2016 Charleston Library Conference

The results of our large scale survey (n=40443) into researcher discovery behavior sheds a great deal of light on the adoption of library technologies by readers, by job role, sector, country, and region. They show the gulf between search resources used by librarians and those selected by their patrons in North America. In addition we can see to what extent institutional repositories are seen as a resource for scholars and can look forward to how recent changes in results display within Google Scholar may change the balance of where readers download journal articles.

What defines the library - the collections or the services? How do libraries stay relevant and respond to users' needs? Ask any group of users and one can expect an equally diverse response based on the premise of what the need of the moment is. Increasingly, academic and public libraries are creating new service points to help users develop fresh or different skills. As the diversity of communities increase due to immigration, social change, demographic shifts, the role of the library increases, too. The Makerspace and Gaming Studios, technical writing and resume labs, outdoor reading spaces and collaborative work spaces, in addition to the range of public events and exhibitions taking place in libraries expands the scope and reach of both campus and community services. Equally important, these service areas bridge the role libraries have with other academic and civic units and businesses within the community. Being responsive at the time of need is among the challenges libraries face in the planning and execution of new services that build on collection strengths and directions. Digital natives have different needs and expectations of libraries and using social media to increasingly connect with users has seen profound advantages. Many successful marketing and communications strategies and examples that promote libraries and their collections and services will be shared by creative staff from the Rotterdam Public Library and the University of California, Irvine Libraries that will showcase the links between the discovery of collections and services and the diverse communities they serve.

As libraries look to surface unique special collections, or preserve/replace deteriorating print resources with more durable and functional digital surrogates, it is important to come to grips with the pros and cons of a variety of available strategies for achieving library goals. The default strategy has been to let commercial interests take the lead in developing and managing this content; libraries then deciding to buy or not buy based on perceived local interest.  Increasingly, though, we're seeing experimentation with other models that give the library community greater control over selection decisions, standards for digitization, long-term archiving, and terms for accessibility.  The following business models will be considered with an eye to building a higher degree of support for library and user friendly strategies for building significant digital corpora:

• Locally funded and maintained digitization with post-hoc aggregation of metadata in initiatives like DPLA


• Library-led and communally funded initiatives like the Text Creation Partnership


• Agency partnerships with entities like Reveal Digital that can help prioritize, fund, digitize, and aggregate open-access digital resources.  

These and related business models speak to the aspiration of many libraries to find more sustainable approaches to making archival resources more globally visible, accessible and useful.  Participating panelists will speak to the relative merits and limitations of emerging strategies for curating library special collections.

This session will provide updates to several ongoing projects of interest to the library, publisher and vendor communities, including the International ISSN Centre-Ulrich's ISSN project, the revision of ISO-8, the revision of the ISSN Standard (ISO-3297), and an IEEE project to improve the ISSN in their metadata. Attendees will learn which national centers are participating in the ISSN IC-Ulrich's project and how that project benefits the greater community of scholarly publishers and users of scholarly information. There will be a discussion about the project plan and progress of the ISO-8 revision (Presentation of Periodicals) which is related to ISSN and the NISO PIE-J Recommended Practice. The status of and details about the proposed ISSN Standard Revision will also be included. Rounding out the program will be information from IEEE regarding their work on a project to improve the inclusion of ISSN in the metadata that accompanies the periodical and conference serials files they send to various services and providers. There will be time for discussion and questions on any or all of these topics.

Film collections in academic libraries, including streaming video and DVDs, serve a variety of user populations and needs. Videos are used by faculty as part of instruction, by student clubs or other groups as part of public programming, and by individuals for personal study or entertainment. These various use situations are addressed by the Copyright Act and license agreements that accompany video purchases. To maximize use of video collections (and by extension, funds expended on video collections), libraries need to fully understand their rights under the law, track video licenses, and build access around freedoms to stream and publicly display videos. The George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida undertook a project to identify videos acquired with public performance or streaming licenses and better communicate the existence and meaning of these licenses to users. This project included new workflows for cataloging and acquisitions, training for library faculty and staff on uses of video allowed under the Copyright Act and when a license should be obtained, and development of a front-end search and browsing discovery interface for users to find video content by public performance and streaming rights. Audience members will learn how to acquire, catalog, and build access to video content based on freedoms of use.

