there will also be Power-of-Three groups, responsible for implementation of high-priority NGTS recommendations. For example, POT#2 will be responsible for recommendations E5 and E6, and will be made up of HOPS. There will also be "lightning bolt" teams, which are given very specific tasks.

Nick Robinson (UCB) has a question regarding systemwide governance - how can LAUC best position itself to perform an advisory role in whatever new governance structure evolves? Micki Gorell [sorry if I got the name wrong] from UCLA asks a question about NGM - states that NGM is not an adequate substitute for the OPACs that we currently have, and feels that the Council of ULs are not listening to librarian concerns on this issue. Miller says that she is wrong, and what she is stating is a manner of opinion. He says to look at the big picture, and that he wants to talk about the development process. "Pay close attention here...we are not saying that NGM is a pilot any longer. It's the real deal, let's hang onto it, let's build our other infrastructure around it." States that we have to get past the approach that we can't go ahead with something until it's perfect. General murmurs around the room agreeing with the example, mentioned by Micki, that known-item searching in NGM is very difficult. Condescension from Miller, accusing us of not having read the reports, and asking us if we remember the footnotes in the reports.

Another questioner asks how we can feel that we are being listened to, mentions complaints from faculty and students about problems with NextGen Melvyl. "When they complain, and we don't try to fix the problem, I think it's not to our credit." Miller answers that they did studies with end-users, they collected data from end-users, and that data is posted on the website. He says her complaints are anecdotal evidence, but "isn't it amazing that we have tens of thousands of satisfied users?"

Bruce Miller, UCM UL

2011-03-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

Brian Schottlaender was unable to attend today.

Bruce serves as the convener of the Council of ULs.

Message to deliver about the budget situation. It is real, serious, and this is a time of transforming, radical changes, and it is not optional.

Priorities for Collective Initiatives- for all of the UC libraries. Why are we doing this & what are the forces driving us to put these priorities together?

"The Forces"

The Budget
also faced with neverending price increases on collections. something has to change.
overwhelmed by newly created digital services & confounded by new digitization of content (such as research data). Resources such as Merritt can add up to be very expensive (it costs about 1,000/yr/TB...what about a researcher with a PB of data?).
We need to evolve w/ the new undergrad generation & their knowledge/skill set. If we don't, they will go elsewhere
We are out of physical space for the collections
What can we do to try to take leadership & make some strategic moves to solve these forces to ultimately support scholarly enterprise?

Report- The UC Library Collection- Content for the Future & Beyond. We are going to follow this. This is where our priorities are. Note that this says Library- not Libraries.
Next Gen Melvyl. This is not trivial, it is a huge strategic platform for us to move ahead. It opens us to doing new ways of business.
Next Gen Tech. Services. Where are with with this? Wants us to understand where this process is. The ULs have explicitly said, of the recommendations that came to them, which sets are of: high priority, medium priority, items that are not going to be seen through. No longer interested in people's opinions on the reports. They are now in implementation phase.

the formal discharge was Jan 24. Prior to that, in mid-December, sent out the final report as widely as possible. Nobody picked up in this report that it says, "This is what we are doing". SOPAG is responsible for following through.
SOPAG is charged to implement NGTS as specified by the Council of ULs. They are working on the structure for doing this.

Observations from SOPAG. "The Rough Draft":

transformation is an evolving process. Cost savings & cost-avoidance are strategic, but they don't completely solve the budget problems.
current focus is on Implementation & Action- not on more studying of the processes.
want some "quick wins early"- some things in the process will take a long time, some will be implemented immediately
continuous vetting must happen throughout these processes- at all levels. must keep everyone informed. Not looking for input from people, but want people to think "can I contribute something Useful that might help make this move along?"
leverage the existing members of the all-campus groups. Always thinking in a systemwide benefit.
Continuously assess, revise, & adjust this implementation framework.

As SOPAG members are appointment, great attention is paid to the expertise brought to the group. Want a varied representation of expertise. Not accidental who is appointed to SOPAG

-Within SOPAG will build an NGTS Management Team. Will have 5-6 pp on the team, including 2 or 3 sopag members, past chair of ngts steering committee, project manager & communication manager)

Power of Three Groups- responsible for implementing specific groups of the high & medium priority recommendations. At least 1 sopag member to serve as a "sponsor" and 2 other members from one of the All campus Groups.

-charged w/ Make it Happen, deal w/ project mgmt, and take care of Communication

Lightning Bolt Teams- responsible for Action items. Charged w/ very specific tasks.

Structure:

SOPAG

NGTS Management Team

POTS

**This is all going to happen rapidly

Questions:

- As part of this on-going vetting process, does this include openness at this point to suggestions related to receiving documents generated from programs held at individual campuses discussing this topic?

Answer: Speaking for himself (Bruce Miller), thanks, but not particularly interested in this. Why? Because we have already made decisions & are moving forward. Professionally speaking, yes, we'll take a look at it.

- How & when will we have a chance to assist w/ implementation?

Answer: We are going to do these things, regardless. As for implementation, SOPAG is in charge & will assign the groups. Those groups will be in charge of moving forward & communication- which may help with people feeling left out or confused. This is a change in how we have historically done things & he wants people to understand that.

- 2 questions about governance of systemwide tech services, post-implementation.

1. As for the teams- there was no team on governance.

2. As a LAUC member, how can LAUC best position itself to continue to perform its advisory role in relation to whatever new governance structure is established?

Answer: The SLASIAC outcomes explicitly said that the final report will be given to Council of ULs. Are we going to evolve as we continue working? Things should naturally arise that will make clear the changes that need to be established

- Please talk about Shared monographs & Shared print in place groups.

Answer: All of these activities & other are factors taken into account. In response to budget & space limitations, not going to buy 10 copies of the same book. Different libraries will buy different books & will share them with each other. Shifting more towards the UC Library collective.

- Next Gen Melvyl- not an adequate substitute for the current OPACs we have. Not sure if this feedback has arrived at the level of the ULs. This is a very serious issue & needs to be usable for the library patrons. There have been options that have been ignored.

Answer: Where are we going to get the money? Trying to look at the big picture & what will work for the long term. We need to get out of the "we don't move ahead unless it's perfect" mindset. When looking at big picture, the budget, of trying to be in a leadership role, we need to go with NGM. The UC systemwide is moving forward.

- Comments made over & over by members- the SLASIAC reports are broad statements w/o references to reports or studies. We want to follow up on these statements. Would like the ULs to "step up to the bibliographic citation plate".

Answer: There are heavily embedded footnotes & links. Go to the NGTS website & read the documents. The data is all there. SLASIAC is a work in progress.

Bruce Miller: There is a LAUC rep on every all-campus group. Also every librarian on the groups, they are all LAUC members. Carry your responsibility w/ you and speak up.

- Can we truly have faith that we are being listened to? From the beginning with the pilot public service librarians started noticing problems, which is to be expected. Have complaints from faculty & students trying to use the system. Shortly after NGM started, it was the default catalog. Faculty would complain to the librarians & the reference desk. All complaints were passed on to the appropriate body & it feels as if we were not listened to.

Answer: We are seeking input. The complaints to go up the chain & get worked on. We have data that show problems for our users. We did real studies w/ end users & received overwhelmingly positive responses.

LAUC Resolution: UC Budget Cuts

2011-03-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Ken Furuta

Comments from various participants:

- Suggested the UL's may not be the most appropriate group to submit this resolution to- perhaps they should just be copied.

- Concerns of the generality of the phrasing of the resolution. It is general, we are not taking the opportunity to take a stand on what should be protected and why. We should identify what should be protected- such as the collections. Should talk about what kinds of librarians we need, to best support the missions of libraries. To be able to best invest the time of libraries and librarians. Should deal more with long-term preservation of the collections. Take this as an opportunity to be more directive & specific about what we believe should be protected.

- Reply: it is more generalized because it is coming from the greater LAUC, but it does address topics such as the collections

- Comment that it is weak. Should be more aggressive in its resolution.

-Suggestion by authoring group member that this resolution goes back w/ group that authored it & revise according to comments taken from today.

- The motion for approval was withdrawn.

Memorial Resolution honoring colleagues

2011-03-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

Memorial Resolution honoring Locke Morrisey read by Pauline Manaka.

Motion out there to approve or accept?

Motion put out there by Pauline Manaka and seconded by Elaine McCracken.

Lise Snyder has only the kindest words for Locke and thought highly of him. But she feels this is not appropriate for LAUC. Resolutions put forward by librarians such as Ken Furuta are more appropriate. What about all the other UC Librarians who passed away who also contributed to this field in their own way but are not recognized in this way. Should we have such a resolution for all librarians who pass away who spent some time at a UC Library? There must be another way to recognize treasured colleagues.

Because of the short amount of time we have, Rhonda Lawrence moves to put this to a vote.

Michael Yonezawa can see both sides of the argument.

Miki Goral suggests we copy the faculty memoriam thing and create a LAUC memoriam thing.

Is there a motion to close the debate?

Miki says, listening to what Lise had to say, she now has a concern about his sort of thing. This kind of this may become exclusive rather than inclusive based on who is popular or has friends who would put forth such a motion.

Michael's compromise is to adopt these resolutions and find other ways to honor our colleagues in the future.

Pauline Manaka says people make contributions to librarianship, and if their friends don't say anything, no one will know. She believes in the spirit in the innovations Locke and Patty has made to our field. She suggests we adopt the resolutions and then find another way starting next year.

Motion to close the debate by Debbie. Seconded by Nicole. Motion passes.

Resolution passed.

Esther Grassian read the Memorial Resolution honoring Patty Caravello. Rhonda put forth a motion to accept this resolution. Seconded by Colleen. No debate. Call for a vote. Resolution passes.

LAUC Resolution: University of California Budget Cuts.

Discussion: This is too general, too apple pie. We're not giving enough specifics about why we need to protect libraries and librarians. The collections shouldn't be destroyed because they're part of the core mission of universities to educate and provide the tools for a good education.

Resolutions Submitted for Morrisey & Schifter Caravello

2011-03-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

The resolution for Locke Morrisey was passed.

Resolution for Patti Schifter Caravello was also passed.

Dan Greenstein

2011-03-10T11:08:00.001-08:00

Vice-provost, Academic Planning, Programs and Coordination, UCOP via Skype

Discussing offering UC quality education online. Pilot will offer classes to undergraduates. They received 80. Faculty selection panel selected 30; they met for 2 days at the Berkeley marina. The 30 faculty, their classes and some information has been posted. Check them out at http://bit.ly/dP9XeZ.

We should have some courses up and running this Fall quarter.

Lise Snyder from UCLA wants to know about library involvement in this program. How are libraries integrated into this program?

Over the next few months, working with the instructional designers, that's the time they'll be talking about which materials will be integrated into their courses. We have a range of experience among the faculty with regard to this so it's up to the instructional designers to direct the faculty along this road. Hopefully, they will be engaging with the librarians on their campus to learn more as well. He also wants the instructional designers get in touch with the libraries on the campuses of the faculty.

Is there a way for librarians to be proactive in this involvement and find out the names of the faculty so we know who to contact?

Yes. All the names and contact info are posted.

Another interesting discussion has been about the income earned by this program. All the income earned on each campus will stay with the campus. Dan is working on make this program very transparent, sharing line item budgets with the administration of all the campuses.

Mitchell Brown of UCI would like a more explanation of the assessment of this program.

John Young (Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and the Director of Research at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in educational measurement from Stanford University in 1989) will be evaluating the pilot programs. He will look at the program as a whole. There's also going ot be a top down assessment, how well the students do, costs of the workload effectiveness of the teachers. Bottom up will be more descipline specific. How well did the learning acitives achieve the learning objective set up by the instructor? Are certain approaches better in certain types of disciplines than in others? There may be experiments by offering 2 courses, one with asynchronous and one with synchronous teaching to assess effectiveness of the teaching method.

How will students be selected for these courses?

Students will sign up in the normal way. Cross campus instruction is challenging but there are a few that are that are being designed for this. It's permitted under senate regulation. But there are challenges - having to do with advertising, getting the courses listed, and the students having to transfer the credits. So this won't be a huge part except perhaps during summer sessions.

Dan Greenstein, Vice Provost for UCOP, via skype

2011-03-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

Talking about: 1. Online Instruction Pilot Program, 2. Proposals for new funding streams from UCOP

1. Can we deliver a UC undergrad quality education online? This is framed as a pilot to assess critical issues that have to do w/ online instruction. Aim is 2.5 year program, to build courses & teach to undergrads. Request to faculty for participation to submit proposals for courses- received 80. 30 were selected by selection panel. Team of 30 faculty that were selected met for 2 days in Berkeley, talking about all issues that have to do w/ the pilot of online instruction. Have Tech. Learning Design team, Evaluation Team. Moving forward into a detailed design phase. Next steps to work w/ faculty in a sense that works w/ them to develop proposals for their courses. Plan is to hand these proposals to a production team. Hope to have courses up & running as early as Fall Term. Do not yet have funding. Have enough now to get through May, optimistic they will receive more funding to get beyond May.

- Questions:

- Lisa (UCLA)- LAUC documents about library involvement in this process- where does this document stand?

- Greenstein (DG): Over the next few months, faculty will begin working w/ instructional designers to map out their courses, this is when they will start to look perhaps at library involvement. Some have a few fixed idea of what they want to do, others don't. Wide range of experience & ability represented. As faculty work with instructional designers & think about activities they want to include, DG hopes they will include libraries in this process.

- Michael Yonezawa mentioned information literacy components to include in online instruction

- DG replied he hopes they will be looking at how best to incorporate this.

-Are these projects going to be publicly posted so LAUC can be proactive in contacting faculty- for direct follow up?

- Yes, they will be accessible on the website.

2. - DG: Different funding model adopted. Before, Indirect Cost Recovery & Grants came to UCOP and was redistributed to campuses. Now, all funds generated by campuses will stay at the campuses. Will be moving to implement this soon. By 2012-2013, hoping systems will be in place to move to this model. At individual campuses, the libraries need to be much more proactive that we communicate to administration the role of the library so that we can have an opportunity to receive some of this funding. Increasingly, this will become a very local topic, specific to the funding model at each campus.

Question- how will the assessment of the online instruction programs work? This is being managed by Director of Multi-Campus Research (at UCSB). Two Main Assessment components: 1. look at program as a whole, the extent to which it is successful in achieving its goals. 2. comparable questions will be asked about each course- how well the students do, what are the costs, workload, etc. to be able to do a comparable analysis of the courses.

- Also will have a "bottom up" analysis. How well did the learning activities that were selected achieve the learning objectives that the instructtor developed for the course? Controlled experiments- e.g. if course is offered twice, one synchronous instruction & one asynchronous- which model was more effective?

Question- how will students be selected for the pilot program courses? Aim is that these courses will become part of the curriculum. Cross-campus instruction is challenging. Small number of these courses are designed for this model. Challenges: advertising, getting course listed, etc. DG hoping pilot will enable lowering of barriers that exist around cross campus instruction.

Presentation by Janet Lockwood via Skype

2011-03-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

Janet Lockwood is at UCOP, as Associate Director, Academic Personnel, Academic Advancement

- Academic Personnel updates & restructuring: Susan Carlson, new Vice Provost has joined from Iowa (since they last met Spring 2010). 2 other positions filled- 1. Compensation & Policy Analyst, and 2. Labor & Relations Manager for Academic Personnel- will provide internal support for academic labor contracts.

- Observations on Data Reports produced for LAUC: 1. Looking at April 2010 payroll snapshot & 2. October 2010 payroll snapshot. Looked at librarians by campus, gender, ethnicity. A few observations: between April & October 2010- total headcount 470 (april), 459 (october). All ranks showed decreases. Most decreases at Step 5. All campuses but UCM showed decreased in total headcount. Decreased in librarians at Step 6 from 24 to 21. Increase from 8 to 22 at Step 7. In terms of ethnicity, ethnic minorities has decreased at all categories at Assoc. rank.

- Jesse Bernall, Diversity UCOP Coordinator assigned, in response to recent racist & homophobic incidents on some UC campuses. He was a UC student Regent. He works at the Provost's office. New position- has been there about 7 months. Addition to diversity efforts: looking beyond structural diversity to the environments that UC people experience on a daily basis. Ad Hoc committee formed to examine campus diversity climate. Each campus has 1 rep to President's council. 6 experts from outside of UC to join, including someone from NAACP & Anti-Defamation League.

-5 Working Groups of President's Council- including faculty diversity initiative; defining best practices for recruitment & retention. A Safety & Engagement working group for best practices w/in UC. A group to Identify Metrics in this area, which is not easy, but there are some national models available that are currently being explored. A Working group looking specifically at LGBT issues.

- Mitchell Brown's presentation for Research & Prof Dev. committee: reviewed 20 applications. Granted 2 research grants, 2 mini, 14 presentation grants. Recipients were posted on current LAUC website & current grants committee looking at 19 submissions. Reviewing & contacting members for 6 research & 13 presentation grants. Remainder balance is left, a 2nd call for submissions will be going out. Larger number of research grants this year. Encourages members & divisions to apply for grants for attending conferences and prof. dev. meetings. Larger report will be posted on LAUC website.

And we're off!

2011-03-10T10:38:00.001-08:00

Called to order at 10:30.

Welcome by UCSB Library co-Acting UL Sherry DeDecker and Lucia Snowhill

Census of delegates by LAUC secretary

Approval of minutes from last assembly

Approved by general consent

Up next presentation via skype is Janet Lockwood and Jesse Bernal!

LAUC 2011 Assembly has officially started

2011-03-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome and announcements

SLASIAC Library Planning Task Force

2011-03-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

Dear LAUC members:

I am writing to you as your LAUC representative to SLASIAC. On Wednesday, March 16, from 10am to 3pm, SLASIAC will be having a face-to-face meeting at the Office of the President in Oakland. The agenda is not finalized, but the majority of the time will be spent on the initial outcomes of SLASIAC’s Library Planning Task Force. An Interim Final Report will be sent out as background material prior to the meeting, but you can review the preliminary documents on the Task Force website at:
http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/planning/taskforce/.

Please read these preliminary documents and provide any feed back to me by March 14th, so I have time to compile and process these comments prior to the meeting.

Thanks in advance, Barbara

Barbara Schader
AUL for Collections & Scholarly Communications
Rivera Library
University of California - Riverside
Riverside, CA 92517-5900

T: 951-827-4614
F: 951-827-2255
E: bschader@ucr.edu

SLASIAC website: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/planning/slasiac/

Agenda & Registration for LAUC Assembly - March 10, 2011

2011-01-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

Dear LAUC Members,

I am happy to announce that the Agenda & Registration for the March 10, 2011 LAUC Assembly are now ready.

Visit http://www.ucop.edu/lauc/ and click on the Assembly Registration Link and explore the Assembly’s Website.

Registration Deadline: February 16, 2011

Local Contacts:
LAUC-SB Chair, Elaine McCracken
(805) 893-3721
emccrack@library.ucsb.edu

Registration, schedule and accommodations, Chuck Huber
(805) 893-2762
huber@library.ucsb.edu

I’m looking forward to an informative and productive Assembly.

For those thinking of attending the Assembly and extending your stay in Santa Barbara over the weekend you might find the following of interest:

Santa Barbara Visitor’s Center
http://www.santabarbara.com/community/visitors_center/

Santa Barbara Visitor’s Bureau
http://www.santabarbaraca.com/

Bargain guide to Santa Barbara's hotels, restaurants and attractions
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/09/travel/la-tr-santabarbara-20110109

66th Annual Santa Barbara International Orchid Show – March 11-13, 2011
http://www.sborchidshow.com/index.html

Michael Yonezawa
LAUC President, 2010/2011
Reference Librarian
Tomás Rivera Library
P.O. Box 5900
Riverside, CA 92517-5900
951.827-2896
yonezawa@ucr.edu

The Most Interesting of Experiments...

2010-09-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that the attrition rate among Ph.D. candidates is huge. Given the amount of resources devoted to these programs, such a shortfall may be comparable to the problem of graduation rates for undergraduates for the welfare of universities. The question and the source of the proposed experiment is to figure out the cause of the higher failure rate in Ph.D. programs. This would be technically daunting to investigate. There are many factors that contribute to the success of a Ph.D. candidacy over a long period of time. There is no exit interview associated with failed candidates nor any attempt at assessment. Many reasons for failure to complete are of a personal nature and could not be released.

Yet, I suspect that possible answers to the question are well-known. The candidate is not smart enough would be one. The second one is that he or she lacks the determination to finish. A third would be external circumstances which can interfere. That's pretty much it for the most likely reasons. The fact is that most experienced faculty who have worked with Ph.D. candidates probably have a pretty firm sense of the most common causes of failure. If only this information could be communicated!

What if the underlying problem was not any of the above but was one of information management? Most Ph.D. projects, especially in the humanities and social sciences, involve processing and managing a great deal of information running into the hundreds of references. Working with them is not at all a trivial task and there is minimal guidance for this from faculty who expect the candidates to figure it out for themselves as has been done since time immemorial. Enter EndNote, bibliographic software designed to manage references as well as format them. By way of analogy, word-processing is a type of management software, yet the difference between it and a typewriter is enormous for the writing process. What if the same were true of the relationship between bibliographic managers and the ad hoc research methods assembled by individuals? The library could be at the forefront of high-level research that is the very summit of what universities produce.

Ambitious as this sounds, it is not even new. The program has essentially been done and reported on by Manchester Metropolitan University:

Harrison, Mary, Stephanie Summerton, and Karen Peters. "Endnote Training for Academic Staff and Students: The Experience of the Manchester Metropolitan University Library." New Review of Academic Librarianship 11 1 (2005): 31-40.

Is there a reason for the UC system not to investigate this?

Going Mobile

2010-08-23T11:29:00.001-07:00

Social networking devices may be encroaching slowly but surely on library outreach. The UCDavis instruction department is exercised continuously in trying to improve its instruction. The most recent project had to do with a series of orientations for STEP students (acronym unknown) who go through a short summer course prior to starting their first year to gain extra preparation for college. The library is given one hour to provide an orientation. In deciding what to focus on during this limited time, the instruction staff decided to go retro in a sense. One theme of feedback for introductory instruction is that when all has been said and done about the databases and instruction technology, many students do not know how to physically retrieve a book. This basic task seemed like a worthy goal for the STEP instruction as well as a fun activity.

The next big question was verification. It is easy enough to send students out to all corners of the library on their treasure hunt, but how to check that they've done the job correctly? Having the students bring the books back physically was not an option when there are multiple classes to be run over several days. In fact, keeping the books undisturbed over this time was a problem all by itself. Checking the answers to a list of questions completed by the students was not an option either within the time constraints. So, how can the students give what in action films is called "proof of life" that they had found the correct book? Action films provided something of answer although the actual idea was described in the recent CARL conference. Have students take a picture of the book with their cell phones and show it to the instructor. This hinged up how many students had cell phones which they could use for this purpose. The answer, we found, was that all of them did. The exercise went very smoothly with almost everyone finding their book and the students displaying an extra thrill in using their cell phones with which they seem to be very competent. It's hard to forecast just how social networking technology can be used by libraries. But by adopting an alert, opportunistic posture, the odds are that librarians will find something and that these connections will emerge.

Summaries from the LAUC 2010 Southern Regional Meeting

2010-08-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

All of this information was gathered at the time of the LAUC 2010 Southern Regional meeting titled, "The Future of Librarianship" on May 6, 2010. The meeting consisted of LAUC members from the southern UC campuses in addition to a few guests, such as the chair of the CPG committee, Matt Conner, and the current LAUC president, Lucia Diamond.

The meeting, which began with a talk by UCSD University Brian E. C. Schottlaender, was followed by a break out session of multiple groups. Each group was further broken up if a given topic had an excess of participants. We preferred to have groups smaller than 10, though some were larger. Groups worked on specific themes over a short period of time (about 45 minutes) during which librarians brainstormed observed trends, actions that might be taken as a result of such trends, and methods of measurement to ensure the success of those actions. Later we returned as a group to walk among all of the ideas written down to vote for what we though had merit. We had an extraordinary number of ideas that could be implemented. We saw that one way to use this information is to work backwards from the metrics discussed for each action and implement those that are doable in some sort of pilot fashion. More could be done with the remaining actions and trends over time as we uncover appropriate metrics.

Kristin Andrews, Ying Zhang, Rachel Shulman and I (Dana Peterman) used the original posters to identify those ideas that garnered the most votes. Those ideas that had two or fewer votes were not included here, though I did keep photos of the original data. We tried to make sure we understood what was meant for each suggestion, but it was difficult to do so. I later tried to make more sense of the original posters myself and placed them in rank order here. Each of the themes has been explained earlier in this blog, so I won't reiterate them here. You can see all of the photos of the posters at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpetermanus/sets/72157624012236068/ . The statements are followed by a number in parentheses that represents the number of votes that it got.

Twenty-First Century Skills
In this session, participants were asked to identify those skills that would be needed as necessary for the 21st century librarian.

