c/o Katina Strauch
Post Office Box 799
Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482
ALA Annual issue
TM
volume 32, number 3
ISSN: 1043-2094
June 2020
“Linking Publishers, Vendors and Librarians”
Brave New World — Access and Authority in 2020
by Lettie Y. Conrad (Publishing & Product Consultant, Information Science PhD Candidate, Queensland University of
Technology) <lettieconrad@gmail.com>
N
ow more than ever, the scholarly communications industry is
struggling to ensure scholars and
learners have state-of-the-art digital access
to the world’s research and instructional
resources off campus. Just as the library
community was taking steps toward modernizing access controls, with initiatives
like SeamlessAccess 1 and GetFTR, 2
social distancing interventions during
the coronavirus pandemic put a spotlight
on the limitations of IP-based
authentication, virtual private
networks, and other legacy
systems.
Before COVID-19 was a
household name, our traditional modes of institutional
controls on access to scholarly
resources were undeniably
disrupted — by funding agen-
cies and other open-access advocates,
various points of “content leakage,”3 not
to mention illegal efforts on the part of
wily activists who want to liberate information from social constructions, such as
copyright law. This issue is dedicated to
establishing a collaborative understanding
of where we go from here, in the brave
new world of access and authority in 2020.
Marshall Breeding offers his expert
perspective on today’s challenges with
digital authority controls, including shifting to distributed workfrom-home library operations
all while scaling networks for
high-volume remote access.
Members of the Scholarly
Networks Security Initiative
discuss cyber challenges and
methods for subverting efforts such as Sci-Hub — just
If Rumors Were Horses
T
his month, Charleston County Public Library (CCPL) is honoring
the lives of those lost at the Mother Emanuel AME Church five
years ago by promoting acts of kindness around the county and
releasing a special tribute documentary about Cynthia. The Library is asking the public to
perform acts of kindness and post a photo or video
of the act to social media using #ThisIsForCynthia.
Cynthia Graham Hurd was one of the nine people
killed in the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME
Church and she was a beloved long-time librarian
with CCPL. The Cynthia Graham Hurd/St.
Andrews Library is named after her. “We do not
want anyone to forget what happened to Cynthia
or the eight others killed in the church five years
ago,” said CCPL Executive Director Angela
Craig. “Every year since the tragedy, we have
Pictured are two of Katina’s grand- worked to honor her legacy through book drives
children, George (lt) and Porter (rt) for her family’s foundation, special programs,
Jacks — young and already reading!
continued on page 6
one of the various pathways and pitfalls
discussed by Scott Ahlberg of Reprints
Desk, who explains how flexibility in
serving diverse user needs is the key to
success.
Building on this theme, the folks at
Third Iron outline ten principles that
ensure simple, user-friendly library access, where Kendall Bartsch and John
Sequin have seen first-hand how content
delivered to meet user expectations “will
be happily used.” Abigail Wickes echoes
this sentiment by explaining that library
“access is people,” which was her motto
when Duke University librarians were
scrambling to support students, faculty,
continued on page 8
What To Look For In This Issue:
Problems with Searching Amazon....36
Eight Lessons Learned From Eight
Years of Open Access...................... 61
Librarians as Interdisciplinary Digital
Research Project Partners................ 65
Academic Library Response to
COVID-19....................................... 67
Interviews
Barbara Casalini............................ 40
John T. Nardini, PhD..................... 42
Steven J. Bell – Part 2.................... 45
Alex Lazinica.................................. 72
Profiles Encouraged
People, Library and Company
Profiles............................................ 81
Plus more............................See inside
1043-2094(202006)32:3;1-0
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on important topics
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Researchers looking to expand their expertise to
keep up with in increasingly interdisciplinary fields
will also benefit from these works.
Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094) (USPS: 012-618),
Copyright 2020 by the name Against the Grain, LLC is published six times a year in February, April, June, September,
November, and December/January by Against the Grain,
LLC. Business and Editorial Offices: PO Box 799, 1712
Thompson Ave., Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. Accounting
and Circulation Offices: same. Call (843-509-2848) to
subscribe. Periodicals postage is paid at Charleston, SC.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Against the
Grain, LLC, PO Box 799, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
v.32 #3 June 2020 © Katina Strauch
ISSUES, NEWS, & GOINGS ON
Rumors.................................................. 1
From Your Editor................................. 6
Letters to the Editor............................. 6
Deadlines............................................... 6
Editor:
FEATURES
Associate Editors:
Brave New World — Access and Authority in 2020
Guest Editor: Lettie Y. Conrad
Katina Strauch (Retired, College of Charleston)
Cris Ferguson (Murray State)
Tom Gilson (Retired, College of Charleston)
Matthew Ismail (Central Michigan University)
Research Editors:
Judy Luther (Informed Strategies)
Assistants to the Editor:
Ileana Strauch
Toni Nix (Just Right Group, LLC)
International Editor:
Rossana Morriello (Politecnico di Torino)
Contributing Editors:
Glenda Alvin (Tennessee State University)
Rick Anderson (University of Utah)
Sever Bordeianu (U. of New Mexico)
Todd Carpenter (NISO)
Eleanor Cook (East Carolina University)
Will Cross (NC State University)
Anne Doherty (Choice)
Michelle Flinchbaugh (U. of MD Baltimore County)
Joyce Dixon-Fyle (DePauw University)
Michael Gruenberg (Gruenberg Consulting, LLC)
Chuck Hamaker (Retired, UNC, Charlotte)
William M. Hannay (Schiff, Hardin & Waite)
Bob Holley (Retired, Wayne State University)
Donna Jacobs (MUSC)
Ramune Kubilius (Northwestern University)
Myer Kutz (Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.)
Tom Leonhardt (Retired)
Stacey Marien (American University)
Jack Montgomery (Western Kentucky University)
Alayne Mundt (American University)
Bob Nardini (ProQuest)
Jim O’Donnell (Arizona State University)
Ann Okerson (Center for Research Libraries)
Anthony Paganelli (Western Kentucky University)
Rita Ricketts (Blackwell’s)
Jared Seay (College of Charleston)
Corey Seeman (University of Michigan)
Lindsay Wertman (IGI Global)
ATG Proofreader:
Rebecca Saunders (Franklin Pierce University)
Graphics:
Bowles & Carver, Old English Cuts & Illustrations.
Grafton, More Silhouettes. Ehmcke, Graphic Trade
Symbols By German Designers. Grafton, Ready-to-Use
Old-Fashioned Illustrations. The Chap Book Style.
Production & Ad Sales:
Toni Nix, Just Right Group, LLC., P.O. Box 412,
Cottageville, SC 29435, phone: 843-835-8604
fax: 843-835-5892 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>
Advertising information:
Toni Nix, phone: 843-835-8604, fax: 843-835-5892
<justwrite@lowcountry.com>
Publisher:
Brave New World — Access and Authority in 2020................................................1
by Lettie Y. Conrad — This issue is dedicated to establishing a collaborative understanding
of where we go from here, in the brave new world of access and authority in 2020.
Library Response to Pandemic Closings: Implications for Network Access,
Privacy, and Security................................................................................................12
by Marshall Breeding — The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led to massive changes
in libraries. These new patterns require substantial efforts in the deployment of supporting
technologies, especially those related to network access and authentication.
Beyond Sci-Hub: Cyber Challenges for the Scholarly Communications Industry.... 17
by Rick Anderson, Robert Boissy, and Sharon Mattern Büttiker — Ultimately, how
can we all work together better to address challenges of balancing security and simple
authentication methods from multiple locations and devices.
Acquiring Scholarly Content: Is It Possible to Set Users on the Right Path,
Even If They Start Off on the Wrong Foot?...........................................................20
by Scott Ahlberg — The path to acquiring scholarly content is not concrete. That is, there
is no single, established route researchers take to find and obtain the articles they need
for their studies.
10 Principles of Simplifying Access to Keep Libraries at the Center of the
Research Process.......................................................................................................22
by Kendall Bartsch and John Seguin — Researchers are increasingly leaving behind
traditional routes to content. In response, publishers, libraries and technology companies
are developing new initiatives to simplify and expedite access to authoritative content.
Access is People: Navigating the E-resource Access Landscape During a
Pandemic....................................................................................................................24
by Abigail Wickes — The pitfalls of the content pipeline and the importance of building
relationships with the people facilitating access at each point becomes even more
important when options change so drastically.
When Thinking “Access,” Think Like a User........................................................26
by Christopher Lee and Robert Lisiecki — Users are shifting to online learning and
library support of faculty and students is provided completely virtually. In this piece we
shapeshift to think about access from a user’s perspective instead of from our own.
Op Ed — Random Ramblings.................................................................................36
Problems with Searching Amazon: You Can’t Always Find What You Want by Bob
Holley — Confused by not finding items through a well-formulated search but then serendipitously discovering them in some unexpected way prompted Bob to investigate this issue.
Back Talk — Carpe Diem – Seizing Pandemic Opportunities?............................86
by Ann Okerson — So what do we make of this chaotic and erratic information environment? We can draw a few lessons.
A. Bruce Strauch
ATG INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Katina Strauch, Editor, Against the Grain, LLC
Post Office Box 799
Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482
cell: 843-509-2848 <kstrauch@comcast.net>
Barbara Casalini – Casalini Libri...........................................................................40
John T. Nardini, PhD – SAMSI & N.C. State University......................................42
Steven J. Bell – Temple University Charles Library – Part 2...............................45
Profiles Encouraged..................................................................................................81
Send correspondence, press releases, etc., to:
Against the Grain is indexed in Library Literature, LISA,
Ingenta, and The Informed Librarian.
Authors’ opinions are to be regarded as their own. All
rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
This issue was produced on an iMac using Microsoft Word,
and Adobe CS6 Premium software under
Mac OS X Mountain Lion.
Against the Grain is copyright ©2020
by Katina Strauch
4
Against The Grain
Against the Grain / June 2020
ATG SPECIAL REPORT
Does the Repository Reflect the Institution?..........................................................54
by Gail McMillan — This study looked at VTechWorks, the IR at Virginia Tech, as a whole
and through three lenses.
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
ALA ANNUAL Issue
REVIEWS
Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews......................28
by Corey Seeman — Two types of reviews in one column. What we are doing continues
to morph and grow as the very nature of reference works and some monographs change.
“Linking
Publishers, Vendors
and Librarians”
Booklover — Travel During An Apocalypse...........................................................32
by Donna Jacobs — Peter Handke’s novel Short Letter, Long Farewell was awarded the
2019 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Collecting to the Core — Decolonizing Francophone Literature.........................33
by Kathleen A. Langan — This essay explores philosophical approaches to classification
and knowledge organization and reflects on how we assign value and meaning.
Uncommon ...
Legally Speaking — “McEngage” Disengages.......................................................50
Against the Grain is your key to
the latest news about libraries,
publishers, book jobbers, and
subscription agents. ATG is a unique
collection of reports on the issues,
literature, and people that impact
the world of books, journals, and
electronic information.
Cases of Note — Copyright – Ripping off Lady Liberty.......................................51
Unconventional ...
by Bill Hannay — McGraw-Hill and Cengage were prepared to divest (or spin off) a few
titles or subject areas where there was substantial overlap, but the DOJ and the CMA were
looking to have the companies shed significantly more overlap products.
by Bruce Strauch — Robert Davidson v. The United States.
Questions and Answers — Copyright Column......................................................52
by Will Cross — As always, many relevant questions and answers. Who owns course
materials? And what’s the importance of precedent to the Supreme Court judges?
PUBLISHING
Bet You Missed It......................................................................................................10
by Bruce Strauch — What do Oscar Wilde and Carrie Fisher have in common? Read it here!
And They Were There — Reports of Meetings......................................................57
by Ramune K. Kubilius — The third installment of 2019 Charleston Conference reports.
Don’s Conference Notes............................................................................................77
by Donald T. Hawkins — A brief summary of the NISOPlus2020 Conference.
BOOKSELLING AND VENDING
Stop, Look, Listen — Eight Lessons Learned From Eight Years of Open Access.... 61
by Dr. Sven Fund — This article considers some key takeaways from an insider perspective, which should be of interest to publishers, libraries and research funding agencies.
Oregon Trails — RIP – He Liked To Read.............................................................63
by Thomas W. Leonhardt — Tom likes to read!
Biz of Digital — Case Study: Librarians as Interdisciplinary Digital Research
Project Partners........................................................................................................65
An Overview of Recently Established and Emerging Digital Research Projects and
Support Services Led and Implemented by the Rowan University Libraries by Benjamin Saracco and Shilpa Rele
Optimizing Library Services — Academic Library Response to COVID-19.....67
by Prof. Jennifer Joe — We should be planning for two different futures: one where we
are able to return to our buildings, and one where we are not.
Squirreling Away: Managing Information Resources & Libraries —
Our Grand Intermission: Libraries & Change Management..............................75
by Corey Seeman — It is definitely the time to think long and hard about what we are doing
and what will be needed of us after we get to return to normal – or what we think will be normal.
TECHNOLOGY AND STANDARDS
Considering Games in Libraries and Such — Zoom-A-Zooma Head Shots:
In Virtual and In The Real.......................................................................................69
by Jared Alexander Seay — During this time of pandemic exile, we have reached the point now
where we too need to start distinguishing between working in virtual and working in the real.
Library Analytics: Shaping the Future — Inspec: Precision Analytics for
Research Excellence..................................................................................................70
Upcycling, Innovation, Relevance and Renewal: How Analytics Transformed our
Business by Vincent Cassidy
The Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with Alex Lazinica...................................72
by Darrell W. Gunter — We are excited to welcome Darrell to Against the Grain!
Against the Grain / June 2020
ATG is published six times a year,
in February, April, June, September,
November, and December/January.
A six-issue subscription is available
for only $55 U.S. ($65 Canada, $95
foreign, payable in U.S. dollars),
making it an uncommonly good buy
for all that it covers. Make checks
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Post Office Box 799
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LEGAL ISSUES
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
5
From Your (feeling my way) Editor:
T
here are no new words to describe
how times are changing for all of us.
Each day brings new challenges.
Will we have a conference — virtual or
in person? Will we have more attendees
if we go totally virtual or should we keep
our in person conference assuming we
can afford it and enough people come?
Where is our crystal ball? Last night we
had a meeting of many of the Charleston
Conference directors who could attend.
We have decided to take the Conference
virtual assuming we can get dispensation
from our hotel colleagues.
Amidst all this uncertainty, we have a
great issue guest edited by the wonderfully
persevering Lettie Conrad. The theme
is Access and Authority in 2020 and
is dedicated to understanding where we
go from here in the brave new world of
access and authority. There are articles by
Marshall Breeding (massive changes in
libraries), Rick Anderson, Robert Boissy, and Sharon Mattern Büttiker (working together for security and authentication), Scott Ahlberg (the path to acquire
scholarly content), Kendall Bartsch and
John Seguin (leaving behind traditional
Letters to the Editor
Send letters to <kstrauch@comcast.net>, phone 843-509-2848, or snail mail: Against
the Grain, Post Office Box 799, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. You can also send a
letter to the editor from the ATG Homepage at http://www.against-the-grain.com.
Dear Editors,
I am writing in regard to the post “Little Red Herrings — The Wuhan Wilding” by
Mark Y. Herring. This post’s use of the virus’ name referring to the city and jokingly
referring to it with Asian imagery are concerning to me, especially in a publication and
profession working with information. In addition, the post continued with Chinese/
Asian stereotypes of food. These words and these stereotypes are associating “blame”
to Asians and Asian American communities, some of which are members of the library
and information profession. In the last few months, Asians and Asian Americans are
experiencing a rise in racism and xenophobia due to COVID-19 and posts like this are
adding to that experience.
As an attendee and presenter at The Charleston Conference, I have had opportunities to present on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in libraries. This post is
not representative of my experiences at Charleston.
I respectfully ask this post to be either taken down or heavily revised. I also encourage ATG and The Charleston Conference to help combat racism and xenophobia
against Asians and Asian Americans.
Thank you!
Paolo P. Gujilde (Assistant Head of Acquisitions, University Libraries,
Northwestern University)
continued on page 8
AGAINST THE GRAIN DEADLINES
VOLUME 32 — 2020-2021
2020 EventsIssue
Ad Reservation Camera-Ready
Reference Publishing
September 2020
06/11/20
07/09/20
Charleston Conference
November 2020
08/13/20
09/03/20
Dec. 2020-Jan. 2021
11/05/20
11/23/20
ALA Midwinter
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
Toni Nix <justwrite@lowcountry.com>; Phone: 843-835-8604; Fax: 843-835-5892;
USPS Address: P.O. Box 412, Cottageville, SC 29435; FedEx/UPS ship to: 398 Crab
Apple Lane, Ridgeville, SC 29472.
6
Against the Grain / June 2020
routes), Abigail
Wickes (pitfalls
of the content
pipeline), and
Christopher Lee
and Robert Lisiecki (online learning virtually). Our Op Ed is about problems with
searching (Bob Holley). Our Back Talk
(Ann Okerson) asks what lessons we can
take out of our current environment.
We have great interviews with Barbara Casalini, John T. Nardini, and Steven
J. Bell. This issue’s Special Report (Gail
McMillan) looks at how the repository
can reflect the institution. Our review section includes Corey Seeman’s excellent
reviewers (Reader’s Roundup), Donna
Jacob’s Booklover (Peter Handke), and
Kathleen A. Logan’s Collecting to the
Core (Francophone literature).
The Legal section has an article by
Bill Hannay on the disengagement of the
McGraw-Hill and Cengage agreement, a
Cases of Note, and enlightening questions
and answers from Will Cross.
Sven Fund tells us about the eight
lessons from Open Access’ eight year
history, Biz of Digital includes a case
study on librarians and interdisciplinary
research (Benjamin Saracco and Shilpa
Rele), Optimizing Library Services
(Jennifer Joe) is about planning for two
futures, returning to our buildings or not.
Squirrelling Away (Corey Seeman) tackles change management in the new normal. Jared Seay (Considering Games)
talks about working in the virtual versus
working in the real. Vincent Cassidy (Library Analytics) discusses how analytics
can transform business.
We saved the best for last! An entirely
new column, The Innovator’s Saga, by
Darrell Gunter. This one’s an interview
with Alex Lazinica, the man who has established IntechOpen. Love, Yr. Ed.
Rumors
from page 1
exhibits and events. Unfortunately, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, we are unable to host
these tributes this year and that pains us. We
hope the community will take this opportunity
to share a little love, even from afar.” All
in-person public programs and events were
suspended at all CCPL libraries due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. CCPL published a
continued on page 16
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Discover
As we all adjust to a new reality, we want you
to know that we are committed to working with
you and your patrons to navigate the various
challenges that have resulted from COVID-19.
Please visit our Librarian Resource Center
(osapublishing.org/library/covid-19-policy.cfm)
to learn more about setting up remote access
for your patrons, and the changes we have
made on a short term basis to our print delivery
and claims processes.
Ta ke a closer look at....
The CHARLESTON REPORT
Business Insights into the Library Market
You Need The Charleston Report...
if you are a publisher, vendor, product developer, merchandiser,
consultant or wholesaler who is interested in improving
and/or expanding your position in the U.S. library market.
Brave New World ...
from page 1
and scholars during their campus closure
this spring. Christopher Lee at Utah
State University and Robert Lisiecki
of Lean Library found a user-centric
approach to be successful in their testing
and development of a browser extension to
improve the USU library user experience.
As we look ahead to the balance of
2020, new challenges are afoot, and much
is yet to be decided about how policies
and practices will change — there are
also ripe opportunities for invention and
innovation, as we all find new ways of
working.
Subscribe today at our discounted rate of only $75.00
The Charleston Company
6180 East Warren Avenue, Denver, CO 80222
Phone: 303-282-9706 • Fax: 303-282-9743
Letters to the Editor
from page 6
Hi Katina, Leah, and Tom,
I hope this email finds you well. It’s been a long time, and I
sincerely hope you are all healthy and coping with the challenges
brought about by this pandemic.
I’m writing because of the column written by Mark Herring
entitled “The Wuhan Wilding.” A friend called my attention to
that post late last night, and when I read it, I was greatly disturbed,
disappointed, and angry. It was insensitive, cruel, and just flat
out racist. It doesn’t take a person from another ethnicity to see
that it was problematic and inhumane. It perpetuated the false
narrative that this government is espousing about the origins of
this virus. His attempt to be humorous at the expense of a group
of people demonstrates privilege and utter lack of empathy.
What bothered me the most was that ATG published it. As
you know, I have a connection to this publication as a member
of the editorial board, and I deeply respect all of you. However,
I wonder why no one saw how this narrative might affect those
of us from the minoritized segment of our profession. My friend
Tweeted about it, and I replied, expressing my disappointment,
and as a result, that article was retracted this morning. While
I appreciate the retraction, I think ATG did not address this
head-on. I hope you issue a written statement about why you
decided to retract and your commitment as a publication
to do better. Not everyone will get it right, and
sometimes even with the best of our intentions,
we make mistakes. I just hope this becomes a
learning opportunity to uphold your values and
commitment as publishers.
8
Against the Grain / June 2020
Endnotes
1. https://seamlessaccess.org/
2. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.
org/2020/04/21/guest-post-seamless-remote-access-during-a-global-pandemic-an-indispensable-necessity/
3. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.
org/2019/02/27/will-publishers-have-platforms/
Thanks so much for hearing me out. I look forward to visiting
Charleston when it is safe for all of us to do so. In the meantime,
take care, and I wish you all the best.
Regina Gong (Open Educational Resources, and Student
Success Librarian, Michigan State University Libraries)
Dear ATG Editors,
On Monday, May 11, 2020 at 11:23 PM, I fired off an email to
draw your attention to an opinion piece on ATG that was shared
with me by a colleague: https://against-the-grain.com/2020/05/
v322-little-red-herrings-the-wuhan-wilding/
The basic gist of my email included bullet points on the
insensitivity of the column, that while not every single one of
Herring’s points are offensive, the examples below clearly are:
• Referring to China as the “Third World”
• “That is yet another sad chapter about a country in
which its inhabitants, at least some of them, could not
find enough to eat and so ate animals that the rest of the
civilized world exterminated” in reference to China
• “Wuhan virus (Kung Flu as a friend of mine dubbed
it)” in reference to COVID-19
ATG promptly responded by first retracting the editorial on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 at
9:50am, forwarded the reactions from individual
letters (like mine) along with comments posted
on the website to the author, and took further
action by removing Mark Herring from the list
of contributing editors.
continued on page 10
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Bet You Missed It
Press Clippings — In the News — Carefully Selected by Your Crack Staff of News Sleuths
Column Editor: Bruce Strauch (Retired, The Citadel)
Editor’s Note: Hey, are y’all reading this? If you know of an article that should be called to Against the Grain’s attention ...
send an email to <kstrauch@comcast.net>. We’re listening! — KS
Let’s Read Life Onstage
Jean Stein, West of Eden (2016) (daughter of the founder
of MCA writes about growing up among actors, agents,
shrinks, and gardeners); (2) Oscar Wilde, The Picture of
Dorian Gray (1890) (Dorian wasn’t an actor, yet his whole
life was a performance); (3) Anthony Sher, Year
of the King (1985) (Sher was famous for playing
Richard III; huge insights into actor’s mind); (4)
Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking (2008) (daughter
of Debbie Reynolds was an addict and bipolar);
(5) Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984)
(novel about an Edwardian trapeze artist).
See — Anne Enright, “Five Best,” The Wall
Street Journal, March 21-22, 2020, p.C12. (Anne
is the author of the novel Actress.)
Letters to the Editor
from page 8
But in a profession that values facts, records, and social justice, the externality was that ATG demonstrated it has not upheld
these values. Herring’s remarks were belittling, divisive, and
ill-informed. It was disheartening to see Herring’s opinions,
further fueling harmful misconceptions, published in a library
publication/website at a time when there is especially high
anti-Asian racism and xenophobia as a result of COVID-19. I
have seen Herring’s tweets and do not expect an apology from
the author, but I do believe ATG should be accountable to its
audience — accountable for allowing its platform to be used in
perpetuating racism.
Although Herring’s opinions were deleted online, as we all
eventually transition back to in-person/face-to-face work spaces
and open up our mail backlogs, the print copies sent to libraries
and individuals cannot be retracted. Merely erasing Herring’s
presence on your site does not absolve ATG from permitting
content rooted in hatred and/or ignorance to get published in
the first place. What will ATG do to actively combat racism in
your content in the future?
I am wondering why Herring’s submission did not get flagged
prior to publication? Is it because there was no editorial review
for Herring’s column? Or worse, the reviewer(s) did not see a
problem?? I think the ATG editors should be transparent about
10 Against the Grain / June 2020
Royal Maps Online
George III is mostly remembered by American history as
being mad. But he ruled from 1760 to 1820. That includes
the last of the Seven Years War, American Revolution, and the
Napoleonic Wars. And he was big on maps.
He founded the Ordnance Survey, thoroughly
mapping Britain. Also founded the Royal Military
College at High Wycombe where officers were taught
topography, surveying and mapping.
Now his entire collection of 3,000 military
maps, prints and sketches are available digitally,
graciously provided by the Royal Collection
Trust. www.military-history.org/news.
See — “George III’s Military Map Collection
Released Online,” Military History, April/May,
2020, p.6.
the editorial process and say what steps they will take to prevent
editorials like Herring’s from surfacing on ATG again. If you
are willing to take a recommendation, I would suggest adding
an EDI-torial review process.
Thanks, Moon
Moon Kim (Acquisitions Librarian | Assistant Professor
Ohio State University Libraries Acquisitions and Discovery)
Statement from the Publisher of Against the Grain
The article titled “Little Red Herrings — The Wuhan
Wilding” from v.32#2, our April 2020 issue, has been retracted. We sincerely apologize for publishing the article. Mr.
Herring was a long-time contributing editor for the journal,
and we made the mistake of not monitoring the content more
closely. We are taking steps to modify our editorial process
to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. We stand with the
Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA)
in condemning the rise of inappropriate behaviors due to the
novel coronavirus outbreak (http://www.apalaweb.org/coronavirus-response/). Thank you to all our readers who wrote
emails or commented online about this issue. We appreciate
your feedback and will use it to continue to improve. Thank
you. A. Bruce Strauch, Publisher
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
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Library Response to Pandemic Closings: Implications for
Network Access, Privacy, and Security
by Marshall Breeding (Independent Consultant, Library Technology Guides) <marshall.breeding@librarytechnology.org>
T
he ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led to massive
changes in libraries. Almost all have closed their physical
facilities to the public, abruptly changing the way that
libraries provide access to their content, resources and other
services and in the ways that library personnel accomplish their
work. These new patterns require substantial efforts in the deployment of supporting technologies, especially those related to
network access and authentication. Two different sets of challenges arise, one in supporting library workers shifting to working
from home, and the other in optimizing support for patron use
of electronic resources to enable high volumes of off-campus
access and to compensate for loss of access to physical materials.
This essay explores some of the issues and concerns related to
technology, privacy, and security as libraries strive to respond
to the ongoing crisis.
Library Workers Shift to Work From Home
The shelter-in-place and social distance mandates mean that
libraries, generally oriented to performing their duties onsite,
have rapidly made accommodations for working remotely from
their homes. In support of this change, libraries have implemented expedited responses to provide administrative and
technology support.
Policies regarding telework have been adjusted.
Organizations that may have previously limited
telework have altered or suspended these policies.
We can anticipate that once the crisis abates,
institutions that have previously limited remote
work arrangements will review policies both
to be more prepared for any future emergency
situations and to benefit the organization and its
employees based on experiences gained during
the COVID-19 pandemic.
Special consideration applies to library workers
that work primarily with physical materials or whose
primary responsibilities are closely tied to the physical facilities.
Many libraries have been able to identify data cleanup or other
projects that can be accomplished remotely by staff members
whose usual work responsibilities cannot be performed at home.
Libraries have also needed to address computer equipment
issues to support staff members working from home. While
librarians and those in other professional or administrative
positions may already have personal or institutionally supplied
laptops, many libraries have been able to allocate computers to
staff members lacking suitable equipment. Some library workers
may not have adequate home Internet connectivity. Institutions
may be able to provide Wi-Fi hotspots with cellular data subscriptions to staff members working from home.
Many public libraries lend these devices to patrons as part of
their efforts to promote digital literacy and to address disparities
in access to digital information in their communities. As libraries
make accommodations for their personnel to work remotely, it is
important to take into consideration the differences and disparities
in the levels of technology that may be present in their homes
as well as the many scenarios that may impact each individual’s
ability to work productively that do not involve technology —
12 Against the Grain / June 2020
such as maintaining work / life balance, ergonomic health, and
much more.
Policy and equipment issues aside, some of the most trying
technical challenges relate to access, security, and authentication
issues. Library workers rely on a wide variety of systems, services, and resources to accomplish their daily activities, often
residing on a complex array of infrastructure components. In
some cases, these components rely on legacy technologies, not
necessarily designed for remote access. Libraries that have
moved to cloud-based services for their core systems are better
positioned for shifting to remote work than those with legacy
systems requiring proprietary client software.
VPN (virtual private network) services are well established as
the standard tool to provide access to internal network resources
for offsite workers. This category of network product establishes a secure, encrypted communications path between a remote
worker’s computer and the institutional network. Once attached
via the VPN, the external computer is recognized as participating
in the internal network, enabling access to institutional resources restricted by IP address or network directory
services such as Microsoft’s Active Directory.
VPN technology is generally regarded as a secure
and reliable method for remote access to network
resources. It is common to implement VPNs with
advanced security features such as two-factor
authentication or biometrics.
VPN clients, however, are notoriously complex
to install and configure. They are especially well
suited for institutionally owned and managed
laptops. This approach may be less ideal for personally owned devices where the user would be
responsible for their installation and configuration.
Once connected via a VPN, remote computers
essentially reside within the institutional network.
From a security perspective, VPNs used with personal devices
can be problematic since any preexisting malware or other
vulnerabilities could pose a threat to the institutional network.1
Since VPNs establish an encrypted tunnel between the user’s
computer and the institutional network, they provide a high level
of security and ensure privacy from network eavesdropping, even
when the home Wi-Fi network may have security vulnerabilities.
For reasonable security and privacy on a home network, it is essential to configure home routers to use encryption, which is the
default setting for almost all service providers. It is also important
to change the router’s administrative access to a strong password
other than that provided in the default settings. Surveillance
cameras, smart thermostats, and other IoT (Internet of things)
devices may come with weak security and may leak personal
information. Although it is always beneficial to configure home
networks to use the best security options available, the stakes are
even higher when accessing institutional resources.
The use of a VPN alters some of the basic flow of network
communications. When accessing resources outside the institutional network, traffic goes from the user’s computer at home
continued on page 14
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Library Response to Pandemic Closings ...
from page 12
to the VPN server on the institutional network, and then to the
external service. The overhead involved in this additional hop
would usually be insignificant, but when these shifts happen
abruptly and at large scale, they can press the capacity of the
network involved. Networks scaled or optimized for the use
levels of the pre-crisis period may need to be rebalanced for the
new patterns where significant portions of activity have moved
outside of institutional networks. This rebalancing applies not
only to specific components, such as VPN services, but to the
broader domain of institutional and residential Internet services.
Library personnel working from home only needing access
to web-based services would not necessarily need to use a VPN.
If the library uses a fully web-based resource management
systems, productivity suites such as Microsoft 365 (formerly
Office 365) or Google G Suite and associated storage services,
remote workers may be able to carry out their work with only
their institutional login without the need to reconfigure their
personal computers with a VPN.
The shift to working from home has brought increased use of
collaborative communications tools to library workers. Video
conferencing services such as Zoom, WebEx, or BlueJeans
have replaced face-to-face meetings and collaborative communications tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack supplement email
for the daily communication library workers need to carry out
their work. These types of tools had already seen adoption in
many libraries, though the shift to work from home has accelerated their use.
The rapid uptick in the use of online communications tools
has exposed privacy and security concerns. Unsecured meetings
using Zoom, for example, have been subject to intrusion by uninvited and unwanted participants, a phenomenon now known as
“zoombombing.” These incidents have led to some strengthening
in the security of the service but, more importantly, are important
reminders to use available mechanisms to control meeting access
with passwords and not to publicly share the access credentials.
Those working from home should also be vigilant in separating personal from work communications. Personal communications, even among work colleagues, should not be carried
out over the same channels as those used for formal or informal
work dialogue. Although rarely exercised, institutionally supplied communications tools may be subject to administrative and
technical monitoring. Consumer services may be more private
relative to one’s employer but may be subject to scanning for
identification of advertising interests.
The necessity of continued employment in the context of
library closures has meant a quick shift to working from home
and adoption of readily available supporting technologies. Privacy and security concerns will continue to be addressed and
will improve throughout the duration of this crisis and will also
result in libraries being better prepared for any future events.
Patron Access to Library Resources
The pandemic crisis and the closure of library facilities also
has broad implications for the methods that libraries use to provide access to their resources and services. Without access to
physical materials, libraries have taken any available measures
to provide increased access to digital content. This crisis has
highlighted the reality that much material remains available
only in print despite large-scale efforts over recent decades, and
14 Against the Grain / June 2020
that the current scholarly publishing models continue to hamper
access to digital content.
Many publishers and providers of scholarly content have
opened access restrictions to resources related to coronavirus
research. The need to eliminate barriers during the pandemic to
medical practitioners and researchers during the crisis also serves
to highlight that these same restrictions represent barriers to other
important areas of research during more normal times. Although
major initiatives are underway which promise growth in open
access publishing going forward, the possibility of universal open
access to all scientific research seems unlikely.
The mechanisms for access to scholarly resources present
another layer of constraint in the ecosystem of scholarly content.
This ecosystem is optimized for the scenario where researchers
are associated with institutions that have licensed access to collections of materials that otherwise are not available. Systematic
research requires comprehensive discovery tools able to address
both restricted resources and the growing body of open access
content. Access to proprietary content requires reliable authentication and linking technologies. Libraries acquire licenses
to relevant resources of highest interest to the researchers and
students of their institution and provide tools for discovery and
access.
Apart from the ideal world where all scholarly content is
available through open access, or where libraries have unlimited resources to purchase licenses to every possible electronic
collection, a number of challenges remain in optimizing access
to content within the current restrictive environment.
One component of the ecosystem deals with determining that
a researcher has permission to access a given piece of content.
Since the earliest days of electronic journals, mechanisms have
been based on the network address of the computer used to access
the resource. When a library subscribes to a resource, it provides
the list of IP addresses associated with the institution. Once
activated, users on the network are recognized as valid users.
Proxy services have been almost universally implemented that
enable individuals working outside their institutional network to
login to the library website or discovery tool so that their session
becomes associated with an authorized IP address.
The model of IP authentication and the related proxy services
are generally regarded as convenient and ideal for protecting
the privacy of the researcher. When using IP authentication,
the only data point inherently known by the content provider is
the associated institution. Providers may also encourage users
to create voluntary accounts on their systems which may collect
additional information and offer personalized features.
IP authentication likewise has many shortfalls. From the publisher perspective, IP addresses are easy to forge, risking leakage
of content to non-subscribers. Proxy servers can be defeated
through the capture of login credentials, enabling bulk downloads
of resources from content providers. IP authentication mechanisms can also be inconvenient for students and researchers in
many scenarios. Especially when working off campus, they may
be denied access or be presented with a paywall for resources to
which their institution subscribes when trying to access materials
via popular mainstream search tools, such as Google Scholar.
The proxy servers associated with IP authentication mechanisms can also represent a bottleneck or single point of failure in
network access patterns. For off-campus users, proxy services
mean that rather than the simple path between a user’s web
continued on page 16
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Library Response to Pandemic Closings ...
from page 14
browser and the content server, requests travel through a more
complex path, either via the campus network or through a third
party that hosts its proxy server. OCLC’s EZproxy (https://www.
oclc.org/en/ezproxy/) service has become the most implemented
IP-based service and is increasingly offered as a hosted service
rather than installed on the campus network.
Federated authentication provides a more modern and scalable
alternative to IP authentication and proxy services. This model
enables a single sign-on to provide access to authorized resources
within the institutional network and with trusted external providers. Rather than simply rely on the presence of a computer on an
authorized IP address, federated authentications rely on standard
protocols, such as SAML, which transfer limited elements of trust
from a signed-in user on one network to another. A researcher, for
example, would sign into the university network to gain access
to email, library services, the learning management system, and
other relevant services. These credentials can also be used to
gain access to other external resources that participate in a shared
authentication framework.
The RA21 initiative (Resource Access for the 21st Century
ra21.org), a partnership between publishers and NISO with
participation from the library community, was established to
explore alternatives based on SAML authentication frameworks
to the prevailing IP authentication model. This initiative has
been adopted by NISO as a recommended practice (https://
www.niso.org/standards-committees/ra21) and is the basis for
the SeamlessAccess service (seamlessacces.org), now in early
implementation. The service operates under the governance of
NISO, Internet2, ORCHID, STM, and GÉANT. The first
use of this new federated model is the cross-publisher initiative
GetFTR (https://www.getfulltextresearch.com/).
Librarians have raised concerns about how RA21 and SeamlessAccess impact patron privacy.2 As noted above, in the IP
authentication ecosystem, information providers are only aware
of the institution associated with any given patron. With the
federated authentication transaction exemplified by RA21, a
Rumors
from page 6
video showing some of its staff members
performing a few acts of kindness in hopes to
encourage the public to keep it going the rest
of June. Those who participate should upload
photos or videos of their acts of kindness and
tag them with #ThisIsForCynthia. “We hope
this sparks a string of positive interactions,”
said Craig. “More than ever, we should all
work to make kind connections within our
community.” CCPL will also release a video
tribute of Cynthia Graham Hurd on June
17. “Cynthia Graham Hurd, A Legacy
Everlasting,” was produced by CCPL Digital
Studio Manager and local documentarian
Julian Gooding. The video will be posted
on the Library’s YouTube channel and
Facebook page.
16 Against the Grain / June 2020
broader set of characteristics can be passed between the institutional environment and service providers. For most educational
institutions, the authentication service would be managed by the
campus IT department, rather than by the library, and would be
designed to interoperate with a broader set of service providers
other than those related to library content.
SAML-based transactions allow for a broad range of data
points to be passed to service providers, such as email addresses,
usernames, or departments. Expectations for privacy may differ
between those that manage institutional services and the library.
While RA21 has been designed to accommodate privacy protection, it depends on institutions to agree on a minimal set of data
elements passed among authentication authorities and service
providers. In a scholarly publishing ecosystem increasingly
hungry for analytics and personalization, it will be critical to
ensure privacy controls in federated access models are consistent
with library values and policies.
The COVID-19 crisis may or may not have a direct impact
on the wide-scale transition from IP authentication to federated
services such as SeamlessAccess. The urgency to accelerate research in related fields will more likely accelerate the movement
toward open access publishing models and other open science
initiatives. For materials that continue to be restricted within
subscription models, researchers need convenient, scalable, and
reliable access and authentication mechanisms — which libraries
will continue to service, either on or off campus.
Endnotes
1. Haber, Morey. “The Dangers of Using A VPN On Home Computers For Work And What To Do Instead.” Forbes. January 17,
2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/01/17/
the-dangers-of-using-vpn-on-home-computers-for-work-and-whatto-do-instead/
2. See for example: Hinchliffe, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, “What
will you do when they come for your proxy server.” The Scholarly Kitchen. January 15, 2018. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.
org/2018/01/16/what-will-you-do-when-they-come-for-your-proxyserver-ra21/. Accessed April 29, 2020.
https://www.ccpl.org/news/ccpl-launches-thisisforcynthia-campaign-honor-former-librarian-cynthia-graham-hurd?fbclid=IwAR3i1AAu6PUpzOUpftMnSYNlHk1uHYfDw1uu3KTezr3crXFbfQItW9MK4vY
And please don’t forget that each year,
Springer Nature honors the legacy of Cynthia Graham Hurd by awarding a $1,500
travel grant to a library employee that has not
had an opportunity to attend the Charleston
Library Conference.
https://against-the-grain.com/2020/06/
atg-news-announcements-6-19-20/
I am heartened by the fact that books
(print and online) have surfaced greatly and
survived through the pandemic and become
even more popular than ever before! Hooray! To help us know more about books out
there, Corey Seeman’s Readers’ Roundup
in this issue (p.28) includes three first time
reviewers! Introducing Jessica Brangiel,
Electronic Resources Management Librarian
at Swarthmore College, Heather Cyre, Head
of Public Services, University of Washington
Bothell & Cascadia College Campus Library,
and Christopher Edwards, Assistant Head
of Information Literacy, University of Texas
at Dallas. These first timers join longtime reviewer Jennifer Matthews, Collection Strategy Librarian, Rowan University. Thanks to
the innovative Corey who sends word that if
you would like to be a reviewer for Against
the Grain or if you are a publisher with a book
you would like to have reviewed, please write
him at <cseeman@umich.edu>. And thanks
to all of our authors and reviewers.
