Saturday, December 21, 2013

DLF Forum November 2013


Following are summaries of the sessions I attended at the recent DLF Forum, including links to community Googledocs and abstracts for the papers. Videos of some of sessions are available here:  http://www.diglib.org/archives/5244/

Opening Keynote by David Lankes 



David focused his talk around the idea of the ‘mortal in the portal’. He addressed the common sense notion that ‘libraries are good and necessary things’ and unpacked this notion throughout his talk. He emphasized that when we say ‘libraries’, we really mean ‘librarians’ and that it is in fact rather odd to think about a building or an institution as doing something when in fact it is the inhabitants who are providing services and maintaining the function of an institution. He advocated that a professional service is more than just a series of functions and that the provider is an essential part of the service.

At the heart of his message was the idea that librarians have a mission to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. Being a librarian is more than helping people get to stuff, as this ‘stuff’ can take a variety of formats including conversations, arguments and training, and is not just books on shelves or websites. Further, training people and imparting knowledge is not just about how to use the library’s facilities, but teaching the norms of scholarly communication.

Turning from the first half of the sentence ‘libraries are good and necessary things’ to the second, he unpacked why libraries [librarians] can be considered good and necessary things. He questioned who gets the benefit and why. In his opinion the word ‘information’ means nothing – he prefers talking about knowledge since this is fundamentally a human phenomenon and refers to what’s in people’s heads. Libraries [librarians] are helping people to do something that they couldn’t do before.

In essence ‘libraries are good and necessary things’ under David’s examination mutates into ‘librarians improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities’, or, put more simply ‘librarians make the world a better place’. One of the themes that ran alongside this unpacking of the initial thesis of the speech was the idea that we need to stop worrying about saving libraries and to concern ourselves, instead, with responding to the needs and dynamics of the community in which the library is immersed.

He gave the whole talk via Skype as he was at home recovering from chemo – what a fab dude!

Digital collections: if you build them, will anyone visit? 



In addition to being an excuse for a picture of Kevin Costner, this session looked at how visible digital collections of newspapers are in online searches. The choice to look at newspapers was on account of them being particularly highly used, and therefore you would expect them to have high visibility in a Google search or similar. However, this is rarely the case. This was because, to quote the speakers, sites for digitized content often “suck”. 89% of college students start their research with Google rather than the library website, and are, therefore, in danger of missing resources. The session discussed how digital collections might be marketed more effectively and it was suggested that too much focus and money went on content and not enough on publicity, presentation and SEO. There are some further details in the community Googledoc.

Metadata First: Using Structured Data Markup and the Google Custom Search API to Outsource Your Digital Collection Search Index 



Community notes googledoc: same as previous googledoc link – the notes follow straight on from the Digital Collections discussion, and has links to the slides, a demo and a download.

This talk was about creating indexable content and how library resources need to be discoverable in other venues and systems (the community notes contain a link to a video of Lorcan Dempsey talking about this). They noted that while Solr and Blacklight were flexible, faceted and had stable URLs, the development time was often prohibitive. It was suggested that Google Custom Search might be an alternative as it was already optimized for web search. One commentor noted that making a site more accessible for users with disabilities would improve visability to search engines. There are further notes and links in the community document.

Hunting for Best Practices in Digital Library Assessment



This was a workshop session. It focused on the problem that while research and cultural heritage institutions are creating more and more digital resources, the funding for such institutions is being eroded. As such, we need to hone our skills in being able to measure the value and impact of these resources.

After breaking out into groups with different members of the team presenting, we discussed what the challenges are in assessing digital libraries. There are a large amount of community notes available on the googledoc above, summarizing the thought from the various groups. However, one point that I felt was particularly important was the suggestion that assessment criteria can’t be an afterthought – they need to be built into a digital resource from the outset. That is, we need in creating any kind of web-based collection to determine from the outset what success would look like and how we might measure it (this is often a requirement of grant agencies). This was a huge topic and the conveners decided that we should continue the discussion, so I’ve signed up to the mailing list.