Trends:
Librarians have fewer opportunities to provide input on administrative issues that affect them and their work. (10)
Librarians find that they must be generalists as well as specialists. (6)
Librarians need more and more training on cataloging and other skills less related to previous job functions, and to develop new skill sets. (5)

Actions:
Break down barriers that reinforce the hierarchical structure of libraries. (13)
Train all staff on emerging technologies. (11)
Teach people to be more adaptable and flexible . (11)
Build our project management skills. (9)
Teach technical skills, both electronic and computing skills, as well as cataloging skills. (8)
Teach people how to do marketing and outreach. (7)
Teach subject expertise. (7)
Teach people how to write grants and to fundraise. (4)

Measurements :
Learning and sharing among campuses on training increases. (16)
When there is a question as to the usefulness of a skill, skill set, or program, pilot studies are conducted. (10)
Usage data are acquired, posted and analyzed. (8)

Pedagogy
Trends:
There is more and more online instruction and digital content available. (9)
Libraries provide space for human contact .(4)

Actions:
Create marketing and branding resources – University Librarians need a “marketing czar”. (17)
Create greater communication mechanisms. (15)
Partner with faculty to provide support that is integrated with their teaching. (13)
Create digital services at the point of need. (12)
Provide library space to the university to facilitate partnerships with faculty. (7)
Create a suite of email lists, working groups for collaboration on tutorials, and/or subject guides (LibGuides). (6)

Measurements:
Survey stakeholders to see how of the actions mentioned above. (10)

UC 1-Copy Universe
Trends:
Economics make it tough to be part of shared projects. (13)
One copy doesn’t work for all materials, so there is a need for some redundancy despite our desire to economize. (6)

Actions:
Communication is key and will help libraries and librarians to make better decisions. (26)
Better communication between technical services and collection development. (23)
Develop parameters for single-copy purchase. (12)
Improve distribution for shared collections. (12)
Improve e-document delivery. (12)
Distribute collections budgets across the UC campuses centrally. (12)

Measurements:
Enhance circulation/Interlibrary loan (ILL) to handle situations in which “1 copy” is shared among 10 campuses.(8)
Assess ILL speed. (7)

Evaluation ourselves for promotion
Trends:
We getting so much busier that we have too little time for professional development. (8)
Must be both a generalist and a subject specialist to work effectively. (7)
We have a problem quantifying soft skills like collaboration (4)
Low salaries (4)
There should be a balance between criterion 1-4. (4)
Teaching is undervalued. (3)
Tedious bureaucratic procedures (2)

Actions:
Communication between ULs and LAUCs should be improved. There is a perception that ULs are not present and are out of touch at local LAUCs. (18)
Evaluate and streamline internal administrative processes (15)
Make the librarian review and reward process more reflective of what we really do day-to-day. (14)
Should have continuing education (in order of preference) - Management/supervision (4); Project management (4). (14)
Collect and analyze data for decision making (12)
Expand the definition of scholarly to include web 2.0 contributions. (9)
Create more uniformity in how criteria are applied and which are expected of a librarian. (8)
Succession planning, mentoring and training are needed. (6)
Learn how to emphasize our own impact. (6)
Create reading/study groups to discuss professional literature and develop papers.(6)
Increase the use of social networking tools to increase visibility with faculty and students. (5)
Skills to bridge IT and public services and other functions. (5)
Recognize and support membership and activities in alternative professional development organizations (e.g. technical and subject specialties). (4)
Professional should a voice in what is taught in library schools. (4)
Leadership development skill training. (4)
Create a LAUC review committee to review ALL campus librarians to create greater consistency for all. (4)
Create a grievance outlet, which faculty have. (4)
Have the 10 ULs meet with us at an annual meeting to improve communication. (4)
LAUC should issue state-wide recommendations for things like the number of review letters required. (4)
We should read or re-read position paper #5. (3)

Measurements:
UC library hits or downloads of presentations. (7)
Amount of Librarian research in eScholarship. (4)
Amount of UC-wide sharing of review process. (4)
Evidence of interaction with review initiator for concrete feedback (and criticism). (4)
Existence of peer review groups for de-briefing process. (4)
Add staff-to-staff "reference" questions to statistics we keep. (3)

Discovery and delivery
Trends:
Mobile technology in all areas. They are a part of the job environment. We will provide mobile devices for students to use. (21)
WorldCat local is complicated by how difficult it is to access electronic content and how difficult it is to determine local availability. (8)
Digital delivery of any digital content (e.g. UC pays for any request, like Questia articles). (6)
Problems reconciling local v. more union-like catalogs. (6)
UC wide, our instruction efforts focus on discovery. (5)
Patrons expect that electronic materials have replaced print. (3)
Challenge for us to help patrons in unfamiliar electronic environments via tools such as QP. (4)
Use of archives for undergraduate teaching and research. (4)
Using resource collection funding to support document delivery. (4)
Fee based delivery even though users expect free services. (3)
Federated searching that is less helpful than a user wants or needs. (4)

Actions:
conduct user assessments both ethnographic/surveys to better define specific user groups and user needs. (13)
More formal union catalog. Get back to basics and get WorldCat to listen to librarians. (11)
Work on current shared catalog first to get priorities and use of money right. (9)
Generally support WorldCat with major improvements and simplifications. (6)
Improve ILL with all partners, not just UCs. (6)

Measurements:
Conduct assessments and analyze results - map to gaps/causes in collections, interface, user education, etc. (9)
Continuous user assessment studies as WorldCat local evolves. (4)

The Ultimate Theory of Everything

2010-07-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

Not our name.... Yet, this was the operating concept behind a body of theory of potential relevance to librarianship. It comes far afield from the realm of military strategy. Librarians have little to do with guns, bombs, and airplanes; probably the closest approach to this realm would be encounters with government agents attempting to enforce the Patriot Act against which the principles of our profession tend to align us in opposition. However, librarianship now, as seen in our discussion of the future, has everything to do with issues of survival. For this reason and out of a posture of free inquiry, it behooves us to look at whatever may be useful to the profession.

To understand the theory, it is important to understand the creator. This person was John R. Boyd, an Air Force officer who is virtually unknown. He began his career as a self-proclaimed "Top Gun" style fighter pilot after the Korean War who had a standing bet that any opponent starting out on the tail (dominant) position on his aircraft would have his role reversed within 40 seconds. He never lost. After completing the definitive tactical manual for air combat, he moved on to make major contributions to the design of the F-15 and F-16 fighter planes which have played a dominant role in national defense for the last decades. His ideas continued to evolve beyond aerial warfare to grapple with the very foundations of military theory. Along the way, his naturally abrasive personality grew positively eccentric. Already disliked by the Air Force for interfering with their airplane designs (though they embraced his results), Boyd took to roaming the Pentagon in a tattered bathrobe and slippers. For almost no reason at all, he was capable of collaring four star generals and shouting criticisms in their face in a shower of spittle. His profane fighter pilot's language would make secretaries weep, and his own supporters speculated that he "did not have both oars in the water." Yet out of his ruminations grew a body of theory of conflict in any form, and some hints suggest that his ideas were fundamental to the fabulous success of the U.S. military in its two Gulf Wars (in military terms anyway). At Boyd's funeral in 1997, the Air Force from whom he was almost completely estranged contributed 11 minutes to his eulogy. Nevertheless, the work of this shadowy figure on survival deserves the attention of librarians facing an uncertain future in a competitive environment.

There is no definitive written record of Boyd's ideas. They were delivered in idiosyncratic and near incomprehensible slide presentations lasting up to 13 hours. Only smaller, suggestive documents and secondary sources remain. The basis of his theory was three scientific concepts: 1) Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem 2) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and 3) Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. From these he reasoned that any organization exists in an infinitely complex and dynamic universe. Thus, no organization can encompass within itself all the tools necessary to deal with the challenges it will encounter. To survive, the organization must continually adapt to its environment through a procedure which became formalized as the Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action Loop (OODA). In terms of the airplanes which were Boyd's original subject, the observation step involved perceiving a threat. The orientation step called for formulating a list of options for response--attack or flee, in which direction, and how. The decision step required choosing an option, and the final step was to execute it. With this formalism, the criteria for success was found to correlate almost exclusively with the SPEED with which the organization cycled through this process. In the airplane example, success did not depend on the speed, turning radius, range or any physical quality of the airplane nor the level of training, eyesight or particular attribute of the pilot, as one might suppose, but on the speed at which the system of pilot and airplane could run the decision cycle. The power of this theory lay in its broad application to any sufficiently defined organization whether it was the entire Marine Corps which formulated a new doctrine of maneuver based on this system, the entire military forces of the United States, or companies in the business world or sports teams all of which have found notable success with these ideas. The rhetoric surrounding the theory is more pervasive than one might realize. When former Secretary of State Colin Powell called for "getting inside the decision cycle" of terrorists following 9/11, he was virtually quoting Boyd's ideas.

So, the message for libraries to consider as they organize for the future is clear: Survival depends on the speed of decision cycling.

Boyd, J.R., 1976. Destruction and Creation.
http://www.goalsys.com/books/documents/DESTRUCTION.AND.CREATION.pdf

Coram, R., 2002. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. Little, Brown, New York.

LAUC-SD Discussion on “Future of the UC Librarian” – July 13, 2010

2010-07-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

LAUC members at UC San Diego met on July 13, 2010 to discuss The Future of the UC Librarian. The meeting was organized and facilitated by the LAUC-SD R&PD Committee. Prior to the meeting, we distributed the five topics discussed at the LAUC Southern Regional Meeting at UC Irvine. Along with the topics, we sent the trends identified at that meeting for each topic. During our meeting, we broke up into topic groups and the objective for each group was to 1) review the UCI trends and decide whether we agreed with them or not, 2) add any trends we thought were missing from the list, and 3) develop a list of actions. The results of the five discussions are attached.

LAUC-SD R&PD Committee
Karen Heskett
Patrick McCarthy
Annelise Sklar
Susan Shepherd (Chair)
Dominique Turnbow (Co-Chair)
Mary Wickline

TOPIC 1 –Preparing the current and future generations to work in 21st century settings

TRENDS
From the regional meeting at UC Irvine:
• Librarians are being given fewer opportunities to provide input on administrative issues that affect them and their work
• Librarians believe they must be generalists who can do all the new and old tasks done by librarians, but they are unable to do so
• Librarians need more and more training on technical (and management) issues to develop new skill sets

UC San Diego:
We agree with all above, and would include management training in the 3rd bullet as well.

UC San Diego Trends:

• Reference requests are dropping. We are having less contact with our users (chat reference excluded), but their reference needs are still there.
• Data curation will be huge. We need expertise.
• Scholarly publishing will increase.

UC SAN DIEGO ACTIONS:

• Training – the need for training will continue to increase.
o Management skills
o Technical skills (9)
o Cross-training within the library (7)
• Communication – we need to know more about:
o Campus trends (1)
o UC-wide initiatives (6)
o Our users needs and trends (1)
o And we need to information it while discussions are happening, not after decisions have been made (2)
• Collaboration
o Within the library (3)
o Across campus (3)
o UC-wide (3)

TOPIC 2 –Preparing the current and future generations to work in 21st century settings

TRENDS
From the regional meeting at UC Irvine:
• There is more and more online instruction and digital content available
• Libraries provide space for human contact

UC San Diego:
We agree with the above.

UC San Diego Trends:

• There is a push for tenured faculty to do instruction (lecturers have been laid off)
• Joint programs with other universities are increasing
• Increase in new undergraduate and graduate programs and degrees (2)
• Record numbers of students are coming into the library (7)
• The role of the university is changing. The undergraduate degree is becoming a commodity, i.e. a ticket to a good job. Libraries can help prepare students for the skills they will need at work, vs. academic skills and training received in their coursework. (15)

UC SAN DIEGO ACTIONS:

None identified – ran out of time.

TOPIC 3 – Acquiring unique materials assuming a UC one-copy universe

TRENDS
From the regional meeting at UC Irvine:
• Economics make it tough to be part of shared projects
• One copy doesn’t work for all materials
UC San Diego:
First, re the economics trend (above), it appears backwards to us. Economics (i.e. the budget) require shared project / one-copy universe.
Second, agree one copy is more difficult for some materials than others and consensus will be difficult.

UC San Diego Trends:

• Culture – changing the culture(s) will be the biggest hurdle. UCLA & UC Berkeley see themselves as the flagship campuses and are not willing to give up immediacy of local copy and are reluctant to carry lesser budgets of smaller campuses.
• Infrastructure – we do not currently have the infrastructure to support a one-copy universe. Processes are duplicative across campuses. We must change how we are organized.
• Technology – related to infrastructure, there must be a universal technology used at all campuses for collections & technical services
• Budget Disparities – in order to have a one-copy universe, there must be a “UC Libraries” budget that funds the universal system-wide (“Tier 1” level) one-copy. Funding must come from the top down in order for it to work.
• Interface – current interface is lacking
• Digital – as more resources become digital, one-copy will be easier to facilitate. Time is a factor in receiving materials from another campus (ex. Berkeley ILL is slow).

UC SAN DIEGO ACTIONS:

• Use UCLA & Berkeley’s desire to be perceived as the flagship campuses – make them central repository for shared physical collection, which would alleviate some campuses space issues.
• Coordinated weeding with validated quality (decision process) will be needed. Especially need a shared decision-making process on how retrospective weeding will occur. Cost & time to do weeding must be shared. SLRF closing makes coordinated weeding an imminent concern.
• Coordinated selection process across campuses is necessary – including across languages and formats.
• UC-wide shared approval plan for core collections that all campuses share (like history, literature). If no e-version of monograph, core print would be at all campuses with additional distributed copies available.
• Binding must also be coordinated system-wide with an eye to which copy is the unique copy that “deserves” top-quality binding
• Identify areas of expertise. Create more discipline-specific Tier 2 working groups (Latin American Studies has a working model).
• Decision rubric or process for determining when duplicate copies are necessary
• Shared print will require validating the quality of a copy and when & how it gets replaced, where cost comes from, how time is shared/used—must be a systemic process with the same criteria across campuses.
• Fund UC-wide resources from the top down. The one-copy available to all campuses must be funded first system-wide and not be part of individual campus’s budgets.
• Need a true system-wide federated search: across formats including the catalog, digital resources, special collections—include everything!
• Authentication & digital rights management across campuses must be managed.
• Knowing our community better is essential; promote awareness of system-wide collection strengths. Identify areas of expertise.
• Technical Services has expertise that should be utilized in facilitating this change.
• Special Collections has cultural barriers to digital repository (rights management, search interface lacking), but can selectively target what can be exposed. Even if it doesn’t circulate, serve up the metadata in federated search because there is value in knowing where it exists.

Topic 4 : Evaluating ourselves for promotion: what should count in the future

TRENDS
From the regional meeting at UC Irvine:

• We getting so much busier that we have too little time for professional development
• We have a problem quantifying soft skills like collaboration
• Tedious bureaucratic procedures (added this one to our list and got 2 dots)
• Low salaries
• Must be both a generalist and a subject specialist to work effectively
• Teaching is undervalued
• There should be a balance between criterion 1-4
UC San Diego Trends:

We mostly agreed with the trends above and would add the following trends:
• “hitting the ceiling” – need to consider decoupling Step 6 and “distinguished librarian” (11 dots)
• Things that should be given more weight in reviews
o Embedded librarians (7 dots)
o Liaison librarians (2 dots)
o Instruction (1 dot)
o Informal teaching experiences (e.g. consultations) (8 dots)
o Collaborating with faculty (5 dots)
We had a lengthy discussion about Criteria A-D (aka 1-4):
• Librarians are very busy and it is difficult to progress in B-D (aka 2-4)
• Appreciate that UC librarians can move up in salary without taking on more administrative responsibilities (12 dots)
• Appreciate that librarians can select activities within B-D (i.e. you don’t have to do everything)
• There is a perception that unspoken cultural and university librarian expectations impact reviews – (e.g. it is not clear what the UL really wants to see highlighted in files; there is an expectation to be involved in national organizations as one progresses through the steps, however it is not explicitly stated anywhere)
UC SAN DIEGO ACTIONS

Going forward, we would like to see:
• Generally, we would like to see more formal goal setting. We discussed the possibility of tying goals to reviews, but realized there would be a lot of issues related to how that would be implemented before we would feel comfortable with it. (7 dots)
• Reward creativity and innovation (11 dots)
• Reward “soft skills,” such as collaboration, communication and project management (we think that a successful project manager has to excel at “soft skills” (13 dots; one comment that “soft skills” does not mean “easy”)
• Reward initiative, process and effort, not only accomplishments (10 dots)

TOPIC 5 – Getting stuff where it needs to go: Discovery and delivery

TRENDS
From the regional meeting at UC Irvine:
• UC wide, our instruction efforts focus on discovery (5)
• WorldCat local is complicated by how difficult it is to access electronic content and how difficult it is to determine local availability. (8)
• Patrons expect that electronic materials have replaced print. (3)
• Mobile technology in all areas. They are a part of the job environment. We will provide mobile devices for students to use. (21)
• Challenge for us to help patrons in unfamiliar electronic environments via tools such as QP. (4)
• Use of archives for undergraduate teaching and research (4)
• Using resource collection funding to support document delivery (4)
• fee based delivery even though users expect free services (3)
• Digital delivery of any digital content (e.g. UC pays for any request, like Questia articles) (6)
• Federated searching that is less helpful than a user wants or needs (4)
• problems reconciling local v. more union-like catalogs. (6)

UC San Diego:
Mostly agree with all above.

UC San Diego Trends:

• Funding: (1)
• Bypassing library to get resources (e.g. Kindle books and other materials available for micropayments) (2)
• What to subsidize? (1)
o Pay to a determined threshold
• Does the user pay?
• Enhanced tools:
o Union vs local catalog – which to enhance? (5)
 Rare books/focus is on unique material—how do we include unique local info in WorldCat Local? (1)
 Connect multiple versions (5)
• otherwise too difficult for users (right now, records for print and e from different vendors are all separate
• Simply unified
• Marketing/purchasing journal articles rather than the entire journal
• User expectation for delivery is high
• Users want to use their own mobile devices (rather than ones the library provides) (15)
o We focus on developing apps to organize materials (4)
o Promote better (2)

UC SAN DIEGO ACTIONS:

• Develop tools and interfaces for user autonomy (13)
• Library get out of the way (e.g., stop putting up barriers that delay access) (5)
• More awareness of faculty and student expectations (5)
• Learn more about use of textbooks: faculty, students, bookstores (5)
• Make the process for making a decision transparent (i.e., is NextGen Melvyl Pilot here to stay? Who decides and how do we know?) (1)
• Call things “beta” not “pilot” (11)
• Develop texting reference (6)
• Provide things to people regardless of their technology level (4)
• Set realistic goals (4)
• More empirical data about our uses (e.g., what technology they own) (15)

UCIrvine Report

2010-07-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

The Library Task Force at UCIrvine has issued a lengthy report which we can hardly fail to blog. Irvine faces the budgetary challenges that are familiar to the rest of the UC system and the profession as a whole, however, the recommendations take a surprising turn. Foremost among the ways to save money is in the area of buildings. The recommendation calls for eliminating 30,000 asf of space currently allocated to the library which amounts to the entire sixth floor of the science library in return for savings of between $720,000 and $1,000,000 annually. The money savings will be realized by eliminating the leasing fees from the library budget and transferring them to other campus units that will occupy this space.

This recommendation is particularly remarkable for its divergence from the experience of other UCs. At UCDavis for example, recommendations to reduce hours at the library branches was vetoed by the administration as failing to save money and hurting the students. Another effort to close the Physical Science and Engineering Library for approximately the same reasons given by the UCIrvine report was blocked by outrage from the faculty and their direct appeal to the chancellor. Some also speculated that the cost of closing PSE and transferring its collection would outweigh any gains to the budget. UCIrvine's plan will bear watching in view of these considerations.

Eliminating library space raises its own problems which the report acknowledges. Chief among them is the survey result that study space in the library is one of its most highly prized qualities for users, especially students. The value of space lies in a place of quiet to study, an area for intellectual exchange and a symbolic retreat. The report suggests reorganization of the available space and the conversion of other spaces outside the library such as the student center as alternative solutions.

The report also cites the need for improved document delivery of print resources. This correlates a submerged theme in other literature that the difficulties that users face with libraries are less in finding useful resources as is often mentioned but in the seemingly more mundane process of retrieving them. The case of print document delivery is one case of a more general problem of navigating among multiple libraries, interlibrary loan interfaces, and SFX links.

Finally, in the midst of budgetary woes, the report issues the somewhat surprising recommendation to hire more staff. The practice that has been in place (familiar at other UCs) has been to reorganize by closing positions vacated by attrition and consolidating staff, but the report claims that the process will be inadequate shortly if it has not already and erodes the library's effectiveness.

Thus, the report reverses two common themes of budget control by calling for a reduction in space and an increase in staff.

UCIrvine: Library task force report, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, 2010.

http://www.evc.uci.edu/budget/BudgetTaskForces%20Reports%20home.html

We are not alone in our quest

2010-07-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

It appears the future of libraries has become a popular topic across the library world, and even further out to the NPR internet space (specifically, their Monkey See blog).

Library Journal reported snippets of the ALA 2010 conference that dealt with this question "At Session on the Future of Libraries, a Sense of Urgency" The primary speakers Joan Frye Williams and Stephen Abrams held out for a bright future for libraries. The theme of change held steady, so we should anticipate more on that theme as the topic evolves.

On a more encouraging note, NPR's Monkey See Blog offered up a post sweetly titled (pun intended)
Why The Next Big Pop-Culture Wave After Cupcakes Might Be Libraries. The reason's why the author feels libraries are posed to become a pop-culture phenomenon articulates a side we don't often publicize (Libraries get in fights) as well as areas with which we staunchly identify (Librarians know stuff). Then there's our work with the public, which the author maintains could make for an intriguing reality TV show.

UCSD Libraries... status

2010-07-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

LAUC-SD is holding a discussion on 13 July on “Future of the UC Librarian” regarding (1) Preparing the current and future generations to work in 21st Century settings; (2) The consequences of changing university pedagogy; (3) Acquiring unique materials assuming a UC one-copy universe; (4) Evaluating ourselves for promotion: What should count in the future?; (5) Getting stuff where it needs to go: Discovery and delivery.

The UCSD Libraries Strategic Planning Working Group is nearing completion of a draft strategic plan. ILL consolidation from multiple units into one unit will complete by September; document scanning continues in decentralized mode. In late May, UL Brian Schottlaender made a budget presentation to the Academic Senate Committee on Library, presenting our 5/10/15% budget reduction planning scenarios. He characterized their general reaction as "sober." The Committee Chair noted that the faculty will have to be made to feel the pain before they understand the magnitude of what the Libraries is up against. Campus decisions about reductions to the various divisions' support budgets have been made. Reductions are to be taken over the next three years and are not assessed evenly across divisions, ranging of 7% to 17%. Decisions about the budgets of the colleges will be made next, followed by decisions about "central service" budgets, including that of the UCSD Libraries. Since library staff know the budget reduction scenarios, waiting the campus decision about the Libraries’ three year budget is suspenseful.

July 1, 2010: Peter Brueggeman, UCSD Libraries

Researchers' use of academic libraries and their services: A report

2010-06-25T14:34:00.000-07:00

As part of the reports in the "The Digital Information Seeker" collection produced by OCLC, this one offers a list of observations. Desktop computers are ubiquitous among library users. Users have high expectations for rapid retrieval and will not pursue a reference that is difficult to retrieve. Researchers place high value on electronic journals but little on other digital resources. Librarians and researchers interviewed placed a high value on libraries for the foreseeable future. Respondents also suggested a more distinctive brand for libraries within their institutions.

Consortium of University Research Libraries, and Research information Network: Researchers' use of academic libraries and their services: A report, Research Information Network and Consortium of University Research libraries (CURL), London, 2007.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekerreport.pdf

Researchers and discovery services: Behavior, perceptions and needs

2010-06-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

This is another in a series of studies by OCLC to investigate user behavior. The angle of this one is to compare users at the beginning of their professional careers who have grown up in a digital environment with more senior people who have had to make the transition in their careers. Overall, the report claims that the similarities between the two were more striking than the differences and separate profiles did not emerge. Among the highlights of the findings were that users tended to start with internet tools like Google and then fall back to more traditional resources. The major source of dissatisfaction with library resources was the difficulty of retrieval wherein desirable information was not available through subscriptions. There was some difference between the sciences and the humanities with the sciences showing a higher level of satisfaction with the resources available and a higher level of comfort with the digital world. While journal articles were the most popular resources with 99.5% mentioning it as their primary resource, monographs were also popular with 83% naming them as their primary resource. These percentages add up to more than 100%, so it's not clear how this is possible. The report concludes by saying that access was more of an important issue than discovery.

Research Information Nework: Researchers and discovery services: Behaviour, perceptions and needs, Research Information Network, London, 2006.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekerreport.pdf

After December There's Always May

2010-06-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

This phrase was attributed to an anonymous German soldier at Stalingrad.... In the case of UC librarians, it relates to the May Revise of the state of California's budget. Coming off a year of budget struggles and cost-cutting measures, one of the major signposts for the budgetary future is the governor's May Revise to his proposed budget for the next fiscal year. This was favorable to UC although it was to be subjected to negotiation and revision by legislators. Nevertheless, a favorable May Revise was necessary since if the governor did not support higher education, it is unlikely that the legislators with their various constituencies would support it instead.

In the event, not only has the governor produced a favorable May Revise built around eliminating a one-time $350 million reduction to the UC budget from last year, but legislators have not opposed the governor's commitment to higher education. UCOP apparently feels confident enough to release a YouTube video featuring President Mark Yudof explaining the favorable aspects of next year's budget and encouraging more advocacy for the UCs by university staff to their legislators.

The YouTube video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1gXZVU6AE4

Have we really made it through the worst of the crisis? The irrepressible YouTube comments offer some skepticism about the president's announcement. The comments may all be true, however, it is still difficult to construe the announcement as bad news.

Sense-making the information confluence

2010-06-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

This puzzling title in a series of studies by OCLC on user behavior asks questions similar to those of a recent UC Davis focus group on reference service. Most of the answers to the questions were fairly predictable or as the study puts it, "contextually based." In seeking for information, faculty, graduate students and undergraduates all consulted their peers and made use of library and information resources with a somewhat greater tendency to consult peers at a higher level of professionalism. All groups expressed satisfaction with the internet (read Google) and the library although the library came in for complaints for difficulty in retrieving information--as opposed to finding it. The recommendation from those surveyed was to improve the library resources by making them more like Google.