So much has changed in downtown
Charleston. I supposed that we all have
noticed! Just learned that after 24 years
Jestine’s Kitchen on King Street which was
continued on page 19
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Beyond Sci-Hub: Cyber Challenges for the Scholarly
Communications Industry
Co-authored by the following members of the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI) University Relations Group:
by Rick Anderson (Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication Marriott Library, University of Utah)
<rick.anderson@utah.edu>
and Robert Boissy (Director of Account Development Institutional Sales and Marketing, Springer Nature)
<Robert.Boissy@springernature.com>
and Sharon Mattern Büttiker (Director of Content Management, Research Solutions)
G
iven recent reporting in the press,1 it seems that the legitimacy and credibility of Sci-Hub is no longer a matter
for debate. However, the challenge of how to address the
continuing threat Sci-Hub poses to authors, societies, university
presses, and other publishers reliant on the royalties derived from
book sales and subscription income remains — and is connected
to the much wider challenge of cybercrime.
And unfortunately cybercrime is something to which the
higher education sector is particularly vulnerable. In fact, not
only is the sector vulnerable but the education sector is the third
largest target for attacks,2 ahead of retail, due to the fact that
most universities, including library systems, routinely store a
tremendous amount of personal data. Rutgers University has
reportedly had to spend $3 million on cybersecurity. In the UK
last year, the National Cyber Security Centre published its first
Against the Grain / June 2020
report on the cyber threat to UK universities, noting that some of
the effects of state-sponsored espionage included damage to the
value of research, notably in STEM subjects, a fall in investment
by public or private sector in affected universities, and damage
to the UK’s knowledge advantage.
Sci-Hub is just one example. When it exploded into the
academic research space in 2011, it brought to the fore one of
the huge challenges not only to our roles as publishers, librarians and institutions but also to the wider integrity of the sector
within which we work — namely how do we all balance the need
for access while also protecting ourselves, our assets, those for
whom we are responsible, and the quality of the academic record
from criminals? It has no incentive to ensure the accuracy of the
research articles on its site, no incentive to ensure research meets
continued on page 18
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
17
Beyond Sci-Hub: Cyber Challenges ...
from page 17
ethical standards, and no incentive to retract or correct if issues
arise — all of which make its actions particularly egregious. But
its activities are not the only threat to the scholarly communications ecosystem and the integrity of the academic record, and
this issue goes beyond that of the illegal accessing of academic
research. It is clear that in order to address this sustainably and
effectively, publishers need to work with librarians, university
network security officers and others responsible for cybersecurity in academic institutions. As the saying goes — we are all
in this together.
Collectively, we have a responsibility to safeguard and
manage a successful online researcher experience by ensuring
institutional and individual access is enabled to high quality,
licensed, peer reviewed publications; that data is protected;
and entitlements from licensed institutions are safeguarded. For
example, publishers and librarians worked together as part of
the RA21 initiative, now called seamlessaccess.org, to make
access to articles easier for researchers using their institutional
logins when they are not on campus. As this becomes implemented across platforms and publishers, it will also negate the
need for researchers to log in each time they move between
publishers’ websites.
This is an excellent demonstration of how publishers and
librarians have come together to solve real pain points as outlined
by researchers. Publishers also worked together to create Crossref so that research outputs could be easy to find, cite, link, assess,
and reuse. Most recently, GetFTR (Get Full Text Research),3
a new, free-to-use solution has been sent out into
the market for consultation that will enable faster
access for researchers to the published journal articles they need from a wide variety of discovery
tools that they are already using. While this was
initially developed in the publishing community,
its advisory boards include a number of librarians
to ensure the views of this important stakeholder
group are properly represented and reflected in the
development of GetFTR.
While sites such as Sci-Hub are harmful to the
research community, we understand why people
use them but are pleased to note that they are becoming continuingly less attractive as alternative, legitimate, means
of accessing content are developed and rolled out. However,
more awareness around the harm caused by such sites — to all
in the research community, researchers, institutions, providers
— needs to happen. Particularly, we think that the members of
the research community need to work together to improve and
better spread awareness of the benefits of the legitimate services
on offer, to reduce researchers going to illegal sites, and to ensure we have a scholarly communication cycle that collectively
addresses and protects the needs of all those involved.
One way that our community is looking to address and tackle
these issues is through the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI). This was initially an informal group of interested
publishers (large and small, societies and university presses) and
others involved in scholarly communications. We are now keen
to take this partnership a step further and are seeking to engage
more proactively with higher education institutions to solve the
cyber challenges they are facing, whether they be the accuracy
of the scientific record, the integrity of scholarly systems or the
18 Against the Grain / June 2020
safety of personal data. For example, by exploring whether the
dangers related to Sci-Hub connect to other cybercrime issues,
it may mean that it is useful to include solutions that help protect universities from Sci-Hub’s network intrusions in broader
information literacy and other library outreach programs.
Some of this outreach is already underway such as the security summit co-hosted by Springer Nature, part of SNSI, the
Worcester Polytechnic Institute Libraries and the Boston
Library Consortium. This brought together a diverse group
of librarians, corporate information professionals, and academics with an interest in cybersecurity to discuss cybersecurity
issues, determine the scope of threats to higher education and
the scholarly communications network and begin a dialogue
regarding practical steps to make campus records and resources
more secure.
The great thing about this event was that it saw tangible
outputs, one being an Information Security Checklist for Academic Libraries. This was created using the comments that
came throughout the day from the very engaged participants
and contains information on self-education, support, partnering,
and spreading the word about cybersecurity threats in higher
education. It gives concrete guidance on becoming involved
with organizations like EDUCAUSE and REN-ISAC, as well
as use of encryption and the need to reach out to their own network security staff with concerns relating to protection of library
resources, clearly setting out for librarians the steps they can take
to secure their networks.
The success of this summit means that a second is being
planned later this year as are a series of webinars with key
stakeholders — more information on both of these will be available shortly. This is all in addition to members of the
group attending conferences and speaking at seminars
(coronavirus permitting) to provide information and
support to potential partners and stakeholders.
Whilst the initiatives mentioned above have
not been without their challenges, the point stands
that they are examples of the need for a collective
approach to cybersecurity and demonstrate the
impact such a collaborative approach can deliver.
Ultimately, a combination of forces is needed to
protect institutions from cyber-attacks, to ensure
data is protected on both sides, and to ensure that
researchers are presented with the best possible
user experience, safe in the knowledge that the work
they are accessing is correct, up to date and properly connected
to the scientific record.
Academic research was digitised and made available across a
range of platforms faster than any music or film content. Open
access articles are immediately accessible and sharable by anyone who wishes to read them. Most publishers have policies in
place which enable authors to publish their articles to publicly
accessible platforms, and most fully support pre-print servers.
The industry encourages openness and accessibility as a path to
our shared goal of a more interconnected research world.
Collectively, what we are seeing so far from the work that we
have been doing within SNSI is that, moving forward, we need
to expand the scope of our activities to address the following
questions:
• What support do librarians need from publishers and
technology providers to effectively balance the need for
access and the need for security and data protection?
continued on page 19
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• How can we help IT security within institutions in
designing systems that meet both researcher and organisational goals so that people don’t choose risky
convenience over legitimate options?
• What support do institutions need to implement and
uphold a secure network system that safeguards users
and ensures streamlined simple access?
• How can publishers continue to make platforms more
interactive and interconnected so that communities can
access the research published how, where and when they
want to?
Ultimately, how can we all work together better to address
challenges of balancing security and simple authentication methods from multiple locations and devices?
Cybersecurity isn’t just an issue for publishers. It isn’t just a
challenge for librarians. It is not just an obstacle for institutions
or a nuisance for researchers. This is an issue for all of us, and a
problem that we firmly believe can be best addressed sustainably
and effectively together.
We hope that you will join us in the collective outreach.
Against the Grain / June 2020
Endnotes
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/justice-department-investigates-sci-hub-founder-on-suspicion-of-working-for-russian-intelligence/2019/12/19/9dbcb6e6-2277-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html
2. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/report/the-cyber-threat-to-universities
3. https://www.getfulltextresearch.com/
Rumors
from page 16
known for its fried chicken, gumbo, pecan pie and other Southern
classics has closed!
The Old Towne Greek Restaurant on King Street has closed as
well. I remember earlier when the Conference was smaller that we used
to have meetings at the Old Towne. Also closed is Mellow Mushroom
and Kickin’ Chicken on King Street. So sad to see these cherished
eating memories going away but I don’t think that we will starve!
Just finished a webinar from the Financial Times Digital Dialogues: Business Books in Times of Uncertainty. This provocative
webinar discussed key issues facing all the business book sector’s
stakeholders during this time. The webinar featured Andrew Hill,
FT’s management editor, moderating a virtual panel discussion
continued on page 25
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
19
Acquiring Scholarly Content: Is It Possible to Set
Users on the Right Path, Even If They Start Off on the
Wrong Foot?
by Scott Ahlberg (Chief Operations Officer, Reprints Desk) <sahlberg@reprintsdesk.com>
A
s anyone in our industry knows, the path to acquiring
scholarly content is not concrete. That is, there is no
single, established route researchers take to find and
obtain the articles they need for their studies. And that creates
challenges for librarians.
Librarians work hard to help their users obtain content in the
most efficient and cost-effective way possible. But steering researchers in the right direction isn’t always easy. As users move
through their widely varied literature acquisition workflows, how
can librarians ensure each user finds what they need, quickly and
easily, while avoiding wrong turns and frustrating dead-ends?
At Research Solutions/Reprints Desk, we’ve heard countless
stories from librarians about the obstacles they face. Here are
some of the top challenges we hear about — both actual and
perceived:
• Academic users don’t want to pay for content, yet
they don’t seem to be thorough about searching for
free content. Some Open Access resources seem to be
surprisingly hidden from the view of many researchers.
• Users find library authentication and navigation cumbersome.
• Users sometimes seem to treat interlibrary loan (ILL)
as a crutch, like an assistant who will do the work for
them.
• Users are accessing content on sites that librarians, publishers, and vendors don’t want them to use — including
pirate sites, which may be easier to use than legitimate
sources, but can come with significant security risks.
Additionally, librarians say they want users to take advantage
of the helpful resources the library has paid for — like content
features and other added value on subscription sites, controlled
vocabularies, and semantic searching.
One of the concerns we hear is the risks involved in accessing
free content. These range from faculty using articles which might
not be the version of record, to the possibility that pirate sites
may compromise the credentials of researchers.
And there is also the situation of a user encountering a paywall
for content which their institution’s library has already paid for,
simply because the user struggled to navigate through search
results and authentication challenges to the library’s entitlements.
We know that there are mixed feelings amongst librarians
about users accessing content independently of the library. But
wherever one stands on that question, it is certainly the case
that this activity strips the library of valuable user data, which is
critical to collection development and improving services. This
also undermines the efforts of publishers to produce high quality
content in a commercially viable way.
An Anecdotal Look at Acquisition Workflows
To gain some insight into how users find and access content, we conducted an informal, small-sample study. Fourteen
post-graduate researchers at universities in the UK, U.S., Canada,
20 Against the Grain / June 2020
and Australia participated via usertesting.com (an online platform
for collecting real-time user feedback).
We presented participants with a “known-item search” scenario — and mocked-up results to look like Google search results,
including relevant live pages from:
• PubMed
• Journal website (where the DOI resolves)
• ResearchGate
• An experimental Article Page with links to 3rd party OA
versions, rental and purchase options, and a pathway
to navigate their institution’s authentication to access
subscribed content
We then observed participants’ individual search workflows
and concluded by asking the following questions:
1. When you’re searching for articles online, what website
or service do you start with?
2. Were you familiar with the resources presented in these
search result images?
3. What methods do you use to access the full-text articles
you want to read?
4. If you can’t get to an article without paying, what do
you usually do?
Some users were thorough and tried almost everything. Other
users either found what they wanted straight away or gave up
quickly. Because of this variability and the small sample size,
we felt that compiling statistics from the results wasn’t the right
thing to do. Instead, we studied the audio and video from the
user testing and pored over the written responses to compile our
results. As such, the results should be considered anecdotal —
providing helpful insights rather than hard numbers.
Key Takeaways
Overall, we found that users often cherry-pick search results
and go first to sources they trust or prefer (e.g., PubMed and
ResearchGate). They will often ignore unfamiliar sites, even
though they might offer a pathway to a free version of the article.
Somewhat surprisingly, no users mentioned pirate sites (we
didn’t suggest these options, but because the questions we asked
were open-ended, we expected some users might mention them).
As librarians look for ways to improve their literature management systems and set users on the right path, here are four
things to keep in mind:
1. Familiarity is important. Users confer “trust” on sites
that have worked well for them in the past. Specifically,
they prefer to search Google, ResearchGate, and their
library (in that order). Similarly, ResearchGate and
PubMed are preferred by many because the navigation
is consistent and familiar. This survey finding reveals
an advantage for aggregators — and a challenge for
publishers and libraries. The hard truth is that many
continued on page 21
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
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Acquiring Scholarly Content: Is it possible ...
from page 20
users try their library for full-text access only if other
options don’t work first.
2. Researchers can be impatient. Even though they don’t
want to pay for content, most respondents indicated they
won’t do an in-depth search for a free version. Users
will often opt for alternate articles rather than pay for
their first choice. Some users lamented that there is no
single source for all their content needs.
3. Logins are unpopular: To avoid complexity and extra
steps, users will often use Google or ask a colleague for
a paper before authenticating.
4. Format matters: Users prefer PDFs for familiarity,
consistency, and ease-of-use.
Flexibility is the Key to Success
While there is no one-size-fits-all discovery-to-acquisition
workflow that will work for everyone, understanding the varieties
of typical user behaviors — and the reasons behind them — is an
essential first step for improving service. For example, if users
are starting their research somewhere other than the library’s
discovery environment, is there a way to bring them back to
the library to access the content? Are Open Access resources
hidden because they’re not well integrated into what your library
offers? Are pathways leading to broken link resolvers and other
Against the Grain / June 2020
27/05/2020 17:56
dead ends? Are they being forced to re-key citations on ILL
request forms? Do they find that it takes more time to authenticate than it does to ask a colleague for a PDF? In other words,
when users hit a fork in the
road, what factors drive
their next steps? And
what can librarians do
to make the institution’s
preferred path more efficient and enticing?
Armed with this critical
information, librarians
can identify areas for
improvement — and then
make informed decisions about how to address them. The key
is to create a system that has the flexibility to accommodate a
broad set of users — in whatever means their search originates,
no matter how many possible outcomes there may be.
The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of
the graduate student participants in the study discussed in this
article. The underlying research question in this project was
inspired by conversations with Kieran Prince of OpenAthens
and Michiel van der Heyden of Springer Nature. Writing and
editing was made possible by Karen Hittelman.
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
21
10 Principles of Simplifying Access to Keep Libraries at
the Center of the Research Process
by Kendall Bartsch (CEO, Third Iron) <kendall@thirdiron.com>
and John Seguin (Third Iron) <john@thirdiron.com>
I
n an era where the amount of scholarly information has
never been higher, researchers are increasingly expressing
a preference for alternative markets such as ResearchGate
and Sci-Hub as sources of scholarly content. This is not,
however, because these alternative sources necessarily offer
more or higher quality content, but because they offer easier
access. As a result, researchers are increasingly leaving behind traditional routes to content such as publisher sites and
library resources.
In response, publishers, libraries and technology companies
are developing new initiatives to simplify and expedite access
to authoritative content. With these new services, libraries and
publishers look to simplify and speed delivery to their wealth of
content. Third Iron is part of this new access technology wave,
having developed our LibKey technology in 2017, reconciling
what users experience when linking to scholarly content with
what they expect the experience should be. In this essay, we
outline what we see as the necessary components needed to
make new technologies successful.
The digitization of content, and the technology infrastructure
to support information seeking and retrieval, opened up an
unparalleled opportunity for research. However,
getting from the point of information discovery to the digital full text has never been
straightforward. When researchers start their
journey with library databases and discovery
services, getting to content typically requires
using a link resolver. Studies1 spanning over
the past decade, however, have consistently
found link resolvers to be a stumbling block
in researcher workflow, long complained about as being confusing, requiring too many steps and time consuming to use.
As an example, in recent a study of graduate students’ research
behavior, a doctoral student declared, “library access was too
difficult and took too many steps.”2
Starting research on the open web, at indexes like Google
Scholar, often ends with similar frustration. Users following
links from popular indexes often end up at pages where content
is locked behind paywalls with no obvious way to access them,
even if the library has full-text access available either from the
publisher or an aggregated source.
The response to this seemingly byzantine process needed to
reach scholarly content within and outside of the library has
been the fast rise of alternative information marketplaces. Peerto-peer sharing, content exchange on social media, academic
social network sites such as ResearchGate, and pirate sites like
Sci-Hub, all share the common trait of providing easy, often
one-click access to content. Need an article? Post a DOI on r/
scholar and others will send the article; post the DOI on Twitter
using the hashtag #icanhazpdf and others will direct message
to a Dropbox site with the article; search ResearchGate and
you’ll likely find the author has posted a manuscript copy or
sometimes the article of record; or go to Sci-Hub, paste a DOI,
22 Against the Grain / June 2020
click search and the article is revealed. These services thrive
not because they contain more or better content than a library
but because access to it is so frictionless.
The lessons we take today from these alternative content sites
are similar to those taught to the music industry by Napster in
2000. First, if industry technology delivers content in a way that
meets user expectations, it will happily be used; and second,
using authorized access channels will benefit all stakeholders.
We see ten elements as essential in developing a successful
technology that will meet user expectations while benefiting
researchers, publishers and libraries. These principles inform
our LibKey product development.
First, minimize clicks. If a PDF or HTML version of the article is available, the link found at the point of discovery should
go directly to that full text.
Second, indicate at the point of discovery when content is
available. Links to content from library and open web sources
are usually suggestive, indicating that content is likely available,
but the user never quite knows what to expect until after they
start following the link. When information is discovered on a
webpage, the researcher should not have to guess if access is
available or in what format it will be. Inconsistency leads to distrust in a service, driving users
away from the library and towards services that
provide a consistent experience.
Third, be content inclusive. At most libraries, aggregated sources comprise a substantial
percentage of full text available to researchers,
and open access content sources are growing.
Linking technology should seamlessly incorporate this content,
along with what may be available from the publisher directly.
Fourth, be authentication agnostic. Different libraries use
different methods of authentication for varying reasons, such as
IP-based methods including proxy servers and VPN systems,
as well as federated technologies like SAML. While some see
universal SAML adoption as the future of authentication, given
the costs to publishers and libraries to adopt it, the road to universal SAML adoption, if achieved at all, will be a long one. In
the meantime, linking technology should route through whatever
authentication system a library is using or even a combination
of SAML and IP technologies as is appropriate.
Fifth, keep libraries at the center of the process. At all times
and in multiple ways, library branding should be incorporated
into linking technology to visually remind researchers that the
library is the source of the content.
Sixth, integrate document fulfillment systems. When content
is discovered that is not available from one’s library, the link
should fall back to library services like interlibrary loan and
document delivery. The link to these services should deliver the
article metadata in order to make fulfillment requests as close to
one-click access as possible.
continued on page 23
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
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10 Principles of Simplifying Access ...
from page 22
Eighth, be fast. Most users expect content to load in less than
two seconds. Delivering this requires technology be built on
performant, reliable hardware and software, technologies that
can be scaled easily with demand.
Ninth, make the technology ubiquitous. Better access to
information is in everyone’s interest so the technology that promotes it should be available to be integrated by any company
who is interested.
Finally, respect user privacy. Things such as a user account,
caching of user credentials or reading of all web traffic for marketing purposes is not required to link users to content. Linking
technology should only gather what personal information is
needed for usage reporting and what is gathered should be
clearly disclosed.
For these reasons, nearly a thousand libraries are using
our LibKey technology in various ways to simplify access to
content and the results are impressive. Information we are
gathering from our own internal data review, user studies from
a number of libraries, and anecdotal feedback demonstrate
four things.
First, with our LibKey Discovery service, a direct article link
is displayed in a library’s discovery service in addition to the link
resolver link. When given this option, users strongly prefer oneclick access to content over the traditional link resolver route.
Against the Grain / June 2020
Download our guide at
WSJ.com/CollegeMembership
Second, removing steps in the access process saves a considerable amount of users’ time. Having to select content platforms,
waiting for different pages to load and hunting around for PDF
buttons can take up to a minute or more, compared to just a few
seconds with direct access. Across hundreds of thousands of full
text downloads at any given institution, the research process time
savings is substantial.
Third, reducing complexity in the access process leads to
fewer library help desk and interlibrary loan requests. Simplifying access minimizes the amount of time library staff spend
assisting users lost in the access process or fulfilling requests for
documents that are already part of the library collection.
Fourth, it is better to meet the researcher where she is than it is
to try to change research habits. Adding direct links to content at
points of discovery outside the library keeps the researcher engaged
with library services, even when the researcher is not “in” the library.
Our experience is also demonstrating that simplifying access
will require some change in stakeholder thinking. For example,
publishers must accept that the great majority of researchers want
to go directly to content and bypass the platform; libraries must
recognize that access is correlated to usage, which means easier
access will likely lead to more full-text downloads.
Whatever the challenges, the benefits of new access technologies are increasingly clear: for researchers, it increases efficiency;
for libraries, organically incentivizing researchers to stay within
the library ecosystem; and for publishers, diminishing the incentive for researchers to use alternative content markets.
endnotes on page 25
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
23
Access is People: Navigating the E-resource Access
Landscape During a Pandemic
by Abigail Wickes (Electronic Resources Management Librarian, Duke University) <abigail.wickes@duke.edu>
W
hen I first began brainstorming this article in early
March 2020, the refrain that kept coming to mind was
a riff on a blog post by Whitney Hess1 — Access is
People. Just as Hess points out that a human being is behind
every email, a human being is also behind every twist and turn
in the content pipeline2 that can go awry. (For clarification,
when I use the term access, I’m talking about the process of a
library user identifying then getting to content in the desired
format.) I knew this from my experience working in content
discovery management at Oxford University Press, where I
learned the importance of building relationships and facilitating
communication across the library, publisher, and discovery vendor trifecta. This was further validated in my current role as an
ERM Librarian at Duke University, where I still work to open
doors of conversation between content providers and discovery
vendors when access issues arise in our collection, while also
working with colleagues to manually provide e-resource access,
and helping patrons and colleagues who are experiencing any
number of enigmatic access issues.
Then, the rest of March 2020 began to unfold. On the last
night of the ER&L 2020 Conference, I learned that my campus
was extending spring break then abruptly switching to entirely
remote classes and work. One month later, writing up this article
in mid-April, the whiplash I’m experiencing from these rapid
and all-encompassing changes is unprecedented (though the
lack of ergonomic office furniture in my home workspace may
be contributing.) The pitfalls of the content pipeline and the
importance of building relationships with the people facilitating
access at each point became even more important when options
changed so drastically.
E-Resource Access “Before”
In the world leading up to roughly March 1-9, 2020, a typical
library user with good intentions would try to access scholarly
e-resource content via their library website. They then may have
encountered any number of errors, stemming from unregistered
DOIs, openURL failure due to outdated citations, unannounced
URL changes that break proxies, or intentional road bumps,
such as restrictive DRM. While we hope our users report these
frustrating situations so they can be remedied, it’s also likely
that these intentional or unintentional hurdles drive some users
to access the content using more circuitous methods, some unsanctioned. These hurdles to legitimate access are a lot like the
piracy warning you have to sit through when you watch a DVD.
(I realize this comparison is also a great example of a way to
indicate my age without using any dates.) Like the library user
with good intentions trying to get to content via legal
methods, I’m the user with good intentions who
bought this Shrek 2 DVD from Media Play; why
do I have to plod through these piracy warnings
before reaching the content for which I should have
legitimate access? In an ideal world, discovery
should be delivery.3
Standards for discovery and access protocols,
such as recommendations from Project Transfer,
KBART and KBART automation, the Open Dis24 Against the Grain / June 2020
covery Initiative, and the Content Platform Migration working
group, have emerged in an effort to minimize these problems and
facilitate timely and accurate information transfer among content
providers, discovery vendors, and libraries. However, problems
persist when these standards are not adopted at a wide scale.
Industry shifts, such as the emergence of digital-first publishing,
waves of content platform migrations, and major changes of scale
in library software, also contribute to delays and bottlenecks
in the content pipeline. Metadata distribution lagging behind
publication will be inevitable until content provider discovery
and access resources are scaled to meet the growing quantity
of digital-first content. In discussions with content discovery
management colleagues from a variety of publishers, focused
discovery work such as creating and distributing KBART files
(often manually) and troubleshooting e-resource access issues is
commonly relegated to one person or a small team, who can only
do so much. The sheer volume of e-resource content librarians
must contend with has been one of the most striking parts of
my experience transitioning to e-resource management work in
libraries after working in a similar capacity for a publisher. In
contrast to the low number of discovery and access resources
employed by many large publishers, academic research libraries
employ teams of people to constantly work on solving these problems. When standards are not ubiquitous, facilitating e-resource
access becomes grindingly manual, demanding local work that
is very difficult to keep current.
E-Resource Access During a Global Pandemic
When remote e-resource access becomes one of the only ways
for users to interact with library resources, existing authentication
issues and confusion compound, spiked with newfound anxiety
and urgency. Here, too, it has been helpful to remember that
behind each frantic request for help is a person trying to cope in
a stressful situation. Students trying to complete an assignment
from home may not understand that navigating to a resource
directly from a content provider’s website may result in an
erroneous paywall due to lack of a proxy prefix in the URL.
Faculty trying to continue with research may not know that the
university VPN is necessary for IP authentication. This creates a
cocktail of potential issues, which could be attributed to existing
but unearthed problems, new obstacles stemming from remote
access limitations, or some ambiguous combination.
The gravity of the abrupt and ubiquitous transition to remote
access has largely been acknowledged with gestures of goodwill
from content providers; communication styles have shifted, and
more formal tones are overwhelmingly replaced with well wishes
and updates about how each person and their community are faring as the days of social distancing add
up. It’s a reminder that although these are business
relationships, there are people behind each point
of correspondence who ideally have a similar
end goal — getting content to users who need it.
This has been especially important for research
directly related to stemming the pandemic; when
some of our colleagues in Engineering urgently
continued on page 25
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Access is People: Navigating the E-resource Access ...
from page 24
needed new subscriptions to several standards for efforts to create
PPE using 3D printers, the provider granted access immediately.
Content providers have also opened an abundance of free
content provided during the pandemic. This seems to largely
be a gesture of goodwill, where most providers are looking to
contribute what they can to a dire situation. There have also been
some bad actors who are using this as an opportunity to snare
institutions into contracts if they don’t actively opt out before
the end of the complimentary period. Along with cultivating a
healthy wariness about whether anything is truly free, expectations for access options for temporarily free resources have also
made evident some existing confusion about access models.
Although these temporarily free resources may fill short-term
resource gaps created by the transition to relying solely on decentralized e-resources, it may not make sense or even be possible
to quickly add this fleeting abundance of temporary holdings to
the knowledgebase, temporary MARC records to the catalog, or
temporary stanzas to the proxy server, and then remove them all
before the complimentary period is over. Without these access
frameworks in place, getting users to these provisionally free
resources becomes a convoluted process.
all working, researching, and studying remotely, e-resources
are the content. Drawing on my own experience working in
publishing, the importance of optimizing e-resource content for
library access points is not always widely understood or prioritized by publisher stakeholders, who are more likely focused on
augmenting their own platforms and investing in digital content
innovations. While these individual platform enhancements
are important, especially when meeting ADA requirements, if
users are unable to get to newly enhanced content because of
link resolver failures or discrepancies in KBART files, who is
benefiting from these developments? This is where librarians
can lean on what are hopefully strengthened relationships, and
take the opportunity to offer explanations to the people we talk
to when reporting problems. At the risk of sounding like one
of the many advertisements [insert brand/chain/car dealer/etc.]
emphasizing their focus on people “during these troubling
times,” it can help to remember there are people behind every
bend in the content pipeline from provider to vendor to library
to patron. In troubling times, we can build these relationships
through shared experience. Just don’t be afraid to leverage that
bolstered relationship to advocate for more resources invested
in ensuring smooth library access and adoption of industry
standards!
E-Resource Access to Come
As social distancing continues, there are some examples
we can draw on for building more robust e-resource access
in the days to come. Specifically, by advocating for widespread adoption of information standards and data cleanup
practices, and building on strengthened relationships to create
teachable moments. So many access issues stem from lack of
standardization and bad data that blocks linking. While we are
10 Principles of Simplifying ...
from page 23
Endnotes
1. See for example: Chisare, C.
et al. (2017) “Selecting link resolver and knowledge base software: Implications of interoperatbility,” Journal of Electronic Librarianship, 29(2), pp. 93–106. doi:
10.1080/1941126X.2017.1304765
and Imler, B. and Eichelberger, M.
(2011) “Do They ‘Get It’? Student
Usage of SFX Citation Linking Software,” College & Research Libraries,
72(5), pp. 454–463. doi: 10.5860/
crl-141.
2. Moore, M. and Singley, E. (2019)
“Understanding the Information
Behaviors of Doctoral Students: An
Exploratory Study,” portal: Libraries
and the Academy, 19(2), pp. 279–293.
doi: 10.1353/pla.2019.0016.
Against the Grain / June 2020
Endnotes
1. https://whitneyhess.com/blog/2013/06/03/email-is-people/
2. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/07/11/building-pipesand-fixing-leaks-in-scholarly-content-discovery-and-access/
3. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/01/08/discovery-delivery-user-centric-principles-discovery-service/
Rumors
from page 19
composed of Christy Fletcher, Hollis Heimbouch, Mohamed El-Erian and Rik Kirkland. The good news is that most attendees
were cautiously optimistic about the future
of books and publishing. The webcast will
be archived shortly.
Talk about change! In this recent article,
Christopher Cox (Dean of Libraries at Clemson University) predicts the significant ways
academic libraries will shift in terms of collections, services, spaces and operations as a result
of the pandemic. https://www.insidehighered.
com/users/christopher-cox
More – The Association of University
Presses (AUPresses) presented two awards
during its virtual 2020 Annual Meeting,
recognizing two individuals for outstanding
service to the university press community.
Ned Stuckey-French received the Inaugural
Stand UP Award Posthumously. The Stand
UP Award was established by the AUPresses Board of Directors to honor people who
through their words and actions have done
extraordinary work to support, defend, and celebrate the university press community. Next
— Larin McLaughlin, editor-in-chief of the
University of Washington Press, was named
the 2020 AUPresses Constituency Award
honoree. The award was presented by Niccole
Coggins, editorial, design, and production
coordinator and assistant project editor at the
University of Virginia Press, and a former
Diversity Fellow. McLaughlin was honored
for her contributions to advancing the goals of
diversity and inclusion in the university press
community; in particular, her nominators commended her leadership as author and principal
investigator of the Mellon University Press
Diversity Fellowship Program.
Talk about innovative. De Gruyter has
published 13 Perspectives on the pandemic:
Thinking in a state of exception, a digital collection of thirteen think pieces on Covid-19
written by humanities scholars. The publication is freely available online and will be
accompanied by the weekly digital debate
series CoronaTalks, which will be streamed
live on De Gruyter’s YouTube channel.
www.degruyter.com
continued on page 44
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
25
When Thinking “Access,” Think Like a User
by Christopher Lee (Electronic Resources Librarian, Utah State University) <Christopher.lee@usu.edu>
and Robert Lisiecki (Marketing Manager, Lean Library, a SAGE Publishing company) <Robert.Lisiecki@sagepub.com>
A
s librarians and vendors, we often fall into the trap of
assuming information is accessible or easy to find because we are so close to our platforms and resources.
Instead, we should consider the user’s journey, particularly at
a time where users are shifting to online learning and library
support of faculty and students is provided completely virtually.
In this piece, we shapeshift to think about access from a user’s
perspective instead of from our own.
Christopher Lee, Electronic Resources Librarian
at Utah State University
Librarians should be proud of the many services we provide for users to find information, technology, or community
resources. The end results of these services are wonderful, but
sometimes getting through the interface is a challenge. It doesn’t
matter how good the information available inside a database is
if the patron cannot access it.
While studying for an MLIS at San Jose State University,
I read something from the textbook Designing Interfaces that
stuck with me: “you are not the user” (Brewer, Tidwell, and
Valencia). While an obvious statement, it helped put into words
a frustration I had when I was a student: many library websites
and databases seemed to be designed with librarians and vendors
in mind instead of undergraduate students. And the problem
seems to have only increased since then.
There are two overall issues I have seen with library and
database websites. The first major issue is the accessibility of
the content for persons with disabilities. Last year the court
decision in Payan v. Los Angeles Community College District
brought attention to the lack of accessibility.
Most databases and library websites do not
adhere to the most recent Web Accessibility
Content Guidelines and as such do not work
well with devices such as screen readers. This
is an area we can all improve on. Librarians
need to ensure our websites are accessible and
communicate the importance of accessibility to
vendors when we renew or purchase content.
Vendors need to strive to make all their content
accessible, which is admittedly a daunting task
that will take time.
The second issue is broader but equally frustrating. Many
users don’t use the library website or vendor databases as their
main research tool. It may be because our interfaces are clunky
and complicated, or it may be that they are conditioned to seek
all their answers through Google (there is a reason the Google
name has moved from a noun to a verb!). Libraries and vendors
cannot hope to ever have the resources Google has to create intuitive and powerful search tools that understand human ways of
asking questions, but we can learn to work with Google instead
of trying to compete with it. Google also has major drawbacks
when used as a research tool. It doesn’t know what patrons are
associated with a university and therefore won’t get them past
paywalls to content the library subscribes to. And it can bring
patrons to legally questionable file sharing sites where content
may not be credible.
26 Against the Grain / June 2020
To improve access to library resources at Utah State University, we recently purchased a subscription to Lean Library.
This web browser extension will alert library patrons when they
find content online that the library has access to. For example,
a patron can Google “article on Civil Engineering,” find a publisher page, and Lean Library will pop up saying the library has
access to this content if you sign in through a provided link. The
idea is that if students won’t go to the library, we will bring the
library to them. They can now access library content by using
whatever search techniques they are most comfortable with. We
also have the option of posting alerts on well-known illegal sites
to steer patrons to legal alternatives. We have not taken that route
at Utah State University, but it is a possible option through the
Lean Library extension.
There is a drawback to Lean Library. We need to convince
students to download it for it to be useful. Before the global
pandemic, our plan was to hand out flyers at tables in the library
and student center, but plans have changed for now. We have
shifted to reaching out to faculty to promote the resource in their
classes, posted links on our website, and advertised the service
through social media. Our hope is that faculty will share it with
incoming freshmen in the fall semester when their research
habits are more fluid.
Robert Lisiecki, Marketing Manager
at Lean Library, a SAGE Publishing company
Johan Tilstra, founder of Lean Library, noticed the same
issue related to research access at his own library, Utrecht University, where he was a Program Manager. Realizing that a large
majority of patrons were not starting their discovery
at the library or library’s website, Utrecht started
its “Thinking the Unthinkable: A Library without
a Catalogue” initiative. The basic premise was to
shift their focus from discovery to delivery — to
bring the library to its patrons.
This initiative led Johan to buying a lot of
coffee — mostly as a means to talk to patrons
about their frustrations with their research. A
key theme among the countless patrons was
they struggled with figuring out what they had
access to and how they could access it. Google
helped them find resources for their research, but it did not
help them access it. That is when he decided to develop the
prototype for what is now Lean Library.
The patrons ended up loving the prototype, even in its early,
clunky stages, because it brought the library to them as they researched rather than forcing them to start at the library. With the
extension, patrons can reap the benefits of the library’s services
and messaging without understanding how the library works,
what avenues are needed to authorize, or where to look. But
their access issues do not stop there, and it has been important
to constantly gather feedback and think like a user to ensure
the extension is truly useful for patrons. For instance, a major
hurdle for patrons is encountering barriers to accessing articles
or eBooks. To help, we added functionality to automatically
continued on page 28
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
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When Thinking “Access,” Think Like a User
from page 26
look for alternative options within the library or available open
access. It is important to ensure they can research as they will
and still feel the library’s support, wherever they are. Doing so
alleviates access issues while increasing library visibility when
patrons are researching off campus.
For Johan and Lean Library, thinking like a user led to
finding solutions to access issues. Here are some tips from our
experience on how to think like a user:
1. Listen to the data: Each year, several new studies
and surveys are published (e.g., Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, National
Survey of Student Engagement, ITHAKA, etc.) Many
universities conduct their own surveys or analyze their
own data (e.g., usage, access denial, discovery methods,
etc.). Considering what the data means from a user’s
perspective can lead to thinking about solutions that
work for them.
2. Acknowledge and avoid assumptions: As the product experts, it is easy to think we have all the answers.
Sometimes that thought process can lead to missing the
solution that makes most sense for users.
3. Ask and listen: Sometimes the best solutions come
from the people experiencing the problem daily. A
casual conversation over a cup of coffee can be really
insightful.
4. Try it out: Forget your expertise for a moment and try
finding access the way your patrons would. Consider
the steps they would take when off campus and try to
experience their frustrations.
As Chris mentioned, the Lean Library extension still requires some action from patrons. They need to download it and
sign in through the library. That being said, we have consistently
seen positive growth, month over month because, put simply, it
works: closely listening to patrons’ frustrations while thinking
about how the library can help ease those frustrations resulted
in a tool that works for the patrons. And last year, we saved
researchers an estimated 90,000 hours through streamlined access. Sometimes making a difference and merging library and
patron needs should start with a listening ear. We are excited to
continue finding ways to reconnect patrons and libraries, while
helping patrons traverse the everchanging landscape of research
one cup of coffee at a time.
References
Brewer, C., Tidwell, J., Valencia-Brooks, A. (2019). Designing Interfaces. O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference
Reviews
Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of
Michigan; Phone: 734-764-9969) <cseeman@umich.edu> Twitter @cseeman
Column Editor’s Note: The 1993 Harold Ramis film
Groundhog Day is one of the truly great comedic movies of the
last 40 years. Featuring a fantastic script that Ramis co-wrote
with Danny Rubin (who also supplied the story), we follow
weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) repeatedly live through
the same day over and over again as he tries to woo his on site
producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell). To be a librarian in 2020
has a fair amount of “Groundhog Day” in it. At one point in
the movie, Phil even muses “Well, what if there is no tomorrow?
There wasn’t one today.” Everyday seems to take on a strange
dynamic of both something completely different and something
fundamentally the same.
But one element in our world that does change continually are
the resources that we have at our fingertips and on our shelves
(remember those?). While some things seem not to change at all,
the flow of new books and new works into the library community
continues. All the while, our budgets and our abilities to manage
resources might be more constrained in the upcoming year, so
having a good sense of what we should add to our holdings is
just the thing we hope to provide to our readers. We want people to make the right choices for their library. While Dr. S. R.
Ranganathan pointed out in his Third Law of Library Science,
“every book its reader,” we know there is value in all the works
that are published. However, the value might not be for our
particular community. So hopefully this will help you navigate
28 Against the Grain / June 2020
how to spend your collection budget that might not have been
as robust as we thought earlier this year.
Thanks to my great reviewers for getting items for this column. I have three first time reviewers for this column: Jessica
Brangiel, Heather Cyre, and Christopher Edwards joining
longtime reviewer Jennifer Matthews. If you would like to be
a reviewer for Against the Grain (and I can ever get back into
my office), please write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you
are a publisher and have a book you would like to see reviewed
in a future column, please also write me directly.
Be safe, be well, take care of others, be a helper ... and happy
reading and be nutty! — CS
Hussey, Lisa K., and Diane L. Velasquez. Library Management 101: A Practical Guide. 2nd Edition. Chicago:
ALA Editions, 2019. 9780838917152, 312 pages. $76.99
Reviewed by Jennifer Matthews (Collection Strategy
Librarian, Rowan University) <matthewsj@rowan.edu>
Library management is an area where some librarians have
interest from the beginning, while others either grow their careers
into a management position or have management thrust upon
continued on page 29
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Reader’s Roundup
from page 28
them. No matter where in one’s career library management may
come, it is helpful to have a variety of tools available to assist
an individual in that role.
Library Management 101: A Practical Guide is one such tool.
While written as a textbook for the library school classroom,
it also serves individuals well into their careers who are first
entering management or those who may be returning to management after a hiatus. Edited by Lisa K. Hussey and Diane
L. Velasquez, this text covers the gamut of management topics
such as business theory, human resource management, strategic
planning, unions, organizational culture, ethics, and grants among
other things bound to keep the new manager up at night. Discussions include practical applications at both public and academic
organizations with sample examples of items such as budget
worksheets along with the inclusion of case studies, exercises,
references and further reading for most chapters.
A particularly timely inclusion is Lisa K. Hussey’s chapter on
diversity. The chapter includes not only a definition of diversity
but discussion about microaggressions, White privilege, visual
diversity, language diversity, as well as conversations about
diversity initiatives. Most importantly, Hussey emphasizes the
need for commitment to this issue from both the organization and
the community. This issue is too important to overlook or neglect
and every leader should be cognizant of not only their diversity
awareness but also the resources available to them and their staff.