Big Archival Data: Designing Workflows and Access to Large-Scale Digitized Collections 



There was a very cool musicological section to this presentation. Tanya Clement discussed the need to think about how researchers will use digitized audio. This is very broad and can include things like psychoacoustics (understanding what sounds mean to people) and creating spectrograms to analyze audio files visually. In the latter case spectrograms can be used to show the machine what is meaningful to you to search for. In one example she took a particular clip from a sound file and asked the computer to look for things that were spectrographically similar. This method turned up a bunch of examples that initially seemed to be useless, however, they later discovered that although the computer had found clips that contained different words and speakers, it transpired that the speakers had the same accent and came from the same area. There were also examples of how a person speaking two different languages appeared spectrographically and how the computer could find the moments where the speaker changed language. These methods can also be used to look at how different speakers have approached the same content (combined with psychoacoustics this could have all sorts of implications for giving speeches, advertising, drama…).

Pathways to Stimulating Experiential Learning and Technological Innovation in Academic Libraries



This presentation had some very nice examples from three institutions about how students were being used to hack apps and gadgets for their libraries.  They made their experiential learning programs a regular part of library life, and fought to maintain the budget for this when it was under threat. Students gained an insight into library workflows and policies, but at the same time were able to bring their experience as users to the planning table. In most cases the structure of the students’ working teams was non-hierarchical and seemed to allow for some dynamic and creative brainstorming. The library benefitted from a regular turnover of enthusiastic students working for them and giving their perspective, while the students gained a lot of skills for the workplace (in one example, the library provided a form the students could fill in with work they had undertaken and what skills this developed listed – apparently the students found this very helpful for designing their CVs and explaining the usefulness of their experience in job interviews).

Determining Assessment Strategies for Digital Libraries and Institutional Repositories Using Statistics and Altmetrics



This session had some similarities with the session on the previous day that discussed assessment in digital libraries, although this one focused specifically on metrics. It also had a workshop element and I joined the group discussing qualitative vs quantitative metrics. The questions we discussed have been summarized here: http://pad.okfn.org/p/XNzqegv4aH

Influence of Academic Rank on Faculty Members’ Attitudes Toward Research Data Management



Presented by Katherine Akers, a current CLIR fellow in her second year. Katherine examined the ways in which humanities faculty differ from members of other faculties in their approach to data curation, and how different ranks within academia also differ within the humanities – see the community notes above for the questions she asked and the responses she collated. As a result of her findings, Katherine suggested some ways in which libraries can better support humanities faculty and how. For example, non-tenure staff tend to desire more outreach and training than senior faculty, while humanities academics in general need better cloud storage since they tend to travel more and some university systems can be very off-putting, slow, or difficult to use. All ranks expressed a desire for more digitized materials to be made available and easily accessible. See the community notes for more of her suggestions and results.

Humanities Data Curation in the Library: The Preservation of Digital Humanities Research Now and To Come



Harriet Green explored 3 case studies that she felt represented three tiers of data curation. The first was the Walt Whitman archive, which she classified as ‘basic’ – it has xml, html, image and recording files stored on optical discs with some basic backup of older iterations; they are beginning to work with university archives. The second project representing the mid-tier was the Victorian Women Writers project, which, in addition to xml files of texts, has annotations and biographical summaries, html files workflow with a fedora repository for storage and another one for creating and editing files [better detail on this is available in the community googledoc]. It was suggested that this project needed more staff to be sustainable. The third example was the Valley of the Shadow and represented a high-level of data curation. As well as having the kind of scope of the VWW project, this online resource had extensive documentation regarding its structure/workflows/programs used etc. The subject librarians were part of the project and costs for the project at each point were clearly calculated and known by both the library staff and faculty.

Based on her analysis of these three projects, Harriet recommended some principles for best practice and suggested that the UVa Sustaining Digital Scholarship was very useful as it identified criteria for defining levels of curation. She also suggested that libraries needed to provide further education and training on digital project curation, and that they needed an evaluation rubric and long term planning.

