Saturday, May 19, 2018
2:30 – 4:30 pm — Registration, Main Lobby
4:30 – 6:30 pm — Opening Reception, Raven’s Nest
6:30 – 8:00 pm — Dinner, Barlow Room
Sunday, May 20, 2018
8:00 – 9:00 am — Breakfast, Raven’s Nest
9:00 – 10:15 am — Welcome and Keynote Address
- Speculative Not Spectral: On Latent Library Potential
Thomas Padilla, Visiting Digital Research Services Librarian, University of Nevada Las Vegas
This talk will advance the argument that conditions of uncertainty and a speculative orientation to collections constitutes a disposition that empowers libraries and the communities they serve. As the poet a. maxwell reminds us, uncertainty is not the same as not knowing – uncertainty indicates the presence of alternatives. This talk is a call to embrace those alternatives. (More on Thomas Padilla)
10:15 – 10:30 am — Break
10:30 am – 12:00 pm — Presentation
- Acquiring Whiteness: A Panel Discussion Between Librarians and Publishers on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in Scholarly Publishing & Acquisitions
Martina Anderson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michelle Baildon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ana Jimenez-Moreno, Ohio State University Press
Evelyn Elias, Taylor & Francis
Juleah Swanson (moderator), University of Colorado Boulder
This panel discussion featuring professionals from the publishing industry as well as librarians involved in acquisitions, collection development, and scholarly communications will explore the historic whiteness of both professions, how this shapes the creation and dissemination of knowledge, what emerging initiatives are occurring in scholarly publishing to consider inclusiveness, and how we might be able to work together to collectively reshape scholarly publishing, academic libraries, and the production of knowledge. Particular attention will be paid to functions of librarians beyond selection and collection development, examining the power and leverage acquisitions and scholarly communications may hold in advocating for change in the publishing industry.
12:00 – 1:30 pm — Lunch, Raven’s Nest
1:30 – 2:10 pm — Presentation
- Defining Our Values: Creating an Ethical Framework at Clark Library (Presentation and Handout)
Susan Hinken, University of Portland
In 2017, the University of Portland Clark Library was awarded an ethics grant from the University’s Dundon-Berchtold Institute. The project, in line with the University’s mission to promote ethical reflection, focuses on the examination of ethics issues in librarianship as they are understood and practiced at our institution. A key outcome will be the development of a general statement of ethics for our work which will be shared with campus and posted to our website. This statement will be supplemented by more granular segments focused on the library’s administrative units, including Collection Services. This presentation will provide background on the work at Clark Library to develop an ethics statement but especially the work done by Collection Services staff to define ethical standards in their own work and how they work to meet those values, and may also spark discussion of the issues of ethics and values in our profession as a whole.
2:15 – 3:00 pm — Presentation
- Triumphs and Tribulations of Leading Workplace Culture Change
Sarah Forzetting, Stanford University
Erin Gallagher, Reed College
In library school we learn the basics of resource and budget management and on the job we become adept at using library tools and creating materials workflows and troubleshooting resource problems. We hear about these things at conferences and collaborate on ideas and tools that revolve around the resources we manage. But approximately 40% of our time involves staff management and this is not a skill that is as widely discussed. We can do our best to prepare for management, but much of the literature does not match with reality of the challenges we face when in these roles. In our presentation, we will share some of our own experiences as managers and open a discussion around what library managers can learn from one another about leading paraprofessionals. We will present some of the strategies we’ve employed to address changing workplace culture, building trust, and connecting staff to the mission and goals of the university. For example:- Reframing performance expectations and coaching staff out
- Outreach to other library departments and the larger institution
- Rewriting job descriptions to establish pay equity and to reflect evolving institutional priorities
- Conducting departmental retreats to establish shared goals and vision
- Taking advantage of opportunities for group professional development
- Navigating historic interpersonal issues and the group negativity dynamic
We’re also interested in a discussion with the audience around what professional librarians can do on an ongoing basis to support one another as managers.