I also recommend the joint chapter on leadership by Mary
Wilkins-Jordan and Lisa K. Hussey, particularly for those who
have had leadership thrust upon them. Wilkins-Jordan and
Hussey cover several leadership theories and competencies in
this chapter and any leader should have at least a basic understanding of both so that they can be a better leader. The section
on followers is slim but the reader can supplement this section
by obtaining materials from the references and further readings.
There is a great deal of literature in this area for one to absorb
so this cursory view provides an excellent starting point for the
novice leader.
This text provides timely information on management and
leadership theory that would be of benefit to anyone that is new
to a leadership role or learning about leadership in library school.
It is also good for those managers and leaders who have been in
their roles for some time to read as a refresher.
ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to
be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf,
if it’s not checked out.)
Jaeger, Paul T. and Greene Taylor, Natalie. Foundations
of Information Policy. Chicago: ALA Neal Schuman
Publishing, 2019. 9780838918029, 212 pages. $64.99
Reviewed by Jessica Brangiel (Electronic Resources
Management Librarian, Swarthmore College)
<jbrangi1@swarthmore.edu>
Information is everywhere and the landscape around information policy is vast. Paul Jaeger and Natalie Greene Taylor
have set out to write a book to fill the gap between information
policy and informational professionals. Their goal as stated in the
Against the Grain / June 2020
Guide to the ATG Reviewer Ratings
The ATG Reviewer Rating is being included for each
book reviewed. Corey came up with this rating to reflect our collaborative collections and resource sharing
means and thinks it will help to classify the importance
of these books.
• I need this book on my nightstand. (This book
is so good, that I want a copy close at hand when
I am in bed.)
• I need this on my desk. (This book is so valuable,
that I want my own copy at my desk that I will
share with no one.)
• I need this in my library. (I want to be able to
get up from my desk and grab this book off the
shelf, if it’s not checked out.)
• I need this available somewhere in my shared
network. (I probably do not need this book, but
it would be nice to get it within three to five days
via my network catalog.)
• I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this
is a useful book for my library or my network.)
acknowledgements was to write a book introducing library and
information science students and new professionals to the field of
information policy. This book meets and exceeds that goal. As
a librarian working in a four-year baccalaureate granting institution, I think this book would also prove useful to undergraduate
students in several fields including history, law and computer/
information science. Each chapter ends with “Questions to
Consider” to further the exploration and interrogation of this
subject. Though this book could easily be used as an introductory textbook, the authors have managed to intersperse humor
and a lighthearted tone, making for a quick and enjoyable read.
The authors go far beyond the title of this book and provide
a well researched background on how information policy has
developed over time since the United States was founded. The
interesting perspective of how our founding documents — the
Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the United
States Constitution — intersect with areas of information policy
such as intellectual freedom, access to information, protection of
intellectual property, privacy and information security are woven
throughout the book. Students and professionals new to the field
of information policy will appreciate the broad coverage of the
topic that the authors provide. In Chapter Three, for example,
there is a very thorough and well cited discussion of the origin
of the right to privacy. The authors connect the First, Fourth
and Fifth Amendments of the Bill of Rights to Judge Thomas
Cooley’s 1880 book Laws of Torts to 1960s case law including
the influential case of Griswold v. Connecticut to the creation of
the Privacy Act of 1974, to the Telephone Consumer Protection
Act of 1991, the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 and
finally to the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988. Jaeger and
Greene Taylor adeptly juxtapose these historical laws and acts
with modern day privacy issues resulting from the explosion of
information online.
In Chapter Four, “Why Study Information Policy,” the authors
make a particularly effective argument for the importance of
this topic by relaying no less than eight examples of informacontinued on page 30
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
29
tion policy related stories from just one day in the year 2018.
Just a few of the noted stories include the government of South
Korea seeking to increase its policy of hidden spy cameras to
be utilized in public and private spaces; to the lawyer for the
president of the United States claiming that a tweet cannot be
considered obstruction of justice; to genetic testing companies
increasing new privacy guidelines that would limit the sharing of
genetic information with researchers, law enforcement or other
companies without prior consent. We are living in interesting
times where issues of privacy, security, sharing and selling of
information are constant and touch nearly every area of our lives.
The final chapters of Foundations of Information Policy nod
toward advocacy and activism for librarians and information professionals. The book takes a noticeably different tone touching
on the current political administration and climate. However,
this does not detract from the overall importance of this book.
Paul T. Jaeger, Ph.D., J.D., is Professor and Director of
the Master of Library Science (MLS) program of the College
of Information Studies. With over 180 published articles
and book chapters, Jager has demonstrated his expertise in
the fields of Information Policy, Disability and Accessibility,
E-Government, Information & Human Rights and Information
Studies. Dr. Jaeger is Editor of Library Quarterly, Co-Editor
of Advances in Librarianship, and Co-Editor of International
Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion. In 2014, he received the Library Journal/ALISE Excellence in Education
Award. Natalie Greene Taylor is an Assistant Professor at the
University of South Florida’s School of Information and the
Program Coordinator for the Masters of Library and Information
Science program. Dr. Greene Taylor’s research focuses on
young people’s access to information exploring youth information behavior, information intermediaries, and information policy
as it affects youth information access. She is an editor of Library
Quarterly and the co-author of two additional books including
Digital Literacy and Digital Inclusion: Information Policy and
the Public Library and Libraries, Human Rights, and Social
Justice: Enabling Access and Promoting Inclusion.
ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my
shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would
be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)
devising a linear approach to the material. Where do you begin
when the frames are deliberately overlapping and adaptable?
This is where librarians find ourselves as we are being asked
more often to develop specific curriculum to foster information
literacy within the context of a field. I myself have recently had
the task of revising an information resources class for healthcare
majors with this very goal.
The authors have great experience in the field of medical
librarianship. Lauren M. Young, MLIS, MA, AHIP, is an associate librarian and instruction coordinator in the Reference and
Research Services Department at Samford University’s Davis
Library. Elizabeth G. Hinton, MSIS, AHIP is an instruction
and research librarian and assistant professor at the University
of Mississippi Medical Center’s Rowland Medical Library
and a liaison to the School of Nursing.
Young and Hinton manage the seemingly nebulous task of
matching up each frame to relevant lessons within the material
using real life examples that could realistically serve as a stepby-step guide to developing a health information literacy course.
To illustrate this point: Chapter One, “Bibliographic Instruction
and Accreditation in the Health Sciences,” breaks out standards
from various degree programs and accrediting bodies that directly reference or relate to information literacy skills and the
specific frames that apply. This chapter would be all a person
ought to need to “sell” administration on a documented need for
instruction programs. Not only are information and research
skills necessary for success in these degrees, they are demanded!
Each successive chapter addresses one of the frames with
concrete examples of application and learning objectives. What
does constructed authority really mean for medical professionals?
How does the creation of information as a process manifest for
health studies researchers? These questions are sketched out in
terms that would be easy to translate into a practice. Indeed, the
contextual explanation of the frame is followed with actual lesson
plans and assignments as examples pulled from contributing
librarians who have already navigated these waters.
While I would not advocate wholesale adoption of another
instructor’s lesson, there are elements of inspirations that would
certainly help less experienced instruction developers to move
from theory to meaningful learning activities.
ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this on my desk. (This book
is so valuable, that I want my own copy at my desk that I will
share with no one.)
Young, Lauren M. and Elizabeth G. Hinton (Editors).
Framing Health Care Instruction: An Information
Literacy Handbook for the Health Sciences. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. 9781538118931,
208 pages. $54.99 (ALA Members: $49.49)
O’Dea, Suzanne. From Suffrage to the Senate:
America’s Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders,
Causes, and Issues. 4th Edition. New York:
Grey House Publishing, 2019. 978-1-64265-097-6.
800 pages. $255.00.
Reviewed by Christopher Edwards (Assistant Head
of Information Literacy, Eugene McDermott Library,
University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson)
<chris.edwards@utdallas.edu>
Reviewed by Heather Cyre (Head of Public Services,
University of Washington Bothell & Cascadia College
Campus Library, University of Washington Bothell,
Bothell) <hcyre@uw.edu>
This is a book that I wish had come across my desk a year
ago. Any instruction librarian should be familiar with the ACRL
Framework for Information Literacy, which is a flexible
and conceptual approach to necessary information skills. One
challenge for course formatted instruction in the framework is
The 2018 midterm elections not only saw the largest surge
of female candidates and women elected to political office since
1992 but shattered a historic number of firsts in United States
History. New Mexico, Maine, and South Dakota elected their
Reader’s Roundup
from page 29
30 Against the Grain / June 2020
continued on page 32
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Reader’s Roundup
from page 30
first female governors. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee became the first female senators
to represent their states. The 116th Congress elected that year
included the first Muslim Americans (Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib), the first Native American women (Debra Haaland
and Sharice Davids), and the first Latina members of congress
(Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia).1 Though women are
still far from equal representation in Congress, author Suzanne
O’Dea has revised From Suffrage to the Senate: America’s
Political Women to underscore the significant advancement of
women and politics in the United States.
Originally published in 2000, this fourth edition
includes new and expanded biographical entries
of the “the people, laws, court cases, and organizations that establish or alter women’s relationships
to their families, their communities, and their
government.”2 Maintaining the selection criteria
of previous editions, O’Dea includes 100 new
entries covering topics such as the #MeToo, #YouKnowMe, and #BlackLivesMatter movements,
biographies of all of the 40 freshmen women of
the 116th Congress, and a summary of the 2017
Women’s March. O’Dea also updated and expanded previously-published entries, specifically broadening profiles on female
judges in the federal court of appeals, women in the military, and
presidential appointees.
The advantage of From Suffrage to the Senate is that entries
are well-organized and provide a brief overview of the political
history and landscape of women and politics. The fourth edition
not only introduces readers to lesser-known state and local officials, historical leaders, and essential legislation but highlights
rising newcomers and political activism. The 1,028 entries
are organized alphabetically over two volumes and additional
facts, statistics, and primary source documents are included in
two appendices to provide supplemental context. Individual
profiles are concise, highlighting the impact and significance of
their work or relevancy in chronological order. Depending on
length of public service or accomplishments, entry lengths vary.
Legislative and topical entries follow a similar organizational
structure but provide more breadth of information.
It should be noted that this text is best paired with other similar reference works, such as Women in the American Political
System: An Encyclopedia of Women as Voters, Candidates, and
Office Holders, in order to form a complete account of the issues
and individuals impacting women and politics in the United
States. For example, the Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
decision in 2014 allowed closely held for-profit corporations to
exclude certain forms of health care products and services, namely contraceptive methods, from their employee health insurance
plans by claiming religious objection. This Supreme Court case
is not included in whole or as footnotes or cross-references of
relevant entries such as Sylvia Burwell, former Secretary
of Health and Human Services, or Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, who wrote the dissenting opinion.
Overall, the fourth edition of From Suffrage to
Senate provides a good starting point for researching the political women, legislation, court cases,
social issues, and organizations that shape the lives
of women in the United States and that have altered
the course of American politics. Academic libraries
supporting lower-level undergraduate research and
high school libraries would find this a useful and
accessible addition to their reference collections.
ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to
be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf,
if it’s not checked out.)
Endnotes
1. Eli Watkins, “Midterm Elections: Women and LGBT Candidates Make History in 2018 Midterms,” CNN online, last modified
November 7, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/07/politics/
historic-firsts-midterms/index.html.
2. Suzanne O’Dea, From Suffrage to the Senate: America’s Political
Women: an Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes, and Issues, New York:
Grey House Publishing, 2019), xxi.
Booklover — Travel During An Apocalypse
Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425)
<donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>
I
t is a strange time. In a world where a popular subject for
many movies (and books) is apocalyptic and/or post apocalyptic scenarios, how does one settle into an innovative story
about escape and travel? Before I answer that question I felt
compelled to google “novels about apocalypse.” One site listed
the ten best post-apocalyptic books to read before the world ends.
I have read three of them: Earth Abides, 1949, On the Beach,
1957 and The Stand, 1978. I have a few to go and will not be
seeking any of them out soon as truth is playing out better than
fiction at this point.
Sidebar: The 2018 award was announced in 2019 due to the
scandal that exposed serious flaws in the appointed-for-life
32 Against the Grain / June 2020
committee. After a year of regrouping, new members,
new rules and a new hope for transparency, the committee
announced both the 2018 and the 2019 Nobel Literature
Laureates. The Washington Post wrote a perspective on this
that is worth the read: “The Swedish Academy took a year
off to fix the Nobel Prize in literature. It’s still broken.”
In case you missed it, the previous Booklover explored a
work of fiction entitled Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, the
2018 prizewinner.
Peter Handke was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has
continued on page 34
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Collecting to the Core — Decolonizing
Francophone Literature
by Kathleen A. Langan (Assoc. Professor, Waldo Library, Western Michigan University; French and Italian
Languages and Literatures Subject Editor, Resources for College Libraries) <kathleen.langan@wmich.edu>
Column Editor: Anne Doherty (Resources for College Libraries Project Editor, CHOICE/ACRL) <adoherty@ala-choice.org>
Column Editor’s Note: The “Collecting to the Core” column highlights
monographic works that are essential to
the academic library within a particular
discipline, inspired by the Resources for
College Libraries bibliography (online
at http://www.rclweb.net). In each essay,
subject specialists introduce and explain
the classic titles and topics that continue
to remain relevant to the undergraduate
curriculum and library collection. Disciplinary trends may shift, but some classics
never go out of style. — AD
“La colonisation fait partie de l’histoire française. C’est un crime, c’est un
crime contre l’humanité, c’est une vraie
barbarie.” — Emmanuel Macron1
In 2017 the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, declared France’s role
in colonialism a crime against humanity
and a barbaric act.2 More recently, while
on a state visit to the Ivory Coast in 2019,
Macron again denounced colonialism
as a “grave mistake” and emphasized
the “hegemonic views and the trappings
of colonialism.”3 Macron’s public acknowledgment of the political trappings
also speaks to the social and cultural
trappings of colonialism, as cultural and
social identity continue to suffer from a
pervasive colonial mindset. Macron’s
declaration is relevant to the discipline of
library and information science because
it serves as a reminder that there is an
ongoing need to address those cataloging
and classification practices which have lingering remnants of a colonial framework.
Some of the most prominent research in
this area focuses on the inclusion and/or
erasure of collective or individual identity
directly due to colonialism and how bias,
power, and privilege surface in cataloging and classification practices. Those
identities include racial, social, political,
cultural, and gendered constructs.4-9 Of
particular interest to my work are colonial
constructs related to Francophone literature (historically considered literature in
French from countries outside France, but
often used for any literature written in the
French language) and its organization and
Against the Grain / June 2020
classification. This essay explores philosophical approaches to classification and
knowledge organization, reflects on how
we assign value and meaning through
categories, and presents an applied attempt
to decolonize the cultural output of historically colonized regions.
As the subject editor for RCL’s core list
of titles in French language and literature,
I annually review new titles for inclusion
as well as review older works for continued relevancy. Another key element to
this project is to maintain and develop a
unique taxonomy to organize the content
in a meaningful and relevant way for users.
The RCL subject taxonomy is a knowledge
system that has been established for the
sole purpose of this project; a subject
taxonomy may draw from the Library
of Congress Classification Outline
(LCCO) or another disciplinary classification system, but can retain greater flexibility to mirror the undergraduate curriculum
and evolve as scholarly practices, and in
this case, cultural and social norms shift.
In the fall of 2017, I was simultaneously
selecting new works to add and reviewing
the subject taxonomy for French language
and literature. Originally developed by the
founding subject editor for French, Jeffry
Larson, and informed by LCCO, the
taxonomic hierarchy has remained fairly
simple, organizing literature into primary
and secondary works and also by genre,
period, and author. A catch-all heading,
“French Literature, outside France” served
to organize all literary production written
in the French language by authors outside
of France, regardless of the political,
historical, geographic, or cultural attachment. Reviewing the works, I encountered
several literary theory texts that gave me
pause, perhaps in part due to Macron’s
acknowledgment of colonialism’s “trappings,” but also because of the scholarly
work in library science around bias and
knowledge systems, which argues that a
Eurocentric hierarchy effectively marginalizes and devalues content while perpetuating the colonial mindset. The depth and
breadth of these literary analyses question
the concept of autonomy and ownership
of cultural production. Two particular titles stood out: Bonnie Thomas’s
Connecting Histories: Francophone
Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their
Past and Allison Connolly’s Spaces of
Creation: Transculturality and Feminine
Expression in Francophone Literature.10-11
These two texts of literary criticism did
not neatly fit into the existing taxonomy.
They treat transnational, multi-faceted
identities in literary works that span cultural and geopolitical borders. They also
call to question how naming and labeling
perpetuate colonial mindsets and create
problematic classifications, like the catchall “Literature outside France” heading.
While the original taxonomy was not
inherently wrong or bad, ongoing review
and revision allows for the flexibility to
adapt to the current scholarly practices of
the discipline. Any attempt to restructure
or recalibrate the taxonomy (not to mention the canon) to account for the political
displacement that shaped Francophone
literature’s diversity, however, is a challenging endeavor with its own obstacles.
The challenge, then, is to revise the taxonomy to accommodate for an evolving
concept of Francophone. The scholarly
literature on classification systems and
cultural identity informs this effort. Discussing knowledge organization, Hannah
Turner notes:
…approaching knowledge organization in a culturally relevant way
can help…build bridges between
different knowledge communities
and increase mutual understanding. A first step to achieve more
culturally appropriate knowledge
organization systems is to document
the history of and to highlight the
changes through time that occur in
classification schemes.12
My first step in developing a more mindful
taxonomy for literature written in French is
to acknowledge the complex relationship
between France proper — also called “the
hexagon” which refers to France’s six
borders and defines the colonial center
— and the colonies, also referred to as
les dom-toms (departments outre-mers
and territoires outre-mers, translated as
overseas states and territories). The
continued on page 34
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33
Collecting to the Core
from page 33
heading “Literature, outside France”
reflects this colonial approach and treats
those literary works as cultural domtoms, denying cultural autonomy and
reinforcing a long-standing subjectivity
of otherness: “Marginalization of a topic
is the process of placing it outside of the
cultural mainstream — making it ‘other.’
One way of marginalizing a topic is to
focus on the qualities that make it other
and fail to recognize the qualities that
are similar to the mainstream.”13 The
relationship is complicated. Citizens of
les doms are French citizens, but citizens
of les toms are not. Yet, literary cultural
output continues to be created in French,
which maintains its linguistic dominance.
To categorize these works as French
because of the language or refer to them
as a relational product of France is flawed.
Language is the only shared marker of
commonality. Philip Pacey asserts, “The
classification of literature by language,
while apparently eminently sensible, can
fragment national literatures and create
groupings in which parts of the literatures
of other nations are subordinated to that
of the country of the ‘mother tongue.’
Classifying literature in this way
reflects, and implicitly endorses, literary
colonialism.”14 A few alternate terms have
emerged: commonwealth literature which,
“superficially… appeared to efface the
ethnic and political divisions associated
with colonialism”; Françafrique, a term
used to indicate France’s “sphere of
influence”; and Francophone.15-16 All
are problematic in that they continue
to perpetuate and privilege the colonial
relationship.
Reorganizing the taxonomy is to
reconcile not only how we define “French
Literature” and “French Literature, outside
France” but also how we interact with
it, how we teach it, and how students
find it. Knowledge organizations might
be able to resolve this, which would
mean reconciling with the labeling
and naming of literary categories. The
power to name affords authority to the
taxonomy, which requires a methodical
and meaningful approach to priority,
structure, and the value conferred to
content through labeling. Philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein proposes that
“words name things” and that language
is the vehicle by which one knows
something. However, the meaning of
labels is relational to and dependent on
contexts. Without context, the label loses
meaning. Assigning labels is ultimately an
act of assigning meaning and essence.17
Literary warrant was a historical cataloging
practice that limited labeling to extant
works — “actual published literature
rather than abstract philosophical ideas or
concepts in the universe of knowledge.”18
Unfortunately, this practice can perpetuate
the mainstream status quo and ignore the
growth in complexity of relationships
over time.19 As cultural theorist Homi
Bhabha argues, “The social articulation of
difference, from the minority perspective,
is a complex, on-going negotiation that
seeks to authorize cultural hybridities
that emerge in moments of historical
transformation.”20
In reviewing how the taxonomy accommodated contemporary titles, I
also examined how some of the classic
Francophone literary works had been
classified, including the poetry collection
Nocturnes by Sengalese poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor (originally
published in 1961), the novels Moi, Tituba
sorcière by French Guadeloupean author
Maryse Condé (1986) and Kamouraska
by French Canadian author Anne Hebert
(1970), as well as the more recent graphic
novel Persepolis by Iranian-born French
illustrator and author Marjane Satrapi
Booklover
from page 32
explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”
This choice by the Nobel Committee did not go with out protest
and controversy as outlined in the above-mentioned Washington
Post article. I will leave that part of this Austrian author’s bio
for you to explore.
Handke’s novel Short Letter, Long Farewell is an interesting
postscript to my previous read, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. Both
works of fiction deal with travel, an interesting subject matter
34 Against the Grain / June 2020
(2000).21-24 Each of these titles represents
a part of the Francophone canon. They
are connected by language but represent
various genres and geographic regions
that span the globe. The concepts of
identity and otherness are treated in each
of these works, yet from such distinctive
perspectives that it is otherwise hard to
reconcile that they are to be grouped
together under one label. Additionally,
approaches to literary criticism are increasingly interdisciplinary, transnational,
and culturally-hybrid.
Restructuring the RCL subject taxonomy to better accommodate the breadth
and depth of Francophone literature was a
way to recalibrate the connection between
the curriculum and the collection. More
specifically, it now has room to grow and
better aligns with current pedagogical
practices and how users interact with print
and electronic collections. How the RCL
subject taxonomies — and other knowledge organizations — will categorize cultural hybrids and historically marginalized
content, ideas, and authors is a matter of
ongoing consideration. For now, the taxonomy will continue to adapt in how it
reflects the title selections, defines classification rules, and structures relationships.
Cataloging and classification hierarchies
can translate into teachable information
organizations that reflect content in a
meaningful, logical, and accessible way
for users. Knowledge systems actively
shape our perceptions of the world around
us and can also help to disentangle the
political and cultural “trappings” of
colonialism. Francophone literature is
more than a mere cultural response to the
colonial power. This essay is a reminder
that there is constant need to review and
adapt knowledge organizations for the
purpose of access, interaction, instruction,
and research.
endnotes on page 35
in light of the current pandemic that brings new social norms of
social distancing, sheltering in place and a run on toilet paper.
And just as this situation has produced wildly different points
of view about how to handle all of this, these two authors also
demonstrate wildly different points of view on travel given to
the reader in two unique styles of writing.
Handke’s German traveler arrives in Boston. Upon checking
into the Wayland Manor Hotel he is handed a note by the desk
clerk: “The letter was short: ‘I am in New York. Please don’t
look for me. It would not be nice for you to find me.’” Thus
begins his journey (or escape) across America. The travelogue/
continued on page 35
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Collecting to the Core
from page 34
Endnotes
1. Roger, Patrick. “Colonisation: les propos inédits de Macron font polémique.”
Le Monde, Feb. 16, 2017. https://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2017/
article/2017/02/16/pour-macron-la-colonisation-fut-un-crime-contre-l-humanite_5080621_4854003.html. Accessed January 4, 2019.
2. Ibid.
3. Salaudeen, Aisha. “Marketplace Africa. France is set to end the use of the
75-year-old controversial CFA franc in West Africa.” CNN, December 23, 2019,
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/23/africa/france-stops-use-of-cfa/index.html. Accessed
January 4, 2019.
4. Billey, Amber and Emily Drabinski. “Questioning Authority: Changing Library
Cataloging Standards to Be More Inclusive to a Gender Identity Spectrum.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 6, no. 1 (2019): 117-123. DOI:10.1215/23289252-7253538
5. Biswas, Paromita. “Rooted in the Past: Use of ‘East Indians’ in Library of Congress
Subject Headings.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 56, no. 1 (2018): 1-18. DO
I:10.1080/01639374.2017.1386253.
6. Mai, Jens-Erik. “Marginalization and Exclusion: Unraveling Systemic
Bias in Classification.” Knowledge Organization 43, no. 5 (2016): 324-330.
DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2016-5-324
7. Noble, Safiyah Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce
Racism. New York: New York University Press, 2018.
8. Watson, Brian M. “Review of Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control.”
Edited by Jane Sandberg. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 57, no. 7-8 (2019):
547-49. DOI:10.1080/01639374.2019.1673524.
9. Algier, Aimee. “The Dynamic Caribbean: A Challenge for the Library of
Congress.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2001): 29-38. DOI:
10.1300/J104v32n01_03
10. Thomas, Bonnie. Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2017.*
11. Connolly, Allison. Spaces of Creation: Transculturality and Feminine Expression
in Francophone Literature. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016.*
12. Turner, Hannah. “Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural
History.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5-6 (2015): 658-676. DOI:
10.1080/01639374.2015.1010112
13. Olson, Hope A. “Difference, Culture and Change: The Untapped Potential
of LCSH.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 29, no.1-2 (2000): 53-71. DOI:
10.1300/J104v29n01_04
14. Pacey, Philip. “The Classification of Literature in the Dewey Decimal Classification.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 9, no. 4 (1989): 101-107. DOI:
10.1300/J104v09n04_08
15. Hargreaves, Alec G. “Ethnic Categorizations in Literature.” Revue Européenne
Des Migrations Internationales 21, no. 2 (2005): 19-33. DOI: 10.4000/remi.2485
16. “Françafrique.” In The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy. Edited by
Geoff Berridge and Lorna Lloyd. 3rd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
17. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by Peter Hacker.
4th ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Press, 2010.*
18. Chan, Lois Mai, Phyllis A. Richmond, and Elaine Svenonius. Preface to Theory
of Subject Analysis: a Sourcebook. (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1985), quoted
in Mario Barité, “Literary Warrant.” Knowledge Organization 45, no. 6 (2018): 517536. DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2018-6-517.
19. Olson, “Difference, Culture, and Change,” 63.
20. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.*
21. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. Œuvre Poétique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1990.*
22. Condé, Maryse. Moi, Tituba sorcière... noire de Salem. Paris: Editions du
Mercure de France, 1986.*
23. Hébert, Anne. Kamouraska. Paris: Éditions Du Seuil, 1970.*
24. Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York: Pantheon, 2003.*
*Editor’s note: An asterisk (*) denotes a title selected for Resources for College
Libraries.
Against the Grain / June 2020
Booklover
from page 34
journal style holds intimate descriptions, awareness, and details of our beautiful country as seen
through the eyes of someone, albeit foreign, who
cherishes it and seems to know it. Truth be told,
the traveler is escaping a marriage — the “me”
in the note is his wife. This fact plays into the
adventure. In addition, he seeks out a previous
companion, Claire, and piggy backs on her and
her daughter’s travels. One stop along the way
has them spending time with some artists where
this observation is made:
“When the child saw a representation of nature, one of the painter’s pictures, for example,
she never thought of asking whether there really
was such a scene, and if so where, because the
copy had replaced the original forever. I remembered that, unlike her, I myself as a child had
always wanted to know where the object represented actually was. In our house, for instance,
there was an oil painting of
a glacier landscape with
a mountain hut at
the lower edge. I
had always been
convinced that
this landscape and
this hut existed
in nature; I even
thought I knew
where the painter must have stood,
and when someone told
me the picture was pure imagination I couldn’t
believe it. For a long time I could hardly breathe
when it came to me that the picture was alone
and that I could find nothing to go with it. It
was very much the same when I learned to read:
I couldn’t see how it was possible to describe
something that didn’t exist. The village described
in my primer was a real village, not my own of
course, but another not far away. I even knew
which village. And because the first books I read
on my own were told in the first person, I was
horrified when for the first time I opened a book
in which there was no “I” narrator. These forms
of perception had so powerful an influence on my
other experience that now in retrospect it seemed
to me that the shock of discovering they were not
valid had been a turning point of my life. I felt
almost jealous of this child, who from the first
looked on symbols and representations as having
an existence of their own.”
These observations, insights, and musings
punctuate the travelogue. I leave you with my
favorite phrase: “All at once I understood how
illusions and mistaken identities give rise to
metaphors.”
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35
Op Ed — Opinions and Editorials
Random Ramblings — Problems with Searching
Amazon: You Can’t Always Find What You Want
Column Editor: Bob Holley (Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University, 13303 Borgman Avenue,
Huntington Woods, MI 48070-1005; Phone: 248-547-0306) <aa3805@wayne.edu>
I
’ve been selling books on Amazon
for eleven years and was sometimes
confused by not finding items through
a well formulated search but then serendipitously discovering them in some
unexpected way. Only in February 2020
did I decide to investigate this issue more
systematically. From a posting to an Amazon Forum, I learned that I wasn’t the only
one who has encountered this problem.
Earlier, at the 2020 ALA Midwinter, I
talked to one acquisitions librarian who
told me that this issue was common knowledge. I was
unable, however, to find any confirmation in Library &
Information Source or through Google searching though
the lack of results may have been my failure to identify
the correct search terms.
Not finding items that exist in the Amazon database
due to searching “glitches” affects both librarians and
booksellers everywhere. As buyers, librarians are looking to purchase needed items. As sellers, both librarians
and booksellers wish to find Amazon records to list their
items. Creating a new record is much more difficult
than appending the seller’s copy to an existing record
and further diminishes the usefulness of the database by
adding a duplicate record.
Defining the Problem
The problem is not the result of a searching mistake. The searching sequence was as follows:
1. I searched for the item using multiple search
terms.
2. I didn’t find the item and put it aside.
3. I found the item later by trying another search
strategy or through serendipity.
4. The record that I found included search terms
that I used in step 1 so that I should have discovered it then.
5. Retrying the searching strategy in step 1
sometimes still does not retrieve the item so
that changes in the database do not completely
explain my success in step 3.
In other words, the problem is not a searching mistake
on my part or problems with the record from misspelling
or other errors in the database. To reiterate, I used terms
in step 1 that should have worked because they matched
data in the record that I ultimately found.
Different Ways to Search in Amazon.com
and Searching Conventions
The most accessible way to search for an item is the
search area in the Amazon retail screen. It is possible to
search in “All Departments” or in specific areas such as
“Books,” “CD & Vinyl,” “Movies and TV,” and many
36 Against the Grain / June 2020
other options. Amazon presents results
first in the indicated department followed
by matches in other departments and then
by various combinations of the words used
in multi-word searches. An “Advanced
Search” tool is available for books that is
similar to those in many library databases. This option offers eleven searchable
fields of which the most important are
Keywords, Author, Title, ISBN, Publisher, and Publication Date. A third search
is available only to sellers. In “Amazon
Central Seller,” the “Catalog” and “Inventory” options
lead to a drop-down menu that includes the choice to
search for existing records to which the sellers can add
their copies. If the seller doesn’t find a match, another
link leads to the form to “Create a new listing.”
Amazon provides the following document on “Using search terms effectively” at https://sellercentral.
amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=G23501&language=en_US. Most of the rules would be familiar
to librarians. One disconcerting rule, however, is You
don’t need punctuation, such as: “;”, “:”, “-”.”. even
though using quotations marks is the normal convention
to search for exact multiword expressions. In practice,
Amazon does apply this convention to searches. I routinely use quotation marks for precise searching. For
example, “music for children folk songs” retrieves six
items while music for children folk songs returns “over
1,000 results.” In a similar fashion, applying the rule
“Use singular or plural, no need for both” is a bad idea
since following this rule returns different and less accurate results. I fault Amazon for providing this incorrect
information. Finally, Amazon provides a list of “Related
articles” on the left of the search helps page, but they
have little relevance for this column.
Using Creative Search Strategies
I have discovered two other creative strategies for
finding items where the multiple search strategies in the
section above retrieved no records. The first is using
AddAll — Used and Out of Print Search at http://used.
addall.com/. As of February 8, 2020, this meta-search
engine queries twenty-two used book sites for matches,
including Amazon.com and its foreign affiliates. At one
point, the site claimed access to 40 million records, but
this figure no longer appears on the main searching
page. I use this site frequently to determine my next
steps when I don’t find an Amazon.com record. I have
been surprised at times to find a listing for a book
on Amazon.com that my prior searching didn’t find.
I would then click through to this record to add my
listing to the Amazon database. For the searcher not
interested in comparative prices, AddAll can be set to
continued on page 38
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Against the Grain / June 2020
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
37
Op Ed — Random Ramblings
from page 36
search only Amazon for greater efficiency. One disadvantage is
that AddAll won’t provide any results if an item in the Amazon
database is unavailable for sale.
The second strategy is to search Google with the terms
“Amazon” and my chosen search terms for the item. This is
my least favored preference because evaluating the results takes
more time since Google also provides close matches and results
from the affiliated foreign Amazon sites and non-Amazon.com
sources. On the other hand, I used this strategy successfully
just today to find an item that the Amazon search strategies
didn’t retrieve. Since Google’s specialization is searching,
the company may take more care to provide accurate results
than Amazon itself.
My query on the Amazon forums, to be discussed in more
detail below, about issues with searching identified a third strategy that proved less successful. One seller suggested looking for
American sellers on Amazon’s international sites and then using
their entries to see if the item is available in the main American
site. To implement this strategy, AddAll can be set only to search
any or all the Amazon offerings in their Canadian, French, German, or the UK subsidiaries. Amazon also has sites in China and
Japan for those interested in buying or selling such materials.
My Experiments
I immediately tried out the new searching options on a stack of
books where my simple searching from the Amazon retail screen
didn’t retrieve any records in the Amazon database. Since I did
this before considering writing this column, I didn’t keep formal
statistics, but I estimate that I found useable Amazon entries for
over half of them. I later did the same with a second group of
books and kept statistics that I’ll provide below. To give some
context, I sell books on Amazon as a hobby and get most of
them cheaply as remainders from rummage and church sales. At
these prices, I scoop everything up and come home with some
strange items including older materials, gray literature, foreign
language books, pamphlets, and publicity/propaganda items
from various organizations. Sometimes these strange items are
somewhat valuable and can be listed for $50 or more. Some
even sell at these prices.
For the second test, I had a sample size of 23 books, certainly
more indicative than statistically valid. After having failed to find
a record from using multiple strategies in the Amazon options, I
searched first in AddAll set to search only Amazon.com and then
Google with “Amazon” and search terms from the book. For
both searches, I tried multiple search strategies before giving up.
If I found the item on AddAll, I didn’t repeat with Google so that
Google might have had a higher count if I had done both searches.
Overall, I was able to find a useable Amazon record for
seven items (30.4%) on AddAll and six (26%) on Google for a
combined success rate of thirteen (56.5%). The failure rate was
43.5%. I was thus able to add a significant number of books to
my inventory that I would otherwise have put aside for original
input. Remember too that buyers, including libraries, would
not have found these items with an Amazon retail or advanced
book search.
I learned a few other things. If the book had a distinctive
cover, a Google image search was an effective way of visually
finding items or double-checking negative results. I found sev38 Against the Grain / June 2020
eral books on non-US Amazon sites, but they were not available
on the US version. I couldn’t find a decent record for the book
that was available as a bilingual edition when my copy was an
English translation and for those cases where the ISBN led to
the hard cover version when I wished to sell the paperback with
the same ISBN.
Speculation on the Reasons for Amazon
Search Failures
From having read hundreds if not thousands of answers to
questions on the Amazon forums, I didn’t expect Amazon to give
any explanation for these search glitches. Amazon is amazingly
close lipped about how its system works or, more importantly,
doesn’t work. Since Amazon monitors these forums, I assume
that an Amazon employee read my question, plus I specifically
asked for a staff member to provide an explanation. No one did.
What follows is my analysis of the various reasons proposed
by responses on the Amazon forum. I then give my personal
favored explanation. (My question and the answers can be found
here: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/can-anyone-explain-searching-on-amazon-to-me/563168.) I have two initial
comments. First, I would expect that Amazon wants to make it
easy for buyers to find items available for purchase and for third
party vendors to list them for sale. Some of the answers below,
however, contradict this assumption. Second, the search problems could be temporary glitches from a momentary hardware
or software failure; but I have some scant evidence that this isn’t
the case. After finding items through non-traditional searches, I
put some aside to scan the book covers to add to my individual
listing. When completing this task a few weeks later, I had the
same difficulties in finding these items to list them for sale. My
sample, however, was quite small.
1. Amazon doesn’t include items when they are “currently
unavailable” for sale. This reason makes partial sense because
related search results provided by Amazon normally include similar buying options. The buyers could, however, put unavailable
items on their wish lists. On the other hand, Amazon should
want sellers to find “currently unavailable” items if they will
then make the item available. A related question, too complex
to describe here, is the case where sellers cannot find items that
they themselves have listed because they show up as “currently
unavailable.” One comment indicates that Amazon knows about
this problem and is trying to correct it.
2. The record is suppressed due to problems with the data.
While the search term is found in the record, other problems with
the record lead to its being suppressed. This reason also makes
partial sense if the problem affects only some search strategies
but not others including those from outside sources like Google
search and AddAll. This reason doesn’t appear valid if the record
is good enough to support a buyer purchase. For potential sellers,
Amazon might want to avoid dealing with additional copies listed
for sale that could complicate data correction.
3. Search results are modified according to the searchers’
prior searching. Amazon tracks browsing history as can be
seen by the section “Inspired by your browsing history” for users
that have logged into their Amazon accounts. Amazon may also
track searches of those not logged in by using cookies. I don’t,
however, see any reason why Amazon wouldn’t want anyone
not to find items that they wish to purchase. The same comment
suggests that Amazon may use a seller’s searching history to
punish sellers that it has caught violating its rules.
continued on page 39
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
to ship to the customer. While, in my experience, Amazon
focuses on customer satisfaction and often treats its third-party
sellers poorly, I’m loathe to suggest maliciousness on its part.
Op Ed — Random Ramblings
from page 38
4. Amazon wants to lengthen the search process so that
buyers will be tempted to purchase additional items. To quote
one response, “distraction means bigger shopping carts and a
larger volume of sales.” I would, however, question a strategy
that diverts buyers from an item that interests them in the hopes
that they will buy something else. One experiment for another
day might be to test search results from the retail selling searching
options with those designed for sellers because Amazon has no
reason to discourage sellers from listing additional items for sale.
5. Amazon doesn’t care about the accuracy of its searches
but only cares about increasing sales. Another comment states
that “what Amazon calls a search function is not a search function under any generally recognized use of the term. It is almost
entire(ly) a sale engine designed to direct you to whatever they
want to sell you with at least as high, or higher, profit margin
for Amazon.” While Amazon has shown itself to be ruthlessly
focused on increasing sales, I have trouble totally agreeing with
this statement. Creating distrust of its searching function will
have a negative effect upon both buyers and sellers and perhaps
push them to look elsewhere where the search function provides
greater accuracy. But I could be wrong since Amazon has a
treasure trove of data to examine and can take advantage of the
best artificial intelligence available to maximize sales and proft.
My Hypothesis to Explain Amazon
Search Failures
Conclusion: What Does This All Mean?
For most buyers and sellers, these search problems will
not be very important. Current popular books of all types
will be easy to find, and Amazon will fix problems quickly
where significant revenue is at stake. It does matter for third
party sellers like me and for libraries that are looking to sell
their materials on Amazon. Our goal is to list as many items
as possible by using existing records since record creation
takes significantly more time. The multi-step search process
described earlier in this column may help both groups find
“hidden” records as it did for me with my limited sample.
Sometimes these items may be listed at a good price because
of their scarcity, but their odds of selling are also not high.
As for the effect upon buyers, libraries may wish to purchase
specialized items, especially those not available through interlibrary loan. In this case, I would recommend, however,
using AddAll since the library is not limited to purchasing
such items on Amazon.
The philosophical lesson for me was learning not to trust
large databases. I spent ten years believing that simple Amazon searches were accurate when they weren’t. We should
all be aware of and humbled by the potential failures of our
access tools and employ multiple search strategies rather than
giving up too quickly.
My hypothesis is that the Amazon database is so large
that mistakes are inevitable, that Amazon focuses on fixing
problems affecting the largest number of
products first, and that some of the reasons
for searching glitches given above would
not be worth Amazon’s time to correct.
According to Scrapehero, “Amazon.com
has a total of 119,928,851 products as of
Dear Ms. April Hathcock,
April 2019” and “the largest category in
I am deeply sorry and regret not citing your quote (April M. Hathcock,
Amazon is Books (44.2M)” (https://www.
“Learning Agency, Not Analytics,” At the Intersection, Jan. 24, 2018), in
scrapehero.com/number-of-products-onthe Against the Grain (ATG) article I wrote for the April 1, 2020 issue. It
amazon-april-2019/). Given that the number
was wrong and an insensitive mistake not to include your citation. I am
of individual items for sale for each entry
asking the editors of ATG to include the following corrections to the article:
can range from zero into the hundreds, the
Amazon database is huge and must deal with
ATG editors, please include (Hathcock, 2018) as an in-text citation to
an enormous number of simultaneous transparagraph 13:
actions in real time. Errors and temporary
Inflammatory rhetoric ends Kyle Jones’ (2019) piece, Just Because
outages are unavoidable.
