Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (Journal)
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A Benchmarking Survey of Open Access Funds at the University of California
No full textObjective – The purpose of this study was to examine the status and viability of application-based open access funds (OAFs) across the University of California (UC) Libraries to assist with long-term planning for this type of funding at UC.
Methods – In 2022, the authors surveyed the 10 UC campus libraries about both the outcome of an earlier UC-wide OAF pilot and the current status of application-based OAFs to support article processing charges (APCs), book processing charges (BPCs), and open educational resources (OERs). Five campuses reported having a current OAF. These five campuses responded to additional questions about their budgets and their sustainability, the number of publications funded, policies, and staffing resources for managing the OAF.
Results – Five UC campuses had an active application-based OAF, with budgets or expenditures ranging from 271,000 annually. Only two campuses felt their budget was sustainable. One of the five campuses closed its fund after the survey. The number of staff resources per fund ranged from 1 to 6 with 3 to 32 hours of work weekly. Funding policies were similar to other institutional OAFs with some distinctions. All campuses had revised their criteria to disallow funding for journals covered by UC’s transformative open access agreements.
Conclusion – Providing application-based funds for OA publishing at high-publishing academic institutions requires a substantial budget and workforce. Though these funds benefit some authors, the wider equity of APCs and BPCs needs to be considered.
Analysis From Seven Years of DDA-Centered Collections Strategy Indicates Long-Term Effectiveness for Acquiring Electronic Monographs
No full textA Review of:
Lowry, L., Arthur, M. A., & Gilstrap, D. L. (2024). A retrospective look at a DDA-centered collection strategy: Planning for the future of monograph acquisitions. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 50(1), 102831. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102831
Objective – To examine long-term data for confirmation that the Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) strategy is a viable method for supporting ebook monograph collections.
Design – Analysis of cost, usage data, and Library of Congress Classification (LCC) for DDA monographs.
Setting – University of Alabama, a public R1 university.
Subjects – Seven years of usage, cost, and classification data for ebook monographs in the DDA pool.
Methods – Authors requested data on ebook monographs from EBSCO dating back to the beginning of the DDA plan. After data cleaning, they used Excel PivotTables and PivotCharts for analysis, as well as SPSS linear regression for determining the strength of relationships between key data variables.
Main Results – Cost per use of ebooks purchased or loaned through the DDA pool showed a high return on investment. Breaking data down by LCC for regression analysis showed links between the percentage of the DDA pool size and the percentage of “triggered” purchases or loans, as well as between the percentage of full-text requests and the percentage of triggers. The percentage of triggers for a given LCC can be predicted by percentage of the DDA pool and percentage of full-text requests. However, primary LCC was not itself a significant predictor.
Conclusion – The authors concluded that DDA plans can act as effective long-term collections strategies but also noted that basing a plan on an existing approval profile and continuous assessment of the plan are useful approaches for ensuring a DDA plan’s success. Supplementary strategies may be necessary for developing areas of the collection where needs are not met by the DDA plan, such as purchasing ebook packages and utilizing approval plans. In addition to overall cost-effectiveness, they further recommended DDA plans because these strategies offer an approach to collection building that frees staff to focus substantial time on other initiatives.
ProQuest Ebook Platform Outperforms EBSCO Ebook Platform in Functionality and Usability Study
No full textA Review of:
Calhoun, E., & Zhu, M. (2023). A comparison study and heuristic evaluation of two aggregator ebook platforms: ProQuest eBook Central and EBSCOhost eBooks. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 35(2), 132–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/1941126X.2023.2197754
Objective – To identify the strengths and limitations in functionality and usability of two electronic book (ebook) platforms.
Design – Comparison study and heuristic evaluation.
Setting – University of Toronto Libraries.
Subjects – The user interfaces and the library administration portals of the ProQuest and EBSCO ebook platforms. In ProQuest, the user interface is Ebook Central, and the administration portal is LibCentral. In EBSCO, the user interface is EBSCOhost eBooks, and the administration portal is EBSCO Collection Manager.
Methods – The evaluation was conducted in August 2022. The authors compared the user interfaces for ease of use, searching and reading functionality, additional features, and accessibility. To evaluate the usability of features, the authors performed a heuristic evaluation by evaluating common tasks that a user would perform against the set of heuristic principles developed by Jakob Nielsen. When usability issues were identified, they were given a severity rating of critical, moderate, or minor. The authors then compared the administration portals using a set of common tasks that a library administrator would perform when managing ebook collections. A heuristic evaluation of the administration portals was not performed.
Main Results – The ProQuest and EBSCO user interfaces have similar functionality. Users can search across the platform and within an ebook, view digital rights and bibliographic information, and access the full-text of a book. However, the heuristic evaluation revealed usability issues with both platforms. On the ProQuest platform, minor issues include misleading feature availability and non-descript link labelling. On the EBSCO platform, there are several issues with varying severity ratings. The most critical issue is that there is no warning that content saved to folders will be lost unless the user is signed into the platform. The moderate issues include a lack of autocorrection or spelling alternatives when searching, hyperlinks that blend into regular text, and a cluttered results page. Minor issues include inconsistent font hierarchies and different full-text access pathways depending on whether ebooks are available or unavailable to access. In the administration portal comparison, the two platforms are comparable for managing ebook download periods. When generating reports and configuring alerts, the ProQuest platform offers more customization options than the EBSCO platform.
