Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Charleston Conference, November 2014
Sue Vazakas
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Here are some highlights from the selected sessions that I attended.

The major discussion trends I noticed were Textbooks, E-books in general, Discoverability, and cool Techie Tools.
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Pre-conference about e-books Speakers: UNC Charlotte, Louisiana State U, Ivins eContent Solutions
  • UNC has e-book "guiding principles": (1) unlimited simultaneous users, (2) no DRM, (3) irrevocable perp access and archival rights
  • Different biz models and different kinds of DRM, to add to the confusion
  • LSU found that scholarly monograph use in STEM was higher than anyone realized; Springer use *alone* was twice as high as *all* print use combined
  • LSU also sees very high use of e-books in hum and soc sci
  • Everyone agreed that investing in GOOD metadata is crucial
  • Everyone agreed that READING THE LICENSE is important, another reason being that sales reps may tell you something different; also make sure that absolutely every detail of your agreement is written in the license
  • Textbooks - UNC created a class text website with a drop-down to link to books. They got the bookstore to give them an ISBN list, matched them to the e-texts they already had, and bought the others. Gave profs list to choose from for class texts. (SueV has more info)
Libraries' Changing Role in Providing Textbooks
Speakers: SUNY Buffalo, Ingram, SPARC
  • Students may have scholarship but texts are out-of-pocket. Average student budget for texts ~$1,200 (don't know semester or year)
  • You can rent from CourseSmart for $103, but only 180 days, too short for full-year class
  • Profs can create texts using what's free online and OA, and print for $50. Rice is building texts and suppl materials and authors get up-front payment. UWashington has Open Course Library; Carnegie M has Open Learning Initiative; MIT and about 200 other places have Open Courseware; U Minn has Open Textbook Library in which profs can search and revise books
  • Ingram says lots of companies offer e-texts under different models; Ingram claims to have largest list of e-texts in the world.
  • Note: bookstores view these initiatives as competition (no surprise), and schools' licenses with bookstores may prohibit
What Faculty Want Librarians To Know

Improving Lib Research Skills of Grads and Post-docs
Speakers: Rockefeller U librarian and former post-doc now with Fac of 1000

LIBRARIAN
  • Rockefeller U is PhD/MD-PhD only, with annual class of 25-30
  • 2014 survey got over 50% response rate: didn't know difference between types of resources, didn't know journals came through library, must deliver info at the moment they need it, want to know how to cite refs and datasets (what to do when it's someone else's data?)
  • Respondent ideas: want to be able to customize websites, help manage and visualize data, want new course on resources/funding/grant-writing/scholarly comm/publication process
POST-DOC
  • Polled users, who are mostly profs and post-docs
  • No awareness of what resources are available -- they're worried about working, teaching, funding, publishing, reviewing, etc. and have ZERO time or wish to learn about resources. Also, new people in labs are intimidated and don't want to say they don't know stuff. We should tell them WHY they should learn our stuff (save time!). Wanted portals to narrow down the info they have to wade through and put all *my* resources together
  • Need clear web design!
  • Need info about how to get ORCID/researcher ID; teach about altmetrics
  • Do mandatory 1-credit class; if you don't have enough staff, get writing center or vendors to help
  • Pain point: e-data management
  • Teach about collab tools like Goog docs, GitHub, Overleaf, Authora, lots more
A Sustainable E-book Ecosystem
Speakers: UNC Chapel Hill, Stanford U Press, YBP

Basically, everybody in the process is important and everybody needs and deserves a piece of the pie, but the pie is too small.
  • Stanford hopes that e-books don't become the next "serials crisis" 
  • Oxford U P says current e-book landscape has become "Darwinian"; print is down and short-term loans are up, but not enough to compensate. Culprint = shrinking monographs budgets. Books don't have brands like journals, so every book they publish is a risk (unlike journals), even though they've already put money into it
  • YBP -- Same e-books can be different models on different platforms (AAGGHH!)
  • So current situation not sustainable -- it's all Hunger Games, with everyone fighting for dollars
  • Publishers and Libraries must share info about REAL costs; better distribution is crucial
Longitudinal Study of Student E-book Experience
Speakers: Wesleyan
  • Checking students' reactions to the navigability and functionality of eBrary and MyILib (Ingram) e-book platforms
  • Libraries did usability studies like this BEFORE buying; GOOD

Owning the Discovery Experience for Your Patrons
Speakers: UVA, Indiana U, EBSCO
  • Google is the students' doorway to the world. They can often get answers from the *results* pages. If it's not on the first page, they'll change search terms.
  • Wiki = overviews in understandable language. The ToC tells them what's in the article.
  • IU -- The library website should be TRANSPARENT; patrons should be able to look *through* the site to see their research problems, not hit a barrier
The Big Squeeze: State of Book Publishing and Academic Libraries
Speakers: UMichigan, Emerald, YBP

Future of Reading
  • Yes, it's true -- reading print and reading on a screen wire your brain differently
Cool Techie Stuff (several sessions)