Building on the notion of a shared collection, Emory University and Georgia Tech recently opened the Library Service Center, an offsite library housing general and special collections materials from both libraries.

In this session, we will provide the audience with an overview of the complexity of such a project, specifically addressing the following topics: the cultural similarities and differences of Emory and Georgia Tech; composition of the shared collection and how we built it; how we use ExLibris Primo to enable discovery and requesting; governance, financial, management, and staffing models; delivery and ILL services; the inventory control system; physical building design and preservation features; connection to the Scholars Trust initiative; and plans for going forward with a focus on collaborative collection development and possibilities for new partnerships.

The audience will be able to ask questions and be encouraged to share their own experiences with shared collections and shared facilities.

While Linked Data is growing in interest in the library and publishing communities, its evolution and adoption is widespread in many industries. Academic libraries and vendors alike have numerous data silos, incapable of communicating effectively with other repositories and/or the broader web. The library community is rife with outdated business models, in part due to data formats and limitations. New ecosystems and integrations will be borne out of transforming these data silos into the broader and more accessible web of data.

BIBFRAME is the planned replacement for MARC, and while the framework is being evolved in working groups such as LD4P and LC, organizations are already beginning to experiment and deploy new business models around it.  Casalini Libri will share their foray into delivering BIBFRAME resources in addition to MARC records for customers. The transformation has begun.

 The Library.Link Network brings together libraries and their providers to inform the Web of their detailed, vetted and authoritative data about art, music, books/ebooks, special collections and more. MARC records are transformed into BIBFRAME resources, assets linked, and then published in a variety of vocabularies to the web for search engines and other applications to consume.  Users finding library resources on the web or other applications can be driven to the institution’s discovery layer for authentication and fulfillment. 

Due to the highly structured data in the library and publisher worlds, these organizations are well positioned to leverage existing data into the BIBFRAME and/or Linked Data realm. 

Shared collections promise access to more diverse and comprehensive holdings at a more sustainable cost as well as better documentation and preservation support for the volumes in the collection. Achieving the goals of shared collections requires new approaches to the discovery, storage, bibliographic documentation, and delivery of library materials. Panelists are key voices in projects that seek to realize the potential for a more nationally unified structure for collections and the resource-sharing, preservation, and digitization services related to them. They will describe:

• new technologies and operations management strategies that enable libraries to transform their user services and reduce the costs of collection management;


• recent studies on the potential costs of establishing a national repository system for print materials;


• the roles and requirements of service and archival monograph collections; and


• how the experience of the Center for Research Libraries and the Print Archive Network (PAN) can guide the development of a nationally integrated collection.

This session brings together an impressive range of experience—from major research libraries (ReCAP) and regional partnerships (WEST), to the nation-wide HathiTrust print monograph program and the collectively built and maintained collections led by the Center for Research Libraries, to global operations and innovative business practices (Iron Mountain). Informed by the work of OCLC Research and 10 years of Print Archive Network forums, these projects seek to radically transform our collective ability to provide access to truly comprehensive research collections.

The volume of data and different formats (text, video, images) today is overwhelming, and traditional search, while brilliant for 'known item searching', does not perform well around 'conceptual search'
In this presentation we will explain how next generation technology can help deal with fragmented information in multiple formats and to help make sense of this for researchers, and more importantly, how it can help people find connections that they didn't even know to look for
The audience will be invited to review some real case studies across different areas of how the new technology (hyperknowledge) has helped drive research forward in various domains and also how it's driving up standards in teaching environments
The audience will learn about the potential of this groundbreaking new technology which changes how research is conducted, and how research communities and individuals can engage and work together.

"A library collection should fit the mission for which it is created. The number of books it holds does not determine its worth." (E. J. Loveland, 2000)

If so, how do we create a National Library and how do we build its collection from scratch? Since 2012, when the plans for the new national library were announced, Qatar National Library (QNL) envisioned as carrying out its mission to: "spread knowledge, nurture imagination, cultivate creativity, and preserve the nation's heritage for future generations."