Dervin, B., Reinhard, C. D., Kerr, Z. Y., Song, M., and She, F. C.: Sense-making the information confluence: The whys and hows of college and university user satisficing of information needs. Phase II: Sense-making online survey and phone interview study, Institute of Museum and Library Services School of Communication, Washington D.C. Columbus, OH, 2006.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekerreport.pdf

Must Study....

2010-06-17T12:02:00.001-07:00

We now see a second instance in what may be a trend of students responding to the UC budget crisis and reduced library services by making a demonstration about the library as place. In February, 2010, UCDavis students protested university budget reductions with a weekend sleepover in which they remained in the library from Friday until Sunday afternoon. Now, the L.A. Times reports that since June 1, Cal State L.A. students have been running a "People's Library" by setting up in front of the library doors when they close at 8pm and continuing through midnight.

Initially, the idea posed safety concerns and maintenance tried to drive away the students by shutting of their electricity. But as a result of discussions, the use of electric cords and other safety issues have been worked out, and the People's Library thrives. Organizers say they are surprised at the large turnouts on cold nights. Participants cite the need for electric power and quiet for study that are not available elsewhere for them. The library administration expressed sympathy but claimed that if the library were to extend its hours to accommodate students, services would have to be cut some other way to meet budget goals.

This protest and the similar one at UC Davis speak to the campus roles of libraries and seem to roll back attempts to minimize the importance of the library building as a part of its services.

Rivera, Carl. "Cal State L.A .Students Want to Study Past 8 Pm." Los Angeles Times 2010.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-calstate-library-20100607,0,1873030.story

Meltdown Librarianship

2010-06-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

Here at UCR we are concerned with critical dimensions relating to the future of UC libraries not yet specifically addressed in this conversation. We will discuss two in this post, and others in the future:

* the global economic melt-down and what this will mean to us;

* why management should empower its librarian experts;

Our feeling is that coming to terms with the first and working towards the second will be crucial in moving forward effectively.

I. The Global Context

The global economic meltdown, and its local avatar the meltdown in California, has already had dire effects on the public sector. Its coffers are rapidly being drained. This has resulted in drastic cuts to public education at all levels. We in the UCs are painfully aware of this. The chances of a turnaround in the funding of the public sector any time soon are slim to none.

For the foreseeable future we will all be asked to do a LOT more with a LOT less.

What does this mean going forward? Specifically:

• Fiscal crisis means that centralization and consolidation of services both within and among UC libraries and CDL will be increasingly and quickly catalyzed on all levels. The Shared Print Initiative and Next Generation Technical Services are new projects taking a system-wide, consolidated approach.

• Similarly, competition among the campuses will need to stop. Campuses can no longer operate as separate fiefdoms. We can’t afford not to change the way we think. If we don’t realize much more substantial cooperation, many of our libraries will cease to function. Given the backdrop of the meltdown, it must be understood that vast savings could be realized if more meaningful system-wide cooperation and consolidation occurred in, for example, systems development, content acquisition efforts, bibliographic instruction development, and management roles -- much of which is replicated on each campus, largely redundant, and which would be much more effective if properly consolidated.

• The relationship between CDL and the campuses will need to be fine-tuned so that decision-making can be more clearly collective. Uncoordinated and redundant efforts in expensive systems development (NextGen vs. the III OPACs), for example, is wasteful, hugely expensive and will need to stop.

All of this means that re-training and development of new skill sets, a result of consolidation and centralization as well as keeping up with new technological capabilities and the evolution of our patrons into them, will have to occur at a level we have not seen before if we are to stay afloat, much less retain relevance to the scholarly and educational mission. Many of us will be doing new things. While change is hard, it can be managed, if properly done.

LAUC must play a role in order to ensure the best possible outcome - and the time to start is now.

II. Flattening UC Library Management

In order for our libraries to transmute less into more, becoming nimbler, smarter, and more effective in the process, we believe that management will need to become flatter, more transparent, more capable of taking calculated risks, more cooperative with other libraries and CDL, and generally better able to empower library/librarian expertise at all levels.

Why flatten the management structure so that all librarians are empowered?

Because we have the experience and the expertise. Because two heads are better than one. Because problems arise in an instant, and solutions will have to be devised and implemented in real time.

LAUC should help re-think UC Library management so it can become more effective by taking input from all levels of library management and staff, and consulting outside experts as proves valuable, in order to develop new, more effective and empowering modes and models. We are not the only major library system facing these challenges. That doesn’t mean we should sit back and wait for others to solve our problems.

UCR definitely has more to say. But we know that lengthy blog posts turn people off.

We leave you with this -- More than ever before, it is highly recommended that LAUC cohere, now, as the substantial advisory body it was meant to be; that it begin to take risks on the level of the challenges affecting us; that it address sensitive, core issues systematically; and, that it make substantial contributions towards developing sensible models of the future for UC libraries and librarians. It is important to note that it is within LAUC’s purview to advise not only ULs but Provosts, Chancellors and Regents as well. LAUC has a critical and unique perspective, and it is uniquely positioned to be a major contributor in the dialogue on UC Library futures. Lets rise to the occasion.

Heidi Hutchinson, Steve Mitchell, John Bloomberg-Rissman

No More Mr. Nice Guy

2010-06-12T15:49:00.001-07:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that in the face of a 400% price increase by the Nature Publishing Group (NPG), the University of California has refused to accept the offer and without renegotiation may initiate drastic action including the suspension of subscriptions to all 67 journals, including Nature, published by the NPG. Furthermore, the California Digital Library (CDL) will initiate a boycott by UC faculty of publishing in any of those journals. UC faculty have a strong record consisting of thousands of articles contributed to the journals under discussion. With one of the largest journal publishers squaring off against the largest university system in the country, the case is seen as an important test of leverage in forming relationships between libraries and universities and information providers.

Howard, Jennifer. "UC Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs." The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 12 2010.

http://chronicle.com/article/U-of-California-Tries-Just/65823/

WorldCat Local at the University of California: Usability Testing: Round Two, Fall 2009

2010-06-11T15:39:00.000-07:00

As the name suggests, this report documents usability testing by NGMTS on WorldCat Local. The material is extremely detailed about moving a particular button here or there. Generally, one gets the impression that NGMTS is indeed addressing the issues of accessibility of electronic materials which loom large in library literature. The report itself states: "The most significant finding is that access to electronic resources is very substantially improved compared to our first round of Next Generation Melvyl Pilot tests, due largely to analysis and recommendations provided by UC about the priority of links."

Arcolio, Arnold, and Sara Davidson. Worldcat Local at the University of California: Usability Testing: Round Two, Fall 2009, 2010.

http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/oclc_docs/NextGenMelylFindingsApril2010.pdf

Ghostlier Demarcations: Large-Scale Text Digitization Projects and Their Utility for Contemporary Humanities Scholarship

2010-06-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

This report takes a closer look at the prospects for "digital humanities," a catchphrase embracing the potential for digitization to influence a large fraction of academic disciplines. In essence the promise of digitization lies in the electronic reproduction of full-texts that allows rapid access, searching, and combining of data. With language as its object of study, the humanities can benefit enormously from digital technologies that can speed up the analysis of language.

The study shows that the promise of digitization in theory is butting up against a number of barriers. Some are technological. Among the digitized collections in existence, it is easier to find works prior to 1923 than afterwards because of copyright conditions. There are problems with the quality of scanning stemming from the limitations of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Many documents are available in snippets. Collections do not overlap as much as one might suspect. In addition, there are financial restrictions on libraries. However promising the technology might be in future, there is insufficient funding available now to address the limits of digitization. It further appears that there are deeply ingrained cultural patterns in humanities research based in the use of print resources. For these reasons, the report, for the foreseeable future sees a mixture of print and electronic resources instead of a wholesale conversion to digitization.

Henry, Charles, and Kathlin Smith. Ghostlier Demarcations: Large-Scale Text Digitization Projects and Their Utility for Contemporary Humanities Scholarship. Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2010.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2010/06/do-libraries-face-an-inevitable-digital-future-and-just-what-is-the-cost-per-volume-of-books-versus-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LawLibrarianBlog+%28Law+Librarian+Blog%29

On the Cost of Keeping a Book

2010-06-09T17:25:00.001-07:00

This article purports to respond to the claimed objection of many librarians to the cost of storing digital materials. The article proposes instead that the cost of a print collection is much larger than supposed and furnishes an argument in those terms for a migration to digital materials.

The method used in the paper is reminiscent of a professor I had in library school who stated that after years of work in the profession she had determined that administration was the place to be because this unit made things happen. It did so by having command of the budget, and the way to use a budget most effectively, she said, was to figure out how to price everything. If it moved it had a cost; if it didn't move it also had a cost. In reviewing costs for a print collection, the report makes the point that is becoming commonplace in discussions of collections that preservation (low cost) through high density storage is inversely related to access. If you preserve something, it is cheaper but less available. Should you decide to circulate an item in remote storage, the cost is greater than if the item had been kept in a collection. So a gray area of expense is figuring out some means of determining the circulation of items so as to store them appropriately. Incidentally, Brian Schottlaender, UL at San Diego, addressing the Irvine assembly, cited one study that claimed that having 11 print copies of an item in existence was the optimum number for balancing accessibility and permanence....

The report goes over costs of maintenance, cleaning of facilities, and staff as a function of facility size. There are also involved financial calculations such as the claim that an item that costs $3.00 per year to store in current dollars, costs $100 to store in perpetuity because of current federal interest rates.... The various calculations require a better head than mine to understand in the time frame available. As a subjective impression, the discussion has the same glib erudition one sees in videos of various executives hauled before the public to explain why their management was way off base and their assumptions dead wrong. However, the citations of various studies in support appears to be in order. It's a substantial document worthy of consideration.

Courant, Paul N., and Matthew "Buzzy" Nielsen. "On the Cost of Keeping a Book." Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2010.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2010/06/do-libraries-face-an-inevitable-digital-future-and-just-what-is-the-cost-per-volume-of-books-versus-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LawLibrarianBlog+%28Law+Librarian+Blog%29

Can a New Research Library Be All-Digital?

2010-06-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

In an introductory piece to the collection containing this article, Charles Henry, president of the Council on Library and Information Resources, adopts a stratospheric perspective on the historical development of information. Citing the work of Stephen Toulmin, Henry proposes that we are at moment of critical change from an information ideal of Platonic abstractions that arose at the dawn of the Western intellectual tradition, to a new age in which information is dependent on circumstances and contingencies.

With this as its starting point, the article in question takes digitized information as one species of the new trends and explores its viability by speculating on whether an all-digital library would be possible now. The study that unfolds is a collection-centered evaluation of library services in the future. In terms of collection building, there is a critical divide between books and articles. Articles are, to a large extent already, in digital form already, and there is no reason why they should not transfer almost entirely into that format. Indeed, ease of retrieval through multiple interfaces, windows, and steps in the current SFX technology is a problem that has perhaps not been fully addressed by librarians--certainly not in our discussion. Yet, there is no reason to think that technological fixes for these problems will be available in short order. Books are much more intractable. Currently, the e-book technology has proven unattractive for numbers of independent reasons. These include the fact that publishers do not make them available through interlibrary loan, thus making them much less accessible than print now. The technology of readers of e-books is limited with many problems adapting to various kinds of formats. Readers are currently expensive and lack features for annotating text which many patrons want. A much cited study at Princeton University found e-books unpopular for these reasons. Supposing that these immediate technological problems could be solved, readers do not allow the same ease of sustained reading as print books, nor the ability to have multiple books open simultaneously, nor the capacity to scan. There are also cultural barriers from faculty who are attached to printed books and librarians who are unable to adapt their workflows and practices to processing e-books.

A concern that embraces all forms of digital information is their permanence, an issue that is central to the identity of libraries which, from their inception, were regarded as repositories of information. Supposing that books could be transferred into digital form, how can their permanence be guaranteed? Access is as uncertain as the duration of contracts until ultimately lies with the information provider. The material durability of the new form of information is unknown as well as that of the reading technology.

The access and cost of digital information has formed a significant tension between information providers on the one hand who wish to maximize their profits and libraries on the other which wish to maximize use (at minimal cost). The drive to resist the demands of information providers is one force behind the organization of libraries into consortia who can demand prices for journal subscriptions as well as e-books.

Questions of cost and accessibility have also promoted an uneasy and nascent relationship between faculty and librarians. Faculty, under continual pressure to publish have found the opportunity diminishing as peer-reviewed print journals get more selective (as a result of having their market share squeezed out by digitized information). Digital information does not yet have the same authority in the academy. In theory, the opportunity exists for universities and librarians to circumvent information providers by self-publishing in digital or print form. Yet, there are barriers to this too. On the faculty side, there is a resistance to any outside element involving itself in the practice of scholarship and questions of authority. On the library side, the technology, expertise and organization do not yet exist for digital publishing.

In terms of building design, a digital collection implies that library space will be much reduced. There is simply no reason for the extensive space required by a physical collection with the significant cost of upkeep.

The reduction of physical space implies a reduction in personnel. The paper sees the public services staff significantly reduced and fused with technical specialists who will be able to present digitized information in new ways and make it more accessible to users. The outlook for technical services is more grim. The centralized cataloging and metadata services established and a lowered standard of "good enough" adopted, there will be no place for technical services as we know it.

A digitized collection also has implications for patrons. The sciences are seen to be much more advanced in the use of digital information than the humanities which are characterized as being "on the same trajectory" but not as far along. For one reason, the humanities, practically and philosophically, are much more attached to books for which digitization is currently more difficult. This difference between academic areas is readily apparent to any teacher of EndNote, a bibliographic manager, for whom the students are overwhelmingly from the sciences. Could it be that the near future of librarianship will lie with the humanities?

The paper closes with a review of case studies featuring California's own UC Merced and Cal State Channel Islands campuses.

The prospects held out by the paper are not reassuring, at least not from the vantage point of stability. But they are not without a silver lining. Clearly librarianship is located at a nexus of great need by many inter-dependent constituencies. Information providers, for all their exasperating prices need librarians to disseminate information. Librarians need digitization in the face of shrinking budgets. Researchers need information. Nobody is in charge of the landscape that is opening up under these conditions. However, one constraint of the interesting times in which we live is that a passive attitude is not an option. If librarians do not take steps to determine their fate, some other interested party will do it for them. As the saying goes, "Power goes to those who know what they want." And it is only by much greater organization and unity that librarians will gain the self-awareness to find the goals they want and develop a machinery for reaching them.

Spiro, Lisa, and Geneva Henry. "Can a New Research Library Be All-Digital?". Washington D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2010.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2010/06/do-libraries-face-an-inevitable-digital-future-and-just-what-is-the-cost-per-volume-of-books-versus-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LawLibrarianBlog+%28Law+Librarian+Blog%29

NGTS Phase One Team Reports

2010-06-07T11:44:00.000-07:00

Lo and behold. In thinking about the future of the UC libraries in all their ramifications, one finds that much of this work is already being done. And it is a part of the work of streamlining and coordinating the system we work in to make ourselves aware of these initiatives and avoid duplicating them. Specifically, it is worthwhile on the blog to report on the progress of Next Generation Technical Services (NGTS), a project so large that it is easy for an individual librarian to perceive it as "present everywhere and visible nowhere." So a few words on the purpose of NGTS and its progress to date are in order.

NGTS describes its goal as: "[transforming] the technical services processes that acquire, describe, and preserve the wide variety of information resource types in the UC collections." This charge embraces approximately our discussion areas (2) Information Providers (5) Collections (6) Library Networks. Some more specific goals for NGTS out of a long list include:

-Speed processing throughout all technical services functions

-View technical serves as a single system-wide enterprise

-Define success in terms of user's ability to easily find relevant content

The point about ease of user accessibility is one that has loomed large in the literature and has not received a great deal of attention from our discussion thus far.

The NGTS effort which remains in the early stages is organized in a complicated structure of various areas and task forces. As of February 16, 2010, NGTS issued its "Phase One" reports consisting of summaries of the "environmental scans" conducted by its task forces. This material has issued in four recommendations.

Recommendation 1: Develop a financial infrastructure that facilitates intercampus business transactions in support of collaborative and systemwide processes and purchases.

This is acknowledged as the "major barrier" to moving ahead. Currently another task force to pursue this problem is being formed out of various stakeholders.

Recommendation 2: Develop an operational infrastructure and technical services that can function at an enterprise level in support of efficient, non-redundant, and collaborative collections services.

All-important here is the sense of "enterprise level" which the report itself describes as "the most important aspect of this recommendation." Regrettably, the sense of this term is not entirely clear from the report. It appears to be defined in opposition to both "isolated and overly explicit actions" by individual campuses and "systemwide ILS" which would not furnish the "optimum response." Enterprise level operations appear to refer to a kind of middle ground or idealized situation of thinking globally and acting locally. As the report puts it, "enterprise level technical services systems that share a common database that would enable greater efficiency and effectiveness." The sense of the term "enterprise" further suggests a kind of initiative and creativity at the local level. To pursue this, another task force is being charged to study various scenarios.

Recommendation 3: Redefine baseline information access for materials in non-Roman languages, special collections, archives, and digital formats with the focus on end user needs and effective and efficient processes. Propose new modes for organizing and providing access to these materials. Focus on outcomes that provide access to materials thtat are currently in cataloging backlogs.

The report claims that a standard of "good enough" is adequate for the availability of non-Roman materials which now constitute a large backlog of collections--presumably because of the difficulty in translating them. To this end, the report suggests new, more streamlined bibliographic descriptions that will take less time to process. A task group is being formed to study this matter.

Recommendation 4: Coordinate NGTS activities with the work of SOPAG and the Collections Development Committee in developing strategies for re-visioning collection development for the 21st century. Ensure that all forms of digital materials are included.

NGTS recognizes the need to avoid duplication! Accordingly, NGTS defers collection development policy to the Collections Development Committee (CDC). NGTS's specific role will involve "redefining, acquisitions, descriptions, and preservation policies and workflows." In other words processing the materials that the CDC decides to collect. As its action item, NGTS proposes to monitor the CDC and contribute where appropriate.

Next Generation Technical Services. 21st Century Emerging Resources: University of California, 2010.

http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about /uls/ngts/docs/Emerging_0310.pdf

NGTS Executive Team. Next Generation Technical Services - Next Steps: University of California, 2010.

http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/uls/ngts/docs/NGTSNextSteps100216rev100224.pdf

Social Networking Arrives

2010-06-03T15:47:00.000-07:00

Both UC Berkeley and UCSF have launched programs for accessing their websites from small mobile devices to increase accessibility to their collections. UCSF offers a range of capabilities for patrons accessing remotely. UC Berkeley allows patrons to search the library catalog with their cell phones and copy citations directly into the phones. More about each program can be found here:

UCSF

http://m.ucsf.edu/

UC Berkeley

http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b15767323~S1

UC Merced: Discussion of the Future

2010-06-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

When LAUC Merced met in April 2010, we had a great discussion on the future of libraries. As builders and managers of the first research library since the dawn of the information age, we believe UC Merced librarians bring an interesting perspective to any discussion on this topic. We are a library of the future. In fact, our library motto is, Not what other research libraries are, what they will be. What makes us a library of the future?

When the founding librarians at UC Merced drew up plans for the library, they seized the opportunity to design a building and an organization that could take full advantage of modern technologies and systems. From the outset, they knew that they could not afford to build a new library based on old traditions. Were they nostaligic about the reference desk that would never be? Were they wistful, knowing that the print monograph collection would never equal that of UC Berkeley or UCLA? No matter the answers to those questions - they didn't have a choice because the budget wouldn't allow for these luxuries.

To illustrate -- Imagine that you are shopping for a house. You are drawn to a charming bungalow that reminds you of the one you grew up in. It has a mature landscape and a mailman who delivers letters to a slot by the front door. Yes, the place has character. You feel at home there. It's comfortable. But can you afford to live in a house with ancient wiring, roots in the plumbing and vintage insulation?

Your other option is to build the home of your dreams. You have complete freedom of design, but a limited budget. You face many difficult decisions. What is essential? What can you live without? How does your modern lifestyle influence your design decisions? Will your design scale when your household grows? And can you live with the fact that the trees won't provide shade for a few years and that the mail will be delivered to a community box halfway up the street?

While building a library of the future from scratch may be easier than remodeling an existing one, in each case, it requires an acceptance of giving up some things to get other things. For example, at UC Merced, librarians knew from the outset that they could not afford to staff a reference desk. Abandoning the traditional model, UC Merced relies on well trained student assistants and paraprofessionals at the services desk, chat reference, and research consultation appointments with librarians to provide quality reference. We have collected data from our campus that supports user satisfaction with chat reference. This assessment, as well as system wide data suggesting that 24/7 chat is becoming one of UC's busiest reference points gives us confidence that we are on the right track, and serving our community well. We acknowledge that there will be some not served without a reference desk. The new model is not perfect, but it is good enough and it is mandated by fiscal realities.

Our library is futuristic in that more than 85% of our books are electronic. There has been a steady march to the use and acceptance of ebooks in academic libraries despite the imperfections of the platform. Why? The advantages of electronic access are obvious, but there is also the reality that libraries are running out of room. The SOPAG Task Force on UC Libraries Collections Space Planning Report makes it clear that we must reduce the system wide growth rate of print collections. Ebooks are part of the solution to this critical space issue. We recognize that not everyone will be well-served by ebooks. But given the environment, we opt for ebooks because this platform will provide information to most of our users most of the time. Ebooks will continue to evolve and improve only if we are willing to use them and create a market that will encourage publishers to adopt Springer-like usability features. Ebooks are not perfect, but they are good enough and getting better.

Our library is only five years old and our shelves half empty, but we share system wide concerns about space. We enthusiastically support initiatives to eliminate duplication in the UC collection and to develop models that will allow shared print acquisitions and the management of shared collections. UC Merced fully embraces and operates on the concept of one University of California Library Collection. Yes, we rely on our sister campuses to fill in the gaps of our young library, but we also make a significant contribution to the shared UC collection. In fact, for every ten books we borrow from other campuses, we loan seven. Surprised? In what can only be characterized as collection development of the future, Jim Dooley, aka the collection department, uses YPB and faculty requests to develop a highly relevant print collection that actually circulates. Much of Jim's success can be attributed to early faculty buy-in of the collection model and the library/faculty relationships cultivated in the ensuing years since the opening of the campus. Our collection model required that we give up the tradition of highly specialized collecting by subject bibliographers. We recognize that it is not perfect, but it is good enough and we believe that it will work on other campuses in the UC system.

The collection development model at UC Merced is a great example of our organizational philosophy which suggests that librarians should be managers who spend their time working on projects and innovations that have a big payoff. Librarians of the future don't have time to do repetitive tasks, i.e. most collection development which can be outsourced, and most reference desk questions which can be handled by other staff. The skill set of librarians must evolve with the current demands of the library environment. That means that librarians must be continually willing to master new technologies, develop new work flows and learn skills related to project management. The organizational culture at UC Merced supports this philosophy by investing in the professional development of librarians who are expected to manage and lead.

When we speak about the innovative practices of our library it's not unusual for our UC colleagues to listen politely and then dismiss what we're doing, suggesting that it would never work in a bigger library. With all due respect, we disagree. While we expect to add more librarians and staff as our campus grows, we do not expect significant changes to our model. We understand that it was much easier for us to build a library of the future from scratch than it would be to retrofit an existing library structure or organization. But perhaps our model can be useful to other campuses as they move forward and make difficult decisions about what they are willing to give up to become libraries of the future. We welcome your questions and comments.

Lightning Tech Talks

2010-06-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

The LAUCD Program Committee at UC Davis recently held a program (5/28) of Lightning Tech Talks to highlight new technologies among librarians. The format, allowing 5 minutes for each presentation and questions, was based on the recent trend in conferences for "Pecha Kucha" a Japanese term translated literally as "chit-chat." It is designed to cut through padding and present information rapidly and informally. Less indeed proved to be more as the hour designated for the event was filled to bursting with presentations and questions. In light of the professional calls for social networking and other forms of communication technology, it was interesting to view the tools used by librarians. As a general observation, it appeared that librarians are indeed active and innovative in their use of technology. Tools included a use of Google Forms as a spreadsheet; innovative uses of twitter; tools for arranging and holding meetings over distances, time zones, and language barriers; debugging tools for web pages; cataloging tools and more. A link to the event is provided below. However, much of it had to do with professional work and communication between other professionals, a breakout technology to interact with the vast activity of social networking among students and patrons did not appear and has yet to be found.

A wiki page for the event can be found at:

http://staff.lib.ucdavis.edu/wiki/index.php/Program_Committee/Lightning_talks

Admin Strikes Back

2010-05-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

In response to the publication that was the subject of the last post, "The Library in Crisis," the administration of the UC Davis library wrote their own statement of the case. Such a specific engagement of issues is not common in an atmosphere of conflicting policies and budgetary claims. In compressed form, the responses to the statements of the original document are as follows:

1. UCDavis has plunged in the ARL rankings from 25 to 60 where other UC libraries have maintained or improved.

ARL rankings do not tell the full story and must be considered in the context of the institution. Also, most of the other UC libraries have declined in rank in the same time period.

2. UCDavis's budget should be larger than other campuses because of its diversity of disciplines.

The proportion of lab science at UC Davis compared to other campuses has declined suggesting that UC Davis's requirement for a relatively larger library budget has decreased. Moreover, the UC Davis library has gathered a reserve fund of money for special needs.