You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should: Practitioner Perceptions of Learning
Two pieces of evidence lend support for
Analytics Ethics where he quotes Hathcock (2018, para.4):
my hypothesis. First, Amazon itself often
In stark terms, April Hathcock argues that learning analytics ‘is a colotells its users that it is experiencing technical
nialist, slave-owning, corporatizing, capitalist practice that enacts violence,
difficulties and suggests trying again later. If
yes violence, against the sanctity of a learner’s privacy, body and mind.’ (18)
such stoppages occur while third party sellers
Please add this reference to the article:
are entering book records, errors in the record
Hathcock, A. (2018, January 24). Learning agency, not analytics. At
may hinder later retrieval. Similar glitches
The Intersection. https://aprilhathcock.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/learnin processing search queries can negatively
ing-agency-not-analytics/
affect retrieval. Second, the Amazon forums,
which I read each day, include examples
Sincerely, Kirsten Kinsley
from sellers of multiple things that have gone
wrong. I have encountered such problems,
Please Note: The article has been corrected at: https://against-thesome of which have been difficult to detect
grain.com/2020/04/v321-one-academic-librarys-approach-to-the-learnbut with serious consequences for my busiing-analytics-backlash/. — Yr. Ed.
ness, such as not being able to find the book
Correction Notice / Letter
Against the Grain / June 2020
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
39
ATG Interviews Barbara Casalini
President, Casalini Libri
by Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu>
and Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain) <kstrauch@comcast.net>
ATG: Barbara, some of our readers
may not be familiar with Casalini Libri.
Can you tell us a little bit about the
company? What are the main services
Casalini Libri provides to libraries and
publishers? What do you see as the
company key mission?
BC: The company was an idea of
my father’s. While visiting the U.S. on
business in the late 1950s, he became
conscious that there was little (and unreliable or untimely) information available
on Italian publications, and no real supply
structure for the diffusion of Italian titles
abroad. He established Casalini Libri
as an information and supply service for
titles that were not easily found, initially
working with the Library of Congress
and progressively with more and more
libraries and institutions. We have always
tried to respond to the needs of our customers and now offer many services aimed
at assisting libraries and publishers, from
approval selections to subscription management and the Torrossa digital library.
Although our customer base and services
have widened considerably over the past
60 years, I would say that the importance
of providing prompt and high quality bibliographic information to libraries and of
supporting the diffusion of Italian culture
and learning worldwide have remained at
the core of all of our activities.
Of course, it is not just Italian culture
that we wish to promote, but original
language research from across Europe.
This is reflected first in our investment
in creating the same infrastructure for
the provision of Spanish, Portuguese and
French titles over the last fifteen years
and — just last month — in our participation in the acquisition of the two Dutch
companies, Erasmus and Houtschild.
In creating synergy with these companies
with whom we share a single vision, we
aim to offer the very best services to the
Library world, not simply by strengthening our coverage and providing a more
efficient use of technological resources,
but by striving to maintain the excellent
customer service for which we are known.
ATG: The world of libraries and
scholarly publishing has changed dra40 Against the Grain / June 2020
matically since your father founded
Casalini Libri in 1958. How has the company kept pace with the rapidly changing
market? What would you say are the key
factors that have enabled Casalini Libri
to thrive?
BC: I would say that the key has been
our constant collaboration with both publishers and libraries and the confidence
we have received from both sectors, not
only in the trust libraries have placed in
us to source and select quality material for
them, but also publishers in our ability to
provide a technological support and widen
the reach of their publications. As I said,
it has always been very important for us
to listen to the emerging needs of our
customers and respond with services that
offer solutions to those needs.
ATG: One of the cornerstones of
your services to libraries and publishers
appears to be the ilibri Casalini Bibliographical Database. Can you tell us
about that? What is so unique about
the database?
BC: We are indeed very proud of the
ilibri database as it is the main showcase
for our dedication to providing quality
bibliographic information. We carefully
select the new publications that fit the
interests and quality required by academic
and research libraries in order to create
detailed bibliographic descriptions for our
customers. All of the bibliographic data
that we produce is included in our online
database, making it a very specialised
resource for librarians. It’s also worth
mentioning that in Italy, Spain, Portugal
and Greece, it is still very often not easy
to acquire information about publications
or rely completely on national bibliographies. The ilibri database works to fill
those gaps in information.
What’s more, the database is integrated with our other systems, meaning that
librarians can follow a single, linear and
straightforward workflow, from viewing
our new title suggestions to creating and
editing their selections, sending orders
and checking on their status, to finding
a complete archive of all of the invoices
connected with their orders.
ATG: Another key component of
your offerings is the Torrossa digital library. Can you describe what it provides
libraries? Does it work with the ilibri®
Casalini Bibliographical Database to
offer integrated services?
BC: Torrossa was born in its first
incarnation in 2000 as a project to explore
the potential of digital publishing. As the
initial digital library of Italian scholarly
titles grew steadily and was joined by a
second digital collection of academic titles
from Spain, we decided to unite the two
resources in a single website, which takes
its name from our historic headquarters
in Fiesole. Twenty years on and we’re
preparing to publish an enhanced version
of the site, which by now includes digital
content from over 280 highly respected
HSS publishers from Italy, Spain and a
variety of other countries.
The main benefits of Torrossa for
libraries include the possibility to reach
such a wide offering of digital publications
from a single access point and manage
all the content under a single licence. As
with print, we try to give libraries the
freedom and tools to decide how to put
their collections together. So in addition
to the recommended collections of titles
selected by our bibliographers, we also
offer the possibility to pick and choose
collections or single titles, provide tools
and services such as PDA and Approval
selections, and have integrated all of our
continued on page 41
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Interview — Barbara Casalini
from page 40
digital content with the ilibri database in
order to ensure that print and digital go
hand in hand.
ATG: According to your website,
Casalini Libri is particularly interested in
linked data and the possibilities it holds
for the field of librarianship. Can you tell
us about that? What benefits does linked
data offer libraries?
BC: Linked data helps discovery.
Much of the vast quantity of data and resources contained and described in library
catalogues has previously often remained
hidden. Linked data now gives us the opportunity to create links among collections
and provide library patrons with the key to
unlock and navigate a wealth of data that
otherwise would have remained unknown
and undiscovered. By applying the linked
data paradigm, libraries, archives, museums and information professionals have
a more comprehensive suite of tools at
their disposal, based on structured data and
fully compliant with the semantic web.
Keeping pace with web technologies in
this way means that searching and navigating data becomes much more dynamic and
similar to the functioning of the web than
to a traditional library catalogue.
Our work on the linked data approach
— with the Share Virtual Discovery
Environment — is another example of
the emphasis we put on the central role
of libraries in shaping our activities.
Share-VDE is a library-driven initiative
which brings together the bibliographic
catalogues and authority files of a community of libraries in a shared discovery
environment based on linked data.
ATG: As part of this interest in linked
data, you have been actively involved in
the library community’s discussions on
BIBFRAME (Bibliographic Framework
Initiative). Can you give us an update on
BIBFRAME’s progress?
BC: BIBFRAME is an evolving
model of entities and it is important for
us to contribute to its development given
the experience that we are developing in
the field through our collaboration with
the community of libraries participating
in Share-VDE, and also in anticipation of
a future in which bibliographic resources
may be catalogued directly in linked data.
For example, while the Share-VDE
entity model is based on the three original BIBFRAME Work-Instance-Item
levels, in order to maintain and optimise
Against the Grain / June 2020
interoperability with the IFLA Library
Reference Model (LRM), we have
introduced a fourth level of abstraction
— higher than the BIBFRAME Work —
which later proved to be in line with the
latest developments from the Library of
Congress, who have recently released the
BIBFRAME Hub, a more abstract level
entity than the BIBFRAME Work.
All this tells us yet again how productive discussion and exchange of
experiences are within the community,
and how it is impossible to separate them
from experimentation and the practical
application of theoretical models.
ATG: Casalini Libri is known for its
interest in research and development.
In fact, we notice there is a section on
your website called the Casalini Lab.
Can you tell about the latest projects
Casalini Lab is focusing on in addition
to BIBFRAME?
BC: Casalini Lab covers a wide array of projects, from our collaboration in
projects such as BIBFRAME and ShareVDE, which take librarianship and bibliographical data into a new, exciting future,
to discussions on other aspects close to
our hearts. This May, we planned to host
in Fiesole the CRL working forum “New
Shape of Sharing: Networks, Expertise,
Information,” dedicated to the theme of
supporting research in the humanities and
maintaining non-English collections. Although it has been necessary to postpone
the meeting, we are confident that it will
take place once conditions allow. Our
dedication to the sector and to its continuing ability to thrive also shows through in
both our support for the Master’s course in
BookTelling run by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, which
allows us to contribute to the training of
future publishing professionals, and in our
long-running collaboration in the Fiesole
Collection Development Retreat Series.
Emerging from our interest in the ever
increasing potential of digital resources is
the Torrossa Open initiative, a platform
designed specifically to contribute to the
dissemination of research content from
Southern Europe in Open Access, while
since last year we have been investing
heavily in enhancing and updating all of
our websites, from the Torrossa digital
library and bookstores, to our dedicated
content management site for publishers
contributing to these resources. We have
also updated our main company website
and are now working on an improved
search and ordering interface for our ilibri
database and order management functions.
Returning to our role as a bibliographic agency, we continue to strive for
excellence. Not only have we become
an ISNI registration agency, we are also
embarking on a special project and new
services that take into account the importance of the attribution of URI and
accurate authority records.
ATG: In 1999, Casalini Libri, along
with the Charleston Company and
Against the Grain, was one of the founding sponsors of the Fiesole Retreat Series. Can you tell us a little bit about the
Fiesole Retreat? Where did the idea for
Fiesole come from? As you look back
over the years why do you think Fiesole
has been important to discussions about
the future of libraries, publishing, and
collections?
BC: The idea for the Retreat was
initially conceived by Katina Strauch
and Mario, as a way of bringing the
Charleston Conference model of an
informal gathering and its culture of exchange of views and discussion among
industry leaders to Europe. The world
at the time was much less connected
than it is today over great distances and
the Fiesole Retreat created a bridge between the North American and European
communities of librarians, publishers,
vendors and experts. Now, after more
than 20 years and thanks to the tireless
work of Becky Lenzini and Katina,
the Fiesole Retreat is running stronger
than ever, testifying the foresight of both
Katina and Mario.
Each year’s programme is a collaborative effort to create and balance a
discussion that represents the views of
all sectors of the industry on the most
pressing questions and challenges of
the moment. Understandably, a huge
focus has always been given to digital
content and with the COVID crisis we
are seeing many publishers reviewing
their approach to this whole area. The
proceedings for all meetings are available
on the Fiesole Retreat website (http://
www.casalini.it/retreat/) and they make
fascinating reading as they address issues
that continue to be relevant in our fast
evolving world.
Although the current situation has
made it necessary for us to postpone
this year’s meeting in Greece, we are
very grateful to our hosts, the National
Library of Greece, who has agreed to
welcome us to its beautiful new facility
inside the Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Cultural Center in Athens next April.
continued on page 44
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
41
ATG Interviews John T. Nardini, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar, SAMSI & N.C. State University
https://johnnardini.wordpress.ncsu.edu/ • <jtnardin@ncsu.edu>
by Bob Nardini (Vice President, Library Services, ProQuest Books) <bob.nardini@proquest.com>
Author’s Note: John Nardini was one
of the many thousands of university professors across the world forced by COVID-19
to move their teaching so quickly from an
actual classroom to an online classroom.
John and I talked recently about what this
experience was like for him and for his
students. — BN
Teaching Math: From
Homework to Home Work
ATG: John, please tell our readers a
little about yourself.
JN: Hello! I am currently a postdoctoral scholar in Biomathematics at North
Carolina State (NC State) University
in Raleigh, NC. I also have a joint appointment in precision medicine at the
Statistical and Applied Mathematical
Sciences Institute in Durham, NC.
ATG: Tell us about the course you’re
teaching and about your students.
JN: I am currently teaching MA 225:
Foundations of Advanced Mathematics.
My students are transitioning from very
computation-heavy calculus courses into
the more analytical aspects of advanced
mathematics. The focus of the course is to
introduce students to methods commonly
used to prove mathematical claims, proper
presentation of these proofs, and the logical structure underlying these different
proof methods.
My current class is pretty small. I
have 18 students, most of whom are either
first or second-year students. Most are
mathematics majors, although some are
also double majoring in an engineering
discipline or majoring in statistics with a
minor in mathematics.
ATG: How far into the course was the
class before it went online? How much
notice did you have to prepare for online
teaching, and how did you prepare?
JN: The semester is 15 weeks long,
and we found out that we’d be transitioning to an online format 9 weeks in. We
were told about this transition during our
spring break, and NC State cancelled
classes the following week to give faculty
time to prepare. That week was very help42 Against the Grain / June 2020
ful for me, as I was able to read articles on
useful technology for online classrooms,
practice using this new technology, and
determine how to best structure my future
lectures, homework, and exams.
The most valuable resource for me
during this preparatory week was Twitter. I follow all sorts of academics on
my Twitter page, and my feed was full of
suggestions for how to be accommodating
of students’ needs during this trying time.
For example, many professors were advocating to just give all students A’s at the
end of semester because of the extreme
difficulties some may be facing. While
I didn’t adopt this strategy, I was sure to
be clear with my students that all course
assignments were now secondary to their
health, happiness, and well-being. I am
continuously telling students now that they
can consider all assignments due on the
last day of finals.
ATG: What platform or software are
you using for the class?
JN: We are currently using the Zoom
software to meet for synchronous lectures
and office hours. Because my students
are now scattered throughout the country
and may have difficulty maintaining their
previous schedules, I record each lecture
(a built-in Zoom function). I also use the
Moodle platform for online course management. On my class’s Moodle page, I
now post all previous assignments with
solutions, in-class assignments, class re-
cordings, lecture notes, and the textbook
pdf. With so many possible challenges for
all of my students during this transition,
my goal is just to make class material as
accessible for students as possible.
ATG: You mentioned a textbook. Can
you tell us about the textbook you use?
JN: Professor Jo-Ann Cohen from
NC State has written her own lecture
notes for this class and made them
openly available to students and faculty
teaching this course. I am happy to use
this resource because my students are not
required to spend any money on a course
textbook. I’ve enjoyed these course notes
because they encourage students to think
critically about course definitions and their
implications. For example, we begin with
proofs on even and odd numbers early on
in the course. Instead of simply stating
that “a whole number cannot be both even
and odd,” Dr. Cohen’s book asks students
to explore what might happen if a whole
number were both odd and even (answer:
this number would end up contradicting
the definition of being either odd or even!).
ATG: How common is it for your colleagues to assign textbooks not produced
by a traditional publisher?
JN: It isn’t common. Dr. Cohen’s
book is one of the first of its kind that I
knew about. The majority of math classes
are taught from textbooks published commercially. But I am very encouraged by
Dr. Cohen’s book and hope to see more
open access books like this one offered
for students.
ATG: Do you assign any library resources in the class?
JN: I have not. But students often
ask me how they can get extra practice on
problems before exams or how to access
more material explaining class topics
differently. In these cases, I always direct
students to other textbooks available for
checkout at the university library (during
the switch to online courses, I now direct
students to websites, eBooks, or YouTube
videos).
ATG: In teaching math, is that a
typical approach to library resources?
continued on page 44
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
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Interview — John T. Nardini
from page 42
JN: It’s typical for most math classes.
We tend to keep things simple and often
stick to only the course textbook and/or
lecture notes.
But I would like to add a bit about how
important the library can be in serving
students and faculty for online teaching.
NC State benefits tremendously from a
great library system that offers workshops
for professional development and technology lending for all faculty and students.
Technology lending includes laptops,
tablets, and headphones, all of which can
typically be checked out for several hours
or a week. For the pandemic, however, the
library system has been checking out this
technology indefinitely, which was crucial
in allowing many students to access their
courses. I even checked out a pair of headphones that I use for classes and meetings
because the headphone’s microphone is
better than my laptop’s. I also have not
had access to physical textbooks at the
library during the pandemic, but eBooks
have made it possible for me to read some
textbooks during this time.
ATG: What has your overall experience been, then, in teaching this course
online, versus teaching in person, regarding preparation, actual class time, office
hours, exams, anything else you’d care
to mention?
JN: Preparation has been very different for me after this switch to online
courses. When teaching in person, I am
often engaging with students by answering questions, soliciting feedback, or
interpreting their body language. This
helps me to identify challenging areas for
Interview — Barbara Casalini
from page 41
ATG: Barbara, when you are not
directing such an active and innovative
company, how do you like to spend your
down time? Are there particular leisure
activities that help you refresh and get
ready to take on the next challenge?
BC: I do invest a lot of time and energy in my local community in Fiesole and
make the most of the wonderful cultural
events that are organised both in Fiesole
and in Florence with my husband, a pro44 Against the Grain / June 2020
students so that I know which topics I can
gloss over and which topics need more indepth explanation. This is all much more
difficult online!
Reading the room has been near impossible for me online. Furthermore,
recording my lectures so that students
can go back and re-watch them afterwards
means that a lecture must be self-contained, present all necessary material, and
be easily digestible. When preparing for
online lessons, I now begin by identifying
the key topics and then try to break it down
into brief and easy to understand blocks. I
ended up splitting most online 50-minute
lectures into four 10-minute intervals.
During each interval, I would introduce a
topic, explain its basic principles, provide
an example, and then review the highlights
and solicit questions. It was far less fluent
and engaging than in-person lectures, but
my students seemed to appreciate being
able to go back and re-watch lectures.
I switched all of my exams to be takehome and gave students all day to complete them. I told students they were open
course notes (textbook, lectures, etc.), but
told them they were on the honor code to
not look up the solutions online. It’s not a
perfect strategy, but I’m not sure if there’s
a better option.
ATG: How about your students, what
can you tell us about their experience
with this online class? And your colleagues, do you have anything to share
about their experience?
JN: It’s been very difficult for my students. Everyone has experienced unique
challenges, including limited internet
access, having to coordinate studying
and childcare, or trouble adjusting to a
new learning format. I understand that
fessional musician. In these last few
weeks when we have been unable to
attend theatre and concerts, I have been
relaxing with a good book and music
at home.
I am also lucky enough to have my
family and three lively and adorable
grandchildren nearby, and I thoroughly
enjoy cooking and baking for them in
the family home.
ATG: Thank you so much for taking time to talk to us. We’ve learned
a lot!
academics may not take priority for my
students during this pandemic, so I am
sure to let students know that all deadlines
and policies are flexible. I have many
more requests for assignment extensions
than ever, and they are all granted without
question. I am also a bit more lenient than
usual when grading because it didn’t feel
fair to hold every student to our normal
high standards during this time.
In talking with my colleagues, I’ve
learned that everyone has their own unique
approach to online lecturing. I’ve detailed
how I structured my courses already, but
everyone has been doing theirs differently.
I have colleagues who are having students
watch pre-made lectures and then holding
weekly Q&A sessions, others have students watch videos before lecture and then
assign problems in class (this allows for
more 1-1 feedback that you typically get
in person). I am interested to see if such a
variety of methods within the department
will persist for the next few semesters or
if departments will eventually converge to
standard methods for online instruction.
ATG: In the future, what do you think
the role of online teaching will be, for
you, for your department, and for North
Carolina State?
JN: I have no idea what the future
holds! But I would guess that virtual
learning may quickly become central to
the day-to-day workings of a university.
Until a vaccine is developed, there is a
good chance we’ll be alternating between
in-person and online lectures. And some
people may begin to favor the online format over in-person meetings. It will be
interesting to see how this develops over
the next few years.
Rumors
from page 25
BTW have y’all noticed the Rumors
Blog? Caroline Goldsmith, Leah Hinds’
sister, posts the content for that and other
ATG articles. Rossana Morriello has
kept us apprised with what is happening
in Italy and I noticed that Rossana participated in a recent IET/Inspec webinar on
COVID-19 and the future of the academic
library. https://www.researchinformation.
info/news/webcast-covid-19-and-future-academic-library
continued on page 49
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
ATG Interviews Steven J. Bell — Part 2
Associate University Librarian for Research and Instruction Services,
Temple University Charles Library
by Donald T. Hawkins (Freelance Conference Blogger and Editor) <dthawkins@verizon.net>
W
hen you open up the morning
paper and the lead story on
the front page is about the
opening of a new university library,1 you
know something big is happening. By
coincidence, that very same day, I went
to Temple University, home of the new
Charles Library, to interview Steven
Bell. In this issue you will find part two of
my interview with Steven. Part one can be
found in ATG v.32#2 April 2020. The full
interview is also available online at https://
against-the-grain.com/2020/04/v32-2atg-interviews-steven-j-bell/. — DTH
DTH: Many public libraries are reinventing themselves and becoming community centers. They have makerspaces,
outreach programs, meeting rooms, etc.
for the community. Is the same thing
happening in the academic world?
SJB: I believe so. I think that many academic libraries see that they have a community mission as well. We are not putting
up walls and gates to keep the community
out. Rather, we are doing those kinds of
things for the people who are affiliated
with our university. You must keep in
mind that although the College of Engineering might have a makerspace and the
College of Communications might have a
great video production studio, you cannot
use those unless you are a student in those
schools. So it is up to the library to be
the place on campus that provides those
kinds of facilities for the entire community
much like a public library might provide
those kinds of space for everyone in the
community. Not everyone has access
to a private makerspace, so we see that
as being very important to our mission,
Against the Grain / June 2020
and we have all of those things. We have
extensive community programming, such
as lecture series or musical series that are
open to everybody that wants to come.
We also have our Loretta C. Duckworth
Scholars Studio, a digital scholarship
center for faculty and students from across
the university who want to learn how to
use digital scholarship techniques, and we
have expertise in how to do that.
We have a virtual reality and visualization studio in the library for any student
who wants to learn how to use those technologies and tools. So if you are a student
in the Tyler School of Art that wants to
learn how to use virtual reality for your
art, you can do that at the TU library.
Plus, we have a makerspace that has 20 3D
printers in it. We already have humanities
faculty coming in and showing their students how to use makerspace technology
to create 3D replicas of ancient artifacts.
DTH: Some of the public libraries
are getting into areas that an academic
library would not. I am thinking of the
Fayetteville, NY Public
Library that has sewing
or woodworking classes as
well as 3D printers (which
are the most popular).2 I
don’t see that coming into
academic libraries.
SJB: Probably not. The
reason we would not do that
is because we probably have
that expertise in other areas.
So our Tyler School of Art,
for example, has extensive resources
for people who want to learn how to do
woodworking, sewing, fashion design and
those sorts of things. It would not surprise
me if at some point our Scholar’s Studio
might bring in something like that. It is
really up to what people want; if students
said, “We want to start a sewing club and
need a place to put our sewing machines,”
we would provide that. A couple of years
ago, students came to us from our Gaming Club and said, “We need a place on
campus where we can have our monthly
meeting and gaming tournaments, and we
created a “Gaming Den” in the library;
our Scholar’s Studio will be where all
the gaming takes place.
I should mention that TU Library,
being in a highly densely populated urban area, does collaborate with the Free
Library of Philadelphia (FLP) which
has five branches in North Philadelphia
that are somewhat near to our campus (the
closest one is a mile away). For example,
we held a “sign up for a library card”
event here so our students and faculty
could get an FLP library card. That is
very valuable for our students and faculty
because, for example, we do not collect
any audio books. We therefore encourage
our students and faculty to get a FLP card
because they have extensive audio book
collections. We asked our FLP colleagues
if they would mind if we directed our students and faculty to sign up for an FLP
card, and they said, “Tell as many people
as you can!”
DTH: Do they have to be Philadelphia
residents?
SJB: The state is moving toward a
“state library card” to reduce barriers
between counties. Even though I am a
Montgomery County resident, there are
some things I can get from FLP when I
show my local library card because they
have cooperative agreements between
the counties. But the main thing is that
any student affiliated with TU can get an
FLP card. We collaborate with the FLP
branches in our area and talk together
about what kinds of offerings to have. In
this region of the city, the libraries do not
have makerspaces and sewing clubs like
continued on page 46
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45
Interview — Steven J. Bell
from page 45
they have in Fayetteville because they are
much more stretched for resources. So if
there are ways in which we can help out,
we are glad to do it.
DTH: Do you want to say anything
about the TU Press? It is now physically
located in the library.
SJB: Our relationship with the TU
Press3 was established about seven years
ago when the University Provost restructured it so that it reported to the Dean of
the library. Our Dean has been working to
create a much more collaborative relationship and make the Press an integral part of
the library. So when we were designing
the library one of the things we wanted to
do was to bring the Press into it.
DTH: Is there friction between the
Press and the library?
SJB: No. We maintain a productive
collaborative relationship.
DTH: They have different missions.
The Press must sell books and produce
income, and the library is giving out
information, not selling it.
SJB: That’s true. The library does use
some of its budget to support the TU Press
because, like the vast majority of university presses, the TU Press does not sell
enough books to cover all of its expenses.
It is very important that universities, when
they are able to do so, continue to support
the press so that we can have a press
which produces scholarly monographs
that no commercial publisher would ever
publish. The other thing that is great about
the Press is that we collaborate quite a bit
on programming. We have authors that
feature the content of their books and they
bring in interesting speakers.
One of the things that presses are
doing to become more self-supporting is
to produce more popular types of books;
two of our most popular books are the
encyclopedias of the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers. Those
46 Against the Grain / June 2020
types of works help support the scholarly
monographs. We have also created a new
imprint called North Broad Press that
is designed to publish only open access
books, and we already have eight books
in the pipeline. All books published by
North Broad Press will be available as
open textbooks. We will use the expertise of the Press to get the books through
the publishing process, getting rights to
materials, editing, and reviewing. The
expertise of the Press makes these types
of projects possible.
We are also not the only library that has
an ASRS, but one of the things that is very
different about our implementation of it is
that we are not using it as just a storage
facility. Some libraries do that, but they
do not have 40,000 students and 3,000
faculty on campus almost every day. We
believe that we are the first university that
is experiencing regular daily heavy use of
our ASRS to retrieve materials from a very
active circulating collection. Unlike some
libraries, our circulation has not plummeted but is rather healthy. Right now, we are
retrieving books from the ASRS at the rate
of one every four minutes. Other libraries
might retrieve 50 or 60 books a day, so
we are really putting our ASRS to the test
as an everyday collection that people use
heavily, and you can see that our hold shelf
is packed with requested books.
DTH: You told me that you can order
something and by the time you walk down
3 floors from your office, it is available
on the shelf.
SJB: Yes. We tell people that retrieval
can be between 20 minutes and 1 hour,
but we know that we are doing it much
quicker than that; we just did not want to
raise expectations when we first opened.
Retrieval times depend on the time of day
when a book is ordered; in the mornings
books can come very quickly. One of
the tradeoffs that people will always tell
you about these kinds of systems is that
you lose the serendipitous discovery of
materials, and we totally understand that.
But another thing that is very valuable to
people is their time, especially to students
and faculty. TU is a school of people
from middle-class families. Many of our
students have jobs or families to take care
of, and we want to maximize their time
for that; for example, if you are a student
at home, you could order the books you
want, then come to campus and as you are
walking to class, you stop at the library,
pick up your books, check them out at a
self-check machine, and be on your way.
How much time would it have taken that
student to search, write down all the call
numbers, go to the stacks, search for every
book, and perhaps find that one is missing?
That is a lot of time we are saving people
with a system like this.
DTH: If people really want to wander
the stacks and have serendipitous discovery, you have a whole 4th floor for them.
SJB: We do, and those are our latest
five years of books, and we weight that
collection towards more visual materials.
For the future we and other libraries are
working to have an online virtual browse
technology, so you can imagine being on
your computer, looking up a book, then
swipe to the left or right and see what
continued on page 47
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Interview — Steven J. Bell
from page 46
books are on either side of that book.
We are totally comfortable with people
requesting 20 books and when they look
at them, only taking the five that they need.
You could still retrieve books and browse
them in our hold area.
DTH: Another thing that I think is innovative is a single “one stop shopping”
help desk for anything.
SJB: We previously had three different
service desks: a reference desk, a circulation desk, and a media services desk. That
created a lot of confusion because people
did not know what desk to go to, or they
would go to one desk and be told that they
needed to go to another one, so we centralized all of the services at a single desk. No
matter what your task is on any day, you
can go to that one desk and the staff there
can resolve your need. Most people need
help with finding a book, paying a fine,
or reserving a room. These are repetitive
questions that are easily handled by our
one-stop desk staff.
DTH: So you do have fines?
SJB: Yes, although students pay no
fines until they reach $35. They can keep
borrowing books and accrue fines up to
$34.99. Few students ever reach $35 in
fines. Students must pay replacement
fees for lost or damaged material, but we
understand that students are struggling
and always work with them to develop
reasonable options because not everybody
can afford these costs.
DTH: We have mentioned open access already, but is there anything more
you would like to say about its role at TU?
SJB: We are strongly committed to
open access and have a staff member who
works with the scholarly communication
group in the library and also with the
Press, so that is a unique position. Few
libraries have a staff member working for
both the library and the Press who bridges
the two.
Against the Grain / June 2020
We are one of the libraries that ended our Big Deal with Elsevier in 2019.
We felt that we could no longer pay the
exorbitant amount of money that they
were requesting to keep our existing Big
Deal in place, so we decided to subscribe
to their publications individually, and it
seems to be working out very well. It has
saved us a large amount of money, and
the items that we are subscribing to are
our most heavily used items. We receive
few complaints from anybody about cancelled publications. We are also using the
Copyright Clearing House’s “Get It”
service. When people want an article from
a journal that we do not have, they can
use this service to get it within 24 hours.
We also obviously make heavy use of interlibrary loan. To my knowledge, since
we ended our Big Deal with Elsevier, we
have been able to fully meet the needs of
our community for scholarly information.
We also encourage our faculty to publish
in open access journals, celebrate Open
Access Week, Open Education Week, and
Fair Use Week, acknowledge faculty who
publish in open journals, offer an Author
Publication Charges fund, and promote all
these to our faculty and graduate students.
TU was one of the first universities to
start a textbook affordability project in the
library, and we consider it an important
part of our work. We started this project
in 2010, and since then we have had nine
cohorts consisting of ten faculty projects.
We provide them with a stipend to literally stop using commercial textbooks, as
well as expertise to help them identify
alternative materials which could be open
educational resources, articles in eBook
chapters from the library, or any number
of no-cost options. We have had faculty
use primary research materials in place of
textbooks. It does require the faculty to
do a bit of work and change the nature of
their course, and we believe they should
be compensated for the time they put into
that, which is why we provide stipends.
Conservatively, we have saved our students approximately $1 million. We have
heard frequently from students that they
don’t buy a textbook if it is too expensive
or that they drop the course. The bottom
line is that affordable learning content contributes to student retention and success,
and we want to support that.
DTH: Do you have an institutional
repository?
SJB: We have definitely been behind
the curve on that and are actually rolling
out TUScholarShare now. It is in beta
right now and should be fully implemented for the Spring 2020 semester.
We created and filled a position that is
heavily involved in the maintenance of
an institutional repository. I used it the
other day (I am on the beta team), and it
is super simple for people to add materials
to the repository.
DTH: Is that publicly available?
SJB: It will be. You could use it to find
our content. We are one of the libraries
that use the Blacklight discovery system,4
which uses open access software and is
used at several libraries. We customized
it to meet the needs of our researchers.
If you look at our web page and click on
“library search,” you are using the Blacklight system. It searches everything we
have, so when you get your results, you
see the books, articles, videos, special collections, our web site, our librarians with
subject expertise, and materials from the
TUScholarShare. So you will not have
to do a separate search on ScholarShare,
but you can just use the library search to
bring back results from it.
DTH: Let’s broaden our outlook
to the information industry in general.
What do you see as the major trends for
now and the future and are any of them
unique to a large academic institution
like TU?
SJB: As a major research library, we
still continue to make heavy use of all
types of information resources, in the
traditional databases as well as the more
contemporary ones. Part of the challenge
is that there seems to be no decline in the
number of databases that third parties are
developing and offering to libraries. We
are constantly doing trials of new types of
databases and services. I cannot foresee
any time in the near future when we would
not be providing access to the traditional
databases like EBSCO, ProQuest, Web
of Science, etc.
DTH: Do you use a traditional commercial discovery system?
SJB: Our library search using the
Blacklight system searches many of the
databases. I think the trends continue to
point to an increase in streaming video and
audio (Films on Demand and Kanopy are
very popular with educators). I anticipate
that we will see more of these kinds of
databases, but they are expensive, and we
have limited resources, so we will need to
make some very tough decisions.
Another major trend is the information industry showing greater awareness
of accessibility, privacy, and security
issues. We are only at the cusp of this; at
our university, we cannot even buy one
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47
Interview — Steven J. Bell
from page 47
of these products until it goes through an
accessibility review. Either it must be
fully accessible or the vendor must have
a demonstrated roadmap or pathway to
becoming accessible. If we want to buy
something that is not accessible, we must
demonstrate that it is the only product in
that category that is available for purchase,
or we can get an exclusion for a two year
period. The same thing now applies to
security. If we want to acquire certain
information systems, they must go through
a security audit.
DTH: Does that also include privacy?
SJB: Yes. Part of our security audit
requires that the vendors have liability
insurance covering a security breach of
their system, and if they are collecting
data about our students, they must divulge
this information. Our IT has very high
security concerns, the foremost of which
is cybersecurity. We must make absolutely
sure that the products in the information
industry will not open us up to cybersecurity liability, which will become a greater
concern across all the libraries and vendors
that we deal with.
We are looking forward to other new
kinds of exciting products, and I hope
the information industry will continue to
develop things in the artificial intelligence
area, such as voicebots and chatbots. We
obviously have concerns about privacy
and security, but on the other hand, how
can we make a better library experience
for all the people that use our technologies? The people now coming to our
university exist in a largely digital world.
Our students in the Class of 2023 were
born in 2001, so they literally have lived
all of their lives in front of screens. For
better or worse, that’s the information
landscape in which we exist and for which
we must adapt.
DTH: That raises staffing issues.
With all these new innovations and services, what additional skills and training
do you expect from your professional library staff? Is the MLS still good enough
for a professional position? What other
backgrounds and degrees do you see as
being desirable for TU as it staffs its new
library?
SJB: That could be a conversation
all to itself! You are absolutely correct
that to have a successful 21st century
library at a research university, you need
a fairly diverse staff in terms of the skill
48 Against the Grain / June 2020
sets that they bring to it. For example,
just to run Blacklight, you need a team of
programmers and developers to manage
those kinds of systems. In a building like
this, every study room is on an automatic
scheduling system so that rooms can be
reserved online. We therefore need to
have people that can make those systems
work. Our Access Services and Special
Collections staff had to undergo extensive
training to learn the ASRS system. Staff
are continuously learning new skills to
make sure our library customers have the
best possible experience.
DTH: Do you have an in-house IT
staff?
SJB: We do, and we collaborate with
the campus Information Technology Services as well, so if you look at research
data management services, data curation,
or data preservation, a contemporary
research library needs to know how to
provide those kinds of services such as
advising a faculty member how to curate
a large set of data. You can learn about
that in a library science program, but you
may need to collaborate with somebody in
IT who knows how supercomputers work
or how to set up storage systems for vast
amounts of data.
DTH: Or how to do natural language
processing or automated indexing.
SJB: I think library science programs
are changing to realize that you just cannot teach people all the technology skills
they need to have in a year or two. They
will be learned on the job. We need to
prepare students to have the soft skills
and the critical thinking and learning
skills so that they know that they are a
work in progress and still have a huge
amount to learn to be an effective librarian, technologist, or educator. That is
where continuing education will be critically important in the future for people
coming out of library schools.
I am currently an instructor for San
Jose State University teaching design
thinking, which is something they were
not teaching in library schools even a few
years ago. Increasingly, librarians are
presented with very challenging problems that don’t have obvious answers,
and you can use a technique like design
thinking to create a design challenge with
your colleagues, so that you have a more
sophisticated way of arriving at a good
thoughtful solution to a problem. Very
few library schools teach design thinking. It is an example of those kinds of
soft skills, leadership, and knowing how
to work in more diverse environments
that you will need in a library science
environment, as well as organization of
information and how certain technologies
work. Library science must change, and
there must be a clear path to continuing
education for future skill development.
It is not like 20 or 30 years ago when
you could graduate like I did, and your
skills were fine for 5 or 10 years because
nothing changed that much.
DTH: If there are other things you
would like to discuss, please mention
them now.
SJB: I would always advise librarians that if they have questions about
the design and nature of this library to
come and visit and experience it for
themselves. I think it is interesting that
many of the students and new librarians
that I encounter want to know how to
learn about the nature of this profession
and industry, and I tell them that you
learn what is happening by going out and
visiting libraries and librarians. If they
come here and experience it for themselves, they will see where innovation is
happening. This library is not designed
just for today’s students, but to be in a
position to serve people who will be here
two or three generations from now. We
can hardly imagine what skills library
workers will need in that future, but I
suspect that design practice and design
thinking will always contribute to our
professional success.
DTH: Speaking for myself as one
who has been in this industry for many
years, it certainly has been a fascinating experience to come here, tour this
library, see the technology, and have this
conversation.
We often close these interviews on
a personal note. What do you do for
downtime, relaxation, and spare time
(if there is any!)?
SJB: I try to get to the gym several
times a week and stay physically fit. I
think that is really critical, especially
when we have a lot of stress in our life.
Staying fit and eating healthy is very
important to me. When I am teaching
like I do now, I do not have much spare
time. People who know me know that I
do a lot of writing—two columns a month
for Library Journal which I have been
doing for 10 years now. Writing gets
you to think about things carefully, and
it forces me to stay current with what is
happening in librarianship, higher education, and technology. I also like taking
walks, going camping, hiking, gardening
continued on page 49
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
NOTE: This is the version without the landing page URL
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from page 48
and taking care of plants, and spending time with my family as much as
I can. I probably do not pay as much
attention to the work-life balance as
the people coming into the profession
now do; I came in at a different time
and am part of a different era and a
different culture. I seek to understand
the new colleagues coming in to the
profession; they have different ideas,
different interests, and different lifestyles. At TU, we offer flexible work
arrangements to allow staff a better
way to manage their lives, which can
be complicated now.
Donald T. Hawkins is an information industry freelance writer based
in Pennsylvania. In addition to blogging and writing about conferences
for Against the Grain, he blogs the
Computers in Libraries and Internet
Librarian conferences for Information Today, Inc. (ITI) and maintains
Against the Grain / June 2020
the Conference Calendar on the ITI
Website (http://www.infotoday.com/
calendar.asp). He is the Editor of
Personal Archiving: Preserving Our
Digital Heritage, (Information Today,
2013) and Co-Editor of Public Knowledge: Access and Benefits (Information
Today, 2016). He holds a Ph.D. degree
from the University of California,
Berkeley and has worked in the online
information industry for over 45 years.
Endnotes
1. “New library is Temple’s most
compelling work of architecture in
decades,” Inga Saffron, Philadelphia
Inquirer, September 19, 2019, Page 1
(also available at https://www.inquirer.
com/columnists/temple-university-library-inga-saffron-architecture-review-snohetta-20190919.html).
2. “Making and Community Engagement in the Library,” Donald T.
Hawkins, Information Today, Vol. 32,
Issue 8, Page 1.
3. http://tupress.temple.edu/
4. https://projectblacklight.org
Rumors
from page 44
This is from Publishers Weekly: The investment
firm KKR has completed its purchase of OverDrive.
On Christmas Eve, KKR announced it had reached
an agreement to acquire the digital reading platform
from the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten. The
deal was expected to be closed in the first quarter of
2020; it is not known whether the pandemic caused
a problem in completing the agreement. “With the
sale completed, we are excited to begin working
on the opportunities to grow our digital content
platform with KKR’s support,” said Steve Potash,
OverDrive founder and CEO, in a statement. In
addition to OverDrive, KKR owns RBmedia, one
of the largest independent publishers and distributors
of audiobooks. The OverDrive acquisition, like that
of RB, was overseen by Richard Sarnoff, one-time
executive at Random House who also was president of Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments
until leaving for KKR in 2011. Thanks to PW for
during the COVID-19 crisis, Publishers Weekly
is providing free digital access to the magazine,
archive, and website. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/industry-deals/article/83551-kkr-completes-overdrive-purchase.html
continued on page 85
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
49
LEGAL ISSUES
Section Editors:
Bruce Strauch (The Citadel) <strauchb@citadel.edu>
Jack Montgomery (Western Kentucky University) <jack.montgomery@wku.edu>
Legally Speaking — “McEngage” Disengages
by Bill Hannay (Partner, Schiff Hardin LLP, Chicago, IL) <whannay@schiffhardin.com>
O
n May 1, 2019, textbook publishers McGraw-Hill and Cengage
announced that they had signed
a merger agreement that would produce
“a broad range of best-in-class content
— delivered through digital platforms at
an affordable price,” worth $5 Billion.
