EDUCAUSE | Libraries and Technology and Digital Library Services

The Academic Library in a 2.0 World

ckeller — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:00:29 -0500

This ECAR research bulletin provides a context for the current state of academic libraries and the issues they face in a Web 2.0 world. The literature suggests that library services in higher education will continue to be crucial to the core processes of learning, teaching, and research as long key library structures, processes, services, and staff roles evolve to accommodate the epochal changes occurring in publishing and communications. The bulletin discusses how disintermediation is affecting the academic library in higher education and the toll it is taking on traditional library collections, operations, and librarians themselves.

Citation for this work: Wawrzaszek, Susan, and David G. Wedaman. “The Academic Library in a 2.0 World” (Research Bulletin, Issue 19). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Wendy Pradt Lougee, University Librarian at the University of Minnesota

gbayne — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:46:19 -0500

This 18 minute podcast features an interview with Wendy Pradt Lougee, University Librarian at the University of Minnesota. It was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota where Lougee was a co-presenter for a session entitled, "Implementing NIH Deposit Policies: Institutional Strategies".

In January, 2008 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a revision of its Public Access Policy, requiring researchers to deposit articles resulting from NIH funding in the NIH digital archive. Supporters of Open Access consider this policy revision, which was taken in response to an act of Congress, a major step forward in providing broad access to the results of research funded by public monies. Researchers in our academic institutions may need guidance in complying with this new policy, including working with publishers. Key campus players may include offices of research, legal counsel, and the library. This session will provide a brief overview of the policy and then descriptions of the strategies that two institutions are developing to work with their constituencies to ensure compliance. Participants will be invited to share developments in their institutions in an informal discussion.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

CNI Podcast: Moving To Mobile - Exploratory Services and Applications in Libraries - An Interview with Lisa Hinchliffe

gbayne — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:17:18 -0500

This 14 minute podcast features an interview with Lisa Hinchliffe, Head of the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hinchliffe was co-presenter for a session entitled, "Moving to Mobile: Exploratory Services and Applications in Libraries".

Cell phones and other mobile devices are ubiquitous and offer increasingly robust operating systems, user interfaces, and hardware sophistication. The potential of these devices for accessing the richness of library and information content, services, and applications provided is largely unrealized. This is particularly unfortunate in considering library outreach to undergraduate students. Several projects are in development at the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to explore possibilities for communication, content delivery, and instruction through mobile devices.

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard, Director of Development at the State and University Library, Denmark

gbayne — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:26:54 -0600

In this 15 minute podcast we feature an interview with Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard, Director of Development at the State and University Library in Aarhus, Denmark. She spoke at the CNI Fall 2007 Task Force Meeting, where she was co-presenting two sessions- "Explorative Search and the Library Catalog" and "International Digitial Preservation".

Summa, the search system of the State and University Library in Aarhus, Denmark, addresses many of the issues raised in a number of recently published studies, including the observation that the traditional library catalog cannot compete with other services when it comes to explorative search, as well as the realization that the catalog is only suitable as a localization tool for known items. The challenge is to develop an application which will satisfy the users’ expectations for a modern search system.

Summa is an open source system implementing modular, service-based architecture. It is based on the fundamental idea "free the content from the proprietary library systems," where the discovery layer is separated from the business layer. In doing so, any Internet technology can be used without the limitations traditionally set by proprietary library systems, and there is the flexibility to integrate or to be integrated into other systems. A first version of a Fedora - Summa integration has been developed.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2007 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

Exponential Change in Traditional Organizations: McMaster University Libraries

drupal — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:00:49 -0600

McMaster University Libraries, one of Canada’s most innovative university libraries, is bringing together librarians, faculty, information technologists, and students in new and exciting ways. By focusing on emerging technologies, student success, and collaboration, the library is transforming from a "book warehouse" to the center for teaching and learning.

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Roger C. Schonfeld, Manager of Research at Ithaka

gbayne — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:34:55 -0600

In this 18 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Roger C. Schonfeld, Manager of Research at Ithaka, an independent not-for-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide.

