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.