Almost exactly a year later, on May 4,
2020, the parties announced that they had
mutually agreed to terminate their proposed “merger of equals.” They ascribed
the breakup to opposition from antitrust
regulators in the U.S. and U.K. who demanded substantial divestitures of course
offerings to avoid competition concerns.
In a press release about the termination
of the merger agreement, the head of the
DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Asst. Atty.
Gen. Makan Delrahim, stated:
The decision to abandon this merger
preserves competition in the market
for textbook publishing, an important industry in the education sector.
Cengage and McGraw-Hill’s
decision to abandon this merger
also preserves innovation, as the
two firms compete aggressively
in the development of courseware
technology.
At the time the merger was devised,
it would have combined the second and
third largest publishers of textbooks in the
United States in a market long dominated
by only three major textbook publishers.
The leading education company is Pearson
plc which owns educational media brands
including Addison-Wesley, Peachpit,
Prentice Hall, eCollege, Longman, Scott
Foresman, and others. McGraw-Hill
and Cengage were the second and third
largest textbook publishers in the U.S.,
respectively.
McGraw-Hill, headquartered in New
York City, is the second-largest publisher
of course materials in higher-education,
which include physical textbooks, eBooks,
and digital courseware. McGraw-Hill is
50 Against the Grain / June 2020
a private company, owned by a private
equity fund operated by Apollo Global
Management LLC.
Cengage had emerged from bankruptcy in the Spring of 2014, after filing
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in
2013. The company had struggled with the major trend
affecting textbook publishing, i.e., the move
from paper to digital
versions of learning
tools. The industry
has also suffered from
the vicious cycle of increased book pricing, prompting students
to save money by borrowing, renting, or
buying used texts. At the time, Cengage
vowed to focus on electronic versions of
its textbooks and developing digital study
guides and other educational supplements.
Following May 2019, the proposed
merger — which quickly was dubbed
“McEngage” — prompted opposition
from student groups and open market
advocates, such as SPARC, which in turn
prompted concerns among Democratic
Congressmen and led to investigations
into the potential effects of the merger
by the DOJ Antitrust Division and Great
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Critics of the merger asserted that the
combined firm would control between
40% and 50% of the college textbook
market in an era when major textbook
publishers had dramatically raised prices
in recent years. Between 2006 and 2016,
the price of textbooks had risen at four
times the rate of inflation.
During the winter of 2019-20, the
parties to the merger disclosed that the
transaction had been and remained under
review by the U.S. Department of Justice
as well as antitrust authorities in Australia,
New Zealand and Mexico and in certain
U.S. states. Early in March 2020, two
members of the U.S. House Antitrust
Subcommittee, Chairman David Cicilline
of Rhode Island and Commerce Chair Jan
Schakowsky of Illinois, wrote a letter to
the DOJ asking for increased scrutiny of
the deal. In addition to raising competitive
concerns about market concentration, the Congressmen expressed
concern that the merger would
put more student data into the
hands of one company. This
could increase the risk of
cybercrime but also potentially give the combined
entity “an insurmountable
lead in the development of machine learning tools for higher education.”
On March 24, 2020, the U.K.’s CMA
announced that it had decided to conduct
an in-depth review of the transaction,
referred to as a “Phase 2 investigation.”
The Phase 2 process provides for a 24week review, which is subject to further
extension by the CMA.
It became clear by the Spring of 2020
that McGraw-Hill and Cengage were prepared to divest (or spin off) a few titles or
subject areas where there was substantial
overlap, i.e., direct competition between
the parties, but it was equally clear that the
DOJ and the CMA were looking to have
the companies shed significantly more
overlap products. No lists were made
public, but press reports suggested that
the Justice Department had demanded
“significant divestitures of several dozen
courses” to address antitrust concerns.
And the CMA said that the companies had
offered divestitures that were “unlikely to
be sufficient in addressing its competition
concerns.”
In the end, no settlement could be
reached with the government agencies,
and the publishers decided to walk away
from the deal rather than go to court over
the dispute.
continued on page 51
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Legally Speaking
from page 50
Cengage issued a press release on May
4th, stating that the deal was scrapped
“by mutual agreement due to a prolonged
regulatory review process and the inability
to agree to a divestitures package with the
U.S. Department of Justice.” The company vowed to act, on a standalone basis,
“to continue to support the transition to
digital and help students save significant
money.” Looking ahead, as faculty and
administrators move their classes online,
Cengage is “now singularly focused on
ensuring the Cengage Unlimited subscription and our leading digital courseware platforms continue to deliver value
for students and faculty.”
codes to ‘inclusive access’ automatic textbook billing — still make it difficult for
students to get good grades, pay the bills,
and graduate on time.”
The Public Interest Research Group
(PIRG) which was one of the NGOs
opposing the transaction raised doubts
about the future benefits of the textbook
publishers’ individual efforts: “While
Cengage and McGraw-Hill won’t have
quite as much power to jack up prices on
course materials, the new wave of digital
textbook products out there — from access
William M. Hannay is a partner in the
Chicago-based law firm, Schiff Hardin
LLP, and is a frequent contributor to
Against the Grain and a regular speaker
at the Charleston Conference. He can
be reached at <whannay@schiffhardin.
com>.
Cases of Note — Copyright
Ripping off Lady Liberty
Column Editor: Bruce Strauch (The Citadel, Emeritus) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com>
Robert Davidson v. The United States.
United States Court of Federal Claims.
No. 13-942C, June, 2018.
Among the ceaseless waste of federal
dollars, this is something of a standout.
On the corner of Las Vegas and Tropicana Boulevards in Las Vegas, NV sits
the New York-New York Hotel & Casino.
And what is more New York than the
Statue of Liberty? The casino moguls
had to have one.
In the early 1970s, Davidson started in
the plaster business as a water boy hosing
down stucco plastered the day before.
Through luck and pluck, he advanced
through the ranks to executive VP, then left
to form Plaster Tech. A lion head design
in a mega-mansion got him into sculptor
and designer work.
He would start with foam for the initial
shape, hand-rasping it, then slaver on plaster for the final layer. And it was Vegas.
He soon was into the Egyptian theme of
the Luxor Hotel, shaping walls like pyramid blocks and building a 110-foot-tall
replica of the Sphinx.
He built the Joan of Arc at the Paris
Hotel in Vegas and a Mount Rushmore of
Dudley Do-Right characters at Universal
Studios in Orlando, Florida.
These successes
led to the Lady
Liberty job, a
model two-thirds
the size of the
Statue in New
York harbor.
Against the Grain / June 2020
The end result was terrific but not an
exact replica. He wanted it more modern,
more feminine. A picture of his motherin-law was a big influence, and a plaque
in her memory was placed at the crown.
Not since Whistler’s Mother has …
The cost for materials and labor ran
$152,000 with a profit of $233,000.
Which is not relevant to our case, but
you might want to change professions.
The US Postal Service introduced the
Forever Stamp in 2007. The first one was
an image of the Liberty Bell. Wanting
another patriotic image, they considered
flags, but those had been over-done.
Likewise, the USPS had used the Statue
of Liberty in 20 different images.
Nonetheless, culling through Getty
Images, they came across a photo of the
Statue of Liberty they liked and paid
$1,500 for a three-year non-exclusive
license to print a blizzard of stamps.
They were unaware the photo was of the
Vegas statue.
In their defense, if you Google it, the
difference does not jump out at you. Upon
study, the Vegas statue has a less severe
face. But that does become important.
And in CYA communiqués,
the USPS later insisted that
even had they known, they
would have used it anyway as they loved it so
much.(!)
And in a footnote, it is
stated that the USPS has run
a loss every year since 2006 on annual
revenues of $60 billion.
By the time the error was discovered,
a billion stamps had been printed. The
USPS scrambled to determine ownership
of the image while continuing to ship and
sell images.
Meanwhile, Davidson’s excited wife
returned from the post office presumably
having recognized her mother on the
stamp. Davidson filed suit.
So, Let’s Look at the Law.
The USPS asserted the statue was a
replica and had no original work. The
standard, however, is only a minimal
degree of creativity. See Feist Publ’ns.
Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340,
345 (1991).
Further, it does not need to be wholly
original. You can work off a prior creation
in a new and original way. Id.
Davidson testified he was hired to invoke the image, and he did it by making
her softer and more feminine. The fact
finder need only decide that the differences
are non-trivial. Which the court found.
The jaw is less massive and the face more
rounded. Indeed, these features were
appealing enough to cause the USPS to
select Davidson’s version.
But is it Fair Use?
The Fair Use defense is laid out in 17
U.S.C. § 107 (2012).
A. Purpose and character of the
use. Other than chopping and
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51
Cases of Note
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sizing it for the stamp, the USPS
did nothing to transform the
image which would put it under
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music,
Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994). But
in fact, the USPS never really
argued that, asserting instead that
the bulk of the money received
was the necessary payment for
sending mail.
They had, however, sold $4 billion of stamps for $140 million
profit, making this a purely commercial use — not educational or
charitable — and not subject to
fair use defense. Davidson takes
that one.
B. Nature of the Copyrighted Work.
The USPS argued Davidson’s
work was so derivative as to
receive only a thin copyright.
Davidson said the USPS wanted
the image for a reason, otherwise they would just print blank
stamps. And the statue had been
up since 1996.
Result: factor favors neither
party.
C. The Portion Used. This favors
Davidson, as the face was the
part the USPS wanted and they
used it all.
D. Effect of the Use. This favors
the USPS as Davidson had not
attempted to exploit his creation
so they didn’t disrupt a market of
his sales.
E. The Use Was Not Fair. Davidson
wins this one. The USPS used
it to earn revenue and collected
a whole bunch. USPS’s only
defense is they didn’t hurt Davidson very much.
So What Are the Damages?
USPS argued they never paid more
than $5,000 for art, and the artist ought to
consider it an honor to be used and revel
in all the publicity. Which is to say if they
had known Davidson wanted to sell, they
wouldn’t have given him squat.
On the other hand, if you wanted to
license their image for your product, well,
that’s different. Want to put the image of
a stamp on a million T-shirts, the USPS
would seek a running royalty at around
8% of total gross sales.
And there was a whole bunch of expert
testimony from both sides on how to value
the thing.
The court made an odd observation that
since the USPS lost money — its costs
exceeding its revenue — each stamp was
a small money-losing contract.
However, there are stamps on which
the USPS has pure profit — those kept by
collectors. And that was easy to measure,
because they weren’t used to move mail.
So they applied a 5% running royalty on
stamps never used.
Which rather seems like something they
did because the USPS had a clear record
of the number of unused stamps.
Which rendered Davidson damages of
$3,554,946.95.
Which is certainly precision.
Questions & Answers — Copyright Column
Column Editor: Will Cross (Director, Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center, NC State University Libraries)
<wmcross@ncsu.edu> ORCID: 0000-0003-1287-1156
QUESTION: A faculty instructor
asks, “Does using a platform like Zoom
impact ownership of my course materials?”
ANSWER: This is a question I
have heard a lot recently, and it gets at
two underlying issues that many faculty
instructors are currently grappling with.
The first is whether changes in the way
instruction is done will impact their rights
under university policy. The second is
whether a service like Zoom makes any
claim on their work.
The first question is
relatively straightforward,
but the answer depends on
local policy rather than
black letter copyright law.
Most (but not all) institutional copyright policies
vest ownership of instructional materials with faculty instructors based on
principles of academic
52 Against the Grain / June 2020
freedom rather than claiming that they are
works made for hire. In those cases, however, many institutions also claim greater
interest or outright ownership in materials
created with “unusual” or “exceptional”
use of institutional resources.
As the terms suggest, this claim is not
usually asserted based on normal use of
resources such as an office computer,
access to the library, or similar. Instead,
universities often claim ownership in instructional materials where a special grant
is provided or another special
benefit like course release
is offered. These policies
were often invoked or
even revised during the
great MOOC boom in the
early 2010s when universities provided substantial
labor and expertise, as
well as funding, to create
online courses that were
university-branded and
often launched with the hope they would
become dependable revenue streams.
As noted above, these claims based on
unusual or exceptional use of resources
do not typically apply when an instructor
simply uses a standard resource available
to anyone on campus. So, instructors
relying on an institutionally licensed
version of Zoom may not need to worry
about university ownership any more than
they do when they rely on an institutional
license for Microsoft Office or a course
management system like Moodle or Canvas. Because every institutional policy is
different, however, an instructor would be
advised to check out their local policy and
ask for clarification where needed.
The second part of this question may
be more complicated. Zoom, like most
online tools and services, comes wrapped
in a set of terms of use that can create an
additional layer of legal complexity. As
of this writing, Zoom’s terms of service do
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Questions & Answers
from page 52
not assert ownership as a condition of use
— indeed they explicitly state that users
retain copyright — just a nonexclusive
license needed to transmit users’ work to
their audience. Because those terms can
change, however, it is always advisable to
review these agreements or at least refer to
a resource such as Terms of Service; Did
Not Read (https://tosdr.org/) that reviews
and summarizes them.
This is, of course, general good practice
as we all explore new tools and services
whether they support streaming, plagiarism detection, or student learning. The
recent report from the Public Interest
Research Group (PIRG) on automatic textbook billing programs (https://uspirg.org/
feature/usp/automatic-textbook-billing)
offers a useful case study on the language
that is often built into these services and
the changes that can be negotiated by a
thoughtful administration.
QUESTION: A librarian asks, “What
did the Supreme Court decide in the recent Blackbeard case?”
ANSWER: In March, the Supreme
Court decided a case that should have
major implications for copyright holders
and users even though it was focused on
a narrow question about federalism. The
facts before the Court were irresistibly
romantic (for both headline writers and
the Justices as they drafted their opinions),
concerning The Queen Anne’s Revenge, a
long-lost pirate ship used by Blackbeard as
his flagship in the early 1700s. The ship
was lost at sea in 1718 and remained lost
for more than two hundred years until it
was discovered off the coast of Beaufort,
North Carolina in 1996. As the owner of
the wreckage, the state of North Carolina
hired a salvage company to recover the
remains of the ship. That salvage company in turn hired Frederick Allen, a local
videographer, to document the operation.
Allen registered copyright for the photographs and videos he took of the salvage
and offered a license, but North Carolina
declined the license, posting several of
the videos online and included some of
his photographs in a newsletter without
his permission.
As a copyright matter, the case was
relatively straightforward. Instead, the
arguments turned on North Carolina’s
claim to sovereign immunity, the general
rule that federal courts cannot hear suits
brought by individuals against nonconsenting states. North Carolina claimed
Against the Grain / June 2020
immunity from Allen’s suit and Allen
countered that sovereign immunity did
not apply to copyright infringement cases
based on a statute called the Copyright
Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA),
which provides that a state “shall not be
immune, under the Eleventh Amendment
[or] any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court” for
copyright infringement.
In March, a unanimous Supreme Court
decided Allen v. Cooper, Governor of
North Carolina, holding that Congress
lacked authority to abrogate the states’
immunity from copyright infringement
suits in the CRCA. Writing for the Court,
Justice Kagan noted that the Eleventh
Amendment has generally been understood to bar federal courts from hearing
a suit brought by any person against a
nonconsenting state but that suit may be
brought when two factors have been met.
First, Congress must have enacted “unequivocal statutory language” abrogating
the States’ immunity from the suit. In
addition, “some constitutional provision
must allow Congress to have thus encroached on the States’ sovereignty.”
The CRCA clearly included unequivocal statutory language abrogating state
immunity, so the core question was
whether Congress had the constitutional
authority to do so, either under Article
I or the Fourteenth Amendment. The
Court rejected both, in large part based
on its 1999 decision in Florida Prepaid
Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, an analogous case
considering state sovereign immunity for
patent infringement claims. Concluding
that Florida Prepaid “all but prewrote”
the Court’s decision, Justice Kagan held
that Congress did not have the authority
to limit sovereign immunity in cases of
copyright infringement. North Carolina
may rely on sovereign immunity and thus
it remains a bar to Allen’s suit.
While Justice Kagan wrote for a
unanimous court, two justices did write
concurrences. Justice Breyer, joined by
Justice Ginsburg, noted that he disagreed
with the decisions in both Florida Prepaid
and in this case but, “recognizing that
[his]longstanding view has not carried
the day,” he joined the opinion. Justice
Thomas also wrote a concurrence noting
that, while he agreed with the decision
itself, he did not feel bound by the precedent of Florida Prepaid in the way
that the majority or Justice Breyer did.
These concurrences offered two distinct
approaches to the importance of reliance
on precedent and may signal a deeper
disagreement on the Court, as we shall
see in the other major copyright decision
this term, discussed below.
For librarians, scholars, and publishers,
this case is important primarily as a reaffirmation of sovereign immunity. If you
follow copyright in higher education, you
may remember that sovereign immunity
plays a critical role in the (still ongoing,
twelve years later) Cambridge University
Press v. Patton case regarding fair use of
electronic course reserves at Georgia State
University. Because Georgia State was
able to rely on sovereign immunity the
plaintiff publishers were not able to sue for
damages, only injunctive relief. This meant
that the court did not adjudicate the original
copyright policy, which the court held to be
moot. Instead, the case has been contested
primarily based on a revised and more
pragmatic policy. So, while Allen v. Cooper
was decided on federalism grounds, it casts
a long shadow over copyright policy and
practice for all state institutions, particularly in the way they understand and calculate
risk when relying on fair use.
QUESTION: A legal publisher asks,
“What does the recent Supreme Court
decision about who owns copyright in
Georgia’s law mean for us?”
ANSWER: In another technical
but highly important case this spring,
the Supreme Court considered whether
annotations to Georgia’s statutes could
be protected by copyright in light of the
“government edicts doctrine.” Grounded
in the bedrock principle that citizens must
have free access to the law if they are presumed to know it, the government edicts
doctrine holds that government officials
empowered to speak with the force of law
cannot generally be the copyright holder
of works they create in the course of their
official duties.
In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, the
Supreme Court considered the copyright
status of the Official Code of Georgia
Annotated (OCGA). Assembled by a
Georgia state entity called the Code Revision Commission, the Code includes a
set of annotations developed by Matthew
Bender & Co., Inc., a division of the
LexisNexis Group, pursuant to a workfor-hire agreement with the Commission.
The annotations include resources such as
summaries of judicial decisions, opinions
of the state attorney general and relevant
scholarly and reference materials. Under
this agreement, Lexis enjoyed the exclusive right to publish, distribute, and sell
the OCGA.
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53
Questions & Answers
from page 53
Relying on the government edicts
doctrine, the nonprofit Public.Resource.
Org (PRO) argued that the OCGA was not
protected by copyright and posted a digital
version on various websites where it could
be downloaded by the public without
charge. In response, the Commission sued
PRO on behalf of the Georgia Legislature
and the State of Georgia for copyright
infringement. While PRO argued that
the OCGA was not eligible for copyright
under the government edicts doctrine,
Georgia argued that the annotations should
not be covered by the doctrine and were
eligible for protection because they did not
have the force of law and were drafted by
a private party.
Writing for the Court, Justice Roberts
concluded that, “in light of the Commission’s role as an adjunct to the legislature
and the fact that the Commission authors
the annotations in the course of its legislative responsibilities, the annotations
in Georgia’s Official Code fall within the
government edicts doctrine and are not
copyrightable.”
Where the Blackbeard case was
written by a unanimous Court, this case
was decided by a narrow 5-4 majority.
Justice Thomas, joined by two others,
returned to the theme he sounded in Cooper, lamenting that “an unwillingness to
examine the root of a precedent has led to
the sprouting of many noxious weeds that
distort the meaning of the Constitution
and statutes alike.” Justice Ginsburg,
joined by Justice Breyer, affirmed the
importance of precedent but dissented
on other grounds.
This case is great news for libraries,
publishers, and everyone who values
access to the law. Taking a step back,
however, both this and the Blackbeard
case suggest that a significant schism
is growing on the Court related to how
much deference should be given to precedent — previous decisions made by the
Court on relevant issues. As these battle
lines are drawn in copyright cases, it will
be worth watching to see how a crop of
newer Justices defers — or does not defer — to precedent in high-profile cases
revisiting issues that had been considered
settled for many years.
ATG Special Report — Does the
Repository Reflect the Institution?
by Gail McMillan (Professor, University Libraries, Virginia Tech) <gailmac@vt.edu>
Author’s Note: Gail McMillan is a professor on the faculty
of Virginia Tech Libraries and Director of Scholarly Communication. Correspondence concerning this article should be
emailed to <gailmac@vt.edu>. — GM
Abstract
The IR gives the university both a digital library and a showcase so the IR should accurately reflect its home institution.
Assessing IRs from the perspective of its resources, however, is
an as yet unused frame of reference. The goal of this initial study
was to investigate whether the IR represents the scholarship and
activities of its home institution by comparing a microcosm of
the IR to the same microcosm at the institution. The IR can be
correlated with the university by using a controlled vocabulary
to search each source and comparing the percentage of hits.
This study looked at VTechWorks, the IR at Virginia Tech, as a
whole and through three lenses, that of graduate students’ ETDs,
the faculty’s scholarly publications, and the academic units’
web-accessible publications. Using the LGBTQ microcosm, the
percentage of hits for a controlled vocabulary showed a good
correlation, demonstrating that the IR is representative of the
university for this microcosm. Can we extrapolate and say this
IR accurately represents its university?
Does the Repository Reflect the Institution?
Since institutional repositories (IRs)1 have been in use for
about 20 years, it’s time to address how well they reflect their
home institutions. Within the wealth of articles about IRs, there
is little attempt to assess the relationship of IR content to the
scholarship and activities of its institution as an indicator of the
value of the IR. We do not know if IRs have attained Clifford
Lynch’s vision of hosting “the intellectual works of faculty and
54 Against the Grain / June 2020
students — both research and teaching materials and also documentation of the activities of the institution itself in the form of
records of events and performance and of the ongoing intellectual
life of the institution.” (2003, p.2) Assessing IR content now is
also appropriate in light of the COAR (Confederation of Open
Access Repositories, 2017, p.4) recommendation that “The next
generation repository... is resource-centric, making resources the
focus of its services and infrastructure.”
Among my responsibilities at Virginia Tech Libraries, I
oversee the IR, VTechWorks, established in 2012. VTechWorks
had about 70,000 items at the time of this study (April/May
2019). About 96% of those items were publicly available and
about 85% were textual. Members of the university community
largely created these works, but about 10% were created by others
about Virginia Tech (e.g., Condolence Archives) or related to
university interests (e.g., New River Symposium). VTechWorks
is highly focused on research and scholarship, but also hosts academic unit publications, governance and historical documents,
etc. Most items were born digital, but many items have been
scanned and OCR’d.
IRs have not been developed like library collections by subject
experts. IRs are not dependent on money to purchase items, but
on people’s time to locate, deposit, and describe items. VTechWorks has been populated in a variety of ways. For example,
some faculty voluntarily deposit directly or through integrated
systems (e.g., Elements). Mandatory ETD (electronic theses
and dissertations) deposits come through the online graduate
school system, and some courses require students to deposit
final projects. VTechWorks staff deposit through casual (e.g.,
reading VT news) and organized systems (e.g., OA Subvention
Fund and SWORD protocol-captured articles).
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Does the Repository Reflect the Institution?
from page 54
To determine whether VTechWorks is representative of
Virginia Tech, I chose to study a microcosm2 of VTechWorks,
anticipating that it might encapsulate the characteristics of the
repository as a whole. The microcosm I chose to study was
influenced in part by articles and presentations I read and heard
that addressed questions about diversity within the academy. At
the 2017 CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) fall membership meeting, Amanda Rust from Northeastern University
Library, presented “Design for Diversity,” a grant funded project
that focused on ways in which information systems embody and
reinforce cultural norms (e.g., data models that enforce strict
gender binaries) and addressed designing systems that account
for diverse cultural materials.
In “The Hubris of Neutrality in Archives,” Sam Winn (2017,
p.2), at Virginia Tech Libraries, made several salient points,
including “Archivists contribute to the omission or erasure of
historically marginalized groups in the archives.” And, a “radically inclusive historical record” will not happen by accident.
Rebekah Scoggins (2018), a librarian at Leander University,
authored “Broadening Your Library’s Collection: Implementing
a LGBTQIA Collection Development Project.” She determined
that her library was not meeting the needs of its users because
the LGBTQIA collection was out-of-date and incomplete. It
struck me as a well-aimed study but one that was limited because it only considered the traditional library collection, that is
purchased books, serials, multimedia, etc., but did not consider
the content of the IR.3
Because of these works and the dearth of articles about
IR content assessment, I chose to conduct a study that might
also help me learn whether VTechWorks was contributing to
the omission of works of marginalized people or providing an
inclusive record. I analyzed the microcosm of LGBTQ works
and compared the IR findings to the output of the university as
indicated by its website.
I created a list of search terms by compiling terms and phrases
from academic and community resources. [Appendix A — see
http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085] I eliminated some terms
that historically had different meanings (e.g., gay and queer)
or that were too broad (e.g., discrimination). However, I did
not discard biological terms because, though they sometimes
refer to plants or animals, they appeared in each studied collection. The resulting list had 155 terms.4 [Appendix B — see
http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085]
To refine my investigation, to help understand who was doing
the scholarship and research in the LGBTQ microcosm, and
to help put the data in context, I searched the terms across the
university, the IR and within three of the IR’s actual and virtual
collections: graduate students’ ETDs, peer-reviewed faculty
publications,5 and academic units’ (called “colleges” at VT)
web publications. These collections targeted the scholarship
of graduate students and faculty as well as information often
aimed at the general public or alumni from the colleges and
the university.
129 of the 155 terms searched got 21,455 hits in the 71,734
items in VTechWorks (VTW). To search the university website,
I entered the terms directly in Google (i.e., www.google.com) by
using this search strategy: [term] site:vt.edu -site:vtechworks.lib
-site:theses.lib.vt.edu. In what I’m calling the “VT collection”
(VTC), 109 of the 155 terms got 84,793 hits.
Against the Grain / June 2020
I did not compare the number of hits per se because of the
radically different sizes and ages of the collections. For example,
the ETD collection had 32,557 works with LGBTQ terms dating
from 1910. In the virtual faculty research collection (FRC) of
3,870 items, these terms dated from 1989, and in the virtual
college collection (CC) of 14,590 items, these terms dated from
1972. Because of these discrepancies and for comparison purposes, I calculated the percentage of hits for each term within
each collection.
An example of the beginning of the alphabet displaying
the percentage of hits in VTC and in the three targeted collections in VTW when the term was found is available at
http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085 (Table 1).
In FRC, 40 of the 155 terms got hits, with the top 10 terms
getting 86% of the hits. There were two outliers in FRC. “Gender
bias” was used much more (9.3%) by faculty than any other collection (.6% and 1.9%). FRC used “sexual orientation” twice as
many times as ETDs (5.9% v 2.9%). However, CC and VTC, the
most public-focused collections, used it much more (13.8% each).
In CC, 89 of the terms got hits, with the top 10 terms getting
81% of the hits. “Sexual orientation” got more than twice the
hits as FRC and more than four times the hits as ETDs. VTC,
however, used “gender identity” and “gender expression” about
twice as often as it was used in CC, FRC, and ETDs.
The term “gender” got nearly 50% of the hits in ETDs, leaving
the remaining 114 terms with between 3.5% and 0.01% of the
hits. “Gender” also got about 50% of the hits in FRC and CC,
though only 39% in VTC and VTW overall.
The same five terms got the most hits in VTW and VTC. Only
eight terms got more than 2% of the hits in VTC. Gender, sexual
orientation, gender identity, gender expression — the top four
terms, were the only terms in VTW that got more than 2% of the
hits. The top 20 hits in VTC varied by <2% with VTW, except
for “sexual orientation” which got 4.7% more hits in VTW. See
http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085 for Table 2 comparing the 20
most used terms in VTW and VTC.
VTC had three terms that did not appear in VTW: gender expansive, homonormative, and gender creative. At
http://hdl.handle.net/10919/97085 see List of the 23 terms used in
VTW but not in VTC. Ten of these terms only appear in ETDs.
Two terms, cisnormative and diverse sexualities and genders,
appeared only in CC. Analyzing the terms that did not appear
in a collection was not necessarily meaningful due to the very
low number of hits (1-2).
Using VTC as the measure of scholarship and activities at the
university, and comparing the percentage of hits in VTW with the
percentage of hits in VTC, the data provides some evidence that
there is a positive correlation between the IR and the university,
at least, when studying the LGBTQ microcosm.
To speculate how well VTechWorks represents the scholarship
and activities of Virginia Tech, I considered, first, a difference in
frequency of <1% to indicate that the works in the IR’s LGBTQ
microcosm appropriately represent the university for this microcosm. VTechWorks and VTC had 109 terms in common.
Only four terms appeared slightly more frequently in VTC:
lesbian (+1.2%), “gender identity” (+1.3%), gender expression
(+1.5%), and LGBTQ (+1.6). 95% of the terms appeared in both
collections with about the same frequency (i.e., <1% difference
in hits), which may indicate that the IR’s LGBTQ microcosm
adequately represents the university’s scholarship and activities
in this microcosm during this study.
continued on page 56
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55
Does the Repository Reflect the Institution?
from page 55
• ETDs and VTC had 99 terms in common. 89% of the
terms appeared with about equal frequency.
• FRC and VTC had only 40 terms in common, with 73%
of the terms appearing with about equal frequency.
• CC and VTC, the two most public-oriented collections,
had 85 terms in common. 87% of the terms appeared
with about equal frequency.
If instead of a <1% difference, we consider <2% difference to
be about the same frequency of appearance, no terms appeared
more frequently in VTC than VTW. One term appeared more
frequently in VTW. Therefore, 99% of the terms appeared with
about the same frequency so the IR’s LGBTQ microcosm is
representative of the university’s scholarship and activities in
this microcosm during this study.
• ETDs and VTC: 97% of the terms appeared with about
the same frequency.
• FRC and VTC: 90% of the terms appeared with about
the same frequency.
• CC and VTC: 95% of the terms appeared with about
the same frequency.
As a digital library and a showcase for the university, the
IR should accurately reflect the scholarship and activities of its
home institution. This study was a preliminary investigation into
whether the resources available from VTechWorks are aligned
with scholarship and activities at Virginia Tech. Not finding
any guidance in the literature for assessing the contents of institutional repositories, I chose to investigate whether comparing
the percentage of hits on a common list of terms used by authors
at the university website and the IR would indicate a correlation
and, therefore, a true reflection of the institution by its IR. Looking into the LGBTQ microcosm also gave me a chance to see
whether an unconscious bias had crept in. With a 95% - 99%
correlation, I feel confident saying that in the LGBTQ microcosm,
VTechWorks accurately reflects Virginia Tech.
This preliminary investigation should be followed by studies of other microcosms in other IRs and universities as well
as VTechWorks, before speculating that the IR truly reflects
the university. The information community will need to agree
on what percentage of similarity indicates a high enough
correlation to consider the IR representative of its university.
Readers feedback on the research methods as well as potential
collaborators who would consider conducting similar studies
at their institutions and comparing results among institutions,
would be very welcome.
References
Confederation of Open Access Repositories. (2017). Next
Generation Repositories. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://
www.coar-repositories.org/activities/advocacy-leadership/working-group-next-generation-repositories/.
Crow, Raym. (2002). “The case for institutional repositories: A SPARC position paper,” SPARC. Retrieved June 28,
2017, from http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/papers-guides/
the-case-for-institutional-repositories (brief) http://sparc.arl.
org/sites/default/files/ir_final_release_102.pdf (full version).
Lynch, Clifford. (2003). “Institutional repositories: Essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age,” ARL
56 Against the Grain / June 2020
Bimonthly Report 226. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://
www.cni.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/02/arl-br-226-LynchIRs-2003.pdf.
Plutchak, T. Scott and Moore, Kate B. (2017). “Dialectic:
The aims of institutional repositories.” Serials Librarian 72.
Retrieved June 28, 2017, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0361
526X.2017.1320868.
Rust, A. (2017). Design for diversity: Towards inclusive information systems for cultural heritage. Coalition for Networked
Information [presentation] Dec. 9, 2017. Retrieved June 28,
2017, from https://www.cni.org/topics/assessment/design-for-diversity-towards-inclusive-information-systems-for-cultural-heritage.
Scoggins, R. (2018). Broadening your library’s collection:
Implementing a LGBTQIA collection development project.
C&RL News, 79(3), 114-116, 126. Retrieved June 28, 2017,
from https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.3.114.
Winn, S. (2017). The hubris of neutrality in archives. On
Archivy. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://medium.com/
on-archivy/the-hubris-of-neutrality-in-archives-8df6b523fe9f.
Appendix A — Sources of LGBTQ Vocabulary
County of San Mateo [California], LGBTQ Commission.
LGBTQ Glossary. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://lgbtq.
smcgov.org/lgbtq-glossary.
Scoggins, R. (2018). Broadening your library’s collection:
Implementing a LGBTQIA collection development project.
C&RL News, 79(3), 114-116, 126. Retrieved June 28, 2017,
from https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.3.114.
SumOfUs. Progressive’s Style Guide. Retrieved June 28,
2017, from https://www.alumni.vt.edu/.../Diversity%20Language%20Style%20Guide.pdf.
Virginia Tech. Safe Zone [Training 101]. Core Vocabulary.
Retrieved June 28, 2017, from https://ccc.vt.edu/resources/
safe_zone.html.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Stonewall Center. LGBTQIA+ Terminology. Retrieved June 28, 2017, from
https://www.umass.edu/stonewall/sites/default/files/documents/
allyship_term_handout.pdf.
Please Note: This article was originally intended to be part
of Against the Grain’s IR themed issue “IRs R Cool Again,”
ATG v.31#5, November 2019.
Endnotes
1. I prefer Clifford Lynch’s broad definition: “a set of services
that a university offers to the members of its community for the
management and dissemination of digital materials created by the
institution and its community members.” (p2) to Raym Crow’s:
“digital collections capturing and preserving the intellectual output
of a … university community.” (brief, p1)
2. “a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in
miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much
larger” from Dictionary, an Apple Inc. application for macOS.
3. I later learned that Leander University does not have an IR.
4. In an attempt to reduce wordiness in this article, when I use
“terms,” I mean both terms and phrases.
5. Articles are from Elements, SWORD and those supported by our
Open Access Subvention Fund.
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
And They Were There
Reports of Meetings — 39th Annual Charleston Conference
Column Editors: Ramune K. Kubilius (Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center, Northwestern University Feinberg
School of Medicine) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>
and Sever Bordeianu (Head, Print Resources Section, University Libraries, MSC05 3020, 1 University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001; Phone: 505-277-2645; Fax: 505-277-9813) <sbordeia@unm.edu>
Issues in Book and Serial Acquisition, “The Time has Come ... to Talk of Many Things!” Charleston
Gaillard Center, Francis Marion Hotel, Embassy Suites Historic Downtown, and Courtyard
Marriott Historic District — Charleston, SC, November 4-8, 2019
Charleston Conference Reports compiled by: Ramune K. Kubilius (Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center,
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine) <r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>
Column Editor’s Note: Thanks to all of the Charleston Conference attendees who agreed to write short reports highlighting
sessions they attended at the 2019 Charleston Conference.
Attempts were made to provide a broad coverage of sessions,
but there are always more sessions than there are reporters.
Some presenters posted their slides and handouts in the online
conference schedule. Please visit the conference site, http://www.
charlestonlibraryconference.com/, and link to selected videos,
interviews, as well as to blog reports written by Charleston
Conference blogger, Donald Hawkins. The 2019 Charleston
Conference Proceedings will be published in 2020, in partnership with Purdue University Press: http://www.thepress.purdue.
edu/series/charleston.
Even if not noted with the reports, Videos of most sessions as
well as other video offerings like the “Views from the Penthouse
Suite” interviews are being posted to the Charleston Conference
YouTube Channel as they are completed, and are sorted into
playlists by date for ease of navigation.
In this issue of ATG you will find the third installment of 2019
conference reports. The first two installments can be found in ATG
v.32#1, February 2020, and v.32#2, April 2020. We will continue
to publish all of the reports received in upcoming print issues
throughout the year. — RKK
LIVELY DISCUSSIONS
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2019
I Don’t Want to Go Among Mad People: Adventures in
Establishing Good Communication Between Subject
Librarians and Technical Service Departments in a Large
Academic Library — Presented by Jennifer Mezick
(University of Tennessee), Elyssa Gould (University of
Tennessee) — https://sched.co/UZRN
Reported by Chris Vidas (Clemson University)
<cvidas@clemson.edu>
The fun and provocative session title suggested that an engaging and informative session would follow, and the presenters
did not disappoint. Gould and Mezick tackled several serious
issues surrounding communication between library departments,
but they incorporated a refreshing amount of humor into the
discussion. They used polling software to collect and display
Against the Grain / June 2020
responses from the audience members in real-time. It was
reassuring to learn that many libraries are encountering similar
problems, and it was beneficial to hear the perspectives of the
presenters as well as those in attendance. This approach made it
clear that librarians within distinct units often make assumptions
or have false impressions about the work and the roles of colleagues within other units. The discussions that occurred during
the question and answer portion provided some valuable insight,
but throughout their presentation, Gould and Mezick highlighted a few key concepts to help overcome feelings of separation
between siloed departments. Training goes a long way toward
learning more about the work that colleagues perform to help
eradicate negative or flawed attitudes. Any opportunity to meet
with colleagues will further strengthen relationships between
units and enhance collaborative endeavors. Lastly, it is important
to recognize that most library units are equally busy, and delays
in workflows can often be traced to issues occurring outside the
library. Communication issues are not limited to large academic
libraries, so the guidance offered by the presenters should prove
to be beneficial for any libraries that are attempting to address
these difficulties.
(The session’s slides and a handout can be found in Sched.)
Library Collections: Creatively Adjusting Budgets to
Invest in Open Content and Research Infrastructure
— Presented by Julia Gelfand (University of California,
Irvine), Roger C. Schonfeld (Ithaka S+R), Tom Hickerson
(University of Calgary), Barbara Dewey (Penn State
University) — https://sched.co/UXst
Reported by Susannah Benedetti (University of North
Carolina Wilmington) <benedettis@uncw.edu>
Academic researchers’ needs are changing rapidly, moving beyond library collections and services to expertise with new tools
to mine, access, and create new forms of data through curation,
analytics and visualization, digitization, metadata, rights management and dissemination, and collaborative spaces. How can
libraries meet these needs? Collection budgets are being tapped
as the definition of “a library resources” evolves, but funds are
also needed for skills training, positions, equipment, and spaces.
Sources include personnel budgets, campus budgets, grants,
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57
And They Were There
from page 57
development funds, and advancement campaigns. However, if
libraries remain in big deals and pay the same publishers through
different channels, are they exacting real change towards opening
up research content? Is a more intentional strategy to leave the
big deals and redeploy funds straight to new tools and support
for university presses and campus publishers to provide OER and
OA services? Libraries also face reorganization to shift value
from access to knowledge creation. Librarians have concerns,
not able to see their professional role “on the other side.” New
roles will not replace traditional tenets, but they will grow and
afford libraries the opportunity to support unmet faculty research
needs and expand libraries’ value in an age of increasingly open
content and infrastructures.
Print Collections as Battleground? Replacing Conflict
with Conversations in the Use of Library Spaces —
Presented by Sarah Tudesco (Yale University Library),
Brad Warren (University of Cincinnati), Boaz NadavManes (Lehigh University), Michael Meth (Florida State
University) — https://sched.co/UZR8
Note in Sched: Georgie Donovan, Associate Dean,
Collections and Content Services, William and Mary, also
contributed to this session but was unable to attend and
present in person.
Reported by Jeanne Cross (University of North Carolina
Wilmington) <crossj@uncw.edu>
Each of the presenters described projects involving weeding
or moving print collections as a result of proven space needs in
their libraries. The session focused on pushback and communication problems encountered during the projects and steps that
were taken to resolve conflict. Fifteen minutes were saved at the
end of the presentations for a lively question and answer section.
Themes of feeling under attack were discussed. Despite due
diligence, some imagine disasters occurring, taking projects that
were not supposed to be a big deal into unexpected areas. A seemingly small project can morph in the minds of others into a symbol
reflecting larger campus problems. Misunderstandings and the
spread of misinformation can be frustrating, but time, patience,
and dialog are keys to smoothing the way for successful change.
Specific recommendations came out of these experiences.
Engage your communities as early as possible. Keep messaging
simple. Consider external politics as well as internal politics.
Finally, find allies and create many opportunities for conversation
and communication.
Questions after the presentation included discussion of communication and events around library collections and questions
about long-term strategies
for print collections. The
Future of Print project at
Arizona State University
https://lib.asu.edu/futureprint was referenced.
