Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries released by ARL

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) on Thursday released a “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries.” According to ARL, it is “a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education.” Fair use is a fuzzy legal doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the copyright holder.
http://tinyurl.com/7bgrf8w

ACRL in New Orleans

ACRL programs at the ALA Annual Conference

ALA’s 130th Annual Conference was held June 23–28, 2011, in New Orleans. Approximately 20,000 librarians, library support staff, exhibitors, writers, educators, publishers, and special guests attended the conference. Ed. note: Thanks to the ACRL members who summarized programs to make this report possible. From idea to innovation to implementation: How teams make it happen. Jason Young (president of LeadSmart and author of the book Culturetopia: The Ultimate High-Performance Workplace) was the featured speaker at Lisa Hinchliffe’s ACRL President’s Program. To a standing room only crowd, Young challenged attendees to come together and to “get in rhythm” in order to be creative, innovative, and make significant changes at our libraries. Young’s high energy program showcased how intentional teamwork can result in quality staff performance. During his program, he expressed that teams can be highly successful if there is trust among members, the expertise of staff is tapped into and used efficiently, alignment and commitment to the organization’s mission/vision is a priority for everyone at every level, and measurement and accountability is part of the culture. He used his branded TEAM framework to shape the program. Young additionally challenged the attendees to inspire those who they interact with. He often repeated that “leadership is not about title or position, instead it’s about influence.” He asked the crowd, “What influence do you produce every day?” It’s an interesting question for us all to reflect on in our interactions with colleagues, students…READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

On academic leadership, from Confessions of a Science Librarian

by John Dupuis, here.

No, the purpose of this post isn’t to reveal the secrets of successful academic leadership. If I had those, believe you me I’d be writing this from my villa on the French Riviera.

However, I am heading off to the Harvard Graduate School of Education‘s Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians in Boston next week where I hope to be a least a little more enlightened and educated along that path.

Not surprisingly I’ve been watching the blogosphere these last few months for insightful posts and articles about academic leadership, in particular academic library leadership. I’ve found a few and I thought I’d share them with you.

First of all, though, I’d like to mention what the course textbook is. It’s Reframing Academic Leadership by Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos. It a very good book with both practical and theoretical approaches to leadership that I find quite interesting. What’s really useful is that is situates the challenges of leadership within the unique environment of collegial governance, the demands of research/teaching/service and a tenured professoriat/librarian complement. It’s well worth reading. I hope to get around to a more detailed review later in the summer.

Anyways, here’s some of the things I’ve found over the last little while. It’s all on the open web so I’m sure there’s lots of books and articles that would be useful that I haven’t linked to. It’s worth noting that I didn’t only look for stuff on leadership but also ideas that are useful for leaders or potential leaders.

2010 top ten trends in academic libraries

A review of the current literature from the ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee in C&RL News

The ACRL Research, Planning and Review Committee, a component of the Research Coordinating Committee, is responsible for creating and updating a continuous and dynamic environmental scan for the association that encompasses trends in academic librarianship, higher education, and the broader environment. As a part of this effort, the committee develops a list of the top ten trends that are affecting academic libraries now and in the near future. This list was compiled based on an extensive review of current literature (see selected bibliography at the end of this article). The committee also developed an e-mail survey that was sent to 9,812 ACRL members in February 2010. Although the response rate was small (about five percent), it helped to clarify the trends.

The trends are listed in alphabetical order.

1. Academic library collection growth is driven by patron demand and will include new resource types. Budget reductions, user preferences for electronic access to materials, limited physical space, and the inability to financially sustain comprehensive collections have led many academic libraries to shift from a “just-in-case” to a “just-in-time” philosophy. This change has been facilitated by customized patron-driven acquisitions programs from some major library book distributors, improved print-on-demand options for monographs, patron desire for new resource types, and resource sharing systems, such as RapidILL, offering 24-hour turnaround time for article requests. Still to be determined are the long-term effects of this change on the ability of academic libraries to meet their clientele’s information needs, the stability of some of the new access methods, and implications for future scholarship. Increasingly, libraries are acquiring local collections and unique materials and, when possible, digitizing them to provide immediate, full-text online access to increase visibility and use. Access to full-text sources, not the discovery of the sources, is a major issue for scholars.1
• These materials may include special collections, university archives, and/or the scholarly output of faculty and students. Libraries also recognize the need to collect, preserve, and provide access to digital datasets.
• According to a 2009 OCLC report, datasets are beginning to be made available online for “collecting,” but libraries still need to learn how to support discovery.2 The 2010 Horizon Report identified visual data analysis tools as one of the emerging technologies most likely to enter mainstream use on campuses within the next four-to-five years.3 Additional collection development trends noted by survey respondents include the effect of Google Books on library collections, the monopolization of content resulting from consolidation in the publishing industry and the demise of a number of smaller publishers and publications, and a growth in shared collection development.
2. Budget challenges will continue and libraries will evolve as a result. This is a trend no one wants to see continue, but one that is real for many postsecondary institutions. Many libraries faced stagnant or reduced operating and materials budgets for the 2009–10 fiscal year, and the near future will likely bring additional budget pressures.
• According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the average return for college and university endowments in the 2009 fiscal year was −18.7 percent, the worst since 1974. In addition, federal stimulus dollars for education are running out, with only 14.2 percent of the stimulus money set aside for states’ education budget remaining for the 2011 fiscal year and 20 states with nothing left to spend; the proportion of state budgets spent on public colleges and the proportion of college budgets that come from the state were already declining, with the recession exacerbating a trend whereby state spending on higher education failed to keep up with enrollment growth and inflation; even when the economy improves, state revenues typically lag in their recovery by at least two years.4 Survey respondents are concerned about the effect of budget pressures on their ability to attract and retain staff, build collections, provide access to resources and services, and develop and implement innovative services.