Conclusion – This study describes the strengths and limitations of the ProQuest and EBSCO ebook platforms. Overall, the ProQuest platform outperformed the EBSCO platform. For users, the ProQuest interface has fewer and less significant issues than the EBSCO interface. For library administrators, ProQuest offers more options for customizing reports and alerts. The findings of this comparison study and heuristic evaluation may help librarians and library staff choose the most suitable ebook platform for library users and administrators.
Library Chat Transcript Evaluation for User Sentiment During the COVID-19 Pandemic
No full textObjective – The purpose of this research was to explore user sentiment on Ask a Librarian, a consortial chat service for university libraries in Ontario, Canada, between 2019 to 2021. We tested how the characteristics of the chat (such as year, semester, user type, operator type, affiliation mismatch, and user complaints) and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic affected sentiment scores.
Methods – The researchers analyzed 3,339 chat transcripts using VADER, a free, open-source Python natural language processing library for sentiment analysis. We tested the significance of relationships between study variables and sentiment score using either a two-samples t-test or ANOVA.
Results – Between 2019 to 2021, overall sentiment on Ask a Librarian was positive and higher among operators than users. There was a significant relationship between sentiment scores and operator type, affiliation mismatch, and complaints respectively. The year, semester, and pandemic status of the chat were also significantly associated with sentiment score. Chats that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic had a significantly higher overall sentiment score than pre-pandemic chats. Average user sentiment score was also higher during the pandemic, but there were no significant differences in average operator sentiment score.
Conclusion – The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant effect on the emotional tone of the overall chat interaction, as well as the sentiment within the user’s messages. Practitioners can replicate our approach to understand user emotions, opinions, attitudes, or appraisals during times of disruption or emergency, as well as for regular service assessment
EDI and Anti-Racism Work Is Labour-Intensive for Racialized Academic Librarians (and Organizations Could Do More to Address This)
No full textA Review of:
Vong, S., Cho, A., & Norlin, E. (2023). The five labours of equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism work of racialized academic librarians. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 7(3/4), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.33137/ijidi.v7i3/4.41002
Objective – To explore the experiences of racialized librarians who participate in their institution’s equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI), and anti-racism initiatives, and to identify the types of labours impacting these librarians.
Design – Qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews.
Setting – Study participants were from academic libraries and institutions in both the United States and Canada.
Subjects – Fourteen librarians who identified as members of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) or racialized communities, across different career stages.
Methods – After answering an initial survey on barriers within their organization, respondents participated in semi-structured interviews, from which emerged noteworthy data about EDI, anti-racism work, labour, identity, as well as workload issues (among other topics). After the researchers conducted multiple rounds of data transcription and coded data through the lens of invisible labour, key themes were explored further to better understand important findings and concepts.
Main Results – Study participants shared that their work on EDI and anti-racism initiatives at their institutions have caused them to endure multiple forms of labour (such as emotional, interpretive, identity, racialized, and aspirational). Racist encounters were experienced by all participants. The participants in this study offered tangible suggestions on how institutional practices could change more broadly, so that all library staff can engage with this work from a place of power and choice.
Conclusion – The racialized librarians who participated in this study are bearing the weight of institutional engagement with EDI and anti-racism initiatives. Moving forward, administrators and managers should support organizational changes, such as permanently employing EDI experts, formalized compensation for library staff engaging in this work, appropriate training for all employees, dedicated funding for equity-deserving groups, and accountability structures for leaders.
Plan S and Open Access (OA) in Quebec: What Does the Revised FRQ OA Policy Mean for Researchers?
No full textObjective – Our article examines the effects of Quebec’s provincial funding agency (FRQ)’s revised 2022 OA policy on researchers. Following FRQ’s participation as a cOAlition S funding agency, which involves endorsing Plan S principles, we provide an overview of the OA options for researchers. We examine these options under the FRQ 2019 and FRQ 2022 policy years, account for the effect of transformative agreements (TA) on OA publishing options, as well as the financial implications for researchers under the revised policy.
Methods – The researchers extracted a list of FRQ-funded publications from years 2020 to 2022 using the DOI registration agency Crossref. Using this sample set, the researchers quantitatively analyzed OA options under the previous policy and the revised one, comparing the two. To determine the effect of transformative agreements (TAs)s, we reviewed current agreements offered through Canada’s national licensing agency Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN).
Results – We found that the self-archiving method for open access (OA) is reduced under the revised 2022 policy. Our results lead us to anticipate the pressure felt by authors who will be required to pay article processing charges (APCs) to meet grant requirements.
Conclusion – The current publishing patterns of FRQ-funded researchers are primarily concentrated in hybrid journals not covered by transformative agreements. As such, researchers will face additional financial costs should these publishing patterns continue. Concerted efforts among all stakeholders (researchers, universities, libraries, and funders) are needed to sustainably transition to immediate OA.
French version – https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/993806