The Scholarly Kitchen Live-Chat With the Chefs —
Presented by Lynnee Argabright (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill), Todd Carpenter (National
Information Standards Organization (NISO)), Melanie
Dolechek (moderator, Society for Scholarly Publishing
(SSP)), Joe Esposito (Clarke & Esposito), Gwen Evans
(OhioLINK), Jasmin Lange (Brill), Judy Luther
(Informed Strategies LLC) — https://sched.co/UZRc
Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University,
Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center)
<r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>
The session, moderated by Dolechak, featured a scripted
questions and interactive discussion with a number of the “Chefs”
who write regularly for The Scholarly Kitchen blog of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP). In one round, Carpenter
talked about the interactive digital ecosystem, transformed by
the research data landscape. Increasing numbers of repositories
(research data sets, etc.). Publishers don’t serve their community
if they limit to journal articles. Per Lange, disciplinary distances
sometimes mean that bells and whistles desired in one discipline
are not needed in another (for example, humanities projects
may not fit into a box or platform). New research questions
generate new tools: fund and invest in collaboration and open
science. Argabright, a library school student and guest blogger,
already attended the SSP conference as a guest and was now in
Charleston. She shared that library schools emphasize system
analysis and user experience. Products should be useful and
productive to stakeholders; vendors should collaborate, not
overlap. Per Esposito, tools that tie into content are mostly
commercial, though some independent consortia develop some.
Per Evans, format, not discipline is the driver. In her consortium
(OhioLink), supercomputers are in play and they require security
experts. Luther talked about next content forms, and later-about
scenarios seen in Retraction Watch, e.g., a society that took three
years to retract a publication. Discussion time was lively: about
scholarly communication (with no global systems) and scholarly
communities (with loosely connected networks). Comments
with future debate potential: Skepticism about new roles for
librarians (Evans comment); Open Access: Is it the “Jonestown”
of libraries? (Esposito comment); does OA go against library
self-interest? Never dull, the session with the chefs is a welcome
(now annual?) addition to the Charleston Conference menu.
A Springboard to OER Success: How One State’s Higher
Education Agencies and Academic Libraries are Working
in Tandem to Create Greater Awareness of the Value of
OER — Presented by Jennifer L. Pate (University of
North Alabama), Ron Leonard (Alabama Commission
on Higher Education), Katherine Quinnell (Athens State
University) — https://sched.co/UZQz
Reported by John Banionis (Villanova University)
<john.banionis@villanova.edu>
In this interactive session, Pate and Quinnell explained
how they worked with Leonard to secure grant funding supporting OER initiatives at their respective campuses during
continued on page 59
58 Against the Grain / June 2020
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And They Were There
from page 58
the 2018-2019 academic year. At University of North Alabama, the grant funding was used to encourage faculty to
adopt or create OERs for their Spring courses, and student
satisfaction measurably increased with the OER used in the
Spring compared to the traditional textbook used in the previous Fall. Additionally, funding was used to sponsor OER
presentations and workshops for faculty, including an ACRL
Roadshow presentation from Will Cross of North Carolina
State University (NCSU). At Athens State University, the
grant funding was spent on staff time supporting the creation of OERs based on freely available online medieval
manuscripts as source material. At both institutions, survey
statistics, data on OER efforts, and projected student savings
were used to justify additional funding requests from internal
and external sources. Attendees offered a lively exchange of
questions and their own OER successes, including partnering
with university presses, creating OER repositories, and using
OER for tenure and promotion considerations.
The Time Has Come for eBooks, or Has It? — Presented
by Gabrielle Wiersma (University of Colorado Boulder),
Leigh Beauchamp (ProQuest) — https://sched.co/UZQt
Note: Two student eBook users joined the panelists Sai
Gunturu, an undergraduate at the University of Michigan
Flint, and Emmie Mai, a graduate student at The Citadel.
Reported by Jennifer Fairall (Siena College, Standish
Library) <jfairall@siena.edu>
The panelists discussed the past, present, and future
of eBooks. Although eBooks try to replicate their print
equivalents, eBooks can vary quite a bit from the print version
in pagination, fonts, conversion of footnotes to endnotes,
platform, availability, licensing, compatibility, DRM, and
other nuances that affect the content. The student panelists
shared perspectives on their own eBook versus print usage.
Generally, students prefer print for textbooks and leisure
reading because they tend to focus and concentrate better. They
will use eBooks on their laptops or library desktop computers
for research papers but tend not to download eBooks on
mobile devices. Students prefer not to sign up for individual
platform accounts to take notes or use other eBook features
like highlighting, not because of privacy concerns but because
they are not sure how to get back to those notes, do not want
another password to remember, and do not want more emails.
ProQuest collaborates with
libraries and end-users to
add or remove features to
improve the platform. Has
the time come for eBooks?
It depends on what the book
is being used for. Print
books and eBooks go hand
in hand.
The Value of Video: Accessibility, Streaming, and the 21st
Century Library — Presented by Kerri Goergen-Doll
(Oregon State University), Chris Dappen (Kanopy), Ryan
Wilkins (Kanopy) — https://sched.co/Uy8C
Note: Shannon Spurlock, (Sales Director, Kanopy)
spoke in place of Chris Dappen (Director of
Customer Success, Kanopy).
Reported by Kelly Singh (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University) <robinsk2@erau.edu>
Goergen-Doll, Spurlock, and Wilkins presented on the
benefits and challenges of providing streaming video through
the library. While streaming video was merely a blip on the
radar of libraries ten years ago, today many librarians find that
demand of streaming content outpaces budgets. Spurlock
outlined research on streaming video, noting a 256% increase
in demand for Kanopy content from 2016 to 2019. Research
additionally shows that video supports learning outcomes and
learning memory. Goergen-Doll reported that the successful
streaming video collection at Oregon State University (OSU)
mirrors these findings. OSU relies on streaming video to support
users on their large e-campus and finds that streaming video provides needed accessibility options and supports multiple learning
modalities for all students. Wilkins next shared an analysis of
how users at OSU interact with streaming offerings, with statistics showing that users are watching videos that correspond to
curricular offerings at OSU and enhance their educational canon.
Panelists concluded by discussing budgeting for streaming video.
Spurlock suggested partnering with others on campus, such as
disability services, individual colleges, or faculty to provide
streaming content. Kanopy reported that they are exploring a
price-capped program to keep streaming costs for libraries stable.
CONCURRENTS
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2019
Begin at the Beginning: Revamping Collection
Development Workflow — Presented by Jennifer Mezick
(University of Tennessee), Elyssa Gould (University of
Tennessee) — https://sched.co/UZSF
Reported by Alexis Linoski (Georgia Institute of Technology)
<alexis.linoski@library.gatech.edu>
This session presented how the University of Tennessee
restructured their collection development workflows to better
meet the needs of the library. Based on feedback from within
the library and observed needs, a Collections Committee was
established with the charge of reviewing new resources, large
one-time or recurring resources and questionable resources. The
Committee has two co-chairs and representatives from the various subject areas. Resources over $3,000 are reviewed by the
committee, which also maintains a list of priorities, but available
funds can affect what gets purchased, sometimes overriding the
priority.
A standard process was established for requesting new resources (managed via a form), regular communications to the
continued on page 60
Against the Grain / June 2020
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
59
And They Were There
from page 59
library were established (with a standard format) and a vendor
information form was developed to be sent to vendors to request
all needed information for trials and purchases.
These forms and the communication template were uploaded
to Sched and are well worth a look.
“The Evolution of Ebook Collections: Learning Something
New Every Day” – Presented by Jack Montgomery
(Western Kentucky University Libraries), Glenda Alvin
(Tennessee State University) — https://sched.co/UZRu
Reported by Ramune K. Kubilius (Northwestern University,
Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center)
<r-kubilius@northwestern.edu>
Veteran librarians Alvin and Montgomery highlighted eBook
collection building and management strategies during university
landscape changes (i.e., drops in budget, staffing, and/or enrollment), emphasizing the need to adapt, change, and evolve. Alvin
shared scenarios of “errands in the wilderness” and “down the
river and through the valley,” as it became necessary to finesse
internal business practice fund assignments for eBook expenditures, in order to satisfy single title purchase needs for curricular
programs. One lesson learned? Optimally, have eBook licenses
in place with vendors and platforms, even before it might become
necessary to use them.
Montgomery began his presentation about the realities of
operating in a tight fiscal environment with a corporate sector
quote: “Companies that change may survive, but companies that
transform thrive.” eBook adoption, begun in 2002, was spurred
as a way of finding better book expenditure value, and ventures
evolved across platforms, collections, and DDA. Not all library
team members embraced the transition to eBooks, nor did some
younger generation library users who still prefer print. eBook
collection building now is done using a team approach, with a
default of “eBook preferred,” with plans for more expansion into
DDA, as well as weeding of older eBook editions. Other “search
for tomorrow” plans: seek new models for usage analysis, and
overall, continue to work towards a more responsive, fluid organization structure that is adaptable to future institutional changes.
Piloting the Surge: Streaming Video and Academic
Libraries — Presented by Anita Foster (The Ohio
State University), Azungwe Kwembe (Chicago State
University), Joanna Kolendo (Chicago State University),
Charlene Snelling (Chicago State University) —
https://sched.co/UZSd
Reported by Jeanne Cross (University of North Carolina
Wilmington) <crossj@uncw.edu>
This session was broken into two parts. The librarians from
Chicago State University presented first, followed by the librarian from The Ohio State University Libraries.
Kwembe, Kolendo, and Snelling described Kanopy’s DDA
model, the process of acquisitioning a resource for the library
60 Against the Grain / June 2020
at Chicago State University, and the promotion and marketing
that was done for Kanopy by the library. The library had a small
fund for their initial trial of this resource, but they were pleased
overall with the results.
Foster’s presentation, additionally titled From Trickle to Torrent, detailed three, 3-year pilots of streaming video packages.
Docuseek2, Kanopy DDA, and Swank were chosen for review.
Use of all packages started out slow the first year, increased in
the second, and had taken off by the third year. The task force
evaluated the resources based on use, subject coverage, and satisfactory user experience. In the end, they decided to continue
to provide access to packages from all three vendors.
Discussion after the presentations focused on unsustainable
costs of streaming videos and how to place limits and/or gain
some control over budgets for what is clearly a high demand area.
State of the Academic Library: Results from the 2019
Academic Libraries Survey — Presented by Oren BeitArie (ExLibris), Dr. Dennis M. Swanson (University of
North Carolina at Pembroke) — https://sched.co/UZSj
Notes: Shlomi Kringel (Corporate VP of Learning and
Research Solutions, ExLibris) joined the panel as a speaker
and Bob Banerjee (Director of Marketing, Ex Libris)
served as moderator. Oren Beit-Arie (Chief Strategy
Officer with ProQuest) was originally scheduled but
did not present in this session.
Reported by Roger Cross (University of North Carolina at
Pembroke) <Roger.Cross@uncp.edu>
Banerjee introduced this session which reviewed the “Ex
Libris Library Journal report,” a survey of 244 Academic
Libraries, on the impact of academic libraries in educational
institutions. If based on annual budgets and campus awareness
of the library’s role, the overview is negative because budgets
have continued to decline, and the library’s role on campus and
for research seems to have declined with it.
Swanson believes this trend will worsen as declining demographics will mean continued declining library budgets.
Enrollment will fall for the next few years and universities
funded by tuition should prepare for worsening conditions. In
addition, Swanson noted, there has been a national trend in which
administration and non-academic costs in Higher Education has
increased while library funds have decreased.
Kringel pointed out that when our users, faculty and students
alike, do not understand where the resources they use originate,
then they tend to devalue the library. Thus, libraries need to
publicize the value of the scholarly tools the library provides. The
library has faded from view in the plethora of online resources.
The report also that shows most librarians believe they can
“justify budget increases by demonstrating increased value,”
and much of the remaining part of the session was devoted to
discussions of how to demonstrate value to universities; this
including course packs, affordable learning initiatives, Open
Access, and even mission statements.
The survey results themselves are available for viewing at
the following url: https://page.exlibrisgroup.com/library-journal-report-download.
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Stop, Look, Listen — Eight Lessons Learned From
Eight Years of Open Access
Column Editor: Dr. Sven Fund (Managing Director, fullstopp GmbH, Society for Digitality, Wartburgstraße 25A,
10825 Berlin; Phone: +49 (0) 172 511 4899) <sven.fund@fullstopp.com> www.fullstopp.com
Abstract: Knowledge Unlatched (KU) was the first
initiative to make monographs available Open Access in the
Humanities and Social Sciences and has been offering annual
pledging rounds since the pilot in 2013. The KU model has
grown considerably in the meantime and has expanded to include
journals and other categories. This article considers some key
takeaways from the last eight years from an insider perspective,
which should be of interest to publishers, libraries and research
funding agencies, but also to comparable initiatives aiming to
further develop their own approaches.
Keywords: Open Access; monographs; Knowledge Unlatched; scientific publishing; scholarly publishing; Humanities
and Social Sciences.
Background
Free access to scientific information in the form of Open Access (OA) has been developing rapidly since the beginning of the
2000s. Especially in the early years, the natural sciences received
the most attention, while other academic disciplines played a
negligible role in the rapid development of OA. Frances Pinter,
then a publisher and later Managing Director of Manchester
University Press, felt that the lack of Open Access publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)
was a central weakness of the model and one
which needed to be addressed. As a result,
she devised an approach in 2012 to make
HSS content available Open Access, and
that was unique at that time. In contrast
to the APC model dominating scientific
journals, in which individual articles
are “bought free” by the authors or their
research funding agencies/institutions,
Pinter introduced a model based around
institutional funding. At the core of what she
later called Knowledge Unlatched (KU) was
a collaboration by libraries all over the world who work together
to finance making academic books freely available to all users,
regardless of their location.
A pilot was launched in 2013 as a “proof of concept” exercise
to gauge the willingness of libraries and publishers to support
such a collective approach. Several well-established HSS publishers participated, and thanks to the collaboration of libraries
worldwide, 28 new HSS books were made available OA at that
time. Since then, a total of six pledging rounds have been realised
and alongside the purely quantitative expansion, the model has
also undergone considerable qualitative development.
Objective
In order to achieve KU’s entrepreneurial goal of making as
much HSS content as possible available OA, various growth options were evaluated from 2015 onwards — once the model had
been established. A central question was the (justified) concern
that new models in the library market would be rapidly adopted
by a small group of enthusiasts but that the broader acceptance
Against the Grain / June 2020
necessary for the successful establishment of such a model might
not be present among all stakeholders, particularly in the early
phase of KU, when funding within libraries was often taken from
special or leftover budgets.
In cooperation with libraries and publishers, two approaches
have been tested: alongside quantitative growth (i.e., more
titles in the respective pledging rounds), KU created a virtual
marketplace in order to offer more variety in collections and
models. The rationale for this was based on the observation that
a strong increase in the number of titles in the core model “KU
Select” would almost inevitably lead to a greater segregation
among participating libraries. It was clear that the funds made
available for OA monographs would not be enough to even begin
to finance the range of titles that publishers could offer. At the
same time, it was assumed that the larger academic institutions
would probably be those most willing and economically able to
support several simultaneous offers.
It also became apparent early on that packages with little differentiation (i.e., numerous publishers contributing titles from
a wide range of disciplines to an overall package) would be of
limited relevance. This followed the insight that libraries would
not completely change their decision-making
and acquisition behavior in a short time,
even if this were now to take the form of
a funding commitment for OA content.
Parallel discussions with publishers
revealed that they often had an interest
in “opening” certain disciplines more
than others. This was primarily due to
publishing strategies and pressure from
editorial boards and authors.
Thanks to the cooperation with
Language Science Press (LSP) in
2017, KU was able to test, at an early
stage, an entire publishing program
that could be offered OA. This case study with LSP, KU’s first
publishing partner, proved to be a pioneer that would lead to
various other models. As of 2019, 15 different partner models
have been introduced by KU and libraries worldwide, based on
a variety of approaches.
Marketplace as a Core Strategy
The concept of a marketplace for OA models also includes
other components, however. There was an early strategic goal
to be able to finance HSS journals via KU similar to the way
in which the Open Library of Humanities works. It was clear,
though, that such a model would require a significant departure
from the APC model prevalent in the STEM field, which had
developed under very different funding conditions.
In addition, early discussions with providers of OA infrastructures showed that these also had funding requirements which
could additionally be built into the marketplace idea where
appropriate.
continued on page 62
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
61
Stop, Look, Listen
from page 61
In the further development of KU into an OA marketplace,
it was paramount that the core mission of KU, namely the collaboration of institutions worldwide, should not change. On the
contrary, this key element of the model, namely the role of librarians in the selection of content, should be further strengthened.
Eight Lessons from Eight Years
The intensive work with OA and the systematic development
of test cases has helped KU to draw some key lessons for its
endeavours in a rapidly developing and changing environment
of scholarly publishing:
1. Community Action Works — According to the classic
schools of business administration, it is by no means a given that collective action by stakeholders around the world
can function in a coordinated manner. Obviously, there are
several coordination issues, but KU has proven that over
600 libraries and more than 100 publishers worldwide can
create a stable ecosystem that has enabled the financing
of around 2,000 OA books and 46 journals to date. The
collective funding over the last eight years amounts to
approximately ten million euros.
On both the supply and the demand side, there has been a
high proportion of participants in several pledging rounds.
The participation of libraries today is just as much driven
by the individual profile of the institution as is the case
with the traditional acquisition of paid content — a clear
difference from the early days when institutions were often
driven more by idealistic reasons to participate rather than
investing in content relevant for their researchers.
2. Open Access is Multilingual — The model started as
an initiative for purely English-language monographs, but
it has since grown to include German and French language
content, which libraries have been able to fund via KU.
There were initial concerns that the far smaller number of
libraries interested in non-English content would not be
enough to raise the level of funding necessary for books
in other languages, but it has been proven that such a goal
can also be achievable. With packages such as the political science program of the German publisher transcript,
or with the OpenEdition initiative in France, successful
non-English-language models have launched. In the case
of transcript, it has even been possible to renew the model
in the following years and thus to establish a longer-term
sustainable publishing model.
3. Ongoing Specialization — At the same time, the example of the original KU model (which today goes by the
name “KU Select”) shows that models with broader thematic content are also undergoing changes and becoming
more specialized. Last year, for example, the collection
was already streamlined to primarily include titles from
those disciplines with a high degree of usage — a decision
unanimously welcomed by librarians. Increased specialization should also help institutions to more easily flip their
current holdings and to reduce complexity in the face of
greater demand.
4. Growing Importance of Proof of Success — Faced
with a growing range of OA initiatives and products, it can
be observed that libraries are significantly more interested
62 Against the Grain / June 2020
in seeing measurable effects than in the early days. While
support for some initiatives was first motivated by a high
degree of idealism and political goodwill, institutionally
funded OA is increasingly developing into a form of acquisition that must be able to compete with other models.
This poses certain challenges for OA providers, especially
with an access model where decentralized storage and use
of content is an integral part of the approach. Obviously,
users of such OA models do not have to use an institutional
(and thus easily measurable) access route to the content,
meaning that proof of use within the IP range of an institution alone is of limited value.
It can be observed that libraries — as well as publishers
— often make their decisions regarding the support of
OA collections or the publication of content based on
usage and citation statistics. With the portal KU Open
Analytics, there is now a solution that consolidates the
usage from almost two dozen platforms and can provide
valuable insight into the use of open content. The data
can also include location-based usage from outside of the
institutional IP range.
5. Hosting Gains in Importance — The decentralized
structures inherent in OA are increasingly reaching their
limits, as the example of usage reporting above shows.
In view of the growing amount of openly available content and the need for a minimum level of efficiency and
thus organization, this decentralization is coming under
increasing pressure. KU’s surveys of libraries suggested
at the start of 2019 that a common hosting platform for
OA content (at least for books) would be desirable. The
Open Research Library (www.openreserachlibrary.org),
which has been online since the middle of last year, is KU’s
reaction to this wish.
6. Timing is Central — KU has made several attempts
over the past few years to identify the optimal time for the
launch of its offers — and to accomplish this in a global
context in which budget years and practices vary significantly. Not surprisingly, the optimal timeframe fits into
the traditional ordering behavior of libraries worldwide.
Attempts by publishers to offer products to the market at
a later or earlier date have so far seen limited success. It
therefore seems advisable to launch new products in the
second quarter of the calendar year in order to secure
financing in the following two quarters.
7. Collaboration with Trade Partners Yields Mixed
Results — KU has been working with resellers since
2016, and the number of trade partners is now into double
figures and growing. While it could be assumed that such
partners would generally be very important intermediaries
in institutional OA, experience so far has been mixed.
Some resellers, especially in the German-speaking countries, have proven to be highly useful partners due to their
customer knowledge and sales expertise, while others have
proven to be more of a distraction from efficient processes.
The dependence on individual resellers by libraries is often
high, but the institutional knowledge of the book trade
about OA is usually limited.
8. Different Access Models for STEM Books — In KU’s
experience, OA books from the STEM disciplines seem to
fall more in line with the practices of the APC-based journal
business. Decision-making processes within institutions
continued on page 64
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Oregon Trails — RIP – He Liked To Read
Column Editor: Thomas W. Leonhardt (Retired, Eugene, OR 97404) <oskibear70@gmail.com>
B
eing of a certain age, I’ve taken to reading the local
obituaries. I find myself interested less in what people
did for a living than what they did for fun and relaxation,
especially in retirement. The typical, often-occurring activities
include, attending athletic events, golfing, traveling, camping,
gardening, baking, and bowling. I’ll see almost everything imaginable but rarely do I see any reference to reading and none at
all to books. And then that rare occurrence, interspersed among
other activities — “She liked to read.” What better endorsement
for a life well led! But is it?
Reading seems a simple skill learned so early in life that it
may be taken for granted and not even thought of as a skill. But
reading is more than a skill; it is a knowledge-foundation on
which we build other skills. Language is the real foundation
but books and journals — the written
and printed word — is the permanent
record of humankind’s accomplishments
and wonderments. Fiction, too, plays an
important a role in our well-being as a
species. And reading is much more than
this because it is such a personal pursuit
that it can be a spiritual, mystical, transformative experience.
She liked to read? What does that mean?
Read what? Reading matter comes in a myriad
of forms — newspapers, magazines, political
flyers, advertisements imposed on any and every
available surface, cereal boxes, and even digitally produced
words that appear on my computer screen. And books. When
I think of reading, I think of books, so when I see, that is, read,
that some recently deceased person liked to read, I become curious about what she liked to read. It doesn’t matter, some would
say, and at one level (reading is better than vegetating before a
flickering screen), it doesn’t, but I want to know more about the
person’s intellectual interests that spurred the interest in reading.
If the obituary author is not a reader, then someone who reads
only the daily newspaper would be a reader by comparison.
My father, in that sense, was a reader back when morning and
afternoon papers were delivered to our house (he subscribed to
both). He did have a small collection of books that followed him
wherever the Army sent him — Lee’s Lieutenants, The Foxes
of Harrow, Kitty Foyle, Apartment in Athens, and some whose
titles I’ve forgotten — and yet I never saw him reading a book.
I would not call my dad a reader. I don’t know what he thought
about my reading habit of seventy plus years, a habit I have never
tried to break, but I can hear my mother even now complaining
that I always had my nose in a book. Not true, but I did read a
lot and thus stood out in my family. In my defense, I was always
among the first to turn out for a pickup baseball game. And I
didn’t forgo a dance at the teen club to finish the Studs Lonigan
trilogy. You don’t have to be a hermit to like reading.
An obituary that merely mentions reading is not enough. In
fact, the more I think about it, the less I want my relationship
with reading and books reduced to “He liked to read.” As Nero
Wolfe would say, “Pfui!!” There’s more to it than that.
My obituary would need to be at least the length of a chapbook to express my long-term relationship to the printed word,
Against the Grain / June 2020
especially on the pages of books going back to the time my parents invested in a set of books, sixteen slim volumes still in my
possession, that began with nursery rhymes and folk tales and
that ended with excerpts from established children’s books from
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. My father was overseas
or in distant Army bases during the first seven years of my life
but I have a faint image of him reading about Goldilocks, the
Three Billy Goats Gruff, and the Tale of Peter Rabbit. By the
time kindergarten came, I was feeling an urge to read the stories
myself. Because the illustrations accompanying all of the stories
were so inviting, I was especially eager to read the stories that
my father had not read to me.
My chapbook reading biography includes my gratitude for the
Dick and Jane readers for giving me the confidence to advance
to comic books that when read aloud,
impressed relatives at family reunions.
My chapbook would have to include
my affinity for and use of Army Post
Libraries and school libraries from
California and Alaska to Germany, both
as a dependent and as a soldier. I knew
that people bought books because my
grandmother would send me Whitman
reprints of Tom Sawyer and others,
straight out of a dime store, but it never
occurred to me to buy a book, even one
costing only a quarter because a quarter
would buy a comic book, two candy bars, and a Coke. Besides, the libraries that I had access to had more books than
the dime store.
Of the hundreds of books I have read, I can see patterns that
reflect a phase of my life. Interests come and go and they came
and went. I am no longer interested in reading disorders, not
enough to read about them, or about psycholinguistics and deep
structure, although there was a time I thought it was the most
fascinating subject I’d ever come across.
There would have to be a section about German literature in
the original and how certain books had me thinking in German
by the time I’d finished them: Buddenbrooks; Die Zauberberg;
Die Blechtrommel; Die Blendung; and Berlin: Alexanderplatz.
These are lengthy novels that transported me far beyond the
realm of liking to read.
Reading begets re-reading begets multiple editions of
books: The Grapes of Wrath (6 ); Two Years Before the Mast
(9 ); Casuals of the Sea (10 ); and Parnassus on Wheels (7).
There are several other books and authors that I keep on my
shelves to re-read as the mood strikes me, authors who have
become old friends: W.W. Jacobs, John Steinbeck, William
McFee, Frank Waters, Christopher Morley, Hermann
Hesse, Thomas Mann, and Wright Morris, the only one of
my favorites I was privileged to meet and have supper with.
I did have lunch with Lawrence Ferlinhetti and I do like A
Coney Island of the Mind, but I don’t rank him with the others.
I do, however, own a copy of The Portable Beat Reader that
contains 19 pages dedicated to the still-living owner of City
Lights Bookstore.
continued on page 64
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
63
And They Were There
from page 60
Stop, Look, Listen
from page 62
and the willingness of publishers to make significant titles
from their programs available via cooperative models seem
less suitable for institutional funding models. Although
KU has been able to report some positive cases, the
cost-benefit ratio in general does not seem to be reasonable.
Outlook
Open Access models for monographs have developed dynamically and, in terms of results, very positively since KU’s
foundation. Numerous stakeholders and research funding agencies continue to look for ways to further develop institutionally
funded OA. The basis for this positive development has been
the willingness and ability of all participants to continually make
necessary adjustments to its implementation. Institutional OA is
thus developing very successfully, but it requires a much higher
degree of adaptability compared with other business and access
models within scientific publishing.
It is to be expected that OA offers such as those from KU will
continue to develop in popularity, both from the demand and the
supply side. Many publishers are actively interested in expanding
the number of titles openly available to users everywhere and
have largely overcome their initial concerns. In order to increase
the share of OA books in the output of publishers in a timely and
reliable manner, the sustainability of reliable financing is crucial.
Publishers must ensure that they consider — and fulfil — the
growing service requirements of libraries, who now see OA
content as a normal part of their service, and thus as an integral
part of their acquisition and financing structure.
References
Fund, Sven; Mosterd, Max; Godek, Piotr (2019): Open
Access Monographs in the UK: A data analysis, Berlin, retrieved
2020-03-22, https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2019/Fullstopp-Final-October-2019.pdf.
Montgomery, Lucy (2014): Knowledge Unlatched: A Global
Library Consortium for Funding Open Access Scholarly Books,
in: Journal of Cultural Science, Vol. 7, No, 2, pp. 1-28.
Oregon Trails
from page 63
In Black Boy by Richard Wright, there’s a telling exchange:
“Boy, are you reading for the law? My aunt would demand.
“No.”
“Then why are you reading all the time?”
“I like to.”
If you read the entire Black Boy, you will discover that
Wright’s “I like to read” is more than that. Reading allows
Wright to begin a new life, a life of the mind, a writer’s life.
Contrast Wright, with an unnamed associate of A. Edward
Newton as described in The Amenities of Book-Collecting and
Kindred Affections:
64 Against the Grain / June 2020
The Sun Shining in the Middle of the Night: How Moving
Beyond IP Authentication Does Not Spoil the Fun, Ease,
or Privacy of Accessing Library Resources — Presented
by Andrew Nagy (EBSCO), Michelle Colquitt (Gwinnett
Technical College Library) — https://sched.co/UZSC
Reported by John Banionis (Villanova University)
<john.banionis@villanova.edu>
This session opened with Nagy providing an overview
of OpenAthens, which instead of anonymous IP-based
authentication leverages an identity-based SAML solution,
allowing for usage data collection categorized by defined user
groups. Single Sign-On (SSO) adoption was the primary goal of
the NISO working group RA21, now followed by the successor
NISO working group called Seamless Access. Colquitt discussed
her experience in leading the transition to OpenAthens at
Gwinnett Technical College as an initiative of the GALILEO
consortium. Preparations ran from August to December 2018,
including a GALILEO Local Resources Integration, Alma
integrations, and continuous communications to the user
community, ultimately resulting in a smooth transition at the end
of December. OpenAthens has provided additional reporting
functionality, though per GALILEO standards, only minimal
user attributes were shared with vendors by default unless the
additional data was to be used for local reporting customizations.
Colquitt’s successful experience with launching OpenAthens at
Gwinnett Technical College also led her to a new position as
Resource Management Librarian at Georgia Gwinnett College.
(The session’s slides can be found in Sched.)
That’s all the reports we have room for in this issue. Watch for
more reports from the 2019 Charleston Conference in upcoming
issues of Against the Grain. Presentation material (PowerPoint
slides, handouts) and taped session links from many of the 2019
sessions are available online. Visit the Conference Website at
www.charlestonlibraryconference.com. — KS
“I asked a man what he did with his leisure, and his reply
was, ‘I play cards. I used to read a good deal but I wanted
something to occupy my mind, so I took to cards.’ It was
a disconcerting answer.”
Yes, a disconcerting answer but one that suggests that playing
cards in the society of others is superior to sitting home alone in
your favorite chair, a soft lamp illuminating the pages of your
book and you far away in some world of another person’s making.
I suggest, and I know without doubt, that I am not alone, that
there is room in our lives to participate in society and enjoy it
without surrendering a private, rich, inner life of reading. So
if the author of your obituary doesn’t know and really couldn’t
know what moves you to read and what reading moves you and
stimulates you and provides you solace when nothing else does,
it seems okay to state: “He liked to read.”
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Biz of Digital — Case Study: Librarians as
Interdisciplinary Digital Research Project Partners
An Overview of Recently Established and Emerging Digital Research Projects and
Support Services Led and Implemented by the Rowan University Libraries
by Benjamin Saracco (Research and Digital Services Librarian and Managing Editor: Cooper Rowan Medical Journal, Cooper
Medical School of Rowan University, One Cooper Plaza, Camden, NJ 08103; Phone: 856-342-2522; Fax: 856-342-9588)
<saracco-benjamin@cooperhealth.edu> <saracco@rowan.edu>
and Shilpa Rele (Scholarly Communication & Data Curation Librarian, Rowan University, Keith & Shirley Campbell Library,
201 Mullica Hill Road, Glassboro, NJ 08028; Phone: 856-256-4970) <rele@rowan.edu>
Column Editor: Michelle Flinchbaugh (Digital Scholarship Services Librarian, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of
Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250; Phone: 410-455-3544) <flinchba@umbc.edu>
R
owan University has seen rapid expansion over the last
decade and has grown from a state teachers college to
a Carnegie-classified national doctoral research institution. Rowan University started the Cooper Medical School of
Rowan University (CMSRU) in 2012 and merged the Rowan
University School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM) in 2013
and is one of only three institutions in the nation that grant both
M.D. and D.O. medical degrees. Due to this merger and growth
in the University’s research portfolio, Rowan University earned
R3 research status in 2017. One year later, the University was
designated as an R2 institution. At the same time, the University has seen tremendous growth in student enrollment, which
reached more than 19,618 in Fall 2019, new faculty hires (176
within the last five years) and expansion of graduate
programs. Sponsored research funding grew
significantly as well during this time to
$5.6 million in 2010 to $39.5 million in 2018.
With this tremendous increase in
enrollment, research, faculty, and
additional campuses, the Rowan
University Libraries (RUL) has
faced a proportional increase in
demand for digital research project collaborations and new research support services from the
university community. In 2015, RUL wisely established an
institutional repository (IR), called “Rowan Digital Works,”
by subscribing to the Bepress Digital Commons platform to
provide open access to the increased research, scholarly, and
creative outputs at the University. This repository includes
peer-reviewed scholarship, open educational resources, faculty
post-prints, graduate student publications, electronic theses and
dissertations, conferences, events, and symposia proceedings. A
committee that includes representatives from all three libraries, as
well as a representative from the Division of University Research
(DUR), guides the activities related to the IR. This committee
has created a place for librarians of different professional backgrounds at the University to stay informed on new scholarly
communications-related services available to the faculty and
students with whom they interact. A key goal for the University
libraries is for all its librarians, no matter their subject specialty
or assigned campus, to have a core competency in the area of
providing basic scholarly communications support to their patrons. This is a trend that has been reported and written about
at other academic libraries as well.1
Against the Grain / June 2020
The collaboration with the DUR on the IR committee has
been particularly significant as it has informed our decision
to make the creation of researcher profiles a requirement for
all internal grant funding application opportunities. Not only
has this led to increased faculty engagement with the IR and
highlighted scholarly activity on campus, the researcher profiles have proven useful for faculty and the DUR to discover
collaborations across departments and disciplines. An additional example of the value of these researcher profiles is the
ability of the medical students at CMSRU to utilize them to
identify faculty research mentors for their required capstone
projects. Another fruitful collaboration with the DUR has been
the use of the IR’s journal hosting features, such as managing
the backend submission workflows to running internal seed
funding programs for faculty on both the Glassboro
and Camden campuses. This collaboration has
helped the DUR centralize the seed funding
application workflows and track applicants and submissions over time in
one system.
The varied use cases of this
University resource have grown
substantially due to the fact that
the University Libraries have
actively marketed it to new faculty at events like New Faculty
Orientation and University research-related events. The IR was
also highlighted as an important resource in the Middle States
Accreditation Report for the campus community. The addition
of new materials and services over the past few years resulted
in one million downloads last fall, an achievement that RUL
celebrated with the campus community.
RUL also established a Digital Initiatives Working Group
with the goal of making strategic decisions to enable the implementation of digital projects in a more systematic and efficient
manner and to allow for flexible and collaborative work across
departments within the libraries. One project established by the
Digital Initiative Working Group is a strategic digital collections
development decision to segregate purely scholarly materials,
such as journal articles, datasets, and symposia held in the IR,
from digital assets used by digital social science, humanities,
and natural science faculty and historians. The working group
identified and implemented a new Islandora-powered digital
asset management system to manage and provide open access
to digitized content, starting with materials from both our Unicontinued on page 66
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
65
Biz of Digital
from page 65
versity Archives and Special Collections and faculty projects/
collections. The rationale behind this decision was made for
two reasons: 1) We wanted these materials in a system that
would be easily connected to the potential New Jersey/Delaware DPLA Hub being established, and we are ensuring that
our work is being informed by DPLA metadata standards to
make the metadata shareability and discovery processes easier
in the long run. 2) We found that Islandora has additional
capabilities and features that allow for a better user experience
and more efficient abilities to organize and manage digital
assets on the backend.
With the increased focus on research, the University Libraries
also conducted two surveys to identify research data management
and digital scholarship needs at the institution. We have made
significant progress with the evidence of need collected from both
surveys and are currently in the process of implementing services,
policies, and infrastructure needed to support those needs. We
formed the Research Data Management Working Group, which is
comprised of members from the DUR and the Division of Information Resources & Technology (IRT). We secured approval for
implementing ORCID and DMPTool, which we plan to roll out
to faculty later this Fall, and we are currently advocating for the
Open Science Framework to be implemented as well. [ORCID
provides unique identifiers for researchers and the DMPTool
is used to write data management plans for inclusion in grant
applications: orcid.org and dmptool.org.]
We are also in the process of beginning discussions with
faculty about open scholarship as it pertains to new metrics for
evaluating open research, journal selection, data and tools, and
the education and training needed to support and raise awareness of the quality and the value of open scholarship. These
discussions are being conducted in collaboration with the DUR
as open scholarship training and discussions are part of DUR’s
new strategic plan.
Librarians at Rowan are on the tenure-track, and conducting
and collaborating on research and scholarship endeavors is considered a core job responsibility. With the new research infrastructure and groups mentioned above in place and possibly as a
result of outreach that has been conducted across the University
about these new services, librarians now have the opportunity
to play more significant roles as research-collaborators and add
value by contributing their expertise and specialized skill sets to
the research lifecycle processes. Some examples of this increased
involvement include:
• Librarians partnering in grant applications that
utilize library research infrastructure: Librarians
are partnering with faculty from the School of Earth
and Environment’s Geology department to build a
digital collection of fossils discovered at the Jean and
Ric Edelman Fossil Park of Rowan University. This
66 Against the Grain / June 2020
digital collection will ensure broader open access to
digital images from this collection, which could also
be used in K-12 educational efforts and potential collaboration with other fossil archives on grant-funded
digital scholarship projects.
• Librarians serving on collaborative research teams
for projects that involve digital humanities: Another
digital project involves librarians being included as collaborators on a Rowan faculty member’s grant-funded
oral history project that captures water histories in New
Jersey. This project will use Islandora to provide access.
• Librarians serving as scholarly publishing partners
for University journals: The library’s IR added a new
journal publishing platform in order to host and publish University-run peer-reviewed journals. The first
example is a faculty and student-run medical journal
called The Cooper Rowan Medical Journal (https://
rdw.rowan.edu/crjcsm/). This peer-reviewed publishing
project is being used as a possible model for other future
IR-hosted journals, some of which are currently being
developed at the University.
• Librarians assisting research teams with the development of research protocols and systematic review
projects: Librarians at CMSRU have created a pilot
service where they partner on research teams containing
students, faculty, and medical residents for systematic
literature review projects. Librarians assist with the
creation and registration of research protocols and
recommend using the IR for research data management
and archiving of resulting publications, if appropriate.
In order to further strengthen and expand our digital project
and research support services, the RUL plan to raise awareness
across campuses via informational sessions and an expanded
web presence highlighting our work. We envision cross-training
librarian colleagues on providing these services and advocating
for future strategic hires to further engage and support in these
endeavors. Additionally, librarians have conducted advocacy
work in the University to bring attention to the importance and
value of these projects and how they can support the University’s
overall strategic research mission and goals. In this advocacy
work, librarians have communicated with the University’s leadership to highlight how these efforts align with the University’s
overall strategic research mission. We believe these partnerships
have demonstrated the library’s essential role in furthering the
University research enterprise.
Endnotes
1. “Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication:
A ....” https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16059/17505.
Accessed 28 Feb. 2020.
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Optimizing Library Services — Academic
Library Response to COVID-19
by Prof. Jennifer Joe (Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Engagement Librarian,
University of Toledo, USA) <Jennifer.Joe@UToledo.Edu>
Column Editors: Ms. Brittany Haynes (Editorial Assistant, IGI Global) <bhaynes@igi-global.com>
and Ms. Lindsay Wertman (Managing Director, IGI Global) <lwertman@igi-global.com> www.igi-global.com
Column Editors’ Note: This column features IGI Global
contributor Prof. Jennifer Joe, Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Engagement Librarian at the University of Toledo,
USA, co-editor of the publication Social Media for Communication and Instruction in Academic Libraries along with
Prof. Elisabeth Knight, from Western Kentucky University,
USA. — BH & LW
Introduction
Serving patrons from a distance is nothing new. There is
a large body of literature available showcasing the ways that
colleges and universities have adjusted their approach to library
services for the good of students who are off campus. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) released
the most recent Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services (which began as the 1990 ACRL Guidelines for Extended
Campus Library Services) in 2016, and it states, “The originating
institution is responsible for ensuring that the distance learning
community has access to library materials equivalent to those
provided in on-campus settings” (American Library Association,
2016, n.p.). While attempting to adhere to this guideline, modifications have mostly been small and appropriate in scope for the
number of patrons they serve, which depends on the institution.
Overall, however, a 2015 survey found that just 54.05% of institutions offer “special classes or training program[s] for distance
learning students,” which means many face-to-face programs and
methods have not been adapted for the online learner (Primary
Research Group, 2015, p. 38).
At the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio, USA, where I
am the undergraduate engagement librarian, the institution went
to a work-from-home plan beginning the week after our Spring
Break (March 9-13, 2020). By the end of the week (March 20,
2020), library employees were all working remotely, and our
building was closed. We only had a few basic services designed
for distance students — electronic resources, LibGuides, reference chat, and email consultations. This abrupt departure from
normal clearly required some changes in our approach toward
our patrons.
We Are All Online Learning Librarians
Even before the decision to shutter the library and the rest of
the campus, the administration had decided to shift classes to
the online environment. The initial decision was that this would
happen on a temporary basis and then it would be reevaluated,
but subsequent talks in the administration have resulted in classes being held online through the summer (Whiteside, 2020).
Therefore, even before we were working from home, faculty
and staff at the university had prepared to meet our students in
the online environment. We had reviewed important LibGuide
materials; made sure that students were aware that they could
reach us via email, chat reference, and social media; and set up
Against the Grain / June 2020
our office computers with web conferencing software so that
we could conduct synchronous consultations to meet the needs
of our patrons.