3:00 – 3:15 pm — Break
3:15 – 3:55 pm — Presentation
- Establishing the Impact of Area Studies Collections and Exploring Opportunities for Collaborative Collection Development
Thomas H. Teper, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Academic libraries seek opportunities to more effectively manage and share their resources, enhance the programs and services they deliver, and navigate a changing scholarly communications environment. Although there is a long history of collaboration among libraries, many librarians channeled concerns expressed by their local constituents, objecting to calls for broader, systematic collaboration in collection development out of fear that local needs could not be adequately addressed by distributed collections. This study examines the use of area studies materials across the network of libraries by analyzing five years of ILL lending data and local use data from a single institution in order to lay groundwork for future explorations into the feasibility of implementing a robust cooperative collection development model for area studies materials.
4:00 – 4:40 pm — Presentation
- Simplification as Resource Management Strategy
Michael Rodriguez, University of Connecticut
Complexity is appropriate and necessary for libraries and any other organization with size and capacity. But when complexity stymies innovation, hurts productivity, and frustrates workers, it becomes a problem of complicatedness. Academic libraries are overly complicated. Most of our organizations boast endlessly nested workflows, convoluted processes, reams of often outdated documentation, cluttered intranets, systems overlaid with yet more systems, constrictive hierarchies and team structures, and risk-averse organizational tendencies. We toil through twenty-step workflows to process one e-resource cancellation. We create patchworks of systems that perch tenuously atop custom code, or silos of responsibility and communication that fall short even of the patchwork metaphor. This session makes the case for simplification as a novel strategic framework by which institutions can conceptualize and optimize resource management in all its dimensions. Drawing on business and design literature including Dan Ward’s Simplicity Cycle and Yves Morieux’s Six Simple Rules, and inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s exhortation to distill life to “the necessary and the real,” we will address ways to simplify infrastructure and processes in acquiring and managing print and electronic resources. We will distinguish between the notion of efficiency versus the ethos of simplicity. We will examine the vital principles of simplification, the literature behind these principles, and real-world library examples. Attendees will be encouraged to share their own examples and perspectives.
4:40 – 5:00 pm — Wrap-up for today (Words of the Day)
5:30 – 6:30 pm — Lodge Tour, meet at Lower Lobby near Barlow Room
7:00 – 8:30 pm — Dinner, Raven’s Nest
8:30 – 10:00 pm — Favorite Readings, The Blue Ox
Monday, May 21, 2018
8:00 am – 9:00 am — Breakfast
9:00 am – 10:15 am — Presentation
- Putting Our Values Into Action: Evaluating and Developing Monographic Collections for Diversity & Inclusion
Becky Imamoto, University California Irvine
Nichole Grimes, University of Arizona
Jenny Hudson, GOBI Library Services
Michelle Baildon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Providing diverse collections is a long-standing commitment of libraries. In our current political climate, there is a greater sense of urgency about and increased scrutiny of this commitment. Are academic libraries making a concerted effort to collect diverse topics and viewpoints? Are they providing the necessary tools to advocate for social justice? Our panel will discuss different approaches to evaluating current collections and methods for creating collections that promote diversity and social justice. Speaker One will provide an overview of current literature on the topic, concentrating on how libraries should look to the communities they serve — the students and faculty — to build diversity into the collections. Speaker Two will describe the impact of an academic library’s task force report on diversity, inclusion, and social justice in collections-related work. This will include discussion of specific collections strategy projects designed to manifest these values in monograph acquisitions and print storage projects. Speaker Three will discuss one academic library’s experience in evaluating their current collection for diversity using different data points. This project highlighted gaps in the collection and led to additional purchasing strategies. The library also created a new way to display these recent titles to our user population. Speaker Four will address how she (GOBI/vendor) can help libraries both in reviewing their current profiles/collections and in building a more diverse collection moving forward.
10:15 – 10:30 am — Break
10:30 – 11:10 am — Presentation
- Open Wider: Acquiring Diverse Resources in Times of Austerity
Rachel Wexelbaum, St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud State University, a regional comprehensive institution in central Minnesota, lost its book and media budget, and its subscription budget can no longer keep up with inflation or specialized resources. What sounds like a tragedy has become an opportunity for the library to investigate open access resources and promote them to the faculty. This has led to a series of workshops with faculty on open textbooks, institutional repositories, Wikipedia, and copyright/fair use/Creative Commons. It has also reinvigorated discussion within the library about what resources we show students during library instruction sessions, and how to evaluate resources for teaching and research. As a member of a large statewide consortium, St. Cloud State University has access to books from other institutions, but interlibrary loan for audiovisual media and ebooks remains a challenge. Ethnic Studies, LGBTIQ Studies, and humanities/social sciences disciplines have been hurt the most by loss of a book and media budget, as these faculty want to show contemporary films to their students, they still depend heavily on books and ebooks, and have lost the most subscription-based resources to budget cuts. This presentation will present several solutions to meeting faculty and student demands for scholarly content about diverse populations on no budget.