Librarians Talk Google Books, Orphan Works, and What’s Next

April 1, 2011, 11:49 am, by Jennifer Howard.   HERE in CHE

Philadelphia—Like a lot of other people, academic librarians are wondering what happens now that a federal judge has tossed out the proposed settlement in the lawsuit over Google’s book-scanning project. Some of them got together for an informal roundtable discussion of the ruling at the Association of College and Research Libraries’ conference, which runs here through Saturday.

The discussion was led by Corey Williams, the associate director of the American Library Association’s Washington office. (The ACRL is a division of the ALA.) Ms. Williams tracks legislative issues for the association. She made it clear that her remarks did not represent any official ALA position.

“The world has changed a lot since 2005, when this lawsuit began,” Ms. Williams told the group. “Now it’s 2011, and the marketplace, many have observed, is just moving forward. Where does this leave us in our day-to-day operating of our libraries?”

Librarians are especially keen to figure out what to do about orphan works, which are under copyright but whose rights owners can’t be identified or found. Who gets to make use of those works has been a big issue in the Google case.

“Many of us have those in our collections and would love to make those available,” Ms. Williams said. “Some of us do make them available.”

College Librarians Look at Better Ways to Measure the Value of Their Services

By Jennifer Howard in CHE

Philadelphia

How do you take the measure of academic libraries and librarians? At the Association of College and Research Libraries conference, which began here Wednesday, presenters took up the problem of how libraries can demonstrate their value to their institutions—and whether conventional attempts to measure return on investment, or “ROI,” are any use in that campaign.

Like most of academe, libraries have been feeling increased pressure to justify themselves quantitatively. The bold title of James G. Neal’s paper—”Stop the Madness: The Insanity of ROI and the Need for New Qualitative Measures of Academic Library Success”—indicated where its author stands on the issue. Mr. Neal is vice president for information services and university librarian at Columbia University.

Return on investment “has become the new mantra of academic libraries, a relentless and in many ways foolish effort to quantify impact in the face of budget challenges and the questioning of our continuing relevance to the academy in an all-digital information world,” Mr. Neal told a packed meeting room at the Philadelphia Convention Center. “ROI instruments and calculations fundamentally do not work for academic libraries, and present naive and misinterpreted assessments of our roles and impacts at our institutions and across higher education. New and rigorous qualitative measures of success are needed.”

In a paper he described as “a polemic and a call to arms,” Mr. Neal urged libraries to take a different sort of measure–of their users, what they want and need, and how they interact with the physical and virtual resources and spaces of the library. Librarians ought to be asking, “How much did the user receive through an investment of time, energy, and resources in the resources and services of the library?” he said. He called on libraries to embrace what he called the “human” objectives. “Design for the agile rather than the static,” he said. “Start with the user and not the collection.”

After Mr. Neal delivered his broadside, a pair of librarians from the University of Colorado system presented the results of a more traditional attempt to measure their libraries’ worth to users.

Four UCSD libraries to close in consolidation move…

Vaunted Scripps library will be among those targeted

By Pat Flynn

Originally published March 29, 2011 at 7:35 p.m., updated March 29, 2011 at 7:38 p.m., photo by John Gibbins

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography library is in danger of being shuttered due to budget problems. A granite gray whale sculpture in the first floor area.

Four University of California San Diego libraries, including that of the renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography, are slated to be closed and their collections consolidated into other campus libraries in a cost-cutting move.

The consolidations are being decried by students and faculty members.