3. Insufficient support for the Level 5 collection in Enology.

There is no backlog in purchasing materials for this collection.

4. Lack of essential titles for history and delays in interlibrary loan.

Some titles were omitted as part of clerical error during a shift in approval plans, and the missing titles have been purchased. Interlibrary loan rates at UCDavis are comparable to the other UCs.

5. Dissolution of the government documents department.

The subject specialists are available for consultation, and the consolidation of this department is consistent with a general trend among libraries. The trend is driven by the fact that 98% of government documents are available online, obviating the need for a physical collection.

Henry, Helen, and Gail Yokote. "UC Davis General Library Observations Related to 'The Library in Crisis.'" University of California, Davis, 2009.

The Library in Crisis

2010-05-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

A report has recently come to my attention, written by a faculty task force at UC Davis purporting to outline a crisis situation at the campus library. As part of its overview, it touches on many themes of the future of the libraries in our discussion.

In a subject based on statistics, the report actively and instructively attempts to sift through them for conclusions. It claims that the library has suffered a long-term trend of underfunding that predates the current budget crisis. While expenses associated with new technologies have grown rapidly in the last 15 years, the UC Davis library's budget has remained stable at around $16 million. This equates to an effective loss of funding. Coincident with this decline in funding, the report cites a precipitous drop in ACRL ranking from the top 25 in the 1980s to a current position of around 60, among the bottom of the UC's. Underfunding is further exacerbated, according to the report, by the fact that UC Davis has an enormous range of disciplines to serve--greater than any of the other UC's and possibly any in the nation! Presumably this range derives from the campuses background agriculture and veterinary medicine although what these disciplines are and why UC Davis should have so many is not spelled out in the report.

To assess the damage from underfunding, the report makes a case study of several departments. The Enology collection in the Biology/Agriculture department is a Level 5 collection designed to gather everything of interest and shortfalls in its budget impact the entire world as a result.

The mathematics department has been forced to cut back on key journals in its field.

As a result of underfunding, researchers in history no longer have access to major reference resources and books and interlibrary loan introduces critical delays in their work that sets them at a disadvantage compared to their peers.

The consolidation of the government documents department into other departments has made it difficult to consult with experts over the material.

For allowing this situation to come to pass, the committee blames the faculty who have allowed their library committees to lapse and the library administration for failing to communicate historical trends. For its recommendations, the report calls for increased funding necessary to restore the place of the UC Davis libraries to the top 30 in the ACRL rankings and to set up an active system of faculty and library committees with regular communication. The report ends with a warning that without access to the digitized information that contains the essence of current research, scholars "do not have a chance" to be competitive.

The report can be viewed at:

Waldron, Andrew, et al. The Library in Crisis: University of California, Davis, 2008.

http://academicsenate.ucdavis.edu/documents/library_task_force_report_072308.pdf

College students' perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources

2010-05-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

This is a subset of a broader study that is focused on college students. This group tends to use the library more than other groups although, according to their own statements, less than before as a result of the internet. An overwhelming percentage began with internet search tools before moving to the library. A higher percentage than other populations use the library for studying. College students also retain a faith in the value of a library as an ideal and a potential source of valuable information. Their biggest recommendation is to make the library more physically convenient. More details can be found at:

De Rosa, Cathy. College Students' Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources: A Report to the OCLC Membership. Dublin, OH: OCLC Online Computer Center, 2006.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekerreport.pdf

Marian the Cybrarian

2010-05-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by an English professor, mounts a stirring defense of librarians and libraries--even claiming that the library profession has never been so vital and valuable as now when it is facing budget cuts.

The article begins with personal observations including the "beer test": "They are among the most likeable people you'll find at any college. They have the intellectual curiosity of academics without the aloofness and attitude often displayed by professors."

The book moves on to summarize a recent book spelling out the case for libarians in the future:

Marilyn Johnson. This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (HarperCollins, 2010).

Much of the review is given over to the response of the director of the Harvard Library to an unnamed scientist who suggested that Harvard deal with its budget problems by dumping the contents of the Widener Library in the Charles River. The response, exhibiting "balance" and "control" reviews a number of issues familiar to the library community. Of unexpected prominence is the suggestion for faculty and even student researchers to post their finding directly online--with the aid of librarians--and thus circumvent the time-consuming and exclusive avenue of journal publishing. The full article can be found here:

Benton, Thomas H. "Marian the Cybrarian." Chronicle of Higher Education May 20, 2010.

http://chronicle.com/article/Marian-the-Cybrarian/65570/

Perceptions of libraries and information resources

2010-05-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

This summarizes a report commissioned by OCLC on user behavior gathered from around the world. It draws its results from a worldwide survey and amounts to a hymn to the information explosion. Users report satisfaction with the internet and a preference for it over the library for its rapid, convenient access to information that is considered satisfactory. Conclusions for libraries consist of:

(1) Libraries are perceived as being about print books.

(2) Libraries should better advertise their presence and could offer different formats and content.

(3) Libraries are advised by the respondents to increase their collections.

A longer summary of the report can be found at:

De Rosa, Cathy. Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources: A Report to the Oclc Membership. Dublin, OH: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, 2005.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekerreport.pdf

UCDavis: Discussion of the Future

2010-05-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

Future of UCDavis Libraries

1. Reference

a. Need to identify the population we are serving recognizing that there are different needs for each e.g. instruction for on-campus undergrads vs. information for community members throughout the state of California; patrons throughout the world

b. Need to define the reference service; for example does it include outreach functions as well as service to individual users.

c. Currently an evaluation/assessment program for reference has been sketched out that includes surveys at the reference desk and a plan for focus groups. After some delays this program is scheduled to resume in May 2010. Some issues for the evaluation effort include:

* identifying user needs and behaviors and their variations between campuses

* differentiating between the wants that users express and the needs that we can identify as professionals

* making full use of the data collected on user behavior; details tend to be compressed or eliminated in the way that the data is compiled

* a more sophisticated analysis of the data is necessary

d. The defining development of the last couple years in reference has been a reduction of service points in which the government documents, information, and bioag desks have been closed and their staff consolidated at the former hss desk which now serves as the reference desk of the Shields Library. Some discussion remains on the extent to which this has been done at the other branch libraries. Issues regarding consolidation are:

* driven by budget reduction to compensate for attrition now and in the near future

* reduction in demand for reference depending on which numbers are used

* lack of availability of librarians to users

* inefficiency in terms of increased off-desk reference

* dilution of subject expertise

* lack of responsiveness to subject users

e. Alternatives

* chat reference - working with remote campuses not efficient; staffing issues pose a barrier to more service

f. Optimal future:

* relating reference service to the overall mission of the library and university

* more elaborate training for reference personnel

* exploration of technologies for remote reference such as chat reference and online tutorials and guides

* an expectation of a new hybridization of reference with instruction, access services, and other units

* restoration of subject-specific service points

2. Relationship with Information Providers

a. Need to question the relationship between librarians and vendors

* the role of finances

* interface design

* types of pressure to be deployed on vendors to gain better service and products; working on the advisory board of a product can be fruitful

* Davis has a large cluster of liaisons with vendors

* additional usage data from vendors necessary

b. The distributed model at both the library and the particular vendor can cause challenges. For example, the parties who are involved in the negotiation are often different than those who have direct experience with user interaction, or, on the vendor side, are involved with development of the product.

* the interest of universities and database providers does not coincide and needs to be better understood; vendors want more money, libraries want better service

* the role of open access materials needs to be considered: free vs. good; a tendency for quality sources to be disregarded in favor of free ones; Google, Wikipedia; lack of permanence and control of resources; the details of the Google digitization effort are relevant

c. The role of instruction in promoting web sources through source evaluation techniques is important for users

d. The trend in this area appears to be towards outsourcing with its pluses and minuses

* implications for the future of interlibrary loan

e. Optimal Future: More influence with database vendors to provide user-friendly products at lower prices. Single interface for all databases. Finding role for ILL in future when more material available as e-books and restricted. Need to preserve fair use. Work to turn the University into more of an information provider through e-scholarship e.g. journals, research units, and conferences. Marketing of these products is important. The university can produce textbooks and instructional materials for students, and the library can assist with best practices.

3. Personnel

a. Outgrowths of the budget crisis

* more work is expected in the same time interval as before

* subject divisions are being eroded

b. New relationship between librarians and non-librarian staff; e.g. "library professional" is a super LA-5

* work needs to be done on succession planning and mentoring

* An issue is to consider at what point it is necessary to rehire as opposed to reassign positions within the library

c. New opportunities for professional development of staff.

* Request P.I. status for librarians as many grants for AF employees are not accessible as P.I. status is required before applying for the grant (travel grant).

* pathways for coursework and additional degrees

* manage tension between generalist/specialist

d. Optimal Future: As the lowest-staffed library in the UC system, Davis needs an increase in personnel to preserve the level of expertise necessary for a post-doctoral institutions. The current system of consolidation and reduction of personnel results in bad referrals and inefficiency. Regardless of the ingenuity in doing more with less, there is a level of staffing, we can't below without a critical loss in quality. More support needs to be given for staff to pursue formal training and certification.

4. Technology

a. communications technology: e.g. libguides, Second Life, chat reference, Skype (bibliographer groups), Facebook, YouTube,

* new hardware to support communication and mobility (headsets, microphones, webcams for live video, choice of laptop vs. desktop computer)

* training & technology support for new project initiatives and content creation: opportunity to explore the use of new and old technologies in a "sandbox environment" to foster our in-house creativity, collaboration and peer-to-peer learning (requires rethinking of budget and time allocations, initiated by librarians with systems support)

* security/permissions issues stand in the way of using some useful technologies; (these restrictions, in some cases, originate at the campus level)

* social networking may not be relevant to the library's future; publicity tools not reference

* tutorials limited by rapid change of databases which make them irrelevant; tutorials may be viable if limited to major resources or perhaps as links to tutorials by vendors

* library chat for each reference desk: needs to be localized to campus rather than current 24/7 which brings in questions throughout the system; chat should incorporate text messaging

* Next Generation: inadequacy of Next Generation interface; overwhelming resource which floods the user with information; retain local catalog with local notes, easy search of UCDavis titles; improved accuracy/precision of a local catalog

b. preservation/archiving technology: currently lack infrastructure to support digitization (produce, access), onsite; increased coordination necessary with CDL

* benefits to a shared workflow in cataloging and preservation throughout the system

* shared cataloging (CDL) being overwhelmed; need improved coordination between campuses; revamped so that process expedited with equal contributions; a SWAT team approach necessary to deal with backlogs

c. Instructional technology

* Endnote offers opportunities for new involvement with research practices

* use of clickers under consideration

d. optimal future: local catalog, improved infrastructure to support digitization; shared cataloging; mobile versions of catalog and small mobile applications to support general library research (undergraduates)

5. Collections

a. system vs. local collections

* books need local/core collections; system-wide collection for journals only

* approval plans under review; trend in libraries is to evaluate usage of print monograph similar to electronic resource review; changes in scholarly monograph publishing may signal evolution of approval or blanket plan to something more patron-driven for time of need for certain categories of material

* analysis of unique aspects of collection especially regard to the lack of permanence in digitized collections

b. reduce local footprint

* cannot reduce the footprint but must expand to support growth of programs at the university and larger volume of publications; ebook vendors are not available for this purpose; the local collection needs to be able to support growth.

* On the other hand, SOPAG collection space planning report claims that no more space is available. Libraries need to reach a 0% growth rate within five years to fit within available space. Long-term plans call for de-duplication of system holdings.

* cuts have already put significant strain on preservation and binding. More money and personnel will be needed in future to maintain the materials that we have.

c. optimal future: Physical constraints require a streamlining of collections throughout the system, but local collections should be shaped to support growth of programs on campus as much as possible.

6. Buildings

a. consolidation

* space already tight before the proposed closure of PSE

* while the Davis libraries have not reduced hours in response to budget cuts like other UC campuses, the hours are already low; they should be restructured to match times of student use

b. Rearrangement of space

* information commons forming on the first floor where there are no reference desks

* partnership with other entities to support a visual media commons (space, hardware, software, librarians and technical assistants) integrating media access and creation with media literacy topics taught by librarians.

* more group study rooms are necessary and more outlets for laptops

* fundraising: the building can provide sources for funds with the sale of merchandise, food, and space rentals for outside events.

c. optimal future: preserve the space that we have and redesign for efficiency to enable enhanced study environment for students and sale of products to generate funds for the library.

7. Campus Roles

a. Instruction

* UWP instruction

* integrated courses, subject specialists

* Re: Search Start paper consulting service

* classes for Learning Skills Center: STEP, term paper workshops

* orientations for new students and graduate students in all departments

* online tutorials and other tools under development

* EndNote to teach research and citation management at all levels.

* subject specialists given new freedom to design subject guides.

b. Outreach

* liaison work

* marketing

* advertising with fliers/ads to dorms

* reference service

* campus committees: academic federation committees, campus administrative advisory committees, LAUC

* webpage: blogs

* consulting: technical services (meta-data, preservation); archives/special collections

c. Optimal future:

* continued robust activity in existing areas

* sponsored seminars with academic focus; cultural events

* library research awards: writing contests

* formalizing/institutionalizing instruction with credit classes,

* technology: mobile bulletin boards in library lobby

* expansion into new areas of service: EndNote to improve research skills

8. Library Networks

a. ILL UCs

b. shared cataloging within UC

c.national cooperative cataloging

d. UCs repository of research programs in the state by act of legislation

e. CDL participation in national/international digitization

f. expansion outside of organizational boundaries to regional operations e.g. to include CSUs, other consortia

g. chat reference - national/international networks

h. networks to include public libraries, community colleges

i. Networks are driven by cost savings and have adverse effects on local institutions. As an example Google Books does not digitize anything with individual copyright. Many networked efforts pose problems in areas of preservation, omission, poor-quality of work

j. Optimal future - continued expansion in scale and cooperativity of networks with attention to preserving local specificity of collections.

9. Organizational Cultures

a. Communication issues with library administration

* Structure of library bureaucracy needs to reexamined; the library management contrasts with the rest of academia in remaining static while deans and department heads rotate

* There needs to be improved lines of communication

* Quicker responses

* administration counterclaims: communication efforts ignored, need two-way communication with timely input to administration in the spirit of the Principles of Community; difficult, unavoidable decisions should not be cause for shooting the messenger

* dangers of toxic self-perpetuating culture of negativity and inaction among librarians/staff

* free-form committees offer advantages over rigidly agenda-driven ones

* previous discussion indicates an information bottleneck in the practice of filtering communications from administration to staff through department heads; suggested remedies were to publish all minutes and to use notation clearly indicating action items, this has been unevenly adopted.

* need to consider ways to create an innovative environment that is proactive and encourages a sense of creativity and freedom to explore solutions to our challenges

* need to find ways to cultivate library community for example through social events such as ice cream socials and planned retreats

b. Communication with systems

* claims that Systems restricts access to technology and does not respond adequately to requests

* counterclaims that Systems acts to maintain security and must deal with technical challenges that are not apparent outside

c. Optimal future

* Improved communication with regular face-to-face meetings among parties involved e.g. Systems representation on RISC.

* A "Velvet Revolution" of an improved communal culture with frequent social activities

UCLA: Discussion of the Future

2010-05-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

Summary of LAUC-LA Informal Meeting 4/7/10

Diane Mizrachi, LAUC UCLA Division Chair

This year, Statewide LAUC has initiated a dialog among its members on topics of interest to our future. On April 7, 2010, approximately 25 LAUC-LA members met for an informal meeting to look at two specific issues and how they impact the future and can be improved upon. The first issue is ensuring and improving upon the value of librarian professional expertise by the university community, and the second looks at the development of a new generational catalog – Next-Gen Melvyl. Below is a summary of our discussions.

In the values discussion we identified what specific expertise we posses and want to be valued for, and then created a list of suggestions. These questions may seem obvious but it is important from time to time to take stock of what we do and what we would like others to value about what we do. At the LAUC Southern Regional meeting at UC Irvine on May 6, UCSD UL Brian Schottlaender discussed a study he did recently of academic library job postings which reflects the evolution of skills and knowledge needed in our profession. These kinds of studies and introspection are important for us when visualizing and planning towards the future of libraries and librarianship.

Discussions identifying our expertise seemed to cluster around three general areas: expertise we have acquired through our studies in MLIS/MIS programs and on-the-job experience, subject expertise, and collaborations.

What we do and expect to be valued for:
• Our expertise above the layman acquired through our professional training and experience:
o Knowing how information is organized, stored, accessed
o Fluency in all sorts of information tools and resources,
o Knowledge of information vocabulary, collections
o Organizing, classifying information, integrating and evaluating
o Recognition of the "Invisible substrate" principle (by Marcia Bates): people don't realize that there's a science to information organization - having subject expertise doesn't necessarily mean one knows how to organize it best for retrieval & use
o Long term commitment to viability and direction of our collections, researchers have a short-term view.
o Library instruction to end-users and staff:
 we plan, prepare, implement and evaluate our library instruction--help people learn how to learn
o Expertise with e-resources - licensing, acquiring, delivering, & maintaining are more complex than with print
o Scholarly communication issues & intellectual property
 faculty perspective--where they publish affects what we can buy in the future
 student perspective—plagiarism
o Training new librarians, new professionals and interns
o Functional expertise as important as subject expertise--undergrad services, metadata, cataloging, etc.
o Because we have mental models of information organization from our training, we can apply these models to new situations
o Create new standards--technical services; how to fix something when broken; integrating new materials into existing;

• Subject expertise
o Subject specialty becoming more important as general surfing becomes easier & more possible.
o Language expertise – our ability work with information in a multitude of languages
o tension between librarians who may make recommendations related to specific subject areas, and those who don't--partly dependent on subject expertise of the person--e.g., synthesizing information

• Collaborations
o The more we work with faculty and students the more they respect us.
o We offer different perspectives on information than researcher – more holistic
o Networking to other collections & libraries
o Groups with different expertise work together
o Bringing people into shared spaces (web, 2nd life), commons

Current and Future Needs and Suggestions
• We get questions from the larger community because we’re UCLA. We need to be valued for our role in the community as a whole.
• Need an atmosphere where ideas and creativity can flow without fear of reprisal
• Every grant should have a dollar amount and librarians written in as personnel
• More investment in preservation of digital data
• Need to highlight our instruction expertise to make this expertise more visible.
• Partner with faculty in teaching classes
• Increase collaboration and partnering across library, campus and off-campus communities
• Partner with businesses to improve search functionality--cataloging, instruction--librarian as search engine
• Find a mechanism for librarians to serve on relevant faculty committees
• Need greater communication to the university community about what we do and our value
• Great publicity and marketing of librarians
 Personalize the librarians so we’re not just an institution
• Greater extension of the integration of IL into the general curriculum
• Investigate the adoption of the Management and law Library models of integrating/embedding librarian into other departments
• Encourage more transparency between librarians & administration and vice-verse
• Create a forum for non-LAUC library specialists (e.g. may be MLIS holders but position not in librarian series)
• LAUC should take a bigger role in reminding admin that we are here to advise them on services and policies--check in with us--we are the ones who work directly with users and want to provide assistance in making decisions
• Implement student fees for library services (address student-fee to library services)
• Education
• Information universe is increasing in complexity, not decreasing
 Continue professional training and development
• We need to keep updated with newest developments in searching, licensing, purchasing of information in all formats

Questions for Further Discussion
• Should we re-think our status and promote acquiring faculty status?
• Merging and changing of units and roles has created fewer opportunities for librarians to lead nationally and internationally--less subject specific areas--e.g., government docs, how can we reverse this?
• Collocation principle has slipped – do we even still value that? Libraries would say yes but how do we convey that?

Issue 2: Next-Gen Melvyl

Pros:
• faceted searching; many international institutions are listing their materials; one place to search for information, books, journals, articles
• Only catalog that offers my library, UC libraries, OCLC libraries, all libraries
• Will be possible to see all in-process records
• Each campus may adapt default display
Cons:
• federated search doesn't look for articles from all dbs we license

What are the most important pieces of advice that you would give to the designers of Next-Gen Melvyl?
• Implement an Authority Control for author listings
o Attend to the de-duping problem
• Implement Browse Headings Searches for authors & subjects (like our current OPAC)
• Change display from relevance to alphabetical by author name or subject heading
o Sort facet searching by author name or other reasonable way, not by # of records
• Provide guidance on how to search vernacular for materials published in non-Latin scripts
• Make smaller icons, so less scrolling needed
• If reporting locally, UCLA materials should be the default display
• Implement options for focused searches--Catalog only, Catalog + articles, Articles only
• Include RLF paging mechanism
• Include notice to users that it doesn't search all licensed databases
• Make it easier to find E-books:
• Add types of searches--
o search for specific item--e.g., Nature (journal)
o Call number
o better book series searching
o Searching: known item or subject – “start of” for titles, subjects, & keyword in subject
• Graphic design of records daunting--info spread out all over page; hard to figure out what sort of item you're looking at
• Ability to select items from search list to email, rather than have to go into record to email
• Option to display brief or detailed record
• Allow log-on users to do customize their displays

UCSF Response to UC Commission on the Future

2010-05-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

The Librarians Association of the University of California (LAUC) is an official unit of the University charged with advising system-wide, campus, and library administration on the best course for the continued vitality of the University's libraries. More information about the purpose and history of LAUC is available here: http://gort.ucsd.edu/lauc/about.html.

On behalf of the San Francisco Division of LAUC, I am writing to respond to the first round of recommendations posted by the Working Groups of the UC Commission on the Future. This is a follow-up to the statements made by librarians representing many LAUC divisions last fall, as representatives of the working groups visited individual campuses. Those statements stressed the importance of a vibrant library system for the continued vitality of UC.

Without a central place to access and utilize the fruits of UC's scholarly endeavors, the impact of UC's research efforts will be minimized. Furthermore, the next generation of leaders-today's students-will not excel without the benefit of a robust library system.

The working groups have put forth many ideas to ensure a brighter future for UC. This was an enormously difficult task accomplished within a short period of time. Of the recommendations offered, we would like to suggest two areas in which librarians could be valuable partners:

* Education and Curriculum Working Group: "Continue timely exploration of online instruction in the undergraduate curriculum, as well as in self-supporting graduate degrees and Extension programs." Many UC librarians today develop online instructional modules as supplements to individual consultations or classroom-based workshops. Given the plethora of online resources provided and managed by UC Libraries, in many cases today there is less need to visit physical libraries than previously. Librarians have responded by developing the capacity to interact with patrons within their own contexts, and this expertise would be useful as UC contemplates modes of online instruction.

* Research Strategies Working Group: "Create multicampus, interdisciplinary 'UC Grand Challenge Research Initiatives' to realize the enormous potential of UC’s ten campuses and three national laboratories on behalf of the state and the nation." This is a transformative, bold idea. Librarians can assist in developing the infrastructure to manage such a large project, from creating the digital repositories required to store the records of these investigations centrally to providing the skilled staff to manage them. One possible approach would be for the California Digital Library, which serves all 10 campuses, to distribute the results of these investigations on its eScholarship platform. This would maximize impact for the state and nation, and world, because eScholarship is an open platform available for viewing by all.

We offer these suggestions in a spirit of genuine collaboration and in recognition of the difficult days for UC that lie ahead.

Sincerely,

Marcus Banks

LAUC-SF Chair, 2009-2010

marcus.banks@ucsf.edu

Library Barbecue

2010-05-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

The issue is the viability of libraries and the question is: "As higher education confronts shortages in hungry times, will officials who previously viewed the library as a sacred cow think it's time for a barbecue?"

The answer according to Barbara Fister in an article in Library Journal.com is: "Don't light the charcoal yet." Fister tested a number of provocative and alarmist statements about the future of libraries posted in TAIGA, a listserve for AUL's. These included: "Librarians who are not productive will be reassigned or fired." These were tested against the views of non-librarian university administrators and the conclusion is that administrators were more optimistic about the future of libraries than librarians themselves. Administrators cited the high use of libraries by faculty and staff; the importance of those with specialized knowledge to help research; the value of a physical space for diverse areas of the university to interact in the process of learning; and the vital importance of the library to the mission of the university and higher learning in general. Dan Greenstein of the UCs was cited as the only one surveyed who was a university administrator who also had a library background. His views which have provoked some controversy is that libraries will continue to thrive but mainly in the form of a single, mostly digitized repository. Campus libraries will be reduced to special collections for local holdings.

The message from administrators generally is not to despair but not to be complacent either. Administrators called on librarians to be more forceful in making their case for the value of libraries.

Fister, Barbara. "Critical Assets: Academic Libraries, a View from the Administration Building." Library Journal.com (2010).

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726948.html

Campus Learning Spaces

2010-05-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

A recent study at the University of Washington on qualities of optimal learning spaces invites some attention as that institution is comparable to many of the UC campuses. The study gathered data from a variety of sources including surveys, focus groups, and usage statistics of various kinds. The results seem to validate the notion of an information commons. Specifically, the recommendations were to maintain traditional general access computers while removing obstacles to the use of laptops. In particular, the study called for multiple, convenient recharging stations. The physical environment was also important with users calling for quiet, "comfy" chairs, and spaces for both individual and group study. The complete report can be viewed at:

http://www.washington.edu/lst/news/2010/techsurvey_report

UL's Corner: San Diego

2010-05-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

In his keynote address at the Irvine Assembly on the future of librarianship at UC on May 6, Brian Schottlaender, UL at UC San Diego, discussed some issues that have appeared in our ongoing discussion. First, the indication is that the system is rapidly running out of physical space for its collection and for this reason as well as for increased efficiency, the trend is for shared repositories among libraries. A new entity is emerging called the "collective collection" which links together shared repositories. While offering some promise, the collectivization of materials raises numbers of significant questions about responsibility, decision-making and vast logistical problems that include matters of access and permanence. (One study suggests that exactly 11 copies of a document assure its permanence!) One example of the collective collection is the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) composed of the UC as well as other major universities and extending to Canada.