Roger Schonfeld leads the research group at Ithaka, where he studies how new technologies are affecting academia and how the changes they bring can best be managed. Roger is the author of JSTOR: A History (Princeton University Press, 2003), which examines business models for the shift to an online environment for scholarly texts by focusing on how JSTOR developed into a self-sustaining not-for-profit organization. He has also published The Changing Information Services Needs of Faculty (Educause Review, 2007), The Nonsubscription Side of Periodicals (Council on Library and Information Resources, 2004) and the most comprehensive examination of the systemwide print book collection, “Books without Boundaries: A Brief Tour of the System-wide Print Book Collection,” Journal of Electronic Publishing, 2006. Other recent work has focused on the history and future of preservation and book survivability. Previously, Roger was a research associate at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

CNI Podcast: An Interview with Cathrine Harboe-Ree, University Librarian at Monash University

gbayne — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:07:24 -0600

In this 11 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Cathrine Harboe-Ree recorded at the Coalition for Networked Information 2007 Fall Task Force Meeting.

Cathrine Harboe-Ree is the Monash University Librarian. She is a member of the CAUL (Council of Australian University Librarians) Executive and a faculty member of the CAUDIT-EDUCAUSE Institute. She was the CAUL representative on the Australian Government's eResearch Coordinating Committee in 2005 and 2006 and is currently a member of AeRIC (the Australian e-Research Infrastructure Council). She has established an electronic press for Monash University, is the project leader of the national institutional repository project, ARROW and is a member of Monash's Research Committee and e-Research Steering Committee.

Top ten assumptions for the future of academic libraries and librarians: A report from the ACRL research committee

ckeller — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:57:46 -0600

"In 2006 the ACRL Executive Committee asked the ACRL Research Committee to determine ten assumptions about the future that would have a significant impact on academic libraries and librarians. In the ensuing months, members of the Research Committee reviewed previous similar reports; surveyed ACRL committees, councils, and sections; conducted literature reviews; and reviewed the ACRL Environmental Scan of 2003. What emerged was a long list of statements that, after deliberations, was shortened to the ten most pertinent assumptions. These assumptions identify present conditions that the committee feels will have a significant impact on how academic libraries and librarians plan for the next ten years."

Architectures for Collaboration—Roles and Expectations for Digital Libraries

drupal — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:16:21 -0600

The collective expertise of digital libraries in making available the diverse literatures of science and artistic expression, in concert with the increasing sophistication of commercial partners and the development of distributed, interactive forms of publishing, require libraries to chart the engineering of new architectures for teaching, learning, and research. Digital libraries must work to forge the new collaborations required to enable and build these services.

Raising the Library's "Cool" Quotient: Enhancing Academic Environments with Social Networking Services

drupal — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 17:18:38 -0600

In order to make the library more relevant, innovative, and contemporary for 21st-century learners, San Diego State University Library and Information Access is maintaining a profile on MySpace. This poster session will discuss the impact an academic library's presence on social networking services has on student learning.

Strategies and Frameworks for Institutional Repositories and the New Support Infrastructure for Scholarly Communications

drupal — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:06:20 -0600

"Institutional repositories (IRs) are proliferating as they become an indispensable component for information and knowledge sharing in the scholarly world [1]. As their numbers increase worldwide, a new phase of IR development is emerging. Moving beyond their initial functions, IRs no longer serve solely as a place to store, organize, and access content. With rapidly changing technologies, users now desire and expect transportable content that can be utilized within various digital environments and reused in multiple formats, and they need forums for the rapid exchange of ideas with both on-campus and external communities. In response, universities and the libraries hosting IRs are looking for ways to weave their repositories into the "information fabric" of their campuses' academic and business processes and catalyze changes in scholarly communications more broadly."

Digital Library as Network and Community Center: A Successful Model for Contribution and Use

drupal — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:56:32 -0600

The following article describes work on implementing a community DL model through a set of services that enabled geoscience education projects to collectively build the Teach the Earth educational digital library. The focus is on three aspects of this work: 1) facilitating community publishing, 2) creating a navigational and organizational framework that integrates the work of all included projects into a DL, 3) and identifying the ways in which the network centric DL that results from these efforts meets users' needs by complementing their natural search behaviors.

Finding Scholarship: Google Scholar on College and University Library Web Sites

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:44 -0500

This study examined the incidence and visibility of Google Scholar on ARL and Oberlin Group college library Web sites to see if, where, and how it appeared. Results will reveal the level of integration of Google Scholar in university and college library Web sites, including any differences between them and effective representations.