Her bibliography is available here: https://uofi.box.com/dlf2013papergreen

Services for Research Data and Open Access: Strategies and Toolkits Being Implemented at Virginia Tech, the University of California, and Duke



This was a discussion of OA policies. UC recently moved to a policy of required deposit from which people have to choose to opt out (rather than choosing to opt in). One part that interested me was how they were attempting to make it easier for faculty to use their repositories – often in response to complaints from faculty about overly long and confusing deposit forms. This prompted UC to create a new interface which simplified the process (for example if an article has not yet been published, by clicking on that option the request for publication details like ISBNs and issue numbers are removed from the interface). Also they are refining their data harvesting tools in order to make the process simpler. The harvesting program goes and hunts down articles and collects all the metadata, it then adds these articles to a staff member’s profile but in a pending status. The staff member, when they log on to their repository profile can then just click a box to accept the article with its metadata if it is correct (they can adjust this if needs be). The article can be uploaded through a drag and drop mechanism. Alongside making the process easier for staff education and outreach was needed from the office of scholarly communication to dispel the enduring myths of OA! Generally they have found that publishers have not put up resistance to the green OA offered by institutional repositories.

Closing Keynote by Char Booth




In some ways Char challenged (respectfully and graciously) some of David’s remarks in the opening keynote. She felt that libraries do need saving, and in many respects have always needed saving.

She expressed concern that those who are creating tools and those who are disseminating the tools don’t continue communicate with each other, and we need to maintain this dialogue in order for our tools and for our libraries to be a success.

The idea that libraries don’t need saving is an important point for those in the grassroots who are dealing with budgets. Also for students whose local libraries have been closed down, their first experience of libraries and librarians is at university level – this makes our interaction with them and presentation of the institution to them a crucial thing. Furthermore, Char argued that we represent something that is fragile because our not-for-profit, OA ideals do not chime with those of publishers and other for-profit organizations. She believes we are an activist profession.

Char discussed the notion of information privilege. She feels that we need to confront the ‘dark side’ of information privilege, whereby society’s divides are exacerbated by access not being universal. She also looked at  what motivates us to do what we do, and to think about our narratives. There are narratives about libraries which are extremely negative – she mentions a techcrunch article, which asks why libraries are needed when you can just download things to your ipad (see above re ‘dark side’ of information privilege), and ‘libraries in crisis’on Huffington Post.

In essence we need to work together and be involved in the process all along the way. So: we need to create great tools and resources, but then we need to communicate with those who disseminate and those who use them (which, from my perspective, is part of the mission of a CLIR fellow), and also those who unexpectedly come across our tools and resources. We need to follow through on the impact of those tools and understand when and how and if they are being used. She notes that making online resources disability friendly is a good way of ensuring more general good practice in websites and other resources (this point came up in some of the other sessions).

There’s lots more I could say, but the whole speech is online, and she says it better than I do, so do take a look, it will be an hour well spent.

Friday, August 9, 2013

ASERL Summertime Summit

This was a one day event, titled Liaison Roles in Open Access & Data Management: Equal Parts Inspiration & Perspiration.
Our own Sayeed Choudhury was the keynote speaker. His talk, Open Access & Data Management are Do-Able Through Partnerships was very good. What stuck in my mind was the point he made about data becoming an economic driver. The traditional three economic drivers are land, labor, and capital. Data has been added as a fourth driver.
During Marketing Open Access Services & Tools to Faculty, Sean Lind, Georgia State University, made the point that mass marketing of open access services and tools to faculty does not work. He has found that one-on-one conversations, small workshops, working with campus research offices to contact faculty works better than campus-wide announcements and email blasts.
During Library Staffing/Responsibility Models for Data Management and Open Access, Kathy Crowe, UNC Greensboro, talked about how they re-evaluated the roles of their liaison librarians. They decided to change their approach to collection development to allow the liaisons for more time to learn about and promote OA and data services. She also pointed out that the people directly responsible for OA and Data services need to accompany liaison librarians for specific conversations, since the liaisons still didn't feel comfortable discussing specific situations, even after training.
Lorraine Harricombe, Dean University of Kansas Library, gave the closing address, Embracing Change = Empowering Scholarship.She urged us to get out and advocate OA. But she also warned that OA mandates, where faculty agree to make their journal articles open, take a lot of time and must come from the faculty themselves. Her other point, in this time of continual change, is this: It is not acceptable to say "I don't know anything about this."