Libraries: By the numbers

• 2010 user figures for UCSD libraries to be closed:  354,000
• Center for Library Instruction and Computer Services 93,023
• Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies  40,657
• Scripps Institution of Oceanography  34,230 
• Medical Center

To Library, or Not to Library

January 13, 2011, by David Moltz in IHE

Community colleges are growing by leaps and bounds these days. And much of that growth has been in branch or satellite campuses.

This kind of expansion, however, has created a vexing question: When is the right time to add a library? Accreditors require community colleges to provide library services to all of their students, no matter their location. Still, there is some leeway as to whether a physical space is needed on all branch campuses. Given this gray area, some community college officials wonder when simply providing library services to branch campus students is insufficient and a physical library is necessary.

Mt. Hood Community College, in Oregon, reached just such a tipping point at its Maywood Park Campus last fall, when it was decided that existing virtual resources were not enough and the 10-year old branch finally needed a physical library of its own.

“The main reason why we decided to put a library here is that we’ve grown quite a bit in student demand [for courses], physical space on the premises and classes offered,” said Sergio Lopez, branch coordinator of the new library, which opened last September. “We have 10 classes going on at any particular point in time now. But mainly, given the distance of this branch from our main campus, there’s just been a need for people to access information to support their coursework.”

A couple of credit courses are taught at the branch, but mostly it houses the college’s adult basic education program, whose offerings include GED, ESL and Head Start courses. Initially, the branch had a small bookstore, which Lopez said met most students’ needs.

With enrollment and program growth at the branch, Lopez said the college recognized that even so-called nontraditional students, typically adults with jobs and families, wanted the research materials and technology offered by a library. He added that not only did they want to check out reference books and laptops for academic use, but also they wanted to have a quiet place to study, something that might not be an obvious demand for on-the-go working adults with families and other obligations.

“When you’re talking about people taking GED and ESL classes, even though they’re nontraditional students, we assume that a lot of these students are going to continue to go into college for an associate degree, a certificate or to learn some sort of trade skill,” Lopez said. “So again, even though they’re nontraditional students, we want to give them a feeling of what a traditional college experience feels like. ‘This is what college looks like. You’ll be expected to do work outside of class.’”

For a campus that serves about 5,500 students, the new library is small. Located in an old classroom, it is 500 square feet and has four tables, about 400 books and 20 laptops to check out. It has significant ties to the college’s main library; students can access digital offerings online and books via a sharing program….read entire article here.

College & Research Libraries Goes FULLY Open Access

from the C&RL Editor, Joseph Branin:

“In spite of economic uncertainty, I am pleased that ACRL has endorsed full open access in practice for its primary research journal. The intellectual value of open access, I believe, justifies its cost. Now the content of our journal will be freely available online to all around the world. Those of us involved in the production of College & Research Libraries applaud its move to open access, but we are well aware of the financial challenges we face with our scholarly journal.”

A Burgeoning Librarian’s Perspective : A TTW Guest Post by Terri Rieck

by Terri Rieck in TTW

For new librarians entering the field of academic librarianship, there is an expectation to continue and evolve the Participatory Service methodology. Luckily, it is not a forced expectation, but rather one of excitement and, dare I say, glee. The ability of academic libraries to effectively reach and engage students in the research process is palpable and librarians are responsible. Librarians entering the profession are happily challenged with continuing this new era of constant change, experimentation, innovation, and evaluation.

This group of new and future librarians is so inspired and focused on this new culture of libraries and librarians. And I must admit, it’s partly selfish. We are desperate for a career, for a purposeful and fulfilling career—one that reaches users in effective ways and offers services and methods of evaluation that will overcome the intimidating nature of the academic library. Some of us may have gotten to this place from experiences with former academic libraries. Some of us may want to overcome and change the current brand of academic libraries—but the reasons why don’t necessary matter at this point. Because now, we are part of a tribe and we do intend to make this profession our own – isn’t that the point of a career? We have made our spaces online and in classrooms and will remain supportive and collaborative through our professional careers. We intend to follow the principles of librarianship combined with innovative thinking and experimentation detailed in the Library 2.0 methodology to encourage better services for users and a more fulfilling work environment for us.

The Dark Side

There is, of course, a dark side. For a recent MSLIS graduate, who is looking for an interesting and purposeful career, and has been introduced to innovative professors, interesting theories, Web 2.0 technologies, and thinking about emerging trends, walking into a library stuck in an environment of presenting information with no viable way to reach or engage users will be an immensely frustrating experience. That combined with the intimidation and nervousness of being the new person makes for a complicated and sticky situation. Other library staff may be hostile or passive aggressive if a new employee intends to change their way of doing things—not to mention the daunting task of getting the library administration on board.