Once we learned that the situation would be more permanent
and that we would also be working from home, our preparations
shifted slightly. First, we had to test that we had access to everything we would need from home. This gave us unique insight
into the challenges that our students faced as they returned to
their homes. Connection issues, redundant sign-in requests, and
unintuitive paths to accessing materials were suddenly our problems, too. This confirmed what had already been reported in the
general literature. For example, a study conducted by Mueller
et al. found that of nine eBook platforms studied, no platform
achieved a 100% success rate in more than two of the research
tasks attempted, and some eBook platforms failed to achieve
100% in any task (2019). Our electronic resources librarian is
working diligently to help us with these issues as we find them
in our own resources, but some of them are systematic and are
out of her control.
Finally, some of us also made attempts to teach information
literacy in the online environment. In addition to the three librarians who are also instructors at our university and were teaching
credit-bearing courses online, I was able to teach a one-shot library session virtually through our learning management system.
The class was a Pro Seminar in Anthropology and Sociology.
Thanks to a good working relationship with the instructors of
record, they felt comfortable allowing me to teach the class online
synchronously on the same date that I would have been teaching
it in person, March 30th, less than two weeks after the university
had shifted to online work. It was optional for the students, but
we had a good turnout, leading me to believe that it is something
students would benefit from in the future. We also recorded the
session for students who were unable to attend. This returns us
to the report by Primary Research Group conducted in 2015;
we have the technology and capabilities for more comprehensive
distance learning efforts. Now that we have heightened demand,
it would behoove us to conduct them.
We Are All Scholarly Communication Librarians
At the University of Toledo, we have a scholarly communications librarian. Her job includes handling everything related
to public access, data sharing, copyright, and the support of new
scholarship. In normal times, her job gets many requests, but
when one is trying to pivot to online in the middle of the semester,
in the middle of an international emergency, these requests were
not always going directly to her. Furthermore, if they had gone
directly to her, she would have easily become overwhelmed.
Therefore, many of us took it upon ourselves to help answer
scholarly communications issues in our respective subject areas.
I took a question from one of my liaison departments about
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67
Optimizing Library Services
from page 67
format access that turned into coordinating a response from our
reserves specialist that would not violate copyright but that would
also provide the students with materials that they needed. The
response also eventually came to involve our cataloging staff, as
they worked through the possibility of individually purchasing
eBooks from publishers directly, which is something that had
not been done by the university in the past.
Other patrons needed access to electronic materials, too, not
just faculty. I have navigated many research questions where
the best materials for research are locked up in our building right
now, helping students find electronic resources that will answer
their questions and help them proceed with their work. As I
have dealt with these questions, I have also begun managing
a list of materials that have become open access in response to
the crisis. I am not the only librarian keeping these lists; many
librarians outside my institution have been freely sharing lists
that they have made themselves, to the point that my list is more
like a list of lists. I have also been developing the best ways to
express to students how to find these materials; because they are
temporarily open access, they typically would not show up in
our discovery tool. WorldCat has become a dear friend to me
because it can show me if something has an electronic format
available. Unfortunately, at least one study has suggested that
students are less capable of navigating WorldCat, with Gewritz,
Novak, and Parsons finding, “[m]any students appeared to have
difficulties interpreting records in [WorldCat Local],” and, as a
result, these students were unable to find materials that they could
have accessed (2014, p. 119).
We Are All Solo Librarians
My colleagues are still available to support me when I have
tough questions, but gone are the days when I could just stop
by their office. This has led me to work harder, and hopefully
smarter, at answering the questions posed by patrons and my
liaison units. However, it is reminding me more and more of my
previous library position, where I was a solo campus librarian at
a regional university campus, 70 miles away from my colleagues
working for the same system.
It has opened me up to new possibilities, too. Because I am
using e-mail and video chat to contact my university colleagues,
I am just as likely to ask the same question in a webinar or a
listserv; these two methods of information gathering require the
same amount of effort, but I also get the added benefit of hearing
more diverse opinions, leading to more innovation in my job.
Conclusions
The pandemic has made clear position definitions blurry,
but it is also identifying the strengths within us all. While we
should not be afraid to step outside of our assigned roles when it
is necessary for the good of our patrons, we must also recognize
when someone else on our team would be better suited for the
task and allow them to do the work themselves. During a disaster,
self-motivation and cooperation with a team must work together
to meet the challenges the library faces.
This is, of course, only the response from one academic library. We should and are working together to share best practices.
There are already several surveys circulating, asking individuals
to share their responses to the crisis. Hopefully, those results will
be made available as soon as possible because it will help us plan.
68 Against the Grain / June 2020
As we navigate this new but hopefully temporary normal, we
should be planning for two different futures: one where we are
able to return to our buildings, and one where we are not. The
former will happen eventually, as our students miss our collaborative spaces, our computer access, and yes, even our physical
materials, but the latter may last longer than we would like, or
it may become necessary again at some future date. We should
try to learn from the best practices we are developing today, so
that we can use those practices again in the future.
Works Cited
American Library Association. (2016). Standards for Distance Learning Library Services. Retrieved from: http://www.
ala.org/acrl/standards/guidelinesdistancelearning (Accessed
April 14, 2020). Document ID: afcce136-a64c-6094-6de07ad1550814c4
Gewirtz, S. R., Novak, M., and Parsons, J. (2014). Evaluating the Intersection Between WorldCat Local and Student
Research. Journal of Web Librarianship, 8(2), 113–124. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2014.877312
Mueller, K. L., Valdes, Z., Owens, E., and Williamson,
C. (2019). Where’s the EASY Button? Uncovering E-Book
Usability. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 59(1), p. 44-65,
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5860/rusq.59.1.7224
Primary Research Group. (2015). The Survey of Library
Services for MOOCS, Blended and Distance Learning Programs.
Primary Research Group, Inc.
Whiteside, B. (2020, April 6). UT, BGSU move all summer classes online. The Blade. Retrieved from https://www.
toledoblade.com/local/education/2020/04/06/ut-and-bgsu-moveall-summer-classes-online/stories/20200406076
Recommended Readings
Clough, H., and Foley, K. (2019). “Is There Anybody
There?”: Engaging With Open University Distance Learners. In
J. Joe, and E. Knight (Eds.), Social Media for Communication
and Instruction in Academic Libraries (pp. 151-172). Hershey,
PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-8097-3.ch010
Cowick, C., and Cowick, J. (2019). Planning for a Disaster: Effective Emergency Management in the 21st Century.
In I. Management Association (Ed.), Emergency and Disaster
Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications
(pp. 142-163). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-15225-6195-8.ch008
Dixon, J., and Abashian, N. (2018). Beyond the Collection:
Emergency Planning for Public and Staff Safety. In I. Management Association (Ed.), Library Science and Administration:
Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 14941514). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-52253914-8.ch070
Mabe, M., and Ashley, E. A. (2017). Emergency Preparation for the Library and Librarian. In The Developing Role
of Public Libraries in Emergency Management: Emerging Research and Opportunities (pp. 61-78). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-2196-9.ch005
Tolman, S., Dunbar, M., Slone, K. B., Grimes, A., and
Trautman, C. A. (2020). The Transition From Teaching F2F
to Online. In L. Kyei-Blankson, E. Ntuli, and J. Blankson
(Eds.), Handbook of Research on Creating Meaningful Experiences in Online Courses (pp. 67-84). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-0115-3.ch006
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Considering Games in Libraries and Such — Zoom-AZooma Head Shots: In Virtual and In The Real
Column Editor: Jared Alexander Seay (Media & Services Coordinator, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston,
Charleston, SC 29424; Phone: 843-953-1428) <seayj@cofc.edu> blogs.cofc.edu/seayj
Column Editor’s Note: In the distant
future (just before we succumb to our robot
overlords) the irony of starting out a column talking about a Netflix series during
a time of severe “shelter in place” will
be lost on readers. So, while this irony is
currently fresh and relevant in your minds,
I am going to roll with it. — JAS
I
n the future science fiction world of the
Netflix series Altered Carbon, in which
the virtual world is every bit as realistic
as the real one, the characters distinguish
between the two by referring to the real
world as being in the real. During this
time of pandemic exile, we have reached
the point now where we too need to start
distinguishing between working in virtual
and working in the real.
Before this pandemic forced me to
do so, I had very little idea of the whole
video conferencing thing. I had been in
Skype interviews and meetings before,
but it was still in my peripheral vision
as something the “with it folk” were
into. But it did not figure prominently
in my world. Golly, what a difference a
pandemic makes.
Now everyone is a Zoom veteran.
Indeed, I think that the iconic symbol of
this pandemic, at least for the work-fromhome crowd, will be Zoom. My dreams
are even populated with images of people
talking to me from multiple little boxes,
Brady Bunch style, splayed across my
dream vision screen.
As far as a way of having meetings, I
actually kind of like it. In fact, in keeping
(at least microscopically) with the theme
of this column, I have created a kind of
game for myself while in these virtual
meetings in which I try to gauge the mood
and motivations of the meeting participants while closely observing their expressions, dress and backgrounds. Zoom
meetings seem especially conducive to
this. For one thing it seems I can more
easily gauge the mood of each person in
the meeting by actually staring into each
person’s face for extended periods of time,
without them knowing it. Now, once you
get beyond the creepy sound of that last
sentence, there is a certain value in this.
Work with me for a minute.
Against the Grain / June 2020
In a normal face-meeting one’s vision
is of course focused on the speaker. Indeed, in these table meetings in the real,
other than the purpose of giving another
meeting member a knowing nod, it is
socially forbidden to stare into the eyes
of any other person for very long. It’s
just weird, and besides, except for your
colleagues sitting directly across the table
from you, the only view you get
of most people is some angle
on the side of their head.
Well, not anymore.
Now that we have the
Brady Bunch style meetings,
with everyone’s thumbnail
video image stacked up and
spread out across the screen,
one can see each one of their
colleagues face-on. Everyone
is literally staring into each other’s eyes.
Of course, this staring is not in the real,
so though everyone sees each other, no
one can see who is looking at who. This
allows the interesting pastime of carefully studying each person in the meeting
in detail, including their facial cues and
fashion choices. In fact, one can often get
insight as to whether the person in their
little thumbnail video has really thought
about how they are being perceived. Some
people have their face right up into the
camera, giving an almost fisheye look to
their image. Such people are either keen to
have their presence right in there, or they
have trouble gauging camera distance.
Then there are those who apparently do
not particularly care if they are fully in the
field of view. The most common symptom
being the “eyes above the horizon” look,
with the head stuck to the bottom of the
frame and only visible from the chin or
nose up. In a meeting in which you can
see yourself for the whole meeting (literally like looking into a mirror) I do not
understand why one would want to appear
with only part of their head visible, like the
top of a carrot sticking out of the ground.
But perhaps they cannot be bothered by
such vain considerations, no more than
they think twice about their background.
Ah, the background. This is perhaps
the most interesting component of these
“virtual” meetings in that it affords the
novelty of seeing all of your colleagues in
their home world — usually their kitchen, living room and even bedroom. It is
intriguing to get a glimpse of the home
environment of people you have worked
with for years and have never seen outside
of the office. I spend entire meetings
meticulously taking in the backgrounds
of doors, windows, nik naks, paintings,
photos, furniture and even children milling about. Of course, some folks
short circuit my intense observations by placing themselves
against a blank wall, giving
them a neutral, sterile look
that gives the appearance of
broadcasting from a prison
cell. Some just throw up a
headshot picture and be done
with it. Then there are those
of a sweeping fantasy mind that
do the green screen thing of giving themselves an exotic digital background of outer space or a tropical island. I am always
looking for the imaginative person who
gives themselves the digital background of
a broom closet. How exotic would that be?
Though no one combination of camera
placement and background is superior, I
like to think that each one says something
about the personality of each person or at
least how they are feeling.
As for me, I am never satisfied about
how I look on camera. Like most people,
I do not like the way I look on camera
anyway, so I try to compensate by being
particularly careful of my environment.
Coming from a background in theater and
video and possessing loads of self-conscious vanity (and with my mind always
on posterity), I am deliberately cognizant
of how I appear on camera. Though I cannot really do much about my appearance
(my genetics, alas, are mostly unalterable,
despite my best efforts), I can change my
background with ease. I have thus carefully constructed a “set” with lights and a
black hanging curtain backdrop that gives
little or no indication of the actual interior
of my house. I try to give myself that headshot, interview look with a professional
background. This makes it appear that I
might have something witty or important
to say, even if my actual statements during
a meeting belie that impression.
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69
Library Analytics: Shaping the Future — Inspec:
Precision Analytics for Research Excellence
Upcycling, Innovation, Relevance and Renewal: How Analytics Transformed our Business
by Vincent Cassidy (Head of Academic Markets, the Institution of Engineering and Technology) <VCassidy@theiet.org>
Column Editors: John McDonald (EBSCO Information Services) <johnmcdonald@ebsco.com>
and Stephanie S. Buck (EBSCO Information Services) <ssbuck@ebsco.com>
A
s the process of scholarly communications continues 3,500 classification codes in a 5-tier structure, allows the highly
to reshape itself with pace, it can often seem that those structured Inspec records to be discovered precisely and accubest placed to respond to the new opportunities require rately. Inspec is available across a range of platforms including
a rare mix of size, agility, technology and, often, a singular EBSCOhost, Elsevier’s Engineering Village, Clarivate’s Web
purpose. We can see this borne out, both in the strategic plays of Science, ProQuest’s Dialog and Wolters Kluwer’s OVID,
of big corporations and their leverage of scale and technology as well as the IET’s own Inspec Direct.
to innovate new solutions and services, as much
as we can see it in the proliferation of start-ups
and micro-businesses, often springing from the
research communities themselves. But what of
learned societies? How are learned societies
faring? Do they have the scale, the agility or
the strategic intent? Learned societies can often appear to be slow to respond, with complex
governance and multiple stakeholder interests.
For a learned society, the pace and rate of change
and the singularity needed to respond to it can be
daunting, and can challenge the identity and the
mission of the organisations themselves.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has geared up to respond to changes in research literature discovery behaviours. It
has reinvigorated its Inspec A&I service with
Inspec Analytics, an insight and analytics soluInspec’s Precision Discovery Connecting Two Records Across 50 years
tion, and it has effectively reinvented itself as a
150-year-old start-up. This has been done by focussing on users
Over the last ten years, however, changes in user behaviour,
and workflows, re-engineering key processes and embedding largely driven by the emergence of “good-enough” free-to-air
an agile project methodology. Most importantly, and critically, scholarly search alternatives, and an increased preference for
we have invested considerable time and effort in revisiting our full-text library discovery services have led to declining usage
partnerships with librarians and platform hosts, and engaging of A&I resources in our core research market. In turn, some of
them in our change process. What follows is a brief account our library partners, increasingly requiring return on investment
of how the IET has embraced the challenges in the changing evidence to justify subscription commitments, reluctantly canprocess of scholarly discourse and how this is changing the way celled long-held institutional access to Inspec. From 2014 this
our organisation approaches new projects.
had become a noticeable and worrying trend for Inspec, and
Before reviewing the project, first a little context. The IET, unique searches declined by around 30% between 2010 and 2017.
celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2021, is the world’s leading
The IET has long had strong partnerships with libraries and
inter- and multi-disciplinary engineering institution with over universities, and over the last three years we have been working
168k members around the world in 150 countries. We aim to with a group of librarians around the world to understand the
deliver on our mission to ‘engineer a better world’ by supporting dynamic of declining usage, seeking a better appreciation of the
engineers and researchers in their education, training, certifica- relative value of the “good-enough” alternatives, and looking to
tion and professional development, including the publication identify new uses for our high quality structured data. Partnering
of research journals, books, proceedings and Inspec. In terms with libraries to explore “upcycling” opportunities in the expandof scholarly publishing output we are a mid-size learned and ing workspace around scholarly communication reminded us of
professional society, with the accent on professional.
the shared goals and shared DNA we have. Research libraries
Inspec is a jewel in the IET’s crown, covering a broad water- and societies are mission driven and independent, connecting
front of research output across the physical sciences, engineering people and communities and we have been refreshed to see this
and computing comprising over 19m records from journals, shared purpose reflected in our Inspec Analytics project. We
proceedings, books and pre-print services. Our domain experts are appreciative that our colleagues from the library community
curate around 900k new items a year sourced from over 200 pub- were willing to back up their clear understanding of the value of
lishers, and our application of 10,000 controlled terms and over
continued on page 71
70 Against the Grain / June 2020
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Library Analytics: Shaping the Future
from page 70
curated and structured data by supporting its development into
insight and impact tools.
Our library advocates provided invaluable insights into the
segmentation of user types within the university or corporation
that they support, helping to set up interviews and work-shadow
sessions, engagement in the development of proofs of concepts
and prototypes and, critically, facilitating trials and demonstrations.
Partnering with librarians helped the introduction of open,
agile project working and has transformed our organisation. It
has helped to bring users and their workflow into sharp focus,
reminding us that our first objective is to understand our users in
the context of their work and, to paraphrase our mission statement,
to engineer better research outcomes. Identifying
real-world problems, use cases and personas has
helped us to identify new value propositions and
re-engineer our production process. The agile
process worked particularly well for the development of Inspec Analytics as it is a visual analytics
application that uses a large amount of high-quality legacy data. We were able to interview users
to understand their pain points and key business
needs, demonstrate the development progress, and
they could specify which additional data points
would be most valuable to them. For example,
when we demonstrated a feature showing how
many articles an organisation had authored on a
particular subject, customers specified it would
be very useful to see lists of authors who had
published those articles. As we already had the
data, we were able to modify our roadmap based
on customer feedback to add this feature and implement it within a
few sprints — and customers were very pleased with the response.
Our partners have also brought important insights into the project. Elsevier’s Engineering Village team has helped to identify
key user journeys, allowing the visualisation of data on Inspec
Analytics to trigger searches back into the Engineering Village
platform. Inspec users can now move between Inspec and Inspec
Anaytics within the Engineering Village platform. Our EBSCO
colleagues have opened doors into the library community and
collaborated with us on researcher communications and usage
campaigns and EBSCOhost provides a gateway to Inspec Analytics encouraging customer access.
Launched in Spring 2019, Inspec Analytics is available to all
Inspec subscribers, adding precision insights and impact analysis
to the traditional A&I proposition. The semantic enrichment of
the Inspec article records (bibliometrics, affiliations, authors,
journals, concepts and keywords) has created a knowledge base
of billions of data points that can now be related in response to
specific user needs, deriving new value and up-cycling 50 years
of curated data. Now, researchers can monitor global trends in
their field, compare emerging topics and find the most relevant
journals to consider publishing in. Libraries can monitor the
research output of their institution and evaluate resources in line
with growing and declining areas. Inspec Analytics provides
insights to allows senior teams to compare their institution with
collaborators and competitors to set valuable benchmarks, monitor research output to evaluate strategies and find collaboration
opportunities to support research impact.
We continue to receive positive support from our library
contacts who appreciate the opportunity to provide impact
assessment tools across the organisation and particularly into
the hands of those making strategic budget decisions, all within
their current Inspec subscription. Furthermore, we are delighted to have been awarded the Best New Product or Service award
from The Charleston Advisor in October 2019.
More importantly, as well as transforming the use of Inspec’s
data, the introduction of Inspec Analytics is also increasing the
use of the Inspec database. From September of 2019, usage
of both Inspec and Inspec Analytics has improved month to
month, with usage of Inspec up by 300% on prior year. Usage
of Inspec is now back at peak levels, in some
instances, showing that there is a full and rich
life for A&I datasets beyond pure discovery.
The investment in quality and in the specialist
curation of Inspec data over 50 years is now
reaping dividends in a research environment
seeking reliable, authoritative and verifiable
sources that can be trusted.
We are now planning the next phase of our
developments for Inspec, including adding
additional datasets to complement the Inspec
data, and we look forward to working with our
users, customers, information professionals
and platform partners alike to help transform
the landscape of research communications and
engineer better research outcomes.
EBSCOhost Provides a Gateway to Inspec Analytics
Encouraging Customer Access
Against the Grain / June 2020
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71
The Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with
Alex Lazinica, CEO, Underline Science, Inc.
Column Editor: Darrell W. Gunter (President & CEO, Gunter Media Group)
<d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com>
Column Editor’s Note: I am very pleased to be part of the
ATG family with the introduction of my column titled, “The
Innovator’s Saga.” I chose this title as the innovator’s work is
never complete; it is truly a work in progress. — DG
A
s technology evolves, the innovator must balance
many choices to ensure that his/her business remains
an ongoing concern. Our mission is to highlight those
individuals and companies that “put it on the line” every day to
improve the critical path of scholarly research. Our stories will
include both the success stories and the “lessons learned” stories.
I look forward to your feedback and comments, both good and
constructive, as our goal is to provide you, our reader, with the
best and latest information on the innovators.
Our inaugural column focuses on a gentleman who has
established the world’s largest open access book publishing
house, IntechOpen (https://www.intechopen.com/). Now he
has launched the world’s first streaming of livestream and virtual
content repository for scientific conferences, Underline Science,
Inc. (https://www.underline.io/).
DG: Alex, can you share with our audience a little bit about
your experience, knowledge, background and education, which
is quite fascinating?
AL: I graduated from an engineering school in Croatia. I’m
of Croatian origin. After graduation, I went to do the Ph.D.
studies at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, and
I worked there as a robotic and artificial intelligence researcher
for six years or something. I spent some time at the EPFL,
Lausanne. It’s a quite famous university.
I was doing my specialization in multi-robot simulation software. The research I was doing was in the area of multi-robot
systems for the manufacturing industry. But, as I was always
kind of curious in biology as well, I was researching the behaviors of a flock of birds and a swarm of ants and how to replicate
those behaviors in multi-robot systems. Robots were simple as
a unit, but as a group they should perform intelligent behaviour.
DG: Very Fascinating!
AL: Yes, so I was kind of intrigued with engineering and
biology as well. It was quite interesting.
DG: After that, you decided to launch a company called
IntechOpen, but it actually started because you wanted to find
a way to communicate and collaborate with other researchers
and scholars. Is that correct?
AL: Yes. So, you need to understand, it was a quite different
time back then. It was really hard for us, you know, to find the
high-quality literature which we needed for our studies, for our
research. Even though Vienna University of Technology is in
Europe, their library has quite a big budget for subscriptions;
but, they were struggling as well. And I remember, one time I
wanted to get one book from one famous professor from Japan,
and then I called my colleague in Tokyo, and then he was photocopying the book and sending it to me via post, you know.
Those were the days.
72 Against the Grain / June 2020
So, that was one reason why we
started to publish open access. We
didn’t even know that it was called
“Open Access” or that there was a
movement. We just wanted to share our journals and books free
of charge with the robotics community. The whole idea started
as a hobby project. We were just Ph.D. students, so quite young,
and we wanted to connect with our peers. You know? It was
quite exciting to communicate with famous professors from MIT,
Stanford, et cetera. That was the reason. And then the whole
robotics community and artificial intelligence accepted our open
access idea; so, I decided to leave academia and then to try, you
know, entrepreneurial life.
DG: Right, and that launched IntechOpen which is now
the world’s largest open access book publisher.
AL: Well, we didn’t start from a garage, but, yes, from a small
office at the Robotics Institute at the university. Yes, it was 15
years ago. I was the book editor of our first book, and most of
the chapters were written by my colleagues and my friends. At
this moment IntechOpen has published almost 5,000 original
book titles in all areas of science, technology, and medicine. Yes,
it’s quite a successful story, I would say.
DG: You have some Nobel Prize winners as authors and
editors, correct?
AL: Yes, actually, we have three Nobel Prize winners as our
authors. Yes, quite exciting, other famous people as well from all
over the world. We are strongest in technology, since that was our
core discipline. Yes. But, medicine is quite a big field as well.
Intech is in Europe, in Croatia, in the UK, in London, in China
and has a presence in India and the U.S. It’s a global business
and a global company. Most of our authors are from the U.S.
and Asia, and that’s quite obvious since most of the research is
done in those two parts of the world.
DG: And as an entrepreneur, one of the key things that I’ve
witnessed over the years, because I’ve gotten to know you since
2016, is that you’re able to hire really talented people to run
your operation. What are the criteria that you use to select the
people who do such a good job for you?
AL: I mean, you need to make a lot of mistakes during this
journey, you know. The saying is, as you grow, the more I practice, the luckier I get. So, I think that you need to be, I mean, at
least that’s for myself, you need to be honest with your people,
with your team. You need to inspire them. People need to see
that you have honest goals and your vision, and they need to
identify with that. It’s a daily job. The job I would say, it’s not
easy; but, yes.
DG: And at some point, you were publishing both books
and journals; but, I think it was in 2017-18, or whatever, you
decided to just focus on the book program.
AL: I think it was in 2015.
DG: Thank you for correcting it.
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The Innovator’s Saga
from page 72
AL: Yes. So, our first open access book came from a robotic
open access journal. We decided to collect the ten most read
journal articles and gave those authors the opportunity to write
more on the same topic and create an open access book. And I
would like to say that it’s the world’s first scientific open access
book; I cannot claim that, but I have a good feeling.
DG: I think you’re right!
AL: Yes, it came from a need, or coincidence, I can say.
During those few years, we figured out that we have a unique
value proposal in open access books, and expertise, knowledge
and technology. At that time, it was not possible to buy the software for the publishing process to produce books, open access
books, so we were kind of forced to make our own system. And
now that was all unique, and then we decided strategically to
focus on the books and we are the best in the world, yes, so far.
DG: That’s great.
AL: And SAGE approached us and they acquired our project.
DG: And you found a great home for your journals because SAGE is a very reputable publisher. And so you have
IntechOpen, a successful business, and then I read an article
about your Yellow Submarine gourmet hamburger chain in
Europe, which is voted one of the top 50 gourmet hamburgers
in Europe. How did you decide on a hamburger franchise for
your second business?
AL: It started as a hobby project, again. I like to cook a lot,
and we used to live for a while in New York, and then I got hooked
on one famous organic burger chain. I noticed that in Europe
the market is not so crowded with those concepts. And, together
with my friend, we started one outlet. I mean, we didn’t know
what to expect. But, five years later, we have 150 employees.
Yes, it’s a growing chain.
DG: And I must say, when I was in Croatia a year ago, I
had the opportunity of enjoying a Yellow Submarine gourmet
hamburger, and it was delicious, and the service was excellent,
and the environment was very funky, in a good way.
AL: Yes, yes. I mean, that “Yellow Submarine.” (laughter)
DG: Yes, that’s right. The IntechOpen business has opened
an office in London, and you have established a very successful gourmet hamburger business. So, what prompted you to
take the next step to launch your third business, Underline
Science?
AL: As you and all of us do, we attend a lot of conferences
during our career or life. And I noticed a great lack in this ecosystem, you know, in a way, frustration as well. When you get to
the conference, first, you need to get to the conference. You need
to have time and money or energy to fight with jet lag, and all
of the processes. When you get there, there are always multiple
sessions. You need to make a choice about which room to enter
and which lecture to attend. When you come back home, there
is no platform where you can re-experience the whole event.
And that’s kind of frustrating, you know.
There is no repository platform where you can just log in and
watch the lecture of your favorite colleague, mentor and/or leader
from the last conference he or she attended. That’s something
we need to change. With today’s technology, this should be easy,
doable, and quite manageable.
Against the Grain / June 2020
DG: And so Underline Science is a virtual streaming video
conference platform that works both in a live environment
and a virtual environment. Wow! That is dynamic. So, what
you’re saying is that if there’s a concurrent session going on,
you’ll be able to attend the live event if you want to, and then
catch the other ones pretty much “on demand,” as it streams.
AL: Yes, yes. It’s the world’s first live streaming and repository platform custom-made for scientific or academic conferences.
We have basically two value proposals, one for the conference
organizers and one for scientific societies. We are giving them
the possibility, technology, and support to organize online events,
which is quite important today, especially in this COVID-19
environment. In the past we have lacked one for end-users — a
repository of the most important scientific conferences in their
field. Users can watch the lectures from wherever, whenever.
Due to the COVID-19 situation, everything is under lockdown. And we have great technology and great features. We are
building new features every week. And since we are, in a way,
not from that industry, we are thinking out of the box.
On the Underline site, when the whole event ends, it all becomes part of the Underline Science repository platform. So,
we are hosting and broadcasting the lectures. We are enriching
the lectures with the transcriptions, translations, DOI numbers,
which we can talk about a bit later on, slides and PowerPoint
presentations. You can cite the lecture. You can share it. You
can search. You can connect with the speaker, since we know
that the community is one important aspect of the conferences in
general. We are building the community features on the platform.
So, you can read the short biography of the speakers. You can
start a collaboration. Yes, it’s quite exciting. We are developing
something that’s not seen in this industry, especially, so far. I’m
quite excited about that and thankful for my team.
DG: Very exciting. And if I understand correctly, you’re
transcribing the lectures, which means that they’re searchable.
AL: Yes, yes.
DG: The demonstration that I saw earlier, you were able to
change the language from English to Mandarin, to Spanish,
at a click of a button. Tell us about this particular transcription service that you’re using that really translates it at a very
high level.
AL: Well, we are using machine learning coupled with linguistic experts to build our transcription and translation feature.
Yes, it’s quite fascinating to see how you can change the language
“on the fly,” and, I mean, with this, I want to say to the world
that the language should not be a barrier to science. Science is a
global discipline, and we all need to be unified, and our next phase
is to work with the conferences which are being presented in the
non-English languages, to translate those to English as well. Yes.
DG: You’re one of the few publishers that I’ve ever heard to
voice that, that you feel that science should not have language
as a barrier versus saying that science should be in English,
that science should have no barriers. That is awesome, Alex.
AL: I mean, that’s a huge problem in today’s world, and I
had that problem as well, and you can see it. We need to be more
inclusive to all researchers. There are a lot of countries doing
great science, but they’re not English-focused. So, you’re...
DG: So, Underline Science is capturing conference content
which is groundbreaking, simply because before you’d attend
a conference and that information was forever lost, or it was
just in the minds of the people who attended the conference, but
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73
The Innovator’s Saga
from page 73
that record, that scholarly record, wasn’t shared with anyone. I
guess you were shocked that no one was providing this level of
service, especially when you think about the larger publishers
who have the financial wherewithal to build such things.
AL: I mean, the importance of conference lectures is, without
any question, very important. It’s not unavoidable, but it’s one of
the most important parts of the scholarly communication process
in general. And, you know, all the ideas people present and invest
a lot of their time and energy to prepare for the lectures, to do the
proper presentation, all of that just vanishes after the last day of
the conference. You know, there is no platform where you can
re-experience that.
DG: And what about the poster sessions?
AL: That’s something, you know, which needs to be changed.
I like to say that the lecture is just another type of information
exchange. Like journals, like books, like conference paper proceedings. And with today’s technology, you know, it’s the right
time to build the repository which preserves that information for
many years to come. With regard to the poster sessions, we are
doing that, especially during our online events, you know, it’s an
important aspect of the conference for the conference organizers
and societies. So, we’re building poster session rooms, virtual
ones, yes, but our focus is video lectures.
DG: So, your first Livestreaming event for the AAMAS
Conference is coming up.
AL: Yes, AAMAS is one of the leading AI conferences in the
world, and we are quite flattered, again, that they have chosen
Underline Science as their partner to do the online event. It
means a lot to us, for me especially. I’m a former AI scientist;
yes, and to have such a famous and important event as one of
our first customers, it shows us that we have a promising future.
DG: That’s right. I know you’re excited about Underline
Science, but what do you think is the most exciting feature of
the platform when you’re talking to a prospective conference
or publisher?
AL: Yes, I would say, the most exciting features are the ones
that are being built. So, let’s keep it, in a way, a tiny secret.
DG: Okay.
AL: We just started, so what you see now on the platform is
our starting position, yes.
DG: And when you go to the site, you can see current conferences that have been recorded and see the lectures.
AL: Yes, good point, Darrell. So, we are offering to conference organizers the service of filming the lectures at the venues as
well. We have our internal team and a network of freelancers all
over the world. We can film the conference wherever it is happening, and we did that for a dozen conferences before this crisis.
DG: Which is nice. And the profiles of the presenters, it’s
very professionally done. So, it looks far better than what we
see on other social media platforms or academic platforms.
So, congratulations on that.
AL: Thank you. We are just now building the new features,
as I told you before, so the speakers will have their dedicated
pages where they can log in and see the really detailed analytics
of their lectures. They can see who is watching their lecture
from each country, for how long, how many minutes and they
can connect with those as well. And I would like to mention, as
74 Against the Grain / June 2020
well, that we have a Q and A feature so that you, as a viewer, can
pose a question to the lecturer, and then the lecturer gets informed
through our system, and then they answer your question. That’s
really important; then it’s the start of some collaboration as well.
DG: Yes, I’m happy you brought that up because you have
a team behind the scenes that are actually producing the
events. So, the organization putting on the event, they don’t
have to worry about introducing people, or moving things
around to introduce people, share screens, and all of that. Tell
us a little bit more about the Underline Science philosophy
and about how to run an effective conference, whether it’s
live or if it’s a hybrid.
AL: Yes, so we are here to help societies, publishers, or individual conference organizers. So, we are not just giving them
the technology. We are giving them the support and knowledge
to organize the online event. Through our team, or through
technology, or through our marketing services, you know, in the
end, it’s the same. We are here to support them.
So, together with them, we are building the scripts, really
detailed scripts for each day of the live event. We have a professional studio, director, and a professional moderator who is
moderating the event. We are focused on the visual identity, the
branding of the whole event because it’s important in the end as
to how you present your conference. The content is important,
but the visual identity is important as well. Our team is coming
from the gaming industry, and the professional TV industry,
with big show experience. So, they have a lot of knowledge and
expertise in doing the live-streaming.
DG: Let’s talk about the Coffee Break rooms for people to
interact at the virtual conference.
AL: Yes, that’s something we are building right now since,
as I said, we know that the community is one important aspect of
the conference event as well. So, we are now building the feature
where people can attend one virtual room and speak informally
through video chats. We call it the Coffee Break Room Sessions.
DG: Yes, it’s going to be cool. And then to build on that, to
help to fund the conference, you are able to build exhibit halls
for sponsors where sponsors can demonstrate their services.
AL: Yes, we are kind of mimicking the behavior at the conference, the activities which are happening at the conference booths
or stands. So, sponsors or exhibitors can have their leaflets, you
know. They will have video chats so that they can communicate
with the attendees. They can present their products or services
through video, through different digital types of communication.
So, in a way, the digital world is quite diverse, I would say. You
just need to be creative and, yes, you will have amazing products.
DG: So, Underline is bringing forth this great platform, and
the research community is going to have this new tool, right?
This new area of information that they’ve never had before.
So, when you mesh the two together, hopefully, it’s going to
move scholarly research forward in a more productive way.
AL: Well, I hope as well that the future for Underline Science
is, I can see it now that it’s promising, it’s exciting for the research
community as well. I mean, it’s the new tool, a new platform
for scientists, it’s like a new pool of knowledge or information,
which did not exist. So, imagine in a few years when we get to
more content as well, you know. We are building great stuff, and
people are already noticing that, and I’m quite excited. Regards
to the... I thought you were asking about the research community
in general, yes.
continued on page 76
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Squirreling Away: Managing Information Resources
& Libraries — Our Grand Intermission: Libraries &
Change Management
Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of
Michigan; Phone: 734-764-9969) <cseeman@umich.edu> Twitter @cseeman
I
f you wondered what I was listening to these days, you will the case over the last few years, we have been asked to address
likely hear classical music from my two favorite stations.1 If the “Top 3 Things Affecting Your Library.” What I shared might
I am not listening to that, it is likely I am listening to Broad- make sense for a broader audience.
way on XM or the brilliant cast recording of Hadestown, Anaïs
Building a Library for the World We Live in Now
Mitchell’s brilliant show that captured the 2019 Tony Award for
In thinking about this question, I broke it down into three
best musical on its way to a total of eight wins along with 14
nominations. This brilliant re-telling of the tale of Orpheus and terms: Resources, Relevancy and Resiliency. I also want to
Eurydice set in a time period that conjures up the image New address one more term, the need to be grounded in Reality.
Orleans during the Great Depression.
Resources can make or break a library. Resources, very
At one point, Orpheus is asked to share a toast to Persephone loosely identified, give the library the fuel they need to run.
to welcome her back and celebrate the arrival of Spring (in the These resources include financial resources (needed to grow
song titled Livin’ It Up On Top).
and acquire collections), personnel resources (needed to provide
services and assistance for the community), and space (needed to
And if no one takes too much, there will always be enough
operate and provide places for students and community members
She will always fill our cups
to work). If a library is deficient in any of these resources, then
And we will always raise them up
providing services and information tools to the community is
impaired. Larger libraries and smaller libraries have one thing
To the world we dream about,
in common, neither have enough resources to fully satisfy their
And the one we live in now!
campus communities. In the world of COVID-19, there are not
When I first heard that beautiful turn of phrase, it might as many libraries that will have the people and budget they need to
well have been 1,000 years ago. Right now, we definitely find fully support their communities. For librarians who support their
ourselves wondering about the world we dream and about the community through print resources, our world has been flipped
one we live in now.
upside down with the shuttered buildings and the need to close
And as our libraries, theaters, stadiums and convention centers face-to-face services. Working through this new world order will
remain quiet, we are left to wonder and ponder what the future require libraries and librarians to be creative and collaborative
will bring. It is as if we are in a
here to bridge the gap. If internationgigantic intermission and we are all
al students are not coming to North
left wondering when the house lights
American universities (especially the
will flash to let us know when we can
business schools) or students decide
return to our seats. It has been weeks
to defer a year or two — this could
and weeks — we are still wondering.
get much, much worse.
If there was ever a time to ponder
Relevancy stems from the simple
change management, maybe it is this
question are we providing the retime. Strike that — it is definitely
sources and services that our campus
the time to think long and hard about
community needs. I was thinking
what we are doing and what will be
about the billions of dollars of print
needed of us after get to return to
books that are sitting on the shelves
normal — or what we think will be
of our locked libraries these last 2-3
normal.
months. While we will get back
into the buildings someday — was
If you read my earlier columns, I
that the best way to help our camhave broken down change managepus? I also saw a message from a
ment into six key terms: inevitabilHatchlings on campus. Not practicing social
vendor encouraging the adoption of
ity, rapidity, flexibility, hospitality,
distancing at Hatcher Library, University of
OER textbooks (this is good) with
accountability, and empathy. These
Michigan (Ann Arbor), April 15, 2020.
a purchase of a printed set of the
terms are particularly important to
use in the context of your institutional culture and identity. freely available 32 volumes for your reserve collection (this is
Through these six terms, I was exploring how to best manage bad — especially now). I know why you would want to have a
your operation in less than optimal conditions (and let’s face it, print option available — but is this the best use of money for a
most libraries are operating in exactly that “place”). I need to library? The desire for us to be the library of old will make us
work on hospitality, but given the state of the travel and food less relevant for what our community needs. When all our free
service industries, maybe a pause might be in order. Instead, I access to resources dries up this summer — will we be able to
want to share some thoughts that I pulled together for my annual help the campus as effectively as they need?
report to the Academic Business Library Directors.2 As has been
continued on page 76
Against the Grain / June 2020
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
75
Squirreling Away
from page 75
Resiliency might actually be the most important here. How do
libraries bounce back after this longest term ever in Winter 2020?
How do we grow and change to reflect our current world? There
are many librarians who see our current situation as something
that will be over in due time. But in many ways, this will last
longer for institutions in the higher education space. A colleague
at the University of Michigan Library astutely pointed out that
our austerity will far outlast the public health crisis. This is a
complete change in the way that we operate and what we can do.
From this event, there will be schools that consolidate, merge,
and collapse. From this event, there will be publishers that will
do the same. The most important task we have as librarians is
to see this not as an event or an episode, but an opportunity to
change how we operate and how we interact with our campus and
our users. It might not be 100 years until the next pandemic…
Reality did not make the initial trio of elements — but it
might be the trickiest. Maybe it is my role embedded in the Ross
School of Business, but our reality heading into the Fall Term
is one that cannot truly be figured out just yet. I was listening
to an interview with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
who talked about his state’s response to COVID-19 as stone to
stone. As you cross the morass, you plant your foot on a stone
and wait for it to steady before moving the other leg. Our new
reality is one that will forever change our environment and should
forever change the way that we think about services for our
communities. When we first moved Kresge Library Services
to a library without print holdings in 2014, I thought we were
20-30 years ahead of the curve. Now, I think we are less than 5
years. Just as COVID-19 accelerated the demise of many retail
and travel entities, I think this will accelerate problems across
our environment. The things that we could count on in libraries
may not be there for us in the year coming up.
So in many ways, we need to raise a toast, “to the world we
dream about, and the one we live in now!” We need to see this
as two distinct places and act accordingly. While it is great to
dream about the 2020 that we all planned to have, in the end,
it will not help. We have a new reality and our job is to look
forward. Don’t look back, whatever you do. It will not end well
for us, as it did not end well for Eurydice.