Brian also discussed the profile of the future librarian. The qualities that have appeared in other discussions of this topic have now been amplified to an almost superhuman level of capability and diversity. The future librarian will be a generalist with multiple advanced credentials, versatile, self-motivated, a team player, possessed of good technological and communicative skills, comfortable with business models and adept at strategic and tactical thinking. These qualities have been distilled from a number of studies. The powerpoint slides from Brian's presentation can be viewed here:

http://www.ucop.edu/lauc/assembly/spring_2010_schottlaender.ppt

Study of Information Seeking Behavior

2010-05-10T14:17:00.001-07:00

OCLC researchers analyse and synthesise studies of digital information seekers

Library information provider OCLC Research has announced that its scientists, in partnership with JISC, have released a study titled 'The Digital
Information Seeker: Report of Findings >From Selected OCLC, RIN and JISC User Behaviour Projects'. The report seeks to analyse and synthesise 12 separate
studies to make it easier for information professionals to better understand information-seeking behaviours of library users. The study, authored by Dr.
Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Dr. Timothy J. Dickey, OCLC Research, was funded by JISC, and was presented during the JISC Annual Conference in London in
April.

The report is here http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/04/07/digital-information-seekers-new-report-analyzes-and-synthesizes-12-separate-studies/

UL's Corner: Merced

2010-05-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

R. Bruce Miller, University Librarian

1. Reference
What constitutes reference services when all users ask Google and are satisfied with the results? Why would anyone go to the library for reference help? How can we become more involved in developing more sophisticated, semantic-based online access to scholarly information?

2. Library relationships with information providers
Some information providers exist in order to make a profit. Others are non-profit and seek only to cover expenses. Regardless of motivation, the costs are real. We are in a symbiotic relationship in which there is no gain in forcing a provider out of business and that is not sustainable if the library faces costs for which there the budget is insufficient. How can we ensure, for the information providers, that necessary business costs are met and that profits are commensurate with value received and, for the library, that allocated funds can be used for the greatest benefit for our users?

3. Personnel
Increased outsourcing and greater reliance on end-user self service reduces the need for library staff who do routine and repetitive tasks. Those who do work in the library must be highly capable and empowered professionals. How should we develop existing staff and librarians to better prepare them for increased professional responsibility?

4. Technology
Essentially all incoming freshmen own a laptop and most of them also have smart phones. Within a few years, all of our constituents will have mobile computing capabilities that enable full access to the resources of the library, any time and any place. In this context, what is the role of the library in providing technology?

5. Collections
The complete content for the bulk of our journal collections is effectively online. Within a few years, the majority of our monograph collections will also be online. Additionally, our users will have online access to large quantities of scholarly monographs not held within the UC Libraries via HathiTrust. With such ready access to this vast amount of materials, will users abandon use of information resources within the UC Library Collection that are not online? If yes, what should we do differently?

6. Buildings/Facilities
If all users have personal computers with ready access to the Internet and library services and information resources are available online 24/7, why will any users come to a library building?

7. Library campus roles
Librarians comprehend the issues that surround complete life-cycle curation for digital assets. What is the role of the library in working with faculty and students before, during, and after the creation of digital scholarly information resources?

8. Library networks
“Network” is a very broad term that could include OCLC, professional associations, consortia, and even individual professional relationships. One can make a case that the value of a network is directly correlated with provision of access to information resources. How can we weave together myriad information resources that reside in balkanized information systems so that the end user can easily seek information and still be reassured that their search has been thorough?

9. Organizational Cultures in libraries
See comment and question above in 3. Personnel.

UL's Corner: Irvine

2010-05-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

The UC ULs and library directors have offered to share their thoughts on the nine topic areas that have defined out discussion of the future of librarians and libraries at UC, and the UL's Corner will post the contribution of the campuses as they come in. The LAUC Committee on Professional Governance would like to thank the ULs for their participation. This edition comes from Irvine thanks to:

Carol Ann Hughes, Associate University Librarian, Public Services

Deborah Stansbury Sunday, Associate University Librarian, Administrative Services

1. Reference - As statistics for reference desks drop and e-reference
grows, at what point should we stop drop-in reference desk assistance
and depend on electronic means?

2. Library relationships with information providers - How do we
demonstrate that their current pricing models are counterproductive in
terms of keeping us, their customers, able to control costs effectively?

3. Personnel - How do we build capacity across existing staff without
overburdening them?

4. Technology - To what extent/at what rate do libraries need to
incorporate social networking capabilities into our services in order to
maintain relevancy to our community of users?

5. Collections - How do we assure that we have the right amount and
kinds of space for both physical and electronic collections?

6. Buildings/Facilities - How can we best be persuasive in the campus
conversation about the scarcity of prime real estate on central campuses?

7. Library campus roles - How do we convey the "value proposition" of
libraries to faculty beyond that of a 'buying club' (which is their
growing perception of us according to the recent Ithaka report.)

8. Library networks - How do libraries leverage our membership in
multiple networks to get a satisfactory return on investment?

9. Organizational cultures in libraries - The culture of most internal
library functions is changing as the work changes, but at a difference
pace in different units. How can we best help staff develop
complementary goals and help them keep moving collaboratively across
units as these changes occur?

UC Irvine Libraries [LAUC-I] "Academic Librarians & Our Future"

2010-05-05T11:27:00.000-07:00

Pauline Manaka pdmanaka@uci.edu

LAUC Irvine is hosting the semi-autonomous Southern California Regional Meeting of UC Librarians on Friday May 6, 2010, from 10:00a -3:00p. This is in order to continue the dialog on the future of academic libraries and library professionals. The planning of the event is led by Dana Peterman, LAUC-Irvine chair, and a supporting cast of Kristin Andrews, LAUC-I chair of the Academic Librarianship Committee and Becky Imamato, LAUC-I chair of the Program Committee. There has been a great deal of input and support by other members of LAUC-I, Bob Johnson, Mitchell Brown, and from the LAUC Committee on Professional Governance, myself and Matt Conner. For details, please refer to the website, http://lauci.lib.uci.edu/springprogram2010/index.html

At the University level, two committees relating to the library, with membership of faculty, library staff and administrators were appointed. The library and the university have been working together to discuss planning for the future in general, but also to appointment an interim library director. A “Planning for the Future of Libraries” report was shared and discussed with library staff; and the appointment of an interim acting library director is due shortly.

Some of my thoughts about the future of academic libraries are influenced by a quote from Rene Descartes, “I think, therefore, I am”[1]. This reassures me that some of the changes ahead, are needed, and can be greatly influenced by the decisions that evolve from our communication, no matter how uncertain things might be right now. The reports generated from the November LAUC Northern California Assembly, the upcoming UC Irvine meeting and subsequent discussions will have a meaningful influence, only when we challenge ourselves accordingly! Whatever the outcome, change is inevitable, and we are better of working as a part of the change process! For those who will be attending the meeting on Friday at UCI please contact Dana Peterman if you wish to serve as a recorder for a discussion group. Please send Dana questions on this, if you need further information. Looking forward to seeing you!

Acquiring - Roles for defining collections for research and tenure/promotion

2010-05-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

Acquiring - covers acquisitions and Faculty Promotion and Tenure

Mitchell Brown, UC Irvine (mcbrown@uci.edu)

The promotion and tenure process for faculty still requires peer-reviewed and print book length material, which they (ironically) don't use in their assignments -

How do we justify their purchase with decreased use among the largest populations (i.e. undergraduates)?
This affects our collecting because it contradicts our ability to reduce our reliance on expensive subscriptions.

How will libraries go about acquiring unique materials, assuming a UC one copy project, in order to create a collection for the entire UC system that makes material available to all campuses? Two of the larger campuses, Los Angeles and Berkeley, have been the campuses of last resort for expensive research material. As a system UC must address the questions of how much duplication on campuses is too acceptable and how catalogs (campus OPACS, Next Generation Melvyl) serve as discovery tools. For decades, UC has encouraged the acquisition of duplicate materials. Next Generation Tech Services groups are changing the way we manage collections. The "CDL Shared Print Steering Task Force Findings and Recommendations Report to CDC" is an attempt to find ways to make similar changes to how UC collects materials and take current collaborative projects to new levels. Linda Vida commented from the UCB Spring Assembly (April 21, 2010) on how each campus has an engineering program, necessitating an engineering collection. Should the system cut programs to save money? Campus planning needs to consider library funding when adding new programs; the library should be at the table when decisions to add are made. The UC campuses must cooperate with each other whenever possible and learn to cooperate even further. Another viewpoint is that UC librarians have worked out many cooperative agreements in the UC system, with Stanford and other research libraries, and this report might make honoring the terms of those agreements difficult or impossible.

Other questions for consideration of joint collections raise questions of electronic books and free resources.

Is it time to have CDL negotiating consortial e-book licenses?
What will be the role of open access material in building library collections?

“We must take care not to embrace mediocrity but continue the tradition of excellence.”
Posted by Linda Vida.
UCB Spring Assembly Discussion Topics Wednesday, April 21, 2010
http://laucassembly.blogspot.com/2010/04/ucb-spring-assembly-discussion-topics.html

LAUC-SB Future of Librarians in the UC discussion

2010-04-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

Statewide LAUC has charged CPG to discuss the future of librarians within the UC. LAUC-SB had an animated discussion of the issue on April 21. The following notes are from that discussion.

The UC Library Collection white paper as it stands now does not really focus on the role of librarians. It spells out the future of libraries but not librarians. Are librarians still subject specialist or collection managers? And how does this affect reference and other duties that we currently perform? If this is the way we are going in UC, what does it mean to be a librarian?

OCLC Research Report and ITHAKA Faculty survey both indicate an eroding role of librarians in academia. It’s a good barometer for how librarians are perceived by faculty and the outside world. The library was perceived in very high terms as a buyer of information but lower and lowering value as a gateway function. This negative perception of librarians is smaller than 20% but that percentage has doubled since the last survey in 2006. One way to approach the discussion is from the outside looking in.

What librarians need to do is better advertise or expose the role of the librarian in the role of gatekeeper. We are the ones purchasing access to all the content and as such we are doing a good job of quality control. One issue is that many faculty and graduate students is that they think they’re doing enough. They are finding enough materials through Google scholar or Google books. Are there things we have always done that we don’t need to do anymore? Since we are competing with someone who does it better? Then this is an issue of marketing and how we are putting ourselves out there.

These faculty also know who the big names are in their fields and need to be kept track of. However, in terms of interdisciplinary research, faculty don’t necessarily know who the big names are outside their direct field. The faculty will most likely go to faculty in the other departments rather than to the library to find out what they’re missing.

The faculty think that they can get to the information if they want and whenever they want regardless of whether there are librarians or who the librarians are. One reason faculty approach librarians is when they fail to find what they are looking for. That allows librarians to skip the first 20 steps of the reference interview. The big problem though is that faculty are failing earlier than they are aware of. If this is true, how are graduate students and undergraduate students faring?

It’s a cycle that’s difficult. We don’t want to withhold information so that patrons must come into the library because they won’t care. They just won’t use any information that is not easily available. But by making everything easily available, we also fuel the misperception that librarians are irrelevant in the use of libraries.

When you look at the future of libraries and librarians, it seems that a lot of the most exciting things are happening at CDL. That makes the role of libraries and librarians at places like UCSB that much more precarious. However, CDL has always drawn on the expertise of librarians at UCSB and tried to keep us involved. They will most likely keep on doing this. We can also take the initiative and find places within CDL that are open to us to make bigger contributions than we have in the past. Also, keep in mind that CDL has always been a very small operation and has a very small staff. They need the librarians at the campuses to participate in all of their endeavors. No one can do it by themselves anymore and this is especially true of the UC Library system. We need to keep looking for partners and funding sources to keep all of our projects moving forward.

The building as a place to study is not important to faculty but students find a place to study very relevant for their needs.

Perhaps one way to go is to become data repositories as opposed to document repositories. That would mean that many librarians need formal training in mining that data. It is its own specialty. There are requests coming in from graduate students and faculty and it’s an area that most librarians are not currently specialists in. It’s all somewhat similar to what we’re currently doing in terms of pointing people in the right direction. Perhaps this is an esoteric position where not all the campuses need or have data librarians. Perhaps 2 or 3 libraries have these positions who act as reference points for all librarians to confer with as the need arises.

Perhaps what will happen is that librarians will move out of individual libraries to CDL. One need that is on the radar at UCSB is to find out where libraries and librarians fit into the world of publishing.

CDL does not serve faculty or students directly so they particularly vulnerable to budget cuts during times of budget difficulties. What they do is manage things at a system wide level.

eScholarship program, platform and services have been set up. The role of advocacy and outreach is something CDL has been doing but something we can do as well.

What can LAUC do? We can respond. We can let faculty know how we fit into their comments and suggestions for the library. We can rewrite our job descriptions and continue to advocate for ourselves. What do we see our jobs to being in these scenarios? What does this tell us about where we need to concentrate? What do we need to actually make us function?

If you were writing your replacement’s job description, what needs do you think should be met that aren’t being met currently? What will job descriptions, new position postings look like in the future? We’ve got training series currently in the works for the coming year regarding collection management and scholarly communication.

The Consequences of Changing University Pedagogy and Teaching Habits

2010-04-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

The future of library pedagogy is an uncertain yet exciting one during these transitional times. At the UCs and nation-wide, we live in an era of shrinking budgets, increasing student populations, and hiring freezes in library staff. What strategies can UC librarians implement to deal with the changing university pedagogy?

What has changed in teaching?
Some classes are even larger than before. Fewer papers are being assigned and those that are assigned may be shorter or less reliant on secondary literature. Faculty expectations of student works trend toward the use of multimedia, and creative works. Resources for student work are increasingly derived from material not owned or easily curated by librarians, such as websites and proprietary or massaged data. In line with the work that faculty are themselves conducting as researchers, work is increasingly cross- and inter-disciplinary. This is particularly true at University of California where the influence of research on teaching has long been a value of the institution. Though it does not represent a dramatic change in philosophy for some subject areas, expensive library resources in professional schools are cordoned off from the rest of the university. Parallel, and in some ways contrary to these trends, course management systems have created a closed system appearance to courses in which all content needed to pass or succeed appears to be contained within a single interface.

Some of changes in student behavior have both led to a decreased reliance on library resources and an increased emphasis on the pedagogy.
Regardless of the reason, students are familiar with searching and with multimedia creation. They are less likely to feel they need assistance. They use texting and instant messaging for most casual communication and more frequently than face-to-face or telephone. They use information that is created for them reasonably effectively, but are less likely to pursue difficult-to-find material. They don’t need to use a library catalog or database when Google Scholar and Google Books are good enough. In other words, in spite of the added value that traditional reference transactions and instruction bring to the table, fewer students avail themselves of those services without active promotion from librarians or faculty. In addition, those students who choose substitute mediums for reference transactions and instruction are pre-disposed to a communication style in which an expected answer is both shorter and presumed pre-contextualized to their need.

Using one of the nine topics covered in the fall assembly here are some of the implications that result from pedagogy changes.

Some of these ideas were compiled from the conversations that have gone on before with some commentary. We could pilot the effectiveness of any approach on every campus, then compare results. Another might be to share how each approach has been evaluated and what factors were known to have made it succeed. Choose one of these ideas and run with it. Here’s an example that could be further articulated. What would you vote and commit to do?

Integrate information literacy into the academic curriculum.
Drivers in this direction include:
Our familiarity with the standards.
How faculty understand those standards as a part of a traditional pedagogical rubric.
Correspondence with existing pedagogies.
Drivers in the opposite direction include:
Perception by faculty that information standards are their purview.
Insufficient content to establish separate, large-scale courses.
Overly large classes.
Inability to provide more time to the task of teaching over time given competing responsibilities.

Campus roles
In our role as librarians, we have countered pedagogical and student trends by framing ourselves as campus consultants. We’ve created “your personal librarian” programs. We’ve become part of curriculum planning. We’ve attempted programmatic collaboration in instruction by partnering with lower division writing programs. In some cases, we have embedded ourselves in course management systems and created information commons. We’ve even worked out how to meet students where they live by using texting, chat, Facebook, “how to’s” and tutorials (http://www.youtube.com/user/PsycINFO) , and anything else we can think of – all without dropping other services.

*What are the rewards for this to the library?
*What kinds of technology, education and personnel will be needed to facilitate this approach?
*What is the life-cycle for teaching and how can we update it if it’s taught by faculty?
*How and how often will we evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy?
*What would/will you do personally to support or analyze this approach?

Other suggestions we might discuss include:

*Focus on the information commons to create the library as central to the life of the university. Embed the tools of production, such as video, and include less common units such as career centers within the library.
*Publish outside the library literature to illustrate our collaborative and integral roles.
*Create talking points for librarians so that they can actively promote libraries and librarians.
*Act as campus consultants by taking on projects of interest to faculty and researchers that we might normally avoid (e.g. the digitization project that resulted in the Rorty program/conference (http://virtualpolitik.org/rorty/)
*Get involved in the academic senate by changing the role of the librarian or the status of librarians in all of our institutions.

Ultimately, however, what we might consider is, how much of this should we be taking on? What should we outsource and share with consortiums and vendors?

On Ubiquitous Instruction

2010-04-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

David Michalski
Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian
University of California, Davis
michalski@ucdavis.edu

Unlike our counterparts in the bookstores, corporate libraries and even some public libraries, education is central to our mission in the research university. The social promise of the university is to improve the society that supports it by making its members more knowledgeable, more inventive, more skilled, and wiser. As librarians we have a unique role in this mission. Our instruction differs from that of the lecturer or professor. Our teaching is at its core dialogical. Our pedagogy is based on a certain art of conversation.

There is no shortage of studies in the library literature on the “reference interview” or “reference transaction” as it is often called. The reference process has been meticulously analyzed by information scientists and planners who seek to break it into bits in the effort to locate the kernel, or coin of value passed from the librarian to the patron. The interview, however, is not like a vending machine. The student cannot simply pay for information and walk away. Our practice is better understood as a diagnostic one, one that assesses both the interpersonal and social context of each project, and leads to decisions, which attempt to enable not only access, but the incrementally improved ability of the patron to take possession of library as a tool and field in their quest to reorganize information as knowledge.

Librarians, who imagine their role reduced to the mechanics of information delivery, are often left with a sense of purposelessness. A symptom of this lack arises in the current anxiety about the future. It surfaces in a discourse that depicts a contemporary competition between the librarian and the machine. Such questions about the future, dismiss the historic impact librarians and scholars have had on information technology since the profession began. Librarians have had prominent roles working to marshal the efficiencies of technology in the service of our core values. Today, we must reaffirm these efforts by translating our values and pedagogic mission into the info-space of the digital environment, not positioning our values against the digital realm. In part, this means imbuing our machines with the conversational and dialogic skills nurtured by our human practice. We ought to ask: How can people leaving library interaction (whether online or in person) be better prepared to discover and understand the information environment? How can our tools, websites and our people, not only provide easy access to known documents, but teach discovery techniques and the diverse ways in which information is organized? As heuristic devices, how can our tools train better researchers? It is no more appropriate for a search engine or catalog to simply churn out singular responses to a question than it is for a reference librarian to act simply as a medium for the exchange of information. Our exchanges must be value-added. Our catalogs and search tools must facilitate the construction of better formed questions and more sophisticated thinking. It is not an easy task to develop such tools and sites, and it is made even more difficult by a growing gap between search tool designers and librarians, but it is our professional charge and it is worth the effort.

One alarming consequence of treating our tools as simply location devices is the impact this outlook has on our own service roles. When the digital reference experience is diminished to a mechanical transaction, our own interviewing, listening and questioning skills tend to atrophy. Without use ours skills can be forgotten, and as I mentioned in a previous post, our disconnection can make us lose track of our public. With so many databases marketed as automatic, simple and direct we can be tempted to forgo the hard work education demands. We can forget that even our most powerful tools for indexing information are inadequate surrogates for teaching the social life of information. In exchange for expediency and mass capacity they can treat Works as the inert products of remote labor, as objects detached from authors and readers alike, as removed from cause or argument. We ought not to replicate this disregard.

Undoubtedly, the disintermediation of the information world has positively transformed the way knowledge is distributed and produced. Information seekers have more direct access to information providers and the mundane middling tasks of the librarian have largely evaporated. The trend towards disintermediation, however, does not dissipate the mediation of the intellect, which takes form in the course of learning. Technological immediacy does not substitute for the work of critical thinking. In the best instances it may support it, but in the worst instances it can disguise its necessity.

One of the foremost roles of the reference librarian has always been to persuade the patron to think out-loud, to state and restate, to read and question, and to read, write and return with a deeper understanding. Unnecessary difficulties and formalities can not be tolerated, but where information is complex, it can not be represented as falsely simple. Instead, we ought to help our students acquire the skills appropriate to the challenges their projects face. At each stage, helping them see a little bit more by encouraging a deeper engagement with their topics.

Even when patrons come in demanding immediate results, my colleagues and I have discovered creative ways to widen their bibliographic imagination. I’ve met thousands of students over the years and no one approach can be applied uniformly. Not one reference conversation is the same as the next. Each takes on its own shape. Sometimes I am unsuccessful in my application of, what I like to call, ubiquitous non-invasive reference instruction. Some students cannot be bothered, sometime I become impatient, but with each encounter I try to improve. I try to learn more about the public I serve, and find better ways of providing the unique service reference librarians at a research university can provide. These include new ways of fostering critical thinking, information literacy, and new ways of expanding the potential of our collections.

By practicing and honing our unique form of pedagogy, in formal library classes, in the design of our online tools, and in our everyday interactions with our public we can renew our sense of purpose and positively support the educational mission of our university.

The Qualitative Place of the Reference Desk Today

From General Reference to Subject Specialty

.

UCB Spring Assembly Discussion Topics

2010-04-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

#1 – Reference

Various types of online reference are popular, reference by appointment is popular. Reference desk usage is declining but not dead. Ideas for staffing the latter include having students serve as front line staff who will refer to reference staff as needed, and combining circulation and reference desks.

There was a discussion of current reference models, including:

Ask a Librarian: 24/7 chat reference service via OCLC Questionpoint software
o UCB librarians currently staff 8 hours/week
o UCB students have access 24/7
o Questions run the gamut from directional to substantive
o Many questions can be answered using online resources (not all; and referral to subject specialists do take place)
o Discussion of differences – lack visual cues, but librarians feel they can/must ask user more questions; more followup than for in-person reference; challenge of answering questions from non-UC patrons; takes longer; does it reduce ageism and reverse-ageism?
o Will it lead to offshoring of reference? (or not: local information still very important)

Email reference
o Doe/Moffitt has a general e-mail reference service
o Many units and many individual librarians answer reference via e-mail

IM chat reference
o Done at some libraries on campus (including Gov Info, Sciences, Transportation, et al)
o Necessary at units like Transportation Studies with very dispersed clientele

Texting
o Engineering does texting, meebo chat and Lisa participates in Questionpoint
o Questionpoint will start implementing texting

Reference by appointment (in-person)
o Many libraries do this
o Doe/Moffitt: Research Advisory Service (by appointment for undergraduates) recently started online signups; use of the service has increased with relatively few no-shows; Law also has online signups for appointments

Reference desks
o Statistics down for most units; many units have cut staffing (1 person not 2) and/or hours
o Is the reference desk less about reference and more about marketing – our availability?
o Valuable for reference staff to be “out” in the library seeing how users use it
o Location of reference desk vis-à-vis users and vis-à-vis circulation desk makes a difference
o @ some units, students have first contact and refer when necessary; in the new Moffitt building, a similar tiered reference service is being considered, with trained students as first contact point
o combined desks also being considered at some units
o @ UC Merced, all reference is on call (student employees refer); NYU moving to something similar
o but: in surveys, library users say they like being able to talk face to face to someone

? Question: Anyone using Skype for reference? No one knew of any instances at UCB.

#2 – Scholarly Communication / Information Providers

Random discussion points on the topic of Relationship to Information
Providers at LAUC-B Assembly, April 13, 2010 (we decided to rename this
topic “Scholarly Communication.”)

** As librarians, our role is to support our faculty and to share with them information about alternative publishing options that are available. Sometimes that information is hard to find and not all librarians feel equipped to answer the question that we might get from a faculty member who asks, “If Elsevier journals are so expensive, can you
suggest another journal title that might be less expensive (but that is still has a high impact factor, etc.)?”

** Where do faculty publish? One member of our breakout session cited the recent Ithaka Faculty Survey 2009 (http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/Faculty%20Study%202009.pdf).

In this survey, respondents stated that being read by peers in their discipline is the most important consideration when deciding where to publish. The least important factor is whether the article is freely available on the web; this suggests that open access is not important to faculty.

** Reference to John Lewis, UL at Indiana University, who writes, “More precisely, libraries are the mechanism for providing the subsidy that is required if information is to be used efficiently in communities and organizations.” Within an online environment, perhaps it is time to transform this economic model. Lewis makes a number of interesting
(provocative) statements in this article “A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21^st Century” C&RL News, September 2007
(http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/crljournal/2007/sep/Lewis07.pdf).

** Changing the scholarly communication landscape is difficult because we are fighting against a longstanding culture. Does this mean we should be targeting younger faculty and graduate students? (But they can’t take those kinds of risks until they have tenure.) Or, maybe it means we should be targeting the older faculty who already have tenure and,
therefore, are in a better position to take risks.