This presentation will focus on the 3 years' experience of selection, acquisition, and processing of library materials, in a perspective of achieving the Opening Day Collection. We would like to share a preliminary outcome of building a library collection in Arabic, English, and other languages in record time; facing challenges in negotiations (long-term vendors and single sources), logistics (building a library collection without a building), and business culture (visions, working style in a Middle East Business culture/context). We will discuss our various acquisition methods (i.e., blanket and firm orders, donations, gifts and exchanges, Spot purchases from Book Fairs, personal contacts, etc.), highlighting both the challenges and the rewards. General statistics and timelines will be provided to elucidate the intended target and achievements to date. The systems used to support this mission are also highlighted with details enough but not to compromise aspects necessary for future significant milestone reports of QNL. It is expected that the QNL acquisitions program will more than meet its intended targets for the ODC.

Attendees should come away with an understanding of the issues and processes related to the acquisitions of international materials. In addition, we hope to generate a discussion with the audience about alternative experiences and processes in creating a library collection from the scratch.

Sourcing information and material from overseas can be a daunting and complex task, with real challenges posed by diverse and fragmented publishing markets and distribution realities as well as the need for foreign language skills. This panel session explores how specialist vendors' expertise and understanding of specific markets can assist librarians in their search for relevant material. Three vendors operating in three very distinct geographic areas will share their experience{s} and discuss how the unique {and fascinating} nature of their activity provides valuable support for successful collection development and continuity, from a common mission to varying services developed with a precise focus on their particular reality. Questions and comments from participants will be very welcome.

In 2015, the Michigan State University Libraries acquired the Rovi Media Collection, consisting of more than 800,000 CDs, DVDs and video games. Accepting this transformative collection entailed a commitment to make it accessible to residents of the State of Michigan through our statewide network as well as to the larger scholarly community. This commitment coheres with MSU's land grant mission, but the sheer size of the collection, and the diversity of the materials within it, has challenged us in a number of ways.

While most libraries have curated small multimedia collections over many years, Rovi has instantly increased our holdings over 26 times (from 30,000 to over 800,000). This raises technical and logistical challenges, particularly for metadata and description, circulation, and physical processing of materials that are starkly different from the majority of our collections. In addition, assumptions about use patterns, accessibility and workflows have all been challenged. As our goal is to make this collection more widely available, we grapple with the reality of suddenly having a collection so large and so popular that we risk our ability to provide services to our primary user community, our university, in order to meet the demand of the public and the greater research community.

This conversation will seek to explore how large scale collection changes can or should transform fundamental roles and core functions of academic libraries. What sacrifices should we make to provide unique, non-traditional library materials in a traditional academic space?

In this session, members of the NISO Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee will discuss NISO projects, recommendations and standards dealing with hot topics around discovery and access of electronic content. Presentations will include updates on open access discovery, specifically the recommended practice Access and License Indicators (ALI) and discussion of a new project proposal regarding discoverability of open access material. In addition, we will discuss two new projects. The first involves automatic transfer of packages and institutional entitlements from information providers to knowledge bases for the identification of institutional access rights using the KBART recommended practice. The second work item refers to link origin tracking that allows information providers, particularly publishers to track originating access to their content. We will include examples of how this NISO work will help the different industry stakeholders in their everyday work. We hope for a lively discussion and feedback from the audience.

The mission of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is to foster the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. NISO brings together publishers, libraries, and software developers to collaborate on mutually accepted standards — solutions that enhance operations today and form a foundation for the future.

Collections librarians receive requests for specialized resources that may require use of passwords or other mediated access, local hosting, or special software. Sometimes (although not always) these resources are used in a business or industry setting, and their subscription and licensing process does not follow typical academic library acquisitions patterns. Librarians may also receive requests for raw data from a subscribed resource. How do librarians respond? How do vendors make decisions about which products to bring to the academic library market? At this session two librarians will share perspectives on these challenges and ways they accommodate these requests, and a vendor representative will provide insight into the product development decision-making process, including how providers decide which products will have licenses or access models typically used by academic libraries, and which will be offered via other models. Librarians wanting to find ways to respond to these kinds of user requests will have the opportunity to learn from the presenters and also to share their practices during Q&A. Vendor representative attendees are also welcome to share how companies make decisions about their offerings to various markets as well as to specialized user requests for access to their data. Collectively, we will consider how to “roll with the times” and be responsive to user needs.