11:15 am – 12:15 pm — Presentation
- Table Talks
This was such a popular event last year we decided to keep it in the program this year! We will have 9 tables, with some topics already set and others to be decided at the Lodge by Institute participants.We had four tables with preset topics:
- Moving Images, Moving Minds: library strategies to improve access to quality streaming video
Facilitated by Valerie Mittenberg - Liaison Training, Management, and Assessment
Facilitated by Jamie Hazlitt
What challenges are out there? What’s working? What can we learn from each other? - Supplementing Traditional Documentation
Facilitated by Rachael Davis - Best Practices for Vendor Negotiations
Facilitated by Anna Fleming
We decided on five additional tables at the Institute:
- Shared Print (& Other Formats)
- Libraries as Open Access Publishers
- Continuing the Discussion on Whiteness in Scholarly Publishing and Libraries
- Mentorship and Succession Planning
- OER, Open Textbooks, & OA Ebooks
12:15 – 1:45 pm — Lunch, Raven’s Nest
1:45 – 2:30 pm — Presentation- Both Sides Now: New Online Product Assessment from a Librarian and a Publisher Perspective
Lenny Allen, Bloomsbury Digital Resources
Rachel Arkoosh, Pacific University
What does it take to create new online products and what considerations lie behind the decision to bring a new product to market? What does the P&L (profit and loss) statement for an online product look like, including technical, editorial, and licensing investments, and how much of a role do librarians and faculty play in the decision to forge ahead or not? We’ll look at an actual online product P&L and the market research that feeds into the proposal for a new product in an attempt to lift another publishing business veil. Presenting the view from the other side, a librarian co-presenter will discuss how new online products are assessed and acquisitions decisions made in an era of ever tightening budgets with less and less room for new products, particularly those that are sold on the subscription model only. Ultimately, our hope is to generate lively discussion about the current state of the market and what it takes to be successful in terms of both acquisitions and business strategy.
2:35 – 3:20 pm — Presentation
- How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love E-books
Jennifer Chan, University of California Los Angeles
Roxanne Peck, University of California Los Angeles
Changes in information seeking behavior, textbook affordability issues, and the desire for more study space require libraries to develop nimble operations and programs that can adapt to these user-mandated changes. This program will describe the expansion of the affordable course materials program in a large research library to add e-book titles for the Undergraduate Library reserves collection when available. We will show how the added service of access to electronic content has quantifiably increased access for students, while simultaneously enriching the overall collection.
3:20 pm – 3:35 pm — Break
3:35 pm – 4:20 pm — Presentation- Deciphering Dense Data: Approaches to Visualization
Sara Amato, Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust
Kathleen Spring, Linfield College
Working with large data sets can be a challenge for both librarians and external stakeholders. Vendors often provide scads of data about the products we use, but sifting through it takes time. Visualization tools exist to help distill meaning from particularly dense data. This talk provides a look at how data visualization approaches can differ based on a variety of organizational factors such as staffing capacity, costs, and specific project requirements. We offer a nuts-and-bolts look at a serials and journals shared print project from the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust that uses Tableau and OpenRefine to create collection retention scenarios on-the-fly, as well as a look at how Linfield College is attempting to implement more visually appealing and digestible ways of sharing collections data with various stakeholders in multiple venues. Through these examples, we aim to spur attendees to discuss how different techniques or approaches might transfer to data assessment scenarios at their own institutions.
4:20 pm – 4:40 pm — Wrap-up for today (Words of the Days)
5:00 – 6:30 pm — Wine Tasting, Barlow Room
7:00 – 8:30 pm — Dinner, Y’Bar, Wy’East Day LodgeTuesday, May 22, 2018
7:00 – 9:00 am — Breakfast, Raven’s Nest
9:00 – 10:30 am — Full Institute Wrap-up, Evaluations, and Planning for Next Year - Moving Images, Moving Minds: library strategies to improve access to quality streaming video