** Everyone agreed that Tenure and Promotion is the elephant in the room. We didn’t want to go there.

** How do we change things? Librarians don’t have much influence. Faculty have some, but they are caught up in a deeply embedded culture that doesn’t give them much room to change their behavior. Maybe we should be targeting administrators who control the purse strings and would support libraries when we walk away from expensive journal packets.

** We have mixed feelings about eScholarship. Not much uptake from faculty. On the other hand, it is a great place for publishing so-called grey literature and eScholarship is very good at surfacing its contents in Google.

** We all have to understand that while some of us may be excited about Open Access, it is not free. Many question whether it is even a sustainable model. On the other hand, just because there are questions about its sustainability we should not discount it (as many faculty and publishers do). Most importantly, we need scholars to understand that
open access IS peer reviewed; it is not vanity publishing!

** The good news: some in-roads have been made in the health and medical sciences. The NIH Mandate requires all recipients of NIH funding to submit an electronic version of their final, peer reviewed manuscript to PubMed Central. Now anyone with NIH funding knows about open access and the fact that research in traditional journals creates a barrier to accessing their findings.

** More good news: there is starting to be a buzz about textbook affordability. Maybe this is a good way to get attention from the academy about the sustainability (or lack thereof) of the current publishing industry.

#3 – Library Personnel

Hiring of library personnel depends not only on the amount of staff
needed, but also the training required. What is missing is succession planning. Right now, there is nothing formal in place for succession
planning (moving into a new job, leadership training, management
training, etc). Potential reasons for the lack of succession planning
could be that supervisors are not used to thinking about it.

When replacing library personnel, things to consider are what skills to
advertise for, the person’s strengths, and also what is required and
desired. It all depends on the individual. Even if you find someone who
has all of the necessary skills, is that person someone you want to work with? On the other hand, how much time/energy can we put into getting people trained and up to speed? What we need for job descriptions is the core elements/values of what makes a library employee.

With reduced staffing and large workloads, people need to be realistic.
How can you provide the same amount of services with fewer people? It
feels bad to cut public services, but if funding for collections is
protected, then only thing to cut is public service.

Student employees are so important to the Library. They work late shifts and some even do higher-level technical processing work. There are some interns, who can work on special projects, but these interns do not typically help with daily workloads.

The MLS or MLIS is a degree that is important to the field of librarianship. Obtaining the degree is key, because there is something
you learn when you’re in the program that makes librarians different
from library staff.

#4 – Technology
Bolded, top-level bullet items are the “conversation starters” we started with, and there are very loosely thrown summaries of the comments into each category, even though we did not address the topics strictly or in any particular order.

Are we leveraging technology as best we can?
o We need to be more cutting edge - leaders, not followers … Berkeley was more so in the 90s - what happened? So much happens off campus now (e.g., CDL). Fracturing of technical support offices makes for a confusing system to navigate and slows innovation.
o Flexibility - many library changes require many layers of committees etc. - need to be able to make decisions faster

o Some changes libraries have made have been by going rogue, against advice of IST - too often the response is simply "oh we don't support that"… (e.g., metasearching/federated searching - resistance to trying).

o Affiliates and institutes as drivers of and experimenters with new technology
o Get rid of bureaucracy - need to move quickly, need to trust staff to try out new techs and capture their innovations

o Importance of staff re: training and time to play with new technologies. Librarians testing new products – raising awareness of resources, but also able to evaluate quality

o We need a dedicated position to proactively seek out new technologies. Current model is systemically more passive and reactive, relying on individuals with other responsibilities to innovate

o How about a Library Office of Technology [or Innovation] (maybe a library committee?) - Library Systems Office is focused on (overworked) keeping existing systems working. A lot of universities have an emerging techs office - Duke Digital Initiatives (developed to foster use of digital repository) -

o changed structure to make Digital Initiatives report directly to university president - freed from university layers of bureaucracy

o can direct IT, Libraries, teaching/learning, Academic Senate, etc.

o situated in the library (powerful symbolic meaning).

o Responsible to interpret and facilitate; three groups (IT, Library, Teaching/learning) sitting together, working together as functional group.

o Need a librarian in the systems office; lack of structured liaison with IST and Library Systems Office Is also a barrier to innovation

o Difficult/expensive to do video conferencing from this campus. It saves money but there seems to be resistance/barriers

o Working remotely … using Skype for videoconferencing, pushing webpages … A lot of ways to do things cheaply, on the fly (even if deemed "not supported"?)

o using iChat to run remote discussion for distance learning interesting experience. (But is there a resistance about distance education?)

o Looking towards the future - the students who will be here 5 years from now - comfort level in using technology. We need to be there, and just as flexible, adaptive and curious as they are with technologies and change.

Technology for technology's sake?

o Talk about tech is often outside the context of library values …

o Tech should be a tool for where we want to go, not the driver. It is important for librarians to determine for themselves where to go based on our goals & mission (quality, authority, etc.) rather than tech for its own sake.

o Tech changes so quickly - We can't let tech guide us blindly, but at the same time we have to be flexible to be able to explore the ways it can support librarians’ core values

o Library values - Focus on end-user support: don't conceptualize based on traditional functional groups like buying, maintenance, etc., but supporting teaching/learning, research

o why try to reinvent Google when Google already exists? Instead, focus on what librarians can contribute that is a value-add –

o e.g., Open Gov Initiatives is coming (datasets, etc., from all federally funded research must be uploaded) … Libraries can contribute by creating standards for data structure for access across different possible future platforms

o Ebook readers - should libraries lend these? We don't even have laptop checkout. But what about the Amazon experiment with Kindles for textbooks at Princeton – wildly unpopular because readers wanted to be able to highlight, take notes, use easily ….

Letting patrons (undergrads) lead the way

o Being reactive versus leading and planning – UCB tends [too much] toward the former mode

o Stuff that works on mobile devices are what users want …. - SFSU model, a couple of people developed their library enhancements to make “mobile friendly”

o We often move in reaction to what we think students want
o making video tutorials …Has anyone had any reactions or done assessment of user reaction to this? –

o there are barriers: Not thinking outside the box (e.g. instance where selector was told Schoolhouse Rock "I'm Just a Bill" was not academic enough) means not being able to take advantage (quickly) of things that our students find useful

What about Google?

o We can't reinvent Google, but we can improve on it

o No one wants Local Worldcat – always want to search everywhere

o Google as model - experimentation with new technologies, trying to change

o Don't tell an engineer to design a bridge, tell her to design a way to get from here to there

Open Source, Digital Rights Management

o Can we reclaim from CDL control over tech initiative? (e.g. CDL’s digital archiving – several Affiliated Libraries pay for outside service for DRM). CDL is great for managing shared collections, negotiating contracts, and similar functions – but by ceding to CDL control over so much tech innovation, de facto it becomes a work of centralizing. Centralization of so much from all 10 campuses slows things down too much to be able to keep up with technology.

Staff Training/keeping up-to-date
o coexistence of people who somewhat resist change and those who are early adopters

o A good combination?

o control issues - feels better to have rigid controls, but may not be able to keep up, given pace of change

o Duke model – sometimes a top-down model is needed to force and encourage change

o innovations at low level need to bubble up quickly and then be propagated back down

#5 – Collections

Are librarians wizards for their ability to find information, as Marilyn Johnson suggests in This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, or lizards, changing colors and losing their tails while adapting to danger and varying environments?

The recent CDC report "University of California Library Collection: Content for the 21st Century and Beyond" maps out changes in library roles without ever mentioning the word librarian but rather using "library staff" and "curatorial role." Librarians provide vital services to our users not only in collecting research materials but also at reference desks, in classroom and in myriad other ways.

Next Generation Tech Services groups are changing the way we manage
collections. The "CDL Shared Print Steering Task Force Findings and
Recommendations Report to CDC" is an attempt to find ways to make similar changes to how UC collects materials and take current collaborative projects to new levels. UCB refuses to shed its insular attitudes toward ownership.
Another viewpoint is that UC librarians have worked out many ooperative
agreements in the UC system, with Stanford and other research libraries, and this report might make honoring the terms of those agreements difficult or impossible. UCB has successful arrangements covering Latin America, Africa and other areas. These agreements define collection areas for sharing ofacquisition and processing. For years UC has had informal arrangements such as buying two copies of some research materials, one in the north and one in the south. Many research materials are at RLFs and meant to be shared in the UC system.

Collections are fluid since faculty retire and faculty with new research interests join the institution. Librarians must decide whether to maintain historical strengths or concentrate on current needs, especially difficult as budgets shrink.

All libraries are concerned with ownership, historically important in
determining ARL rankings and in attracting top faculty and graduate
students. Shared ownership might not be as problematic for the sciences and health fields since so much is online, although copyright and lending are issues. Eastern Europe is increasingly turning to digital only; digitization is supported by grants, leading to crucial questions of sustainability and preservation.

CDL cancellations lead to other issues since campuses cancel the paper and rely on the CDL licenses for digital only to have the CDL cancel the title. For example, one paper journal was held by 5 campuses, all of which canceled when the CDL subscribed to the online version. Now that CDL has canceled, no UC library has the journal. The paper journal was cheap but necessary to a small number of scholars; the e-journal was expensive and had low usage so didn't meet the metric to retain. This pattern is not unusual in the humanities. UC needs more coordination between CDL cancellations and campus cancellations and also between bibliographer group request priorities and what CDL licenses.

Preservation is a key issue. Many research libraries, including those in UC, are canceling foreign newspapers and relying on digital versions. What will happen in 100 years when scholars will have to travel to other countries to see these newspapers? What if the local country has not preserved them or a disaster has destroyed them? Digitized newspapers often do not contain all the content, such as ads and editorials. We are increasingly relying on the digital without a (secure) backup.

Key to collections is coping with current problems in collections-funding, preservation, etc.-while still striving to keep in mind the needs of future scholars. We must consider what they will need in the centuries to come and how to deliver it.

UCLA and UCB have long been the campus of last resort for expensive research material. We must address the questions of how much duplication is too much and how catalogs serve as discovery tools. For decades UC has encouraged the acquisition of duplicate materials. Each campus has an engineering program, necessitating an engineering collection. Should the system cut programs to save money? Campus planning needs to consider library funding when adding new programs; the library should be at the table when decisions to add are made. Departments/schools should involve the library when interviewing candidates for new positions; their research needs may not be
met by the collection, and they should be encouraged to make
collection funding part of their start up funding. Archival units are
making fundraising arrangements with donors before accepting their papers. Librarians must be aware of shifts in departmental programs and faculty research.

Library funding brings quality collections; quality collections attract the best faculty and students. As State support for UCB decreases, so will the number of Nobel prizes and the ability to retain the best faculty will wither. At what point will the public notice?

Archivists live with the reality that not every item can be cataloged and that rapid digitization, such as done by Google, is not possible with their fragile and unique materials. Creating metadata is costly. Standards change rapidly, and turnover of personnel is a factor in deterring priorities. Large digital collections, which draw from many places, can be frustrating because the collection managers massage interfaces/metadata to funnel material from different libraries into one collection. Individual collections may not operate in the way the owning library intended.

Library silos are problematic; users must have a way to discover material and a vigorous interlibrary loan to obtain.

We must take care not to embrace mediocrity but continue the tradition of excellence.

#6 – Library Buildings “Back to the Future: space planning”

Library Space NEEDS: We thought these were desirable for all patrons particularly students and faculty -
group study, quiet study, presentation rooms, instruction rooms, wireless internet, wireless printing, copying, printing, scanning, computer software on library pc’s, include a café, allow food, longer hours.

Space GRABS: when the departments or campus want to acquire library space for teaching or academic purposes, be clear about the impact on students, in order to engender a positive outcome for all concerned. Work with the university and the departments to create tradeoffs that will benefit the library. When this comes up, present it to library committees, and donors; supporters who have an interest.

UC wide: collections increasingly electronic move more to storage.

Look FORWARD and be prepared – as print collections change to electronic, down size, and go to storage, have a plan, be ready to repurpose exiting space in older buildings – upgrade physical environment, wiring.

Look for OPPORTUNITIES to upgrade facilities, improve furniture and work areas,
change presentations in the library, keep the environment fresh. The library can look more current by adding displays, new technology, promoting online – blog, wikis, facebook, rss feeds from your own blog.

Topics for discussion.
• Staying relevant in an online
• Campus space grabs
• Space for computers and computer labs
• Quiet study and group study
• Social gathering: cafes, programs, meeting friends

# 7 - Technical Services

1. NextGen Melvyl

Many people, in both technical and public services, are unhappy with Next Gen Melvyl. We at the Law Library don’t like it because it continues to regard us as unaffiliated with UC Berkeley. Anyone wanting to find books in Melvyl has to know to click the button for libraries in the rest of the world. This will apparently be fixed, but for the moment it’s not good.

Other complaints include the screen display – unnecessarily cluttered; the fact that you cannot limit by campus – something essential for cooperative book selection, or indeed any book selection; the inclusion of some articles in some search results – it seems to patrons that they are getting back all available articles on a topic, which is not true. The advanced search possibilities should be a lot better.

We all agreed that LAUC could play a role in providing feedback on NextGen Melyvl. Having a good catalog is too important to continue with the current status.

We considered how we would go about providing feedback.

Another problem is that it’s really not “NextGen” enough (see below).

2. Local vs. universal needs

We then discussed the problem of local needs vs. a centralized technical services department. There are times when a branch librarian has the subject knowledge to know when a book will be looked for under a certain subject. Debbie offered the example of books about local places. The local place may not be included as a subject heading, but that heading would be very useful to the patrons at Environmental Design. Presently, the branches do not have the ability to add subject headings, even in a very restricted way, and Technical Services does not have the manpower to handle requests in a timely way. Another issue is dissertations, which are hugely backed up. We wondered if there was not some way of using the abstract which is presumably available electronically in California Hall to automatically create a catalog record. This seems like a great idea, but of course, does technical Services have the staffing to be able to figure out how to do something like this. There is also the question of social tagging, which apparently is being done at Penn State. Again, this would require a capacity that Oskicat may or may not have, plus the staffing to develop and then maintain it.

3. Cooperative technical services

We also considered the idea of cooperative technical services – for example, what if one campus hired an Armenian cataloger. All Armenian books ordered at UC would be delivered to her/him for cataloging and then shipped off to wherever they belonged. Could we centralize all cataloging? All selection? All ordering? There may be a savings, but it might also make it harder for Debbie to get her local subject headings added – or maybe it wouldn’t. Something to consider.

UCI South Regional Assembly- Why You Should Attend

2010-04-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

Register today for the
LAUC Southern California Regional Meeting

We all know that LAUC is a self-determining and planning body, and that we are all interested in future of our profession and in our own professional development at the University of California. That’s a given. But you should attend this region’s meeting because the responsibility and value of participation isn’t all that different from that of a vote in an election. You are a part of a solution and can contribute to a plan to improve as a group. You provide the impetus for change, and understand how decisions are made and why. You get to choose based on your priorities and values and the priorities and values of your UC.

But some people ask, why should I, as a (insert your departmental or divisional affiliation here) librarian come to the LAUC Southern Regional Meeting? All of these agenda items look like they’re related to someone else’s job. But, all of these agenda items are also intertwined with what we do. They affect one another. They are not truly separate. Take a look at SOPAG , HOTS , HOPS and the UC Commission on the Future. It’s pretty clear by looking at the reports, initiatives, proposed policies and actions, that communication and collaboration are required across many areas. They do affect you and they do require your consideration.

Don’t reference services change if students of all stripes don’t have to come to a desk to get reference assistance or resources because professors have changed their delivery of education, their assignments, or their research (Topic 1)? They do. Library instruction changes. Acquisitions changes. Collections change. Processing changes. Licensing changes. Access services changes. Personnel changes. Where people work changes (home, department, you name it). Skills change. The technology changes. Space needs change. The amount of money needed and how it’s controlled changes. Unique collections change. Archival curation changes. This is only one example of the ripples that radiate from a single set of actions.

This still, however, doesn’t get to the heart of what we can do in a regional meeting. We already have answers to what we might do in the form of reports and initiatives in play, but we need to decide where to place our energies as a group because our work is increasingly distributed across all UC libraries. So, decide. What solutions of those offered here on this blog and in our own campus assemblies work best for all of us? How will we know if we have succeeded? How can we minimize risk and maximize benefits to everyone through testing and evaluation? What are you able to commit to? What can we achieve and when?

The heart of your participation in a regional meeting is a focus on solutions-based concepts associated with concrete actions. Not the specific issues or technologies that you dislike or champion, but a careful consideration and articulation of the factors that will facilitate positive actions and ways to overcome impediments. So, how can you do this? It seems overwhelming, but preparation will make it less so.

*Look at the questions that Esther Grassian posted for the meeting and take a specific note how you rank and articulate your responses. Post your thoughts in the comments or apply to post to the blog via Phoebe Ayers. Your ranking of these questions forms the basis of your values and will help you decide what’s really important.

*Take a look at the discussion group notes and decide how to address the notes that were taken. Change the questions you see into propositions and try some on for size. Choose a couple. What are the elements that will allow a proposal to work? How will we test and/or evaluate the substantial success of a proposal to determine what is of highest value to our clients? If you can’t evaluate it, it’s not a proposal that can be addressed. What do we need to change to implement those ideas? How much money? What kinds of technologies? How much time would it take? How much disruption or training would it involve? What are the easy wins (things everyone can do)?

*Take a look at this (admittedly incomplete) mapping of the nine topics onto the five prepared for the LAUC Southern Regional meeting agenda:

Topic 1: The consequences of changing university pedagogy.
See Campus roles ; Relationship to Information Providers ; Reference ; Technology ; Library Buildings

Topic 2: Preparing the current and future generations to work in 21st century settings.
See Personnel ; Reference ; Relationship to Information Providers ; Technology ; Organizational Culture

Topic 3: Acquiring unique materials assuming a UC one copy universe – challenges and justifications.
See Collections ; Technology ; Library Buildings ; Campus roles ; Relationship to Information Providers

Topic 4: Evaluating ourselves for promotion. What should count in the future?
Relationship to Information Providers ; Reference ; Technology ; Campus roles

Topic 5: Getting stuff where it needs to go: Discovery and delivery.
Technology ; Reference ; Campus roles; Relationship to Information Providers

Here’s what will we do at this meeting after you have done your homework:
We will gather your proposals, write them down and synthesize them and vote on them. Once we have compiled your votes, we will communicate them to everyone.

What are your comments?

Register today for the
LAUC Southern California Regional Meeting

From General Reference to Subject Specialty

2010-04-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

David Michalski
Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian
University of California, Davis
michalski@ucdavis.edu

Libraries and librarians have made great strides over the years to simplify access to resources by promoting to the general public good practices in the use and construction of databases and search engines. The society we serve has changed too. Information navigation skills are widely held, acquired by children at an early age, and mastered by adults who are compelled to learn the latest technologies to conduct the business of their everyday lives. Large databases are omnipresent and following inter-text citations is routine. More than ever, our social lives and social networks our influenced by our management and manipulation of digital social networks. Most new university students are no longer unfamiliar with things like Boolean searching, tags, faceted browsing, or the once arcane structures of databases. Great ‘world-cataloging’ initiatives like, WorldCat, Google, and Youtube, are no longer sublime. They are the commonplace, practical and personal instruments of an expansive cognitive world.

These transformations have important implications for reference service. One positive effect of the diminished aura associated with database technology has been to liberate the librarian from some aspects of repetitive general instruction. The orientation work on the basic operation of information technology is less necessary. Rather than explaining how to construct search strings or how to combine or filter result lists with subject headings/tags or other limits, more attention can be paid to information literacy, on teaching patrons how to analyze and evaluate the content of search results, and to deciphering their relation within the topic of inquiry. Thanks to the popularity of database experience, time spent on teaching ‘how to search’, can now be devoted to teaching patrons ‘how best to search’ in respect to the particular research project at hand.

Too be sure, reference communication still requires both general and specialized knowledge. General skills are not universally mastered. In fact, the populations we serve are diverse, both culturally and in terms of research experience. With popular information skills more widely distributed, however, it has been somewhat easier to teach people how to interact with our search tools, how to expand and contract results and how to discovery unforeseen links to like-documents. The emerging popular familiarity with relational databases makes it easier for patrons to transition from one interface to another. With such general skills in place, I can now concentrate on showing patrons how to trace a document’s authority, provenance, and how one might uncover future citations or link to common vocabulary terms in related datasets. I still meet many patrons who are new to both academic research and complex database searching, but even in such meetings, these patrons increasingly demand both advice on how to use information technological and advice about the intellectual content of their results. The more difficult part for the reference librarian at a university has always been to situate the patron in the social life of information.

Even as general librarianship is made easier by the popularity of library/database skills, this later challenge has been made more difficult by the kind of tools emerging today. Many of the vast fulltext aggregator databases shield the scope of their contents from their users. Others offer seemingly arbitrary sets of documents based on publishers or unseen publisher agreements. The coherent subject orientated index and abstracting tool takes on new importance in such an environment, but even many of these have become unwieldy. Today the reference librarian needs to have a handle on the discourse, and better, a foot in the intellectual world she or he is charged to serve. Knowledge of a subject’s own language or jargon, its intra-disciplinary fragmentation, the distribution and repudiation of its publishers is increasingly necessary. The librarian must position the research question within the diverse cultures of inquiry that make up today’s university. If in years past, the librarian had concerned her or his self the mastery of information science alone, the interrelation of information content with information structures no longer makes such an approach viable. Librarians are now often enlisted in the construction of literature reviews.

Today’s researcher, undergraduate or professor, must confront vast displays of initial search results and from these make crucial decisions. The flatness of their representation lends the results the illusion of exchangeability and makes their use values harder to decipher. In this environment the subject grounded librarian is called upon to guide and interpret results, to provide context and relief in the horizontal displays of equivalency. For the advanced researcher or inquisitive undergraduate, the subject specialist librarian can serve as a cross disciplinary translator, one who can help lead the researcher who endeavors to enter new areas of exploration. The subject specialist/bibliographer, trained both formally and through ongoing collection development work, can make connections between schools, publishers, and intellectual movements. Librarians are often called upon to orient researchers in rapidly hybridizing fields of study.

The undergraduate especially benefits from this contextualization. After meeting with subject specialists, and walking the contours of their topic of inquiry, after situating their question within their field of study, and then situating their field within the larger information landscape, the student can engage their projects from firmer ground. She or he can then return with more thoughtful, intellectually informed questions and a better understanding of the history of ideas, the value of citations, and a more cogent understanding of the social organization of knowledge and how it relates to her or his project. In other words, the subject librarian can facilitate the progressive intellectual development of the student by helping the student to avoid repeating the same entry level queries.

Today’s researchers want to speak with people who understand their complex language, projects and ideas. They like to meet with people who know the general authors, theories, tenets, and controversies which occupy them. This not only gives them the confidence that the library is acting as a powerful partner in their own mission. It allows them to interconnect to wider or related discourses.

To maximize quality reference service the Librarian needs to work in partnership with teaching faculty. She or he must have a familiarity with the work of the professors, an understanding of what their assignments are designed to teach, and how the class project fits into the course’s wider disciplinary context. By reiterating course teachings in the context of the information environment a practical knowledge of information is fostered.

The rise in programs and departments on our campuses combined with the level of staffing currently supported by our budgets makes an ideal symmetry between subject expertise and academic programs impossible to obtain. At the University of California at Davis, I am responsible to no less than ten programs across the Humanities and Social Sciences. I can not master the knowledge of all these areas, and the idea that I am a specialist in all of them diminishes the authority such a status ought to convey. Yet, to these programs, and to the work of the professors and students in them, I remain devoted, doing the best I can, based on the research, training, and reading I do to perform as a knowledgeable guide to the available resources and literatures. I know my colleagues across the University do the same. But there is no doubt, the need for subject specialty is growing just as our resources are being reduced.

In our challenging times, however, we ought not coil back from this responsibility, and concern ourselves only with generalities of research. Instead we need to restructure the library so that it becomes more effective at meeting this growing need. Posturing as if all information were of equal value, as if libraries were only responsible for the management of interchangeable info-widgets is to distort the complexity of the information landscape today. Instead, we must work at finding the best ways to teach and promote the contextual value of information, and do our best to support the practices and policies which add knowledge based assistance to the research process.

See also...

The Qualitative Place of the Reference Desk Today

On Ubiquitous Instruction

.

The Qualitative Place of the Reference Desk Today

2010-04-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

David Michalski
Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian
University of California, Davis
michalski@ucdavis.edu

Even as we reach and serve more and more patrons remotely through new forms of tele-presence, the properly equipped and staffed Reference Desk remains an important part of both the 21st Century library and university. It not only serves as the symbolic center for our activities, it continues as the physical embodiment our mission to the campus. It is, of course, not our only point of contact. The Reference Desk is a site in a wider network of reference interactions made through both static and interactive online tools, virtual meetings and face-to-face meetings in offices and in class instruction, as well as in other public forums. Yet the Reference Desk, by virtue of its very immobility and permanence, is a central hinge between the library and its users. It serves as the anchor and dispatch center for all our flexible and mobile initiatives. It is our office and our laboratory, an open and public node where we can engage the climate of our researchers and the hub from which we embark in service of the university’s educational and research missions. Both history and current events show space and materiality are still important in the construct of our social world, in fact, no less so in today’s fast and liquid information environment. Ultimately, we occupy this space so that we are accountable to our public.