If any of you has a chance to attend an ASERL event, I highly recommend it. The people I talked with were interesting, knowledgeable, and fun.

Robin N Sinn

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

EDUCAUSE Learning Technology Leadership Institute

I recently participated in the EDUCAUSE Learning Technology Leadership Institute. EDUCAUSE is an organization for folks in IT in higher education, so of the 60 or so participants I was one of three librarians.

While the examples used to illustrate points were related to learning and information technologies, the Institute as a whole focused on leadership. It ran pretty much non-stop from Monday noon to Friday noon. During the day we attended lecture/workshops that ran between 30 minutes to 2 hours. In the evening we worked on a small group project (8-9 people). The group chose/developed a made up institution and scenario where your group was responsible for pitching the implementation of a new learning technology to university administration. I'd be happy to discuss the format further if you have questions just let me know.

Overall, I felt this was a great learning opportunity that provide both immediate takeaways and lessons that will require lots of reflection and practice in the coming months/years. Some immediate takeaways on effective presentations were:
  • It will be boring unless you take active steps to avoid causing boredom
  • You must do something emotionally relevant every 10 minutes or you will lose them
  • PowerPoint is not evil, it has cognitive style that you have to resist
  • Stop the bullets, lists are not interesting, we don’t pay attention to boring stuff
  • Present your ideas in visual ways (more compelling and will stay with them)
  • Slides and presentation should be complimentary, slides should be useless without you
  • Educate your voice: conversational, amount of relaxation, contributing to the effectiveness
It stipulates that everyone can and should take part in leadership. Instead of the traditional model where everyone falls behind one larger than life leader, leaderful practice teaches a new path to effective leadership where a successful leader builds a team of concurrent, collective, collaborative and compassionate leaders all working together towards a common goal. These tenets are known as the Four Cs:
  • First, the idea of concurrency stipulates that there can be more than one leader and that by willingly sharing power multiple leaders inspire teams to work together thus increasing organizational effectiveness.
  • Second, leaderful practice is also collective. Since an organization can have multiple leaders, no one person is solely responsible for mobilizing others and decision making. The work is shared and ultimately more is accomplished.
  • Third, collaborative leaders encourage open dialog where everyone feels they can contribute and is equally sensitive to the opinions of others. Strength in numbers occurs when everyone sees their role contributing to the co-creation of an organization.
  • Lastly, leaderful practice requires compassion. Compassionate leaders value every member of the team because of, not in spite of, their diverse backgrounds and levels of experience. All opinions are solicited and those that differ from the current thought process are encouraged
It was an intense and valuable week. Again, let me know if you would like to hear more. ~Carrie

ALA Chicago 2013

As always, ALA had many sessions to attend, with many of them being at the same time. I went to a lot of talks. Below were my 3 favorites:

1. Annual Reference Research forum: http://connect.ala.org/node/207609
Presents 3 original research articles that were published this year. I found the first speaker's research very interesting.
Research Guides Usability Study- Angela Pashia & Andrew Walsh University of West Georgia
    • Has a Libguides for every subject offers a major in
      • Great for librarians- but would like students to use them too…they don’t. How to improve this.
        • What is frustrating the students?
        • When are they leaving the guides and googling it?
        • How to improve the design to get them to use it- did usability tests first & then focus groups
      Usability studies- 4 freshmen, 2 soph, 2 juniors, 1 senior, 1 grad student= 10 users; $5 gc to starbucks, pulled them in “off the street” on the fly. On average each one was about 10 minutes. Varied on how long it took them to complete the 3 tasks.
      • Fairly novice group with familiarity with resources
      • Used free CamStudio- screen capture software
      • Gave them tasks to complete- how would they find articles on education from the education libguide, how would they get help from a librarian from a libguide, how would they get back to the same libguide from the library’s homepage.
      • Made it clear, it was not a test on them but a test on the library
      Common issues:
      • They were using the libguides search box to look for articles- remove this box. Librarians like it, but it is confusing students.
      • Difficulty understanding the role of libguides in the research process; didn’t see the value added
      • Wasn’t sure what to click on when saw the list of databases- clicked on the more info link instead of the actual database link to get to it.
      • Trouble getting to a specific guide from the library homepage
      • Don’t see the tabs, Want more emphasis on the tabs.
  • Focus groups
    • Based on usability results, limited fgs to juniors and seniors. =who would need the libguides for subject specific research
    • What do the labels mean to them?- i.e. background information vs. encyclopedias. They wanted encyclopedias. Finding sources vs. finding articles, etc.
    • They loved the VCU rg homepage. (listed as best of in libguides) plus sign for all disciplines that open to subdisciplines.= systems librarian is going to model new homepage after this.
    • Future: Doing more focus groups with grad students
  • Google analytics: Libguides search data.Config special google anyaltics report.“goal completion” set up for search results page.Tracks this as an event and gives you the keywords in the URL string!
2. Conversation Starters: Achievement unlocked: Motivating and assessing user learning with digital badges 
3.  Two separate talks on "making" and "maker spaces." Cory Doctorow & Mark Frauenfelder
  • Decline of making and DIY 1970-2000. Cheaper to buy new than to fix. Change in popular mechanics mag covers. Went from things you can make yourself to skyscrapers and brain implants.
  • Rise of DIY subculture. 
  • 2000-2013 we are in a making rebirth, modern making movement; Make magazine established in 2005;
  • "Networked Making"- you don't start with a project that you read about in a magazine and try to build it. Instead if you an idea for something new. Look it up online and find someone who did it 80%...you figure out the remaining in online forums, communities etc. 
  • Maker fairs- playful side of making; Pinterest was created at a Maker Fair

