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Finding Balance: Examining the Experiences of Supervisory Technical Services Librarians on the Tenure Track
No full textMany technical services librarians find themselves managing a department and supervising staff while trying to work toward the requirements of tenure. This scenario is not unique to technical services, but historically technical services departments have been deprioritized over more public facing departments. This creates an added burden for these tenure-track technical services librarians. This topic has only been minimally explored in professional literature. This study examines the ways in which the responsibilities of tenure-track technical services librarians who supervise staff impact the amount of time they can devote to the requirements of tenure. This qualitative research study utilizes focus groups to hear the stories of both those who have been awarded tenure and those still going through the process. Participants report they are experiencing both challenges and successes in the process but need more support. The results from this study may be of interest to both librarians navigating the tenure process and colleagues and administrators who support them
Growing an Institutional Repository: Leveraging a Citation Database as a Tool for Sourcing Deposits and Conducting Outreach
No full textMany institutional repositories continue to struggle with low engagement. A combination of factors is often at play, including overburdened faculty, confusion about copyright, and lack of awareness. Adding to these barriers on the researcher side are resource constraints on the administrative side, with many libraries citing limitations in budget and staffing for institutional repositories. Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte sought to address these issues by strategically leveraging citation and copyright information that already existed in Web of Science to grow their institutional repository, Niner Commons. Keeping user needs and staff limitations top of mind, Atkins Library launched a project to reframe the approach to increasing participation with the repository: instead of continuing to expect users to deposit works on their own, the library developed a service in which staff could quickly and sustainably deposit works on behalf of users
A Census of Institutional Repositories at Regional Public Universities
No full textThis study reports on the implementation of institutional repositories (IRs) at regional public universities (RPUs) in the United States and its territories. The author investigated repository platform choice, operation style, and content. More than half of RPUs have implemented an IR. The author discusses how these findings align with trends in previous research and explores the unique aspects of IRs at RPUs—particularly the prevalence of student works and special collections materials. For over two decades, institutional repositories (IRs) have been used at institutions of higher education to collect, preserve, and share the scholarly works of an institution. During that same time there have been an increasing number of studies looking at who has implemented an IR, the most popular IR platforms, and type and number of objects deposited in IRs. While some studies have looked at small or teaching-focused institutions, most of these studies have focused on IR implementations at large research-focused institutions
Exploring a Read and Publish Agreement: The Three-Year Taylor & Francis Pilot
No full textThe Ohio State University Libraries (University Libraries) entered into a three-year read and publish pilot agreement with Taylor Francis in 2020—the first read and publish agreement for The Ohio State University and the first such deal for Taylor Francis in the Americas. This study provides an overview of University Libraries’ motivations behind the agreement, the lessons we learned implementing and supporting the agreement, and the open access publishing outcomes of the pilot agreement that ended December 2022
Stay Amused, Not Annoyed
No full textEver been on the It’s a Small World ride at Disney World? It’s one of my favorites…even when, as it did a few years ago, it stops near the end of the ride for about thirty minutes.Most of the riders were not apprehensive—obviously nothing bad could happen at the Happiest Place on Earth, right? So, we sat back, looked around at all the colorful signs that bid us goodbye in many different languages…and listened (and sang along) to the ride’s saccharine theme song on repeat. Ad nauseum. When we finally lurched ahead again, we never wanted to hear that song again
Programs and Pen Pals: You Never Know Your Library’s Reach
No full textThis is a story of a pandemic, a program, and the pen pal that followed. In short, you never know your library’s reach—who will see or hear about your programs.This a true story of a fortuitous long-distance friendship—one spawned out of a pandemic pivot that has reaped great rewards.In 2020, when, as we all know, libraries had to reinvent methods to reach our patrons, I recorded a video about the lost art of letter writing. It’s a topic I’ve always been interested in—I had an international pen pal when I was younger—but was more so during lockdown
The Next Library–Correctional Association Confab
No full textThe author examines the issue of censorship in prison libraries through the lens of the conflicting interests between the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Correctional Association (ACA). By referencing a recent PEN America report on prison censorship, the author highlights the concerns raised by prison librarians regarding the violation of library service standards and the denial of prisoners’ Right to Read. The article delves into the historical collaboration between the ALA and ACA, noting a lack of joint efforts since the 1980s. It discusses the necessity for renewed collaboration and suggests the formulation of a joint statement to reform censorship practices specifically in prison libraries within correctional systems. The author concludes by underscoring the significance of updated standards and a collaborative approach to support prison librarians in fulfilling their professional obligations and ensuring prisoners’ access to information and intellectual freedom
Intellectual Freedom and Privacy: A Core Value of Librarianship
No full textIn January of 2024, the American Library Association Council approved an updated list of core values for the profession. These streamlined values are access, equity, intellectual freedom and privacy, public good, and sustainability. The new values have been met with criticism from some members of the community, including from ten past-ALA presidents who “advise that we take a step back, and re-evaluate the recent replacement of ‘our enduring values’” (Statement from 10 ALA Past Presidents Re ALA Core Values 2024). (Full disclosure: I was a member of the Core values task force). The ALA Council will appoint working groups to expand the basic descriptions of each value this year
Librarians’ Experiences of Censorship in Carceral Facilities
No full textThis commentary reviews responses about censorship in a nationwide survey of academic, public, and similar librarians and library staff who provide information to incarcerated people.For librarians who work with incarcerated people, censorship is often inherent in maintaining any kind of library services, whether the need to censor is communicated directly by carceral staff, invoked in policy, or shaped by a library worker’s interpretation of their role in the institution (Conrad 2017). While at times censorship seems to shape the entire library collection in a carceral facility, librarians have found many ways to build professional rapport with facility staff, subvert demands for censorship, and build robust collections despite prohibitions on certain types of materials (Arford 2016)
Using Zines in Research: An Instruction Module for Greenfield Public Library
No full textThis paper presents an instruction module design as collaboration between Greenfield Public Library (GPL) and Greenfield Community College (GCC) in Greenfield, Massachusetts. The module, titled “Using Zines in Research,” is intended to assist incoming GCC students in evaluating zines as a medium and source for academic work. Utilizing GPL’s zine collection, the instruction module will give students an opportunity to actively engage with zines, think critically about their usage in research, and work collaboratively to create their own zine. This paper explores the development of the module, based on existing literature on teaching with zines and community-based library instruction. This paper also includes feedback and reflective practice from a module conducted with a group of students in December 2023