Corey Seeman is the Director, Kresge Library Services at the
Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. He is also the new editor for this column that intends
to provide an eclectic exploration of business and management
topics relative to the intersection of publishing, librarianship
and the information industry. No business degree required!
He may be reached at <cseeman@umich.edu> or via twitter at
@cseeman.
Endnotes
1. WRCJ-FM (90.9 from Detroit, Michigan) — Classical Days and
Jazzy Nights — https://www.wrcjfm.org/ or KBAQ-FM (89.5 from
Phoenix, Arizona) — great classical music all day long under the
name KBACH — https://kbaq.org/.
2. See ABLD at http://www.abld.org/.
76 Against the Grain / June 2020
The Innovator’s Saga
from page 74
DG: Yes, I was looking at how this is really going to help
the research community to be more effective, to be able to
capture more information. As we know, researchers build
on each other’s ideas. And having access to this conference
information, even poster sessions where it can spur someone’s
ideas or enhance someone’s idea, I think it’s going to be extremely valuable.
AL: Yes, yes.
DG: What closing thoughts would you like to leave with
our audience about Underline Science?
AL: We all need to work together now towards an open
society, connected world, the world in which we are, in a way,
leveling the playing field. I always like to emphasize that we, as
humankind, we need to build the bridges, not the barriers. And
that’s the way to go forward. And that’s easy to say but it’s,
yes, it’s not so easy to do, but we at IntechOpen and Underline
Science, I’d say it, we are one tiny brick in that bridge. Yes, I
would like to conclude with that.
DG: That was well said. Build bridges and not barriers.
Very profound. Alex, thank you for being our first guest for
“The Innovator’s Saga.”
AL: Thanks for inviting me.
Optimizing Library Services
from page 68
Van Krieken, T., and Pathirage, C. (2019). Factors Affecting
Community Empowerment During Disaster Recovery. International Journal of Disaster Response and Emergency Management
(IJDREM), 2(1), 15-32. doi:10.4018/IJDREM.2019010102
Column Editors’ End Note: As the COVID-19 pandemic
continues to severely impact institutions and libraries as they
transition to an online-only environment and serve as emergency
response hubs for COVID-19 updates and educational resources,
IGI Global continues to actively publish the latest information in
library and information science, online education and resources, and more, to better serve institutions, librarians, and their
patrons. Well in advance of the increased demand for electronic
resources, IGI Global offers all of its research content in electronic format, including e-books and e-journals, all of which are
available in IGI Global’s InfoSci-Databases (www.igi-global.
com/e-resources/). To learn more about the InfoSci-Databases,
or to request a free trial, email IGI Global’s Database Team at
<eresources@igi-global.com>. Additionally, learn more about
the research surrounding the topics in this article by checking
out IGI Global’s Research Trend article “What Is the Role of
Libraries During the COVID-19 Pandemic?” at https://bit.
ly/3ckQCRd.
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Don’s Conference Notes
by Donald T. Hawkins (Freelance Editor and Conference Blogger) <dthawkins@verizon.net>
NISOPlus2020: A New Event on the
Information Conference Calendar
Column Editor’s Note: Because of space limitations, this is an
abridged version of my report on this conference. You can read
the full article which includes descriptions of additional sessions
at https://against-the-grain.com/2020/06/v32-3-dons-conference-notes/. — DTH
T
he NISOPlus2020 meeting convened in Baltimore on
February 23-25, 2020. Organized by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), it brought
together information creators who work with publishers and others who supply content
and add value to the user
community. A highlight
of NISOPlus was the
prestigious Miles Conrad
Lecture. The meeting
was limited to 240 attendees, and it was sold out.
Knowledge is the greatest legacy of human achievement.
Brand closed her address by recommending reading The Power
Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses (known as
the “master builder” of New York City).
Big Data
Mark Hahnel, CEO of Figshare,1 said that everything is
getting more computational, so we must deal with many file
formats. The goals of big data are to find different ways to
group it together and mark it up. NIH has mandated open access
to research data which will have a major impact because it is
the biggest grant funder in the world. Data should be FAIR:
findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. We need to
motivate researchers to send their data to publishers so it can
be checked and validated.
According to Karin Wulf, Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture,2 “big data”
in the humanities can actually be fairly small. The humanities
differ from scientific disciplines because humanities research is
not project-driven, and the data is frequently textual.
Seamless Access
Seamless access to information provides a single sign-on
infrastructure through one’s home institution, while maintaining
an environment that protects personal data and privacy. A final
recommended NISO Recommended Practice published in June
20193 concluded that there were no significant security risks
for users.
The CRediT Initiative
Lord Baltimore Hotel, NISOPlus2020 Venue
Opening Keynote
The opening keynote address by Amy Brand, Director of the
MIT Press, was entitled “The Other i-Word: Infrastructure and
the Future of Knowledge.” She noted that we are all pioneers
working on the leading edge
of information, and our world
is becoming more open. We
must think about possible
unintended consequences of
openness.
Information is the life
blood of a community, and
the struggle for control is
prominent everywhere.
Technology is driving the
Amy Brand
transformation of knowledge
(Brand called it “Techknowledgy”). The future relies on distributed networks, librarians, startups, and vendors, but entrenched
models remain a hindering force.
Is peer review an adequate quality control measure of
knowledge? Methods for peer review transparency need to be
developed, and researchers need help in tagging to identify their
contributions to collaborative projects.
Against the Grain / June 2020
The CRediT (Contributor Roles Technology) Initiative will
help researchers get the credit they deserve for all their contributions. It assigns up to 14 roles to different project members,
which can then be used to generate metadata for research reports
such as articles, books, etc. NISO members have just voted to
develop a standard for CRediT.4
Lightning Talks
This was a session of 10 5-minute presentations on new or
updated services, tools, or events in the industry.
• Charles O’Connor, Aries Systems: Liquid XML.
Corrections can be made by authors and editors in XML.
• Anne Stone, TBI Communications is organizing the
4th Transforming Research Conference, which will
be held on October 12-13 at Emory University in
Atlanta.5
• Vandana Sharma, InfoBeans Inc. Are we still investing the same amount of time in research as when we
only had physical files? InfoBeans helps users make
the right decisions so their work can be done in a more
sustainable manner. It uses an automatic bot to issue
information to all attendees at a meeting.
• John Dove, Paloma & Associates. The Directory
of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an infrastructure
player like many organizations and has designated four
new “ambassadors” to advocate for it with publishers
and researchers.
continued on page 78
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
77
Don’s Conference Notes
from page 77
• Violaine Iglesias, Cadmore Media is Chair of a NISO
group on audio/visual (A/V) standards to treat A/V with
the same care as journals and articles.
• Linda Thomas, APTARA: A new platform, SCIPRIS,
delivers smart content, providing web-based payment
of Author Publication Charges (APCs).
• John Seguin, Third Iron: Digital Object Identifiers
(DOIs) fall short for users because they refer to a publisher’s website and so must be hosted at an IP-based
institution. Third Iron’s new platform, LibKey.io/DOI,
provides authentication for about 10,000 institutions
globally.
• Tim Lloyd, LibLynx: Combining an on-demand real-time analytic solution using an online tracking system
allows building real-time reporting dashboards to tell
which organizations are reading the content.
• Sami Benchekroun, Morressier: Many researchers’
publications are from conference posters and presentations where they cannot be easily accessed. Morressier
is helping organizers digitize early research content,
assign DOIs, and bring it to a platform where it can be
accessed.
• Brian Trombley, Data Conversion Laboratory
(DCL): DCL helps companies format their metadata
for discovery by creating a master record and associating it with content. The DCL Discovery Bridge
creates feeds for each discovery vendor so content gets
up quickly.
The Future of Search and Discovery
Christine Stohn, Director, Product Management, ExLibris,
noted that we currently have many new types of resources and
more data sources. Users are now heavily influenced by social
media and in an academic environment they are expected to use
more diverse materials, for example:
• Many users are focused on articles and books.
• Many parameters determine scholarly value, but we do
not have them for many resource types.
• Are there metrics beyond peer review that can be used
to evaluate research?
• How do we index masses of data?
• How do users search for and find material beyond articles and books? How should they?
How do we flag content appropriately? Sometimes “search”
does not mean traditional searching. In the ocean of material,
search alone is not enough anymore; serendipity is as important as knowing what you are looking for. Methods for creating
new discovery paths include following the citation trail, letting
others inspire you, and browsing virtually to discover “visual”
treasures in a collection.
Alex Humphreys, Director, JSTOR Labs, described how
JSTOR used different types of resources to build an archive of
interviews. The system shows topics of the interview that can
be clicked on by using linked open data to connect the materials.
Topicgraph6 can explore a scholarly book and use natural language processing to determine its subject, then display a graph
of occurrences of the selected term and related terms.
78 Against the Grain / June 2020
Research is multi-valued and diverse, and a major tool of
research is searching, so students are often trained to search
for PDFs. JSTOR’s Text Analyzer7 lets users search their
own documents for mentions of articles and books. New
researchers in a field do not know its major keywords, so
the Analyzer eliminates a lot of “keyword thrashing.” The
JSTOR Understanding Series searches primary text for concepts, finds relevant articles about them, and flags those that
are more important.
Information Privacy
According to Quiana Johnson, Collection and Organizational
Data Analysis Librarian at Northwestern University, privacy
means consuming information with little outside observation.
She noted that there are 48 laws protecting the confidentiality
of printed library records, and it will not be long before they
also apply to electronic records. Users often choose to forego
viewing information because someone might be observing them.
There is a fine line between data-driven decisions and protecting
privacy. Do users know that data is attached to their name and
another person might view it?
Laura Paglione, consultant and advisor at the Spherical
Cow Group,8 and formerly Technical Director at ORCID, asked
how we engineer a system with privacy at its core. Users expect
privacy, so tools should be engineered to be privacy-preserving.
Major questions:
Who is at risk as we move forward in collecting data to
provide enhanced services? Are we forcing people to disclose
information to access something that their organization has paid
for? We are in an evolving world of less and less privacy and
are all at risk when privacy is not prominent. Librarians are at
risk when collecting user data. Many data leaks make libraries
look bad, even when the vendors have not protected the data,
but users get angry at the library.
How can we build in privacy by design? A widespread tendency is to collect data in case we might need it in the future,
but a better approach is to identify the smallest amount of data
needed to answer a question. How long must raw data be kept?
How are we articulating to users what is being collected? Asking
users to evaluate vendors’ privacy controls is burdensome. We
should disclose the business reasons for collecting information.
The issue is often not about what information we collect, but
rather how we care for it and preserve it.
How can we engineer comfort levels or determine degrees
of transparency and control to foster trust in information resources or environments? How many privacy agreements has
a library agreed to on behalf of its users? What data is being
gathered and with whom is it being shared? Users view their
relationship as with the library, not with a third party organization.
If data is breached, trust is broken. How hard is it to build trust
into the licenses that we sign? We are complaining about privacy
policies of vendors, but how many libraries have a privacy policy
on their websites? Not many! We need guidelines about how
to conduct an audit.9
Economics of Information: Funding,
Sustainability, and Stakeholders
Keith Webster, Dean of Libraries, Carnegie Mellon University, said that serious information tipping points are emerging as
librarians push back against Big Deals, pricing, and subscriptions,
while shifting towards OA.
continued on page 79
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Don’s Conference Notes
from page 78
Big deals are affecting all players in the information community: libraries, readers, publishers, and societies. Webster
presented this quotation by Jan Velterop, former publisher at
BioMed Central,
“Only librarians, on the whole, complain about the Big
Deal, since their researchers are mostly not aware of costs
and cost increases. And librarians have limited power.
They also have no strong track record when it comes to
negotiating, only in rare cases employing professional
negotiators, it seems. That is their weakness, and the
publishers’ strength.”
Many libraries have annual budget increases of only 1%, but
journal prices have increased 6% annually, so many researchers
are using ResearchGate and Sci-Hub. Librarians complain
about pricing and Big Deals that limit their ability to cancel titles.
They question why they should pay high prices since their faculty
did the research, which is leading to support for OA. In response,
publishers point to exploding volumes of content, increases in
costs per download, Big Deal discounts, and the good things they
do. They want to work directly with faculty members and be
regarded as partners in the research process.10 Some publishers
say that they will support OA if they can meet their costs, which
has raised a debate on what APC charges should be.
The Miles Conrad Award Ceremony
Deanna Marcum, former Managing Director and now senior advisor at Ithaka S+R11
introduced the Miles Conrad
Award Lecture with a brief biographical sketch of G. Miles
Conrad and a history of the
Award, a highlight of NFAIS
meetings since it began in
1994. (Marcum was the final
president of NFAIS before its
merger with NISO in 2019.)
Deanna Marcum
G. Miles Conrad was a Director
and Trustee of Biological Abstracts;12
before that he was a Documentation
Specialist at the Library of Congress.
Based on his work in the early days
of electronic information, he saw the
potential of computer technology applications in the creation, organization
and dissemination of research information, and he spearheaded meetings
of professionals from organizations in
G. Miles Conrad
the industry, leading to the creation of
(1911-1964)
NFAIS, with Conrad as its first president. After Conrad’s death, 13 the NFAIS Board of Directors
created a lecture in his memory that became a highlight of the
NFAIS annual meetings. Since then, a wide range of industry
leaders has been honored as Miles Conrad Lecturers.14
Closing Keynote
In her closing keynote address, danah boyd, Partner Researcher
at Microsoft Research, and founder and president of Data &
Society,15 questioned the legitimacy of data and asked why AI is
being discussed so much. She quoted Geoffrey Bowker, Professor
Against the Grain / June 2020
of Informatics at the University of
California, Irvine, who said, “Raw
data is both an oxymoron and a bad
idea; on the contrary, data should be
cooked with care.” As soon as data
got significant power, people started
to tamper with it, and then it becomes
vulnerable to being used for business
or political interests, as Jeff Hamdanah boyd
merbacher, Founder of Cloudera16
and former leader of the data team at Facebook, said:
Legitimacy comes when we can believe that data are sound
and useful. The problem is often not what is included in the data
set but what is missing.
Here are 4 areas to consider:
1. Data have power.
2. Vulnerable data infrastructure.
3. Agnotology (the study of the production of ignorance)
and manipulation.
4. Towards a more secure future.
NISOPlus2021 will be on February 21-23 in Baltimore.
Endnotes
1. https://figshare.com/
2. https://oieahc.wm.edu/
3. “Recommended Practices for Improved Access to Institutionally-Provided Information Resources: Results from the Research Access in
the 21st Century (RA21) Project,” Final report available at ra21.org.
4. https://librarytechnology.org/pr/25092
5. http://www.transformingresearch.org/
6. http://labs.jstor.org/topicgraph
7. http://www.jstor.org/analyze
8. https://sphericalcowgroup.com/
9. Lists of references can be found at https://libraryfreedom.org/.
10. See the report published by the STM Association, “An Overview
of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishing and the Value it Adds
to Research Outputs,” April 2008. (Available at https://www.stm-assoc.
org/2008_04_01_Overview_of_STM_Publishing_Value_to_Research.pdf.)
11. https://sr.ithaka.org/people/deanna-marcum/
12. Now part of the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Group
https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/webofscience-biological-abstracts/.
13. A full obituary of Miles Conrad is at https://www.nytimes.
com/1964/09/11/archives/g-miles-conrad-publishing-aide-biological-abstracts-officer.html.
14. A list with links to each lecture is on the NFAIS website at https://
www.nfais.org/miles-conrad-lectures.
15. https://datasociety.net/people/boyd-danah/
16. A software platform for data engineering, data warehousing, machine
learning, and analytics (https://www.cloudera.com/).
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
79
Don’s Conference Notes
from page 79
The 2020 Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture
Column Editor’s Note: Because of space limitations, this is
an abridged summary of this lecture. You can read the full report
at https://against-the-grain.com/2020/06/v32-3-2020-milesconrad-memorial-lecture/. — DTH
This year’s Miles Conrad Lecture was presented by James
G. Neal, University Librarian Emeritus at Columbia University. Neal has had a distinguished career in the
library world, and has held
offices in many other professional organizations.1
Neal began his lecture
by answering three questions that had been given
Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive
to him:
Director (L) and James G. Neal
When you started in
library leadership, what were the pressing issues the information community faced and how have they changed over your
career?
46 years ago, they were: not enough funding, imminent technology, new collaborative strategies, and social unrest.
What has been the most disruptive change in information
dissemination during your career, and how well or poorly have
we as a community reacted to that change?
We have not reacted well to global scholarly communication,
online learning, user-managed applications, big data, streaming
access, and smart access and systems.
What do you see as the biggest challenges faced by libraries,
publishers, and information intermediaries over the next five
to ten years?
• Democratization of creativity,
• Born digital explosion,
• Policy chaos,
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion,
• Human-machine symbiosis, and
• Blended reality.
Future trends of our industry are particularly challenging to
define because the community of interest is narrow. We have entered a period of constant change, productive and powerful chaos,
radical shifts in our traditional staffing, and massive leadership
turnover. The library has always been a significant player in the
learning and research process, but changes in our environments
are challenging this relationship and raising questions about its
value in the community.
The emphasis for libraries in the next decade will be not on
what we have but what we can do with the content. Open resources and tools to support innovation, collaboration, and productivity
will be more prevalent; self-publishing and niche technology
will dominate. Measured transformation will be the key: what
we are, what we do, and how we are viewed and understood.
Here are five commandments for the future:
1. Thou shalt preserve the cultural and scientific record.
We have done a modest job at preserving analog records, but
have lacked with digital records, which are being produced in
80 Against the Grain / June 2020
large amounts. We must hold, secure, and care for the content
while enabling access to it.
2. Thou shall fight the information policy wars. We must
represent and advance the public interest and the needs of users
and readers. Network neutrality, open access to research, copyright, and intellectual property are areas of concern. Publications
and databases provided by libraries are increasingly covered by
contract law, not copyright. Technological controls and digital
rights management systems are reducing libraries’ ability to apply
fair use to their operations.
3. Thou shalt be supportive of the needs of your users and
readers. Users are far more diverse than we realize. They want
more and better content, access, and convenience, as well as technology and content ubiquity, places for experimentation (particularly in their communities), support services, and privacy spaces.
4. Thou shalt cooperate in new and more vigorous ways. Although cooperation is in our lifeblood, we need more radical strategies, deeper integration of operations, and a commitment to shared
knowledge repositories. We are now in a polygamous period of
widespread partnering, but are we ready to form more selective and
deep collaborations? We must move beyond conflict in the relationships among libraries, publishers, and information intermediaries.
5. Thou shall work together to improve knowledge creation,
evaluation, distribution, use, and preservation. Researchers
want to share their results and communicate with their peers
globally through publication. They need support and help
in navigating, analyzing, and synthesizing the literature, and
guidance for an open environment. The new model is one of
informationists and partners, where researchers get help with
disparate sources of information and grey literature.
Our challenge now is how to support these shifting research
conditions.
Following Neal’s lecture, he and Deanna Marcum discussed
these issues:2
• How do organizations like NFAIS and NISO have a
role?
• How can we be more effective in leading the community?
• How can we capture and preserve the digital record?
• How do we deal with the expanded scope of our institutions?
Donald T. Hawkins is an information industry freelance
writer based in Pennsylvania. In addition to blogging and
writing about conferences for Against the Grain, he blogs the
Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian conferences for
Information Today, Inc. (ITI) and maintains the Conference
Calendar on the ITI Website (http://www.infotoday.com/calendar.asp). He is the Editor of Personal Archiving: Preserving
Our Digital Heritage, (Information Today, 2013) and Co-Editor of Public Knowledge: Access and Benefits (Information
Today, 2016). He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of
California, Berkeley and has worked in the online information
industry for over 45 years.
Endnotes
1. Details of Neal’s professional career are at https://library.columbia.edu/james-neal.html.
2. See the full report (URL above).
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED
Scott Ahlberg
COO
Research Solutions / Reprints Desk
16350 Ventura Blvd., Suite D
#811, Los Angeles, CA 91436
Phone: (310) 477-0354
<sahlberg@reprintsdesk.com>
How/where do I see the industry in five years: I expect to
see more consolidation in scholarly publishing, but more decentralization
in getting content to end users.
Deni Auclair
President/CEO
Media Growth Strategies LLC
42 Walpole Street
Dover, MA 02030
Phone: (508) 785-8384
<dauclair56@gmail.com>
www.mediagrowthstrategies.com
Born and lived: Born in Mt. Kisco, NY and, up to and including while
in high school, lived in Brewster, NY; Arlington, VA; Cincinnati, OH; Woods
Hole, MA; Naples, Italy; Troy, NY; Pittstown, NY; Cambridge, England.
Early life: My father was a graduate biochemistry professor at University of Cincinnati and RPI, so we moved around as he changed jobs
and went on sabbaticals. He also did genetics research (cloning) at the
Rockefeller Institute in NYC and genetics-related marine biology at the
Massachusetts Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole. We finally settled
in Pittstown, NY when my family bought a 650-acre Century farm (meaning
it had been in the same family for over 100 years). We started as a beef
farm, raising Charolais and Herefords as well as horses, chickens, and
geese. After our farm manager joined us, we went to dairy and had a
herd of Holsteins until it was sold when my parents retired. I spent seven
summers working on the hay wagons – long days of throwing hundreds of
bales of hay. I learned a lot about hard work, discipline – and being stronger than the boys on the school bus! – during those years.
I went to Albany Academy for Girls, the sister school to Albany Academy
which had several notable attendees, but the most meaningful to me was
Herman Melville. I did my thesis on him my senior year at Bates College,
which I attended for three years, spending my junior year at University of
Stirling in Scotland.
Professional career and activities: I started my career working in Portland, ME for a team of industrial psychologists. I wanted to get
into publishing, however, so after a summer taking the Stanford Publishing
program, I moved to NYC and started as a Reader for the children’s book
division at (what was then) Harper & Row, moving into the adult division
after a year. After six months working as an editorial assistant, I was hired
as assistant to Phyllis Grann, publisher at G. P. Putnam’s Sons. I was promoted to Senior Editor after two years – acquiring bestselling And So It
Goes by Linda Ellerbee and working with notable authors like comedian
George Burns, actress Elizabeth Taylor (her assistant, to be honest), Robin
Cook, Dick Francis, Joe McGinnis, and many more.
I decided, since I had played sports through high school and participated as much as I could in college (there were very few women’s teams at
that time), that I wanted to be in the business of baseball so I interviewed
with a bunch of baseball teams – and ended up as a Reporter (i.e., fact
Against the Grain / June 2020
checker and sometimes supporting the Writers on stories) for Sports Illustrated. Not really what I wanted to do, but it was a fun experience for a
little over a year. I returned to Putnam for a couple of years, worked for a
sports media coach for a year, then got my MBA at NYU’s Stern School of
Business while working again at Sports Illustrated, before joining what is
known as a “vulture fund” as a buy-side analyst. (Vulture funds invest in
distressed debt.) After six years, I got a job at Wiley doing M&A and that
started my career in scholarly publishing. I worked at Wiley for 12 years,
then joined JBJS as CFO. I then started my consultancy, Media Growth
Strategies LLC (MGS) before joining Outsell. I was VP and Senior Analyst
there for two and a half years, joined Delta Think as CFO and analyst for
a year and a half, then restarted MGS. I am now very happily consulting
and working with the wonderful people in scholarly communications on as
many projects as possible!
Family: I live with my eight cats and two dogs, am a widow of 15 years,
and have a brilliant 43-year old stepson who is an attorney in NYC.
In my spare time: I am treasurer for USA Boxing, Metro (USA Boxing
is the national governing body for amateur boxing, under the aegis of the
USOPC, and Metro is the NYC chapter) and the National Golden Gloves
of America. I am also Vice President of the USA Boxing Foundation. I
have been involved in amateur boxing as an official and administrator (all
volunteer) for 36 years – they are like family to me. I am also treasurer of
The Cat Connection, based in Waltham, MA. Basically, being involved
with boxing and cats, I’m a member of the two craziest groups of people
you can find.
Favorite books: Too many to list… I listen to audiobooks constantly,
and am currently reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind.
Pet peeves: Drivers who don’t signal when they turn, malapropisms,
sloppy writing in a professional setting. Also, people who create drama
when it just isn’t necessary.
Philosophy: Be happy.
Most memorable career achievement: Working on the Blackwell acquisition while at Wiley.
Goal I hope to achieve five years from now: Being ready to
semi-retire.
How/where do I see the industry in five years: Pretty much
where it is today, while recovering from this coronavirus pandemic. With
COVID-19, it seems as if life has been put on hold. Combine that with an
industry that moves relatively slowly, and five years is a drop in the bucket
when it comes to time.
Marshall Breeding
Independent Consultant
Library Technology Guides
2512 Essex Place
Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: (615) 479-0392
<marshall.breeding@librarytechnology.org>
https://librarytechnology.org
Short professional bio: https://librarytechnology.org/marshallbreeding/
Full c.v.: https://librarytechnology.org/marshallbreeding/cv/
continued on page 82
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
81
ATG Profiles Encouraged
from page 81
Barbara Casalini
President
Casalini Libri
Via Benedetto da Maiano 3
50014 Fiesole Italy
Phone: +39 055 50181
Fax: +39 055 5018 469
<barbara@casalini.it>
www.casalini.it
Born and lived: In Fiesole all my life.
Early life: Only happy memories except for some Sunday morning
German and French dictation exercises my father painstakingly bestowed
on me.
Professional career and activities: Casalini Libri, for as long
as I can remember.
Family: One husband, two daughters, three grandchildren. In all, we
are also family to three rowdy dogs and two hefty cats that wander freely
around the Torrossa grounds.
In my spare time: I like to cook and bake for friends and family, watch
old movies, read good novels and mysteries, avoid physical exercise if at
all possible.
Favorite books: Asterix (in French) to cheer me up.
Pet peeves: People who complain when they have every reason not to,
people who don’t show respect for others or for the environment.
Philosophy: Look on the bright side.
Most memorable career achievement: Loving my job every
day.
Goal I hope to achieve five years from now: To take a back
seat (but of course being a back seat driver!) while the new generation
goes full steam ahead.
How/where do I see the industry in five years: Definitely
more digital and more accessible, owing not only to recent events and the
needs that have come to light, but also on the emerging work and developments in linked data and the conversion of library data to interconnect
with and harness the potential of the structure of the semantic web. I like to
think that there will be ever more communication and collaboration among
all sectors of the community.
Lettie Y. Conrad
Publishing & Product Consultant
LYC Consulting
Ventura County, California
<lettieconrad@gmail.com>
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lettieyconrad/
Professional career and activities: Lettie brings nearly 20
years’ experience in scholarly publishing to her diverse portfolio of product
research and development talents and passions. She is dedicated to helping information organizations cultivate a user-centered, standards-compliant approach to digital publishing and academic programs. Her work
history demonstrates a commitment to the dissemination of high-quality
scholarly and professional publications that advance science and knowledge for the greater good, and transform the researcher experience.
Lettie excels in driving optimum content discovery and access of academic content platforms, leveraging her R&D experience in web analytics, user
experience, information architecture, SEO, institutional discovery, metadata standards, and semantics. In her 10 years with SAGE Publishing, Lettie played a key role in establishing product management expertise and
82 Against the Grain / June 2020
user-centered product lifecycles and market research routines. She was
instrumental in launching user-centered web and mobile products, driving
research and analysis that enabled evidence-based product management
to maintain outstanding quality of SAGE platforms.
In my spare time: Currently, Lettie is a North American Editor for
Learned Publishing and is a “chef” with the SSP’s Scholarly Kitchen blog.
Lettie has a master’s degree in Mass Communication from California State
University, Northridge, and is currently an Information Science PhD candidate at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Lettie enjoys
organic gardening and drinking wine with her her husband in their Southern California home, ruled by Frida & Bonita, their two calico-tabby cats.
Philosophy: We’re in this together!
Darrell W. Gunter
President and CEO
Gunter Media Group, Inc.
298 Mathers Road, Ambler, PA 19002
Phone: (973) 454-3475
<d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com>
www.guntermediagroup.com
Born and lived: Born Atlantic City, NJ. Lived in Los Angeles, CA,
Chicago, Il and South Orange, NJ.
Early life: Growing up in Atlantic City, NJ with access to the boardwalk
and beach was awesome. I worked in my family’s grocery store and had
a paper route for the Philadelphia Bulletin. I played youth football with the
Atlantic City Dolphins which led me to become a lifelong Miami Dolphin fan!
In highschool I lettered in football and track and broke the school’s high jump
record with a leap of 6’6”! Attending Seton Hall University was a phenomenal experience and I served many organizational posts. I also ran and won
campus elections and won election to serve on the national board of Omega
Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Oh, yes, I was the captain of the SHU Fencing team.
Professional career and activities: During my high school
years in addtion to the family grocery store, I worked for McDonalds and
Mr. Best Car Wash. During my college years I worked at Jules Men’s shop
which set the stage for a career in sales. Post college, I started my professional career at Xerox which led me to Dow Jones Financial Services and
Elsevier. My entrepreneurial leanings opened me up to Collexis a semantic
technology company. After Collexis was acquired by Elsevier, I joined AIP
and sometime later formed Gunter Media Group, Inc., a management consulting firm. The grocery store experience certainly set the foundation for
me to want to be in sales and a desire to help people.
Family: Wife Deb, daughter Bailee.
In my spare time: I love spending my time with my family and our 6
pets (3 dogs and 3 cats), light exercising, reading and watching thought
provoking films.
Favorite books: The Bible, Art of War, any novel by Tom Clancey.
Pet peeves: Dishonest people.
Philosophy: A man’s word is his bond.
Most memorable career achievement: Having my mom see
me receive the Seton Hall University Many Are One Libraries Alumni Service Award at their annual gala in 2008.
Goal I hope to achieve five years from now: To be part of a
new development that will improve scholarly research.
How/where do I see the industry in five years: The scholarly
publishing industry, in my humble opinion, will have a complete new business model that will move subscriptions to open access and be supported
by advertising and data analytics. Data Analytics is the new oil! This predicted shift would truly open scholarly research to the global research community. Considering faster computiing power and Internet speed, we can expect
to see the research community achieve new developments in record time.
continued on page 83
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
Abigail Wickes
ATG Profiles Encouraged
from page 82
Christopher Lee
Electronic Resources Librarian
Utah State University
USU Merrill-Cazier Library
3000 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-3000
<Christopher.lee@usu.edu>
Born and lived: I was born in UT and lived there most of my life except for 6 years in California.
Professional career and activities: I started working in libraries as a student worker for Interlibrary Loan at Utah State University. I
went on to be an Interlibrary Loan staff member at California Polytechnic
State University for 6 years. I am now back at Utah State University as the
Electronic Resources Librarian.
Family: Spouse and 2 wonderful daughters.
In my spare time: I read, watch Netflix, and play video games.
Favorite books: Harry Potter series for fiction and Educated for nonfiction.
Most memorable career achievement: Winning a work Halloween costume contest as Conan the Librarian.
Goal I hope to achieve five years from now: Tenure.
How/where do I see the industry in five years: The coronavirus has stressed the importance of electronic resources and the need
to move more and more online. While I think library buildings and print
materials are here to stay, I do see more and more services going entirely
online to make space for studying or community events.
Electronic Resource Management Librarian
Duke University
Duke University Libraries
Durham, NC 27708-0187
Phone: (919) 660-6939
<abigail.wickes@duke.edu>
Professional career and activities: I studied English and
Film Theory at the University of Rochester before getting my MLS from
UNC-Chapel Hill. I started my early career in scholarly publishing, doing
marketing analysis and content discovery management at Oxford University Press, then transitioned back to the library side of things as the ERM
Librarian at Duke.
Family: I have an awesome husband, a fabulous preschool-aged daughter, and a scrappy elderly mini-dacshund.
Favorite books: Lately anything by Connie Willis, Grady Hendrix,
Rainbow Rowell.
Pet peeves: Pedantry.
How/where do I see the industry in five years: This is
the hardest question on the profile template, and also difficult to answer
mid-pandemic (filling this out in April 2020.)
I think there may be an industry shift towards full text syndication or aggregation by subject, like JSTOR, PubMed, or LexisNexis/WestLaw, in a
wider range of subject areas. These will be similar to A&I services in that
they will be discipline specific, but they’ll have full text rather than just
citations and abstracts so discovery can also be delivery. We know from
reports from Renew Publishing that researchers already find A&I services
extremely valuable. If these were larger scale, researchers would still
benefit from that richer, discipline specific metadata subject experts can
layer on, but with access and delivery incorporated (somehow!) as well.
COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED
Casalini Libri
Corporate Headquarters: Via
Benedetto da Maiano 3
Operational Offices & Logistics: Via Faentina 169/15
50014 Fiesole (Florence), Italy
Phone: 055 50181 • Fax: 055 5018201 • www.casalini.it
Officers: CEO Michele Casalini, President Barbara Casalini.
Key products and services: Sourcing, cataloguing and supplying print and electronic publications in all formats and subject areas. We
specialise in titles from Italy, Spain, the Vatican City, Switzerland, France,
Belgium, Luxemburg, Greece and Portugal, with a particular focus on the
Humanities and Social Sciences.
Core markets/clientele: Libraries.
Number of employees: 96
History and brief description of your company/publishing program: Established by Mario Casalini in 1958, Casalini Libri
is recognised as one of the leading suppliers of publications and bibliographic data from across Southern Europe to libraries and institutions
worldwide.
We provide an efficient and personalised service for libraries, combining
the supply of information and publications with a range of solutions that facilitate selection, acquisition and processing workflows. The Torrossa digi-
Against the Grain / June 2020
tal library aims to offer institutions a resource that gives access to scholarly
eBooks and ejournals.
Is there anything else that you think would be of interest to our readers? As a major bibliographic agency for data
regarding European publications, we are driven by the determination to
anticipate the changing needs of the market and are currently working on
the development of solutions for the effective use of Linked Data and BIBFRAME within libraries. We are a partner in the Share-VDE collaborative
initiative.
Following the renewal of the Torrossa digital bookstore in 2019, our investments in technological innovation continue with, most recently, a new
look company website and enhanced management interface for publishers. The project is ongoing and further, exciting developments will be announced later in the year.
Lean Library
Hofplein 20
3032 AC Rotterdam
<info@leanlibrary.com>
leanlibrary.com
Key products and services: Library Access, Library Assist, Library Alternatives.
continued on page 84
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
83
ATG Profiles Encouraged
from page 83
Core markets/clientele: Academic, Non-Academic, Corporate,
Public Libraries.
Number of employees: 10
History and brief description of your company/publishing program: Johan Tilstra is a former Program Manager at Utrecht
University whose passion lies within the library world and the need for libraries to remain current, useful and dependable.
As Lean Library’s Founder and CEO, Johan Tilstra, came up with the idea
for a browser extension when Utrecht University had the “Thinking the Unthinkable: A Library without a Catalogue” initiative. The groundwork for
the idea of not offering a catalogue was the conviction that libraries should
shift their focus from discovery to delivery.
This conviction is based on an evident change in users’ behavior with regards to where and how they are starting their research, as pinpointed in
many talks, articles and blog posts. Therefore, it’s vital for libraries to revolutionize the library environment to adjust and capitalize on this behavioral
shift of their users.
Working closely with students and researchers, Johan recognized this shift
and worked tirelessly, creating a prototype and developing it into a fullfledged extension that puts libraries directly in their end users’ preferred
workflow.
like myself as a boss! I have been happily running MGS for three years
and while being a consultant can be challenging at times – looking for projects and not knowing what’s coming next – I absolutely love it. The diversity of clients and projects, talking to the really smart people in our industry,
and learning every day – that’s what makes the challenge of bringing in
new projects worthwhile. Market research/business intelligence and financial analysis are my favorite things to do, but I have enjoyed every project
I’ve worked on, with no exceptions. As long as I’m learning, I’m happy.
Scholarly Networks Security
Initiative (SNSI)
Contact: Susie Winter
<Susie.winter@springernature.com>
More information and full list of members can be found on our website,
coming soon at www.Snsi.info.
History and brief description of your company/publishing program: SNSI is an initiative bringing together publishers and institutions to solve cyber challenges threatening the integrity of the scientific
record, scholarly systems and the safety of personal data. Its members
include large and small publishers, learned societies and university presses and others involved in scholarly communications.
Third Iron, LLC
PO Box 270400
St Paul, MN 55127
Phone: (855) 649-7607
https://thirdiron.com
Armed with his vision, he set out to start Lean Library, which once dependent on early adopters, is now a powerful force of change in the library
landscape.
Lean Library, via browser extension, simplifies access to library services
while increasing library visibility with branding and custom messaging.
Media Growth Strategies LLC
42 Walpole Street
Dover, MA 02030
Phone: (508) 785-8384
www.mediagrowthstrategies.com
Officers: Deni Auclair, CEO/President
Association memberships, etc.: SSP
Key products and services: Consulting services to the scholarly
information industry.
Core markets/clientele: Scholarly publishers.
Number of employees: 1
History and brief description of your company/publishing program: I decided I wanted to try working for myself – and I really
Officers: Kendall Bartsch, John Seguin, Karl Becker
Key products and services: LibKey Discovery, LibKey Link, LibKey Nomad, libkey.io, BrowZine.
Core markets/clientele: Academic, hospital, corporate and government libraries.
Number of employees: 25
History and brief description of your company/publishing program: Third Iron technologies keep the library at the center of
the research process, whether the point of discovery is library services
or on the open web. Our services simplify and expedite getting to full
text, freeing up countless hours of researcher time, reducing help desk
and ILL burden, and meeting the expectations of students, faculty and
researchers.
Is there anything else that you think would be of interest to our readers? Third Iron is private, self-funded company
whose products are designed to meet the needs of libraries and the users
who rely on them.
LIBRARY PROFILES ENCOURAGED
Duke University Libraries
411 Chapel Drive
Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 660-5870
https://library.duke.edu/
Does your library have an ILS or are you part of a collaborative ILS? Aleph.
Do you have a discovery system? Summon.
Background/history: https://library.duke.edu/about
Number of staff and responsibilities: https://library.duke.
edu/about/directory/browse/all
84 Against the Grain / June 2020
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
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Back Talk
from page 86
by providers who mean well, while also needing to consider their
own convenience and advantage And the gifts are ephemeral —
promised to expire on June 30 or some other early date, promised,
that is, to go away and leave us.
As I’ve been working on this column (since April 15th) and
living through lockdown, that June 30 deadline approaches. What
should we expect next? [And as I write this, a few publishers have
just extended their free offerings to August.] Will there be bold
announcements of the “it’s safe to go back in the water so we’re
pulling the plug” variety? Will librarians and others push back
and insist on longer-term concessions? Most people agree that
the virus conditions and fallouts won’t go away for a long time.
Do we go back and undo the work we’ve done to make these
temporary resources useful? Web pages would be deleted, LibGuides cut back, etc. User expectations — or at least hopes —
will have to be dashed just when we’re all discovering that the
budgetary world of 2020-2021 isn’t going to be even as happy a
place as, in its limited way, it has been in 2018 and 2019.
In short, we’re all learning that nothing about the pandemic and
nothing about responding to the pandemic is just going to magically
go away. The new temporary generosity and venturesomeness
we’ve experienced reveal the flaws in a system of information
provision that isn’t as universal, transparent, and accessible as we
need it to be. Who’s going to step up to the challenge and find
ways for us to come out of these times better off than our readers
and we were before? Wrapping up this piece on Memorial Day
weekend 2020, I have to say that the answers elude me.
Against the Grain / June 2020
Considering Games ...
from page 69
So, if this pandemic has taught me anything, beyond the joys
of going to work in my underwear, it is a new appreciation of
face meetings in the real. Sure, you don’t get all the personality
telling Zoom features. But you do get… Wait a second. I just
remembered that chat feature which allows you to pass detailed
notes — undetected — during a meeting. Never mind. I think
I do like Zoom meetings after all. Isn’t this 21st century just
the greatest?
Rumors
from page 49
To finish up, I have to confess that I have suddenly become
obsessed with rare book collecting. This is strange since I have
never owned a rare book or been a special collections librarian. I will
admit, though, that the very first Charleston Conference in 1980 began as a rare books conference with the likes of Jake Chernovsky
of A.B. Bookman’s Weekly (long defunct because of the internet),
Paul Koda Rare books librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill back then and
several others. Anyway, I got into this all again when I read a review
of a book called Bluffing Texas Style (U of Oklahoma Press, 2020)
by Michael Vinson, a rare book dealer. I bought it immediately.
Next I got into The Lost Gutenberg by Margaret Leslie Davis
(Tarcher/Perigee, 2019). I highly recommend both books! I have
even devoted a special bookshelf to my growing collection of rare
book collecting. Please send suggestions. Yr. Ed.
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>
85
Back Talk — Carpe Diem – Seizing Pandemic
Opportunities?
Column Editor: Ann Okerson (Advisor on Electronic Resources Strategy, Center for Research Libraries)
<aokerson@gmail.com>
T
hese are head-spinning days. On the
one hand, it’s as if someone pushed
the pause button on the world and
everything has gone into suspended animation. On the other hand, an invisible
enemy is loose among us, powerful