Monday, June 10, 2013



2013 ABLD Meeting: Montreal
Notes
Session 1: Supporting new agendas with the application of technologies related to online teaching, learning, and research.
1.       Deb Wallace, Harvard Business School.
a.       Talked about an ongoing initiative whereby HBS has gone away from general blogging and tweeting to a more focused approach designed to highlight faculty and student achievements, activities (scholarly ones), publications, honors, etc.  The approach is journalistic.  They are aiming at “virality” by using clever tagging strategies, embedding links in highly visited places, etc.  The goal is to focus on a) increasing the stature of faculty and students, b) help faculty and students disseminate their scholarly work to a broad audience, and c) focusing strategies on those wider ex-university audiences for maximum impact.
b.      Special Collections Exhibits are being enhanced by QR codes to see full documents (digitized ) online;  exhibit on Augustine Heard & Co. during the China trade includes video footage of the Heard family home, the exhibit will be accompanied by an online flipbook.  The whole thing is going to be brought to China and exhibited.
c.       HBX Online Course Initiative.  HBS is designing and planning enhancements to the online course environment.  A team of 25 has been created for this.  They’re looking at tools such as Zotero feeds and “info blasts” to students.
d.      KLS Innovation Program.  This is a program to encourage innovation in the delivery of library services.  There’s an idea lab (seed money to text ideas), “Tool Time”—training in various IT tools over lunch (e.g., how to get the most out of SnagIt), and iAwards for small innovations.
e.      Business-at-the-Base-of-the-Pyramid (BBOP) Knowledge Center.  This online resource (http://www.library.hbs.edu/references/bbop/) is an adjunct to a course on this topic.  BBOP refers to the 4 billion consumers at the bottom of the consumption heap—the number of people is large, their needs are many for basic and affordable solutions, but they are under-targeted.  The website contains links to datasets, social network sites dedicated to this topic, and more.
2.       Jack Cahill, Babson College.
a.       This talk was also about online strategies, especially in support of online and blended courses.
b.      Babson has a “Jump Start” video intro to the library: access points, resources, how to ___, an introduction to the librarians, etc.
c.       All the online tools “distract students from the library,” a problem that must be addressed.
d.      Babson uses Blackboard.  Students are “living” on the Blackboard course sites, not the library website, so the library needs to be more visible from Blackboard.
e.      Babson uses Panopto for video capture, Brainshark for simple, easy-to-produce, voice-over slides, WebEx for webinars and conferencing, and Google Suite for collaboration tools.
f.        They use Genbook as an online appointment book for students seeking research help (accessible via QR Code).  Students can choose times themselves, whom to meet with, in person or WebEx, topic, contact info.  The number of appointments is up and the number of no-shows is down.
3.       Wahib Nasrallah, University of Cincinnati—DDA (i.e., PDA), the Basics (e-books)
a.       Cincinnati keeps track of publishers who don’t publish e-books, and focuses its print buying on those companies, proactively.
b.      They also identify companies that charge more for e-books versus print books
c.       He feels students and faculty are as good at selecting what they need/want to read as are the librarians.
d.      He gets good usage stats.
e.      Data cannot be tracked by fund code.
f.        He has greatly reduced his print buying and greatly increased his e-book buying.
4.       Thorsten Meyer, Leibnitz Information Centre for Economics, Kiel, Germany.  Social media shaping research and publication processes.
a.       Researchers now “coming up” are changing continually from past practices.
b.      People announce their new publications on Twitter.
c.       Students are using Facebook as their source for both news/current events AND scientific research.
d.      Social networking use measurements tell more, more accurately, than surveys do.
Session 2: Pecha Kucha Sesson: 20 slides for 20 seconds per slide.
1.       Jessica Lange, McGill University.
a.       Has business info resources FAQs in her LibGuide.
b.      Keeps track of all new faculty hires and proactively reaches out and meets with all those willing to meet, in order to tell them about library services, reserves, etc.
c.       She sends out lots of informational, explanatory, and introductory emails to faculty and students.
d.      She has been allowed to insert a widget into all Blackboard class spaces with her face, contact information, etc.
2.       Bob Hebert, Wake Forest University
a.       Computer labs are passé.  Everyone uses laptops and has remote access to most resources.
b.      The Wake Forest Business School is considering a Business Information Center or Commons—readily available Bloomberg terminals, study rooms, offices, librarians, but no books.
3.       Jim Fries, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College
a.       Students didn’t engage with LibGuides unless actively assisted by librarians
b.      Problem with online courses: large/significant deliverables often due on Sundays.
c.       They use Blackboard, Adobe Connect, Echo 360.
d.      Business librarians have had to learn to search in PubMed to better serve their patrons.
e.      Tuck has a “Master of Health Care Delivery Science (MHCDS)” degree.  There are 5 librarians embedded in teams, has an online component with students from many time zones, which is a challenge.
4.       Alicia Estes, NYU.
a.       “NYU Shorts”—videos that support their online “Global Network University.”
b.      NYU has schools in various countries, including full libraries (with librarians) in 12 countries that serve the local student populations.  There is no “call in” to NYU from other locations.  Remote librarians are trained using videos, e-mail, and Adobe Connect-style meetings.
c.       Use the ADDIE system to design instructional encounters.
d.      Their online guide is called the “Virtual Business Library.”  The homepage is VERY stripped down and simple.  Linked from homepage is a series of video tutorials about the Bobst Library and its resources.
5.       Meg Trauner, Duke University
a.       Conducted a book format preference survey.
b.      Most students never use e-books, but it depends on the type of material and what it is for; content determines preferred format.
c.       Textbooks—print preferred.
d.      Popular business titles—Kindle preferred.
e.      Books about software (how to use it)—E-books preferred.
f.        Career development—50% Kindle, 50% print.
g.       Students don’t have dedicated e-readers.
h.      They purchased Kindle Paperwhites with top business books pre-loaded; these can be locked to prevent adding or removing content.  Included are business bestsellers, career collection, business classics—Each of these collections are on different Kindles, one collection to a Kindle.
i.         The service is marketed.
j.        Users still would prefer seamless downloading to their own devices.
6.       Jeffrey Archer, University of Chicago
a.       Saw need to increase librarian knowledge re: how to analyze/interpret business statistics (not necessarily datasets and SPSS, just how to understand statistical information).
b.      Hired a PhD student for $2,000 to teach 30 people over 8 sessions.  The sessions were somewhat helpful, but would be improved if homework was assigned (to ensure that librarians were really focusing on the material and learning it).
c.       There are plans to follow up with a business statistics MOOC.
Session 3: Interdisciplinary Librarian Services