Marketing Library Services to Millennials: A New Paradigm for Library and Information Service Providers

drupal — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:18:08 -0500

In this campus perspectives session, the libraries of Florida State University and Georgia State University will present ideas for enhancing traditional library services through technology conduits featuring point of need/use access. This is important for academic libraries, as millennial users prefer online access and collaborative Web-based environments in addition to physical facilities.

New Technologies and Reference Services - Book Review

drupal — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 12:41:34 -0500

Richard Bazillion's review of New Technologies and Referencee Services, indicates that technology and reference services in academic libraries will have a strong impact upon scholarly communications in general. Librarians are essential to the digital information environment and the essays in this collection show a wide array of changes to reference services.

Research Collections and Digital Information - Book Review

drupal — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:37:13 -0500

In John O'Brien's review of Research Collections and Digital Information, he notes the strength of this collection of essays is the discussion of specific library issues within the larger picture of today's digital age.

College Students' Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources

drupal — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:36:32 -0500

College Students' Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources examines the information-seeking habits and preferences of international college students. This report is a companion piece to the December 2005 OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.

Building a National Science Digital Library

drupal — Mon, 08 May 2006 14:13:10 -0500

Since 2000, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Core Integration team has been creating the infrastructure for a digital library of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics resources. That library now contains more than a million resources from approximately 100 collections. In this talk, Dean Krafft gives a short historical overview of the NSDL and describes the current NSDL community and participants. He then reviews the technical underpinnings of NSDL 1.0, a library built on metadata harvesting, and describes some of the challenges encountered. For the past year (2005-6), the project has been working on NSDL 2.0, a new version of the library built on the Fedora repository architecture. For the last part of the talk, Krafft describes this new library architecture and explains how it supports creating context for science resources, how it enhances the selection and use of library materials, and what these capabilities mean for the users of the NSDL.

Libraries and the Long Tail

drupal — Mon, 01 May 2006 12:01:16 -0500

Some thoughts about libraries in a network age.

Coming Together around Library 2.0

drupal — Mon, 01 May 2006 11:27:24 -0500

'Library 2.0' is a term that provides focus to a number of ongoing conversations around the changing ways that libraries should make themselves and their services visible to end users and to one another. Through white papers, articles, blog posts, podcasts, presentations and more, at Talis we are taking part in this increasingly global conversation. Library 2.0 is more, though, than just a stimulus to conversation. The phrase captures notions of disruptive change, and promises to challenge both the ways in which we consider our library services and the forms in which they are offered to potential beneficiaries.

Browsing Library Collections: From the Shelf to the Online Catalog

drupal — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 11:32:29 -0500

Experiments are underway to provide library users with a browsable, electronic Table of Contents for books that are shared in a distributed collection environment.

Production Services in the Library: Challenges and Opportunities

drupal — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:58:14 -0600

Learn about a new breed of library service, Information Commons Production Services (ICPS). This unit targets the creation and delivery of educational content and information resources. By partnering with individuals and departments, ICPS extends the traditional service role of the library into more entrepreneurial ventures involving multimedia authoring, digitization, publishing, information design, and application development.

EU to build six million volume internet public library

StuartYeates — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 04:21:47 -0600

The European Commissionis to build a European digital library able to display around six million books, photographs and films and available to all internet users by 2010.

US Internet search giant Google started an international race to build an online library when it announced plans in December 2004 to digitise books and documents from a handful of big libraries.

Since then, US Internet and software giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon have announced separate plans while France, upset that private companies took the lead, has pushed for the creation of a public digital library, AFP reports.

Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services

drupal — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 10:36:25 -0600

Library resources and services in institutions of higher education must meet the needs of all their faculty, students, and academic support personnel, regardless of where they are located. This is the undergirding and uncompromising conviction of the "Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services." The principle applies to individuals on a main campus, off campus, in distance learning or regional campus programs, or in the absence of a campus at all.

Remote Reference Services at the North Carolina State Universities

drupal — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 10:04:10 -0600

In order to provide equivalent services to patrons in and outside the library, North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries have implemented a service point within the main library for responding to requests from off-site patrons. During their shifts at the off-site services desk, staff members answer reference questions received via telephone, e-mail, and online chat. This paper discusses the benefits of implementing the service, staffing strategies, and some challenges encountered.

