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.