1.       Kathy Long, Stanford University.  The Venture Studio within the Stanford Graduate School of Business is a new program to give space and support to graduate students trying to start a business.  Co-staffed by librarians from business and the engineering library, who developed a training session to teach students how to track product development and distribution.
2.       Alan Zuckerman (PowerPoint presentation about my experiences at East Baltimore/Welch Medical Library—PowerPoint presentation available.)
3.       Hilary Schiraldi, UC Berkeley. Described the “Cleantech to Market program (similar to Carey’s Discovery to Market course and the CBID program), and discussed  joint venture between the business and engineering librarians to teach information resources for the students.
4.       Michael Enyart, University of Wisconsin, Madison.  Described the Entrepreneurship Residential Learning Community.  Mostly comprised of first semester freshman.  This is a coordinated program co-sponsored with the university’s student residence office (who was challenged to contribute something significant to the students’ learning environment from a housing point of view).  Mike teaches a course in the residence halls about basic business concepts, but more importantly, research skills, marketing tools, and campus resources that will serve them during their time at the university.
Session 4: Major Themes and Overview Discussion
1.       Laura Leavitt, Michigan Statie University.  Expanding Role in Providing Access to Data.  This presentation focuses on the problems associated with licensing/use restrictions of databases in light of increasing requests for database use by tech transfer offices, students in case competitions, students in courses where they partner with real-world companies/entrepreneurs, students privately pursuing business ventures, etc.  The issues are the same as for JHU, with solutions just as murky given vendors’ unwillingness to rethink their licensing models.
2.       Steve Hayes, University of Notre Dame.  The University’s main library, the Hesburgh Libraries, was reorganized from the top down.  Positions were cut, spans of control were flattened, job descriptions were revised, etc.  Steve concludes that the jury is still out on whether things are worse than before.  There’s been resistance from various quarters within the library staff, there’s a need to reconnect communication channels to replace those that were severed.
Session 4: Presentations by faculty and staff of HEC Business School (Oldest Business School in Canada)
1.       Brief welcome by various HEC admin staff and the head librarian.  English facility limited in some cases, so presentations were short and scripted.
2.       Lecture by Christian Dussart, Professor, Department of Marketing, HEC Montreal (there’s a Paris branch as well).
a.       Marketing is no longer a separate discipline that can operate independently (e.g., market a single product line).  It must be combined with finance, technology, manufacturing, etc.
b.      He tailored his remarks for his librarian audience.
c.       His main topic was survival in our dynamic environment—reinventing our “business” model.
d.      He said that academic libraries need to be resilient and proactively involved in “the revolution.”  He quoted Richard Branson: “Screw business as usual.”  The “long term” is now 2-3 years.
e.      On the theme of resilience, he said that libraries need to simultaneously adapt their core functions and create new models at the same time.
f.        The digital revolution has broken many traditional links to our constituencies, our materials, our physical spaces.
g.       We cannot prevent people from using Wikipedia.
h.      The key phrase is “customer centric.”  We need to be able to read and map the “ecosystem,” which means we have to understand how our constituencies do things.  That takes a first-hand familiarity with the technologies they’re using, their communication channels, etc.  We need to study each technology: What does it do?  What is its impact?  What is its staying power?
i.         Updating the core involves digitizing our information.
j.        He suggests that libraries create a permanent Think Tank of people who can focus exclusively on generating, researching, testing, and implementing new ways of doing things—while others are keeping the core services going and improving.  Then the Think Tank system and the Core Services system (i.e., the people in each of these two areas) meet and coordinate on a planned, regular basis.