Spatially, the Reference Desk serves as an invitation to our users. It shows that we are employed in their interest. In my experience at Peter J. Shields Library at the University of California, Davis, I find patrons approaching the Reference Desk on which I serve for many reasons, for orientation, for resource discovery, and for conversations about the distribution and context of information. Situated at the center of campus, our Reference Desk is often busy. Every quarter, I meet new faculty and researchers, help new students with old problems and new assignments, and meet continuing students who have progressed from the academic novice to the intellectually engaged scholar. It is a mutually rewarding and challenging space from which to serve the campus and community.

New powerful tools and burgeoning resources in print and online have allowed the information environment to flourish. New possibilities, truly await today’s scholars, but these advances also make the information landscape increasingly complex. In this environment, the Reference Desk is used increasingly to ameliorate the confusion encountered online. The opportunity to speak directly with the librarian offers patrons a clear and direct communication of their needs and their challenges. The Reference Desk provides the much needed space and time to listen and provide information and advice in a relatively unmediated way. Time and again I’ve seen the reference desk, staffed by knowledgeable people turn frustrated users back into hopeful researchers. Undoubtedly, this commitment to our users contains costs, and its value is, like most knowledge, difficult to account, but beside counting the papers saved, insights sparked, or careers changed because of the fruitful interplay between librarians and researchers, the Reference Desk must also be recognized as a place to communicate our ethical responsibility to our users.

The rapport created there not only translates into future good will towards the library and university, but better research skills for the patron. Even when the patron approaches the desk to ask for known items or to access sets of pre-conceived information, the contact with the librarian often leads to new, more complex, questions, and sometimes, new research endeavors. New questions develop and new ways to organize projects take form, because reference is a more than a place of questions and answers. It is a space of translation, interpretation, and knowledge formation.

Face-to-face researcher-librarian interaction allows researchers to engage in embodied conversations in concert with the information world. Researchers can walk through their search results with the librarian as an interpretive guide or docent. It is a form of interaction that benefits both the researcher and the library as an institution. In the anthropological terms, it is a rich site for the transfer of cultures and skills. The librarian uses this interaction to impart search techniques, and convey the peculiarities of a discourse’s publication and distribution. Pertinent information about the scope and coverage of available resources is also taught, all with a consciousness of, and reciprocity to the researcher’s disposition. With an eye and ear to the situation at hand, to the patron’s level of skill, the signs and postures of time and attention allow for in-situ adjustments. Communication strategy can be altered by assessing the value and comprehension of communication and instruction imparted. Information is not simply dispensed at the Reference Desk, but communicated in a humane manner. In the best circumstances, knowledge about the fuller social life of information can be discussed. The librarian can work to put the researcher’s project in context with the wider intellectual environment. The new perspective built through conversations can lead to new paths of discovery.

Being there, being present, helps the library work in concert with faculty and students. In our large and complex Universities, perhaps uniquely, the librarian at the Reference Desk is there to listen, to put a face in front of the machine. We perform as information consultants and counselors and the Reference Desk becomes the safe place for such communication. It is a confidential place away from the judgment of professors, a place to inquire, explore, learn and grow. It is where we teach novices not to be intimidated by the languages of scholarship. It is where we hear problems, and in the best cases, where we offer solutions and build confidence.

The librarian at the Reference Desk is also uniquely positioned to convey the institution’s message and mission. She or he wears the University’s public face, offering the best attributes of what is too often dismissed as mere customer service. In the University today we must strengthen our engagement with the public. This node is where the library as an institution can best learn from the populations it serves. It is a prime and unfiltered information gathering point for the library in its efforts to remain relevant to the University. Each conversation there informs collection development decisions, instructional needs, and outreach methods. The librarian on the Reference Desk records the core concerns and trends of our faculty and students. As such, the Reference Desk is generative of library and librarian expertise. It enables us as an institution to react, adjust, and think. A librarian confronted with the assignments and research projects learns the challenges of the engaged student or advanced scholar, and develops creative problem solving techniques as well as information that can be used to enhance the library and better support the University’s mission.

The Reference desk is only one node in the overall provision of reference services, but it is unique in its extensibility, flexibility, and power. It creates conversations that build sustained relationships under the partnership of mutual inquiry and concern for the information experience. It is also the place where our commitment to our public is judged. And rightfully so, for if we can not be bothered to engage the public here, what faith will the public have in us across the screen?

See also...

From General Reference to Subject Specialty

On Ubiquitous Instruction

.

Questions for the UCI South Regional Assembly

2010-04-12T11:30:00.001-07:00

1. Reference and Instruction
Which aspects of reference and instruction do you see as ongoing functions of librarians?
Which aspects do you see fading away?
Which aspects do you see evolving, and how?
What are some practical approaches librarians should consider in relation to reference and instruction?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

Possible article of interest for this discussion: Beck, Clare. 1991. "Reference Services: a Handmaid's Tale." Library Journal 116 (7):32-38.

Contrast the Beck article with the item cited in the UCSF blog posting (2/10/10) on the LAUC blog: Kaufman, Paula. 2009. "Carpe Diem: Transforming Services in Academic Libraries"
https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/12032

2. Relationship to information providers
What differences do you see now between librarians and non-librarian information providers?
In what ways do you see these differences evolving?
In what practical ways can librarians draw attention to and demonstrate these differences?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

3. Library Personnel
What do you see, generally, as the current functions of library personnel?
How do you see these functions and responsibility for them evolving?
In what practical ways can librarians demonstrate their value in analyzing and making recommendations regarding the roles and functions of library personnel?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

4. Technology
Which aspects of technology do you see as ongoing functions of librarians?
Which aspects do you see fading away?
Which aspects do you see evolving, and how?
What are some practical approaches librarians should consider in relation to technology functions?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

5. Collections
Which aspects of collections do you see as ongoing functions of librarians?
Which aspects do you see fading away?
Which aspects do you see evolving, and how?
What are some practical approaches librarians should consider in relation to collections functions?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

6. Library Buildings
In which ways are librarians and physical library spaces linked, currently?
In which ways do you see this evolving?
What are some practical approaches librarians should consider regarding physical library spaces?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

7. Campus Roles
How does your campus view the role of librarians, currently?
In which ways do you see this evolving?
What are some practical approaches librarians should consider regarding their campus roles?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

8. Library Networks
What do you see as the current role of librarians at your institution regarding library networks?
In which ways do you see this evolving?
What are some practical approaches librarians should consider regarding their campus roles?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

9. Organizational Culture
Librarians:
Which aspects of organizational culture at your institution affect your work directly?
Which aspects are supportive?
Which aspects are obstacles?
In what practical ways should the organization change to meet your evolving professional needs?
Please rank each on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being lowest & 5 being highest.

Committee on Diversity at the UCDavis Libraries

2010-04-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

Last week, I attended the first meeting of the UCDavis Libraries Committee on Diversity, and this proved to be an illuminating look at two of the nine topics that have defined our discussion of the future of UC librarianship. The meeting was based on a presentation by Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for the Office of Campus Community Relations Rahim Reed. He reiterated throughout his talk his respect for the Library Diversity committee which has a history of contributing to the campus, he said. This contribution has largely taken the form of support for a centerpiece of the campus's diversity programming which is the campus community book project. Every year, a committee selects a campus book related to the theme of diversity. Previous designees include The Kite Runner and Mountains Beyond Mountains. This year's book is The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. Each year, there is ongoing programming on campus surrounding the book that consists of exhibits and discussions. The author is always invited for a series of high-profile talks at the campus's main performance venue, The Mondavi Center. With the focus on a book, such a project is a natural for the library. In previous years, the library has always obtained the campus book and hosted exhibits and discussions.

At this time, the diversity office is facing a particularly urgent concern in the form of a rash of acts of discrimination. These include swastikas painted on the doors of Jewish students, defacement of the LBGT office and harassment of African-American students. Here we are in the 21st century! Some people are slow to get the message. As was pointed out at the meeting, these incidents are so far beyond the pale and at such an opposite pole from discussions on diversity, that, at first glance it is hard to know how to begin to deal with this. It's like teaching people to add and subtract. One is not sure where to start. Rahim admitted that no place can be guaranteed to be safe against everything, but he offered a comprehensive vision. In part, security will be stepped up around campus. But the main effort will be a version of "draining the swamp" that discriminators live in through education and training of staff, and this is the centerpiece, too, of the conversations that the diversity office plans to hold around campus. New ideas are always welcome. With this challenge to the Library's diversity committee, Rahim ended his presentation. Not only does the library have an opportunity to intervene in the life of the campus, but it has a history of doing so which was news to me as a relatively new member of the campus. In anything to do with cross-disciplinary education, it makes sense that the library should be at the forefront of such an effort, and it will be interesting to see what unique contributions that the library can make in the upcoming year.

For its first action, the committee decided to look internally at the library before looking outward to the campus. There have been a spate of troubles within the last few months. One was an incident in which a self-appointed group delivered letters to certain individuals claiming that they were not doing their share of the work. Another was a series of angry emails regarding the timing and nature of communications about layoffs that the library may be forced to implement in the near future. All incidents did not reflect the Principles of Community that the UC Davis campus prides itself on--to say the least. Some of have speculated that these incidents reflect the tension surrounding the budget crisis that afflicts the entire UC system, and, from that perspective, they are understandable. However, the themes of inequality and that certain classes of staff within the library are more privileged than others are ones that I, for one, have seen elsewhere and seem to be general in library culture. So, the committee's first move will be to address this aspect of the organizational culture of libraries. One of the features of diversity programming, mentioned by Rahim, is a series of workshops and courses on the campus on different aspects of diversity. Rather than sending individuals to this training, the committee is considering a special session tailored to library concerns to focus on healing divisions and increasing communication and effectiveness to face the challenges that lie ahead. The UC Davis Library Committee on Diversity will be a place to watch with regards to both library campus roles and organizational cultures.

Matt

UC Commission on the Future First Recommendations

2010-03-31T12:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a summary of the first round of recommendations of the UC Commission on the Future. Links to expanded documents are appended. The big picture might be useful to see where libraries can insert themselves. The last heading "Educating Tomorrow's Innovators" seems to me like the likeliest entry point.

Matt

Vision for the future

The UC Commission on the Future just released the first round of recommendations from its five working groups. Some recommendations you likely won't find controversial. Others represent changes that we probably would not be talking about if it weren't for the fiscal crisis that inspired the birth of this commission. This is just a first step and by no means the end of the commission's work. We expect lively debate over some of these recommendations.

During the next two months, the commission is gathering feedback before presenting prioritized recommendations to the regents in July. The commission will continue working and will present final recommendations in the fall.

As a UC advocate, your voice is important to this process. You can read the first round of recommendations and submit your feedback online .

As you can see, despite our budget challenges, UC is not standing still. Here are just a few of the recent efforts to serve our students and the people of California.
Campus Climate

University leaders are taking a hard look at the issues of intolerance that have come to light on some of our campuses in recent weeks. You may have read about these incidents .

Campus leaders reported to the UC Regents (Watch video) on the steps they have taken to address those incidents. Regents also heard from students about their experiences with bigotry and about UC's need to increase diversity on all of its campuses.

As President Mark Yudof said at the meeting, "We do not shy away from examining our own problems, from acting decisively and with dispatch to address them."

We want you to know that work continues to investigate the campus incidents and appropriately discipline those responsible whenever possible. At the same time, UC Regents have pledged to take responsibility for monitoring campus climate throughout the system and for increasing the diversity of our students, faculty, staff and curriculum to better reflect the rich, multicultural environment of California.

We are confident that together we can move forward and reaffirm our commitment to tolerance, civility and inclusiveness. Those are values we embrace and that underpin the great work accomplished at the University of California.

Public service

At the governor's request, UC is exploring what role it can play in helping the state save millions of dollars in prison health costs.

Green research

Our annual sustainability report highlights all the ways we're cutting the carbon footprint of our campuses and saving money at the same time. In the growing field of green technology, UC is a national leader, and we practice what we teach.

Educating tomorrow's innovators

Our students continue to learn and apply their knowledge to the real world. Check out some of the research projects our undergrads are working on and see why it's so important that we keep advocating for UC's future. http://undergrads.universityofcalifornia.edu/

Your support makes our successes possible.

Thank you for standing with us.

Please visit http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/uc4ca/home/ if you'd like to learn more about our advocacy efforts and take action.

Visit UC Newsroom for the latest systemwide news.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/

Sincerely,

UC Advocacy Team

The recommendations can be found at:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/23070
full report at:
http://ucfuture.universityofcalifornia.edu/presentations/cotf_wg_first_recs.pdf

SOPAG Reports on Collection Space Planning

2010-03-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Here are links to the SOPAG reports:

Final report: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/spaceplantf/collspace-report-mar24_final.pdf

• Appendices A-D: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/spaceplantf/collspaceAPPENDIX-A-D-mar24-rev.pdf
• Appendix E: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/spaceplantf/collSpaceAPPENDIX-E-growth-mar24-rev.pdf

UC Budget and Libraries

2010-03-11T12:34:00.000-08:00

In times of severe budget crisis as we are surely in, it makes sense to consider all points of view and, as librarians, it behooves us to consider as well the alternative press. So, here is a short review of an article that summarizes well one extreme view of the UC Budget crisis.

Parrish, Will, and Darwin Bond-Graham. "Disaster Capitalist University." Anderson Valley Advertiser 58.7(2010).

The article is listed on the LAUC Futures bibliography on the LAUC wiki with an active link.

The article starts with the decision of last July by the California State Legislature to remove $813 million from the University of California's budget for the next fiscal year. In response, the university's Board of Regents declared a "state of emergency" accompanied by special "emergency powers" for UC President Mark Yudof with which he has implemented cost-cutting measures that have been the subject of controversy. The article generalizes this incident to a general trend which it calls "disaster capitalism" based on a 2007 book called The Shock Doctrine by journalist Naomi Klein. The theory is that major players in a capitalist society will fabricate crises in order to suspend the freedom of the people, suppress their spirit of inquiry and arrogate special powers to themselves (players) for their own advancement. This notion has had currency elsewhere. In George Orwell's iconic novel 1984, societies are kept united and oppressed by remote wars created for this purpose. More recently, Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear, postulated that the entire of issue of global warming is the fabrication of environmentalist groups and corrupt elements of government for their own hidden agendas.

Applied to the UCs, the "shock doctrine" introduces numbers, similar to those heard already, to show that the university is not facing a crisis that is beyond the resources it has available. The article goes on to build a complex web of political and financial connections, including Yudof. This network, allegedly, is using the current financial crisis to gain unprecedented control of university money and invest it in large corporations for personal profit.

I've selected this article for review partly because it appeared in a library listserve, so it is a specimen of the discourses that we are exposed to. It also, rather articulately, gives voice to some of the most extreme objections to the current handling of the budget crisis as well as the misgivings and dissatisfaction that one could hardly avoid feeling in the midst of these events.

How are librarians to respond to this line of reasoning? First, one can hardly deny that this is a specimen of conspiracy theories that have appeared in many contexts. This does not mean that they are to be dismissed out of hand, and it seems undeniable to me that there is some degree of truth in the claims. However as part of the conspiracy genre, this article is liable to a lot of concerns with others of its type. First of all, the claims tend to be long on suggestiveness and insinuations but hard to prove. In this category is another issue that deserves to be singled out. There is a practice of throwing out numbers here and there to support a picture of injustice by the university policy. Maybe these numbers are correct. Yet, it is undeniable that the whole financial picture is far, far more complicated to the point where it is very likely impossible to summarize by a few numbers as has been done. Is it even possible to communicate the essence of the university's finacial situation to the populace at large? I don't know. But it seems to me futile for proponents of both sides to quote a few numbers here or there and claim that their side is right. This just doesn't convince anyone.

In any case, what are librarians to do? Sadly, not a great deal that I can see. We certainly are not in a position to do investigative reporting to expose the truth of large conspiracy theories. It seems like the best we can do is to keep on doing our job and advocating wherever possible the importance of libraries and librarians for the public good against which uses of the public money, even by conspirators, will, ultimately, be held accountable.

For these seeking to explore the actual financial state of the university in all its details and communicate this to constituents, it's important to develop a picture that persuasively shows the complexity of the finances rather than what looks like soundbites and partisan data.

Matt

International Digital Library Research & Development Meeting

2010-03-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

The UC's efforts at digitizing library material in cooperation with Google and the HathiTrust are being paralleled by other cooperative efforts as described in a report called "International Digital Library Research & Development Meeting" which describes an international meeting at Stanford University on library cooperatives. The report can be found in full at (http://www.clir.org/globaldigitallibraries/INTL_LIB_R&D_Partic_FinalA.pdf) .

The report claims that "in an era of retrenchment, [senior administrators and senior technologists] are seeking to extend the reach of their institutions through unprecedented integration of their digital collections with others' in the international library community." In other words, crisis is opportunity and in a time of budgetary challenges, library leaders hope not only to reduce costs but expand service at the same time. These twin imperatives lead to a sense of urgency. "We need to be positively impatient," according to one of the participants.

Progress, however, has foundered or at least been held up by an irresolvable "tension" between two different points of view. On the one hand, "The piece-by-piece maturation of the digital library, growing as it has from separately funded initiatives that are often redundant, is neither efficient nor sustainable." On the other, "Striving to achieve widespread agreement on priorities for digital library development" is slow and even "counter-productive." In other words, neither a top-down nor bottom-top method serves the purpose and no procedural compromise has been discovered. Yet, the report elsewhere describes this tension as "fertile" and productive. Specific initiatives include:

1. Repository Architectural Review
2. Data Curation and Preservation
3. Digital Manuscripts
4. Digital Forensics
5. Semantic Web
6. Hydra/Blacklight - tools for building an environment for hosting and managing digital assets (http://www.fedora-commons.org/confluence/display/hydra/The+Hydra+Project)
7. PLANETS - a European-based initiative for building tools, codifying best practices, and fostering a community around digital preservation (http://www.planets-project.edu/).

and many more.

Collection Preservation and Budget Issues at UCDavis

2010-02-24T14:13:00.000-08:00

The UC Davis Binding Services Section hosted a workshop on their services on Monday, February 22, 2010. The Binding Services Section is part of the Margaret B. Harrison Preservation Department which is housed in the Technical Services Department of the Peter J. Shields Library. The talk was presented by Charlotte Payne, supervisor of the Binding Services Section and Wendy Jones, supervisor of the Conservation Treatment and In-House Binding Sub-Section.

The services of the Binding Section take place against a backdrop of shrinking budgets and offer not only ingenious techniques for doing the job with less money but also a portrait of how the budget-crisis of the UCs is affecting every aspect of libraries. The binding budget has dropped by almost 40% in the last two years from $106,868 to $77,376. Charlotte said that the first consideration is mandatory requirements. All monographs and monographic series housed at the Physical Sciences Library (PSE) are bound, amounting to $4,000 of the buddget. This is partly because space is so compact there that the binding is necessary to squeeze everything in although it was noted that binding also increases the size of a book by a small amount. Gift books are generally not bound or repaired, however, those in need of serious repair will be bound. Otherwise, in order to allot the limited resources of the binding department, Charlotte gathers as much information as possible on the usage level and value of the book. She checks circulation levels of old copies and provdes slips to collection developers asking for their expectations of usage. One librarian mentioned that he had been told not to use these slips, but Charlotte said that, from the point-of-view of the binding department, information was always helpful. Active involvement of the bibliographers is an important element in successful cost reduction.

Among the binding materials available for paperback books, mylar is the champion: it is sturdier than plastic boook jackets, has superior openability, retains front and back covers, and is cheaper than buckram binding with almost equivalent durability. Buckram is reserved for books of significant size and weight. Use of the fastback machine has now been discontinued as the machinery had so much downtime that it was cost-effective to send the jobs to the UC bindery instead. In addition, in-house fastbacking was impacted by cuts in the budget for student assistants. In response to a question, Charlotte said that she was not aware of any "green binding" yet in existence other than the use of acid-free board in binding. What cannot be repaired in-house or at the UC bindery is sent to collection developers with a list of options, including replacement or discard.

Wendy discussed the repair processes of the preservattion department. Books arrive from all branches and departmeents in the Library but the bulk, 270 per month, come from the Circulation department. About 100 per month are sent to the UC bindery, a much smaller number than previously since books are increasingly repaired on-site to save money. An average of 170 books per month have conservattion treatment including rebacking and treatmeent for a bindery new case. Categories of problems include books with sugar and coffee stains or any other kind of stain that could attract insects and threaten the collection. Wendy observed that the quantity of damaged books has increased significantly. There is also an increased incidence of ink markings in books. Asian language books often arrive with very fragile bindings that need to be replaced. The preservattion department works hard to do conservation work that can reduce the costs of UC biinding which, for rebinding or a new case, costs $16. However, the student staff has been cut from 10 to six because of budget cuts, and the preservation departmeent has become significantly backlogged. Repair options include tack binding, velo binding, pam binding and custom-made boxes for books, and full conservation treatments, including resewing. Sometimes books are sent to NRLF where they will be handled less. Wendy reiterated that she works very closely with Charlotte and both check the Melvyl catalog to formulate the most cost-effective repair choices. Wendy added that you cannot always predict which items will be used. GRE Prrep books from 2003 have been borrowed many times already in 2010. Those people are desperate....

Matt

Hurtling Toward the Finish Line: Should the Google Books Settlement Be Approved?: California Digital Library

2010-02-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

Hurtling Toward the Finish Line: Should the Google Books Settlement Be Approved?
February 16, 2010

Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections
California Digital Library

"Late last week, Google and the plaintiffs filed their final briefs in defense of the Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) that is before the New York Southern Federal District Court. As the rhetoric around the Settlement heats up to white-hot intensity in the final days before the Fairness Hearing on February 18th, I’d like to offer a few personal thoughts from my vantage point at the California Digital Library."

UCSF Discussion of the Future of UC Libraries

2010-02-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

On Monday, February 8, LAUC-SF hosted a local discussion about the future of UC libraries and the evolving roles of librarians. Members of LAUC-SF attended, as well as senior library leadership including university librarian Karen Butter. We invited the entire library staff to attend, and a few interested staff members (including a circulation assistant who recently earned his MLIS) were also in attendance.

Prompted by the table reports from the December Assembly in Berkeley, as well as the CDC concept paper on the 21st century collection, a healthy discussion ensued. There remains a gap in conceptions of whether we have a UC "collection" or "collections," and continued discussions are needed about how to balance a campus's rightful ownership with more widespread access. There was a general consensus that our roles needed to evolve in order for librarians to remain relevant, but into what is less clear.

At UCSF we've taken a somewhat different approach to the concept of "library as place," with the Library's active involvement in the development of the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) to open in 2011. The TLC will replace a floor that used to be devoted, in part, to more traditional functions such as housing bound journals. Although there were initial concerns about "losing space," most library staff now see the TLC as a positive development that will cause us to develop new services and ways of teaching. We are not advocating clinging to the building for the building's sake, but rather converting our physical assets into more vital space that benefits the aims of the Library in tandem with those of the University.

Space, mission, roles--all of these are in flux right now. Following the meeting, our UL pointed us to a useful paper by Paula Kaufman of the University of Illinois that addresses similar themes: "Carpe Diem: Transforming Services in Academic Libraries." The gathering at UCSF led to a productive discussion, and I hope many more follow.

Marcus Banks
Chair, LAUC-SF

Library Buildings -- UCDavis Sleep-In

2010-02-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

This past weekend February 5-7, the Peter J. Shields Library was the site of a "sleep-in" to protest the rise of student fees and budget cuts throughout the UC system. Students remained in the library throughout the weekend, holding talks on the progress of the budget, hanging posters, operating coffee stands, and, of course, studying.

The event represents another turn in a string of creative protests at UCDavis. In the fall quarter, Davis students staged a rally on the central quad clad in their underwear to protest fee hikes. At a later date, demonstrators occupied Mrak Hall, the site of the Registrar's office and refused to leave. Some were forcibly removed and there were arrests on-site. When I told my Dad about the library sleep-in, his response was "Why a library?" I said that this is in the tradition of activism from the 1960s where our very own UC Berkeley helped to make history with occupations of university buildings. "I know all that," he said. "But those were symbols of power. Usually people take over administrative buildings. What do they plan to do with a library?"

Why indeed? It appears that what transpired did not quite follow anyone's original vision but was more of an evolution. Earlier in the week, the library and the Chancellor's office received notice that the library would be occupied by students over the weekend. Since, as we know, the library closes for part of that time, in the case of the Shields Library at 6pm on Friday to reopen at noon on Saturday, this announcement was distinctly challenging with the threat of conflict. Linda Katehi, newly appointed Chancellor of UCDavis responded with an announcement that the university recognizes the difficulties upon students imposed by the budget crisis and hopes to assist them by holding extra library hours. So, indeed the library remained open all weekend. Library AULs and acting co-ULs staffed the circulation desk through both Friday and Saturday night. The scene that unfolded was a benign one. Friday evening began with a series of talks on the budget crisis during which the only disruption was when a union speaker was asked to cut his remarks short to make room for student speakers. There were workshops on self-defense and various crafts, coffee stations provided and run by the students, and motivational posters hung up throughout the building. In addition to quoting the likes of Oscar Wilde and Dr. Seuss on various metaphysical truths were several thanking "our wonderful librarians and staff." Mostly students did indeed study and occupied their usual niches throughout the building.

In answer to "why a library building?" this episode, I think has, potentially, much to say about the physical space of the library building in the context of change in education. Players which have sometimes been potentially at odds--the administration, the library, and the users--through political strategy, flexibility, and a spirit of cooperation managed to turn an event that could have been ugly and full of conflict (police dragging people out of a library would be much more inflammatory than dragging people out of the registrar's building as has been replayed on UCDavis TV monitors for weeks) into one that was not only benign but productive. Lo and behold, the mythical library coffee shop, which is often discussed but seldom realized, materialized on its own along with other activities and an "information commons." Perhaps this merging and temperate harmonizing of elements is what the library can offer to campuses in a period of change.