University of Michigan President comments on Google ...

mpasiewicz — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:54:00 -0600

C|NET has a nine and a half minute video of Mary Sue Coleman speaking about their library digitization project.
http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6036176.html

The transcript of her speech is available her:
http://www.umich.edu/pres/speeches/060206google.html

Library Services for a Digital Future

drupal — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 12:01:51 -0600

Libraries' large data collections and varied digital assets demand tools and facilities for easy user access, data analysis, and storage

Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Library as a Virtual Destination

drupal — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 11:21:40 -0600

Deep into the digital age, academic libraries have relinquished much of their fundamental and sustaining role. For most people, including academicians, the library—in its most basic function as a source of information—has become overwhelmingly a virtual destination.

An Interview with ALA's Rick Weingarten

mpasiewicz — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 16:44:00 -0600

In this 32 minute recording, I join Rick Weingarten, Director of the ALA's Office of IT Policy, for a look inside the beltway. Join us as he shares a brief bit of background about the American Library Association and a fairly interesting discussion about privacy, the google print litigation, and internet governance.

Also of interest could be ACRL's blog entry noting a number of higher ed associations have released a guide to copyright. Oh, and don't forget resources from our own policy office ;)

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2005 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

Where Learners Go

drupal — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:37:13 -0600

The author discusses how to strengthen the library role in online learning.

University of Tennessee's Collaborative Digital Media Spaces

drupal — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:22:00 -0500

How can we provide access to several hundred songs to 1,300 students who enroll annually in the History of Rock course? This was the initial question to be answered by the University of Tennessee (UT). The answer ended up to be two workable models and accompanying collaborative spaces for production and creation of digital media content for the campus--the Digital Media Service and the Studio. Formulating the answer required close partnerships between the library, the Office of Information Technology, and faculty from across the campus.

Papa's Got A Brand New (Virtual) Bag: Real-Time Chat and Reference Discourse

drupal — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:43:02 -0500

Many librarians agree that virtual reference has expanded the range of library reference services. Along with an expansion of reference service, virtual reference (especially real-time chat) has influenced reference discourse. Style characteristics of chat include its telegraphic brevity, its conversational and informal tone, and its tendency towards interview and exchange. A bedrock feature of traditional reference service is the reference interview-as this and other aspects of reference exchange are conversational, chat is exceptionally resonant within the continuum of reference services. The virtual reference librarian operates in a medium both familiar and leading-edge (a bridge between the traditional and the innovative), and through which reference services advance into territories governed by emerging technologies and unexpected models of discourse.

Can You Hear Me Now? Communicating Library Services to Distance Education Students and Faculty

drupal — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 11:55:22 -0500

Academic libraries have responded to the challenge of providing resources and services to off-campus users in a variety of innovative ways. However, recent survey results indicate that users are often not fully aware of what is available to them. This study of library web sites at 100 distance learning institutions seeks to establish a checklist of best practice in terms of library resources and services provided and to establish a template for the effective distance education gateway. The results of this research will provide a comprehensive guideline for librarians seeking to institute, improve, or better communicate distance education resources and services to students and faculty.

Interoperability Between Library Information Services and Learning Environments - Bridging the Gaps

drupal — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 10:28:39 -0500

A CNI and IMS Joint Whitepaper on interoperability between library information services and learning environments.

Integration of Digital Library Services Through Repositories

drupal — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:59:35 -0600

Libraries are built upon collections, services, and infrastructure. As digital libraries evolve, there is a danger of creating both collection and service silos. With the development of persistent repositories, libraries now possess the capability to build digital infrastructure with unbundled, modular systems and interfaces that will help deliver integrated services.

Innovative Use of Information Technology by Colleges

drupal — Thu, 23 Sep 1999 16:00:44 -0500

This report contains nine case studies of colleges and mid-sized universities whose libraries have used new information technologies to improve education on their campuses. Funded by a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, members of CLIR staff and one of its advisory groups, the College Libraries Committee, studied the experience of college libraries that use new information technology to enhance library services and provide information resources to students and faculty in innovative ways. The nine colleges and mid-sized universities that participated in the study are: the California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis; Lafayette College; Point Park College; Southern Utah University; Stevens Institute of Technology; West Virginia Wesleyan College; and Wellesley College.

GALILEO: A Vision for One Statewide Library

drupal — Fri, 06 Nov 1998 15:54:37 -0600

GALILEO is a World Wide Web-based virtual library that provides access to multiple information resources. Participating institutions may access over 100 databases indexing thousands of periodicals and scholarly journals. This paper discusses the history of GALILEO, GALILEO services, necessary and desirable databases, university system server sites, hardware and software selection, and help desk activities.