Futures Discussion

2010-01-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

Below is the online discussion growing out of the Fall 2009 LAUC Assembly. The broad topic of the future of librarianship in California has been divided into nine topics labeled below. The post for each topic summarizes the work of the group assigned to that topic at the assembly. Please add comments to particular topics via the "comments" link at the bottom of each post.

Discussion group 9: organizational culture

2010-01-25T14:46:00.000-08:00

• Org culture – how we do business, may be overt or covert
o how slow change occurs, attachment to how we currently do things, resistance to change
o many impediments to change
o culture is rarely questioned & smothers new ideas

• LAUC’s relevance – is it? need to make ourselves more visible
o lots of librarians not outward looking, only focused
o Librarians not viewed as essential to research, teaching
o disconnection between with services we deliver & perception of who makes these available
o Not effective at telling our story

• We don’t know what to let go of, what to take on
• Who else is equipped to handle UC’s research needs
• Strike balance between just in time and just in case
• Great faith and belief in our systems – this attitude works against new ideas and approaches – fear of unknown, of looking bad, huge problem of how to deal with everything that’s gone on before (retro catalog?) – how much to our students care about this?

• Just in time vs just in case
• quick vs slow
• innovation vs tradition
• experimenting vs inertia
• empowerment vs micro-management
• willing to take a risk vs fear of punishment for mistakes/looking bad

Discussion group 8: library networks

2010-01-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

Recorder name and email: Lisa Sibert

Focused on UC Library Networks

Addressed issue off timelines, i.e. 5y, 10y; short-term v. long-term
Networks in place:
Springer e-boooks
YBP approval, plans are linked
NGM—networked across UCs collaboration with outside entity
Shared print
Networks under development and/or consideration:
NGTS efforts
Western states coordinated plan for managing
Permanent retrospective print collections (issue: how will this affect stats for ARL libraries?)
Collaborative approval plans (print & electronic)
Collaborative e-book purchasing

Discussion group 7: campus roles

2010-01-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

Campus Roles - Where does the library fit in on campus?
Recorded by Susan Mikkelsen and Ann Frenkel

What is your first order of business?

Library space, services and collections are integral part of every UC Campus. As librarians we understand that we are critical to the academic success of students and faculty. But we don’t always do a very good job at self-promotion or educating our campus communities about the value of our services. We need to find new ways to communicate to others on our campuses about what librarians have to offer, and make library spaces and services an indispensible component of research and study on every UC campus.

DISCUSSION POINTS (Note: There was not consensus in the group on all points)

Library Spaces
As collections move to the online environment, library spaces must be repurposed to meet the needs of the learning community. The creation of the Information Commons is a growing trend in academic libraries that has developed in response to the need for a more user-centered approach to resources and services. The Information Commons supports and enhances student learning and research by providing state of the art technology and resources in an academic environment that promotes collaborative work. The new Teaching & Learning Center at UCSF is a tailored version of an Information Commons that includes a simulation and clinical skills education center, technology-enhanced active-learning classrooms and computing labs. Other possible models for future Information Commons include creating spaces for students to play with and receive instruction with technology (video-editing, presentation software, poster production, etc).

Instruction
Information literacy skills need to be integrated into the academic curriculum. A for-credit library course would be desirable in some ways, but this is unlikely to be accepted by the University as librarians do not have faculty status. A better approach may be to work with academic departments to get information literacy objectives written into course outcomes. Although librarians across campuses have been fairly successful in collaborating with individual faculty members, faculty and librarian turnover make these partnerships tenuous. Programmatic collaboration provides a more stable platform for continuity in library instruction. Librarians need to advocate with department chairs and other key stakeholders to get information literacy standards integrated into course curriculums.

Academic Senate
If librarians want a voice in the in the academic senate, they will need to fight for faculty status.

Campus Consultants
Librarians need to be willing to act as research consultants for other units on campus. This means that we may have to say yes when asked to be involved in some projects that we previously would not have accepted. Ann Frenkel (AUL - UCR) gave two examples from her campus. (1)An academic committee at UCR asked for librarian assistance using ISI for impact factor/citation analysis. Their librarians wrote searches for citation information in response to this request. (2)The photography museum approached the library with a request to catalog images and place them in the library collection. Though this request was not feasible, Ann saw this as a great opportunity. Opportunities like these exist on all campuses, particularly with the Office of Research (impact factor questions can lead to opportunities to inform about other research metrics) and the Office of Development (research on potential donors).

Talking Points for the Library
Librarians need to be equipped with talking points about the library to effectively communicate with faculty and other key stakeholders about libraries services/resources/initiatives.

Publish outside the Library Literature
Publishing outside the library literature and attending conferences in other disciplines has the potential to make library services more visible to campus stakeholders. For example, Josephine Tan UCSF librarian recently published an article in an academic medical journal with several UCSF faculty members.* We are aware that some social science librarians have also published outside of the library literature, but these efforts need to be encouraged and expanded.

Communicate the Message “Use It or Lose It”
We need to send the message that library resources are costly to acquire and maintain. None of the resources that students and faculty use on a routine basis would be available without librarian expertise. Instruction librarians should deliver this message during instruction sessions to help raise awareness of all the behind-the-scenes work done by librarians. As an additional awareness raising event, the group proposed a “day without resources” when access to library resources would be completely turned off. Along with restricted access, users would receive a message about the cost of the resources.

*Chen HC, Tan JPG, O’Sullivan P, Boscardin C, Li A, Muller J. Impact of an Information Retrieval and Management Curriculum on Medical Student Citations. Acad Med 2009 84 (10 Supp): S38-S41.

Discussion group 6: Library buildings

2010-01-25T14:43:00.000-08:00

1. Does remote access to info make academic libraries irrelevant as a place?
1. Well, yes (thank you very much)
2. Not necessarily

What we know is that “Academic libraries are not ends in themselves.” (to quote Lorcan Dempsey)

2. What are the best uses of library space –
1. Open,
2. well lighted …
3. welcoming with comfortable spaces …
4. few draconian rules …
5. A place with areas for quiet study segregated off …
6. but many more areas where group study and meaningful conversation about life and / or research can occur.
7. A place with classrooms – to maximize the integration of the university mission … to have the teaching embedded within our facilities.
8. Many group study rooms.

3. Print collections …
1. For most of us print collections will be … smaller.
2. Not to be overly superficial but possibly
1. “fresher” … with research items (infrequently used) in shared print storage collection & or massive uc google book shared online / print collection off site ...)
3. We will prune our collections (monographs journals) aggressively
4. We will have a shared collection hub (regional hubs like the regional library facilities) …
5. We will come up with a reasonable method of sharing all the older items.
6. Print on demand may be prominent.

4. Library Service Desks
1. The service desk will be open, without barriers to the greatest extent possible …
2. We will be available … on call … available via text message request or chat or email or whatever …
3. But the desk will be a shared work space with the user.
4. We will be flexible – will be movable (perhaps) –
5. We will bring our service desk to you, if you prefer. If you're on the fourth floor there may be a space we can share to talk about the research.
6. The fewer barriers, the fewer the formal desks and barriers the better.

5. Group study
1. Huge emphasis on group study.
2. It is how we work as a civilization, a society – we work together in teams.

6. Social gathering places – we are.
1. We must be places that are w/out rules for rules sake.... We must be welcoming and comfortable with the type of furniture that makes much of the library space an effective, comfortable social gathering place / study lounge / library …
2.

What really happened:

So we begin our conversation on library buildings discussing timelines of all things.

When do we build the library of the future ? Five years, ten years down the road? Things are changing. It may be wise to wait for the shared collection idea to be fleshed out more fully before building the bookless library :)

So yes, students want to be here (the library) but what makes a building a library?

Some libraries are losing space to other academic disciplines.

Conversation migrates to shifting low use materials to the NRLF and SRLF.

Part of the question, someone says, is what is the future trend.

Print material , leaving special collections aside, added content will be digital. That material that is in print will be in some shared environment.

A space for library collections at UCSF had a floor taken over by the School of Medicine – sort of a UL partnering issue with School of Medicine.

KG UCSD : Brings up the example of ucmerced – how they have a large building … that is largely empty of books but has many classrooms etc.

Classrooms are important elements in future library bldgs.

So why in the library ? How do we define what value we bring to this

Is it a library bldg simply because we are there , librarians, as facilitators.?

Strong impetus to move to

New bldg at UCSC – Classroom space … there will be a cafe (food) … A real cafe area that will not be inside the actualo library space.

The new bldg at UCSC has a couple of academic departments inside the bldg. But there is a separation from the collections space and faculty office space. There are of course access issues and the different access rules for faculty in bldg versus library visitors.

So we are migrating away from print toward remote storage facilities etc.

Sit in conversation …. How the budget has impacted our hours service etc.

There have been studies to try to determine higher use moments. And yet there is a problem with limiting library hours.

Think of merced where there are 75 laptops …

print on demand.

Collections.

Discussion group 5: collections

2010-01-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

For at least 100 reasons

1. It’s premature to take the “s” off collection and we already do act as if there is no “s” as much as we can.
2. Perhaps the whole university will have to re-think the way it does business before we can even seriously think collection in the singular.
3. Shared print with local patron-driven collecting is possible as lon as no restrictions are placed on what campuses can do.
4. We should think about CDL negotiating consortial ebook licenses.
5. The UCs must cooperate with each other whenever possible—and then some.
6. It was really dumb to cut CDL funding during a time when cooperative action is so crucial.

Discussion Group 4: Technology

2010-01-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

Recorder: Phoebe Ayers, psayers@ucdavis.edu
Group members: Amy Chatfield, Rebecca Hyde, Phoebe Ayers, Lucia Orlando

Notes:

• Areas of technology:
o Making technology a separate area of discussion is problematic, because it affects every area of our jobs, and every topic of discussion -- from public computers in the building, to the way we access our information resources, to how we help patrons, etc. Technology is a major driver that bears on every one of the topics discussed.

• Adopting technologies to provide:
o just because a technology is new and shiny -- do we have to adopt it? should we adopt it? (do people really search databases from their iphones on the bus? maybe!)
o for instance, are online books really preferable? Many (most) people seem to still prefer physical books

• Information product interfaces:
o how do you get technology to give people the best results?
o how do we work with database interfaces, google, etc., to help patrons get the best results? Should we work more on information design?
o our own websites (mobile interfaces)

• How far do we want to go to meet people in the library with technologies they use?
o for instance, why don't we have unlocked public computers? (this varies between campuses)
o library facebook, twitter? do people actually want/need this?

• Front end and back end technologies
o technology means both the front end that the patron sees (the website and the back end that we work with, e.g. sfx
o should we concentrate on making the back end better, as well as our sites?

• Instruction
o should we team up with campus systems to teach classes about technologies (word, excel, etc)?
o one barrier to offering nice computers and software to the campus population are expectations of support -- we might have to train people/ support it
o library technology bootcamp? could we offer focussed, serious programs? (like ICSPR bootcamp for social science grad students)
o but we also need to teach basic library skills -- how to use a catalog
o we make a lot of assumptions that students know how to use computers, and tech because they are young, but that might not be true at all

• Technology programs
o for something like e-science -- it's a big, expensive problem; we could help make connections between people
o should something like escience be something that should be worked on centrally, like the CDL; we don't have money, resources, expertise -- but people like local technology programs for the prestige, like local data archives
o something like the ICSPR -- they store datasets and articles based on the data; institution based out of michigan

Group 3 discussion report: Library Personnel

2010-01-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

At UC, the status of the librarian series is under pressure on the one end from paraprofessionals whose work seems to overlap with ours (the Career Compass initiative at UCB is potentially spreading to other campuses) and at the other end from persons hired in the Analyst series who do similar work but are hired outside the librarian series so they can be paid higher salaries.

Technical skills are essential for librarians but they are not the only skills we need. Management and interpersonal skills are equally essential.

As a profession we need to promote ourselves as having these and other skill sets.

Current librarians need the time to read, research, and be involved in professional issues; ideally more librarians would be hired to allow this. This is a professional issue and a retention issue.

Librarians should reach out to library and information schools and let them know what skills and values we want future librarians to have.

Should LAUC lead a discussion on what are the values and philosophies unique to librarians? When we digitize books, for example, we do so through the lens of promoting public access, preservation, standards of quality, and the needs of present and future scholars and readers. Google may share some of these values – what distinguishes us?

Group Members:

Corliss Lee, UCB (recorder)
Dana Peterman, UCI
Dean Rowan, UCB
Socrates Silva, UCLA
Jill Woolums, UCB
Michael Yonezawa, UCR

Group 2 discussion: Relationship to Information Providers

2010-01-25T14:37:00.000-08:00

Recorder name and email: Lucia Diamond

How can universities and faculty influence providers? Librarians don’t have the clout except through consortial arrangements and CDL, for example, has been successful in some negotiations.

We should do more to get control over what the university (i.e., the faculty produces and make better use of and provide more access to this material for the student users, who are faced with increasing textbook costs. Need to look to some models of compensation for the creator of the product (as opposed to the publishers who only do marketing and distribution). Lecture notes could become content that publishers might purchase and distribute. Don’t want every user to have to pay individually for what they need. Want to be able to borrow e-books as we do print.

Multiple models of providing information, peer-reviewed e-publishing, working papers, etc.

Group 1 discussion: Reference

2010-01-25T14:36:00.000-08:00

Participants: Kathryn Wayne (Berkeley); Miki Goral (UCLA); Penny Coppernoll-Blach (San Diego); Teal Smith (Merced); Gayatri Singh (San Diego); Ken Furuta (Riverside).

Note – I’ve rearranged these notes along topics instead of chronological.

What do we know about the current students?

Perhaps not as much as we think we do. We make assumptions about how they like to communicate, etc. But how valid are those assumptions? We should conduct a more formal study of current students.

Future of the physical reference desk

Physical reference desk statistics have been dropping. However, these was no consensus on the future of the physical reference desk.

Many thought personal contact was very important. However, Merced doesn’t have a physical desk. At Merced, students at the service desk are the first contact. Patrons are referred to librarians if more depth is needed.

Some libraries, such as the San Diego and the UCLA Biomed Libraries, have altered staffing. San Diego implemented on-call scheduling; UCLA merged the desk with circulation. Other libraries have instituted “roving” students who, wearing “uniforms,” circulate through out the library and contact others needing assistance. That led to a brief discussion as to whether an MLS was necessary to staff the reference desk. Again, there is no consensus.

Given the above, we wondered if we are entering an era where we are more general approach in reference where we do a little of everything. This may especially hold for the larger campuses with numerous branch libraries.

[As the reporter (Ken) I’d like to drop in a comment. I’m struck by the variety of approaches different UC Libraries have adopted. For me, this diversity can be a strength if we can learn from each other’s solutions and assessments of the results.]

Text & Chat

All of the participants staff chat reference. There was consensus that the current capabilities of QuestionPoint for chat reference could be improved. It should be more reliable and upgraded to include other options. We also agreed that it has served as a “gateway” to other avenues of contact with the student. An example is the complex question where the best answer is to visit the physical reference desk.

One comment was that “we need more intuitive library websites.” [Reporters comment again. Various librarians through out the system have been interested in using chat reference results to improve their websites. The librarians staffing it are “expert” users in a sense. There hasn’t been anything formal on this that I know, however.]

Web 2.0

UC Libraries have been exploring Facebook and Twitter. Riverside has a presence on both. Three libraries at San Diego are on Twitter.

[Ken’s comments again: In conclusion, it’s not surprising that we didn’t reach consensus on most of the topics. The group is in the brainstorming phase at the very beginning of the conversation. However, we were able to lay a foundation for continued discussion.]

discussion reports

2010-01-25T14:35:00.001-08:00

The next nine posts are the results of the discussion that was held at the last LAUC annual discussion, led by the professional governance committee. Feel free to comment!

discussion outcomes

2009-12-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

We finished off the assembly with a breakout discussion on the topics I posted below. There were 9 tables, and everyone went to the one that interested them. Then each group reported back. The discussion seemed to go quite smoothly and there were some interesting ideas. Maybe the most controversial was one from the outreach group, who proposed a "no resources" day: we turn off everything electronic (and have eLinks redirect to a page that tells you what's going on), and see what people have to say! The reasoning was that people use the library's resources, but often without realizing it.

There was quite a bit of debate about this and other topics. Coming up, we will be posting notes from each group on this blog. (I also plan to post my notes about Perry Willit's talk, which I didn't have time to do yesterday).

afternoon discussion topics

2009-12-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

We are now in the afternoon portion of the program, which is a discussion run by the Committee on Professional Governance.
The nine topics of the discussion are:

#1: Reference:
How to respond to evolving user behaviors
* in-person reference still viable?
* chat, sms reference? (24/7 access?) (see article: "how to be a person")
* web 2.0 challenges and opportunities
* meeting users where they are

#2: Relationship to information providers:
* how can libraries influence the marketplace for information resources?
* new scholarly communication models
* new relationships with publishers

#3 Library personnel
* who is eligible for library education today? Is technology the one determining factor for admission into a library program?
* are greater tech skills the greatest need in library education?
* in the work place,, what of massive retirement? downsizing? what role can technology play here?
* what of competitors for the library candidates? are we going to match their offers?
* is the ability to "organize" or the "love of reading" no longer some of the attraction to becoming a librarian?

#4 Technology
* how can libraries evolve along with the evolution of technology and user behavior?
* will instruction become a much heavier load, more important than subject bibliography?
* The need for ongoing training, evaluation and assessment ...
* Library security redefined
* who will fund the technology?

#5 Collections
* what is the Library Collection?
* "UC Library Collection" -- emphasis on collaboration and sharing
* challenges of silos, including unique and special collections
* institutional repositories
* next-gen tech services, including issues of streamlining, collaboration
* books versus digital

#6 Library buildings
* What's the value of the building as a place? As a library as place?
* how do we work with other uses and roles of the library?
* Library service desks
* space for computers and computer labs
* quiet study; group study
* social gathering: cafes, programs, meeting friends

#7 Campus roles
* instruction -- are we stuck with 1-credit library classes? Is there some other direction to go?
* outreach and publicity -- is there a theme or mode of communication we should work on?
* value of a library credit course
* "library as center of campus?" (are we? as a building?)
* should librarians do research for campus units? (since we're experts, after all)

#8 Library networks
* How can libraries increase partnerships to improve services and increase the breadth and depth of the collections? there are various opportunities with various organizations.
* OCLC, Next Gen Melvyl
* Regional management of retrospective print collections
* shared approval plans

#9 choose your own!

Mass Digitization at CDL

2009-12-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

Heather Christenson, CDL Mass Digitization Project Manager, is here to tell us what UCOP does in this area.

Quick facts about the mass digitization program:
* we're #2 in the world of the number of books we've digitized (behind michigan)
* 2.5M total digitized books from UC
* You can find them in next-gen melvyl, hathitrust, google books, internet archive, open library... and possibly other digital libraries... e.g. the biodiversity heritage library
* but physically, they are on servers at michigan, indiana (backed up on tape), IA and Google
* 445,000+ of the books are public domain
* books are digitized from the RLFs and campuses
* they have been doing it for about 3.5 years now -- in Oct. 2005, CDL was an OCA founding member

The projects: CDL works with both Google and the Internet Archive locations.
The IA has digitized 200,000 public domain books. The scanning operations have moved back to IA; the space in the NRLF and SRLF has been reclaimed by UC libs. Funding is now more uncertain for this project because of the budget. IA is scanning from the NRLF and SRLF and some other smaller projects, such as the UCD state water resources reports collection.

The Google projects have digitized 2.3 million books, in copyright and out, all languages. Foldout pages are skipped. This project is funded by Google. Google is scanning at: NRLF, Santa Cruz (for Humanities and social sciences), San Diego (for East Asian, International Relations, Pacific Studies, and Scripps); planned to do the Bancroft, UCLA.

Why do this? Many reasons:
* discovery, preservation, possible new textual research, and collection management -- might give us the opportunity to use our space in different ways. Also: to be a leader in this area ... and, carpe diem! Let's get started on this project.

Will books go away?
* No, but there's a lot to explore. We need to do research on what users need.

What do people at CDL do all day?
* CDL's role is to make relationships with partners, provide technical leadership, project management and coordination, guidance to campuses and facilitation, and stewardship of the output. For instance, they are currently working on the IA and Google contracts, and have played a big role in the HathiTrust project.

The Google Settlement:
* There has been a lot of controversy over the Google settlement:
people are concerned that it would give Google a monopoly over book digitization; corner the market on orphan works, etc. On the other hand, the benefits are that it may make many books more accessible; and allows UC to retain its copies of Google digitized in-copyright scans for replacement purposes.

Finally:
things that libraries should advocate for:
* assist and encourage rights holders to release their books in the public sphere
* press for orphan works legislation
* robust privacy controls
* neither we, nor other librareis, need rush to purchase an institutional subscription

What's next?
* digitization continues
* Google books and next, IA books, will go into the HathiTrust
* planning for access mechanisms in HathiTrust, e.g. in WorldCat Local
* making books viewable -- Univ. of Mich. is using a grant to help determine copyright for individual books. Goal is to make as many books viewable as possible.

For more information, see the InsideCDL site.

research update

2009-12-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

Michael Yonezawa of RPD gave a quick update; he pointed out that grant applications for this year are due by January 9. Information on the grant process for this year, and last year's grant recipient information, is all posted on the website. There are three types of research grants again this year: grants, minigrants and presentation grants.

The other committee reports are linked on the LAUC website.

hashtag

2009-12-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

p.s. the hashtag for twitter et al for the assembly is #lauc09 -- there's a few people posting (despite the lack of outlets in the room).

UC Commission on the Future

2009-12-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of discussion so far about the UC Commission on the Future. Both Lucia Diamond and Janet Lockwood mentioned that the Commission is dealing with issues that affect libraries and should get feedback from LAUC members; Lucia also mentioned that they really value written comments and feedback -- there's a button on the website to leave comments, and you can push it and tell them what you think.

Janet Lockwood

2009-12-03T10:24:00.000-08:00

Janet Lockwood of UCOP is currently presenting and taking questions.

Janet Lockwood also talked about the Commission on the Future, as a major UCOP initiative. Lockwood said that can't think of any of the commission workgroups where the libraries don't have an interest (budget, etc) -- and strongly encouraged librarians to give feedback to the commission.

The other major initiative at UCOP is the HR committee on post-retirement benefits; they have been visiting all the campuses. The issue is to present to the campuses the status of the retirement plan, and post-retirement benefits (esp. health benefits). We were assured however that the retirement benefits we have are not going anywhere.

There's also a major study of salaries in the system, including for librarians; with a comparison to 8 other schools (including Harvard and MIT). The report was just posted on the website: see the link to the report.
The report used the salary data of 535 librarians (including ULs and AULs).

Lucia had asked Lockwood to address two additional issues including:

* The distinguished step -- Lockwood mentioned that there are similarities between the distinguished step and step 6 of the ladder faculty; which just got worked on by UCOP. However: there was no consensus in UCOP about step 6, though; it really depends on the local campus. Similarly, Lockwood thinks that UCOP would see the distinguished step as part of the normal merit review process; they wouldn't intervene in that discussion.

* The second question was about the trend of hiring outside the librarian series, especially with technology. Again, Lockwood said that UCOP supports local authority and tries to stay out of the decisions that are made at the local level.

Finally, Lockwood mentioned that the restructuring at UCOP continues; her department has gone from 17 to 8, for instance.

Questions:
A question was asked about the disparity of distinguished step requirements; merit increase requirements are very different on various campuses. The questioner said that it's a little disingenuous for UCOP to say it's up to the individual campuses, since so much is *not* left up to the campuses.

response: UCOP needs a written summary or chart of exactly what role you want UCOP to play in determining the step. OP won't write the criteria, but they are happy to facilitate among the 10 campuses.

Underway

2009-12-03T10:06:00.000-08:00

The LAUC assembly is now underway in Barrows Hall on the Berkeley campus. We are now in the introductory morning part of the assembly, with the president's report and a report from Janet Lockwood of UCOP.

Chuck Ekman gave the introduction to the assembly and talked about the importance of discussing professional governance in the library. After some official business, including thanking the local arrangements committee, Lucia Diamond gave her president's report, announcing the four travel awards that were given to attendees and thanking members.

Lucia said that the issues that LAUC is broadly discussing include finding technology that will allow us to communicate across the campuses; the UC Commission on the Future; and the loss of librarians in the system that may not be replaced (in addition, three UL positions are open now). Other major topics include the future of librarianship (to be discussed this afternoon) and the impact of budget cuts on all of us.

Lucia pointed out that this will be just the beginning of the discussion, and that other libraries who are facing the same issues might be interested in our results. Additionally, members of the CPG (who are leading the discussion this afternoon) will be meeting with members on campuses for discussion; and there will also be cross-campus discussion via communication tools, eg. a wiki and blog to be set up.

She also addressed the LAUC budget. LAUC was asked to only do one assembly per year. We also had to send in a LAUC budget; which was approved, but we have to cut the LAUC budget by nearly 1/3 for next year (that's the worst case scenario; might not happen).

Next up is Janet Lockwood's presentation.

LAUC assembly on December 3, UCB

2009-11-20T14:24:00.000-08:00

The LAUC Fall Assembly will be held on December 3, at UC Berkeley's Barrows Hall. The website for the Assembly is now live. Fall Assembly reports are posted on the LAUC website.

presentations posted

2009-05-15T10:52:00.001-07:00

The presentations from the 2009 Spring Assembly are now posted on the LAUC website:
http://www.ucop.edu/lauc/assembly/

I'm working on getting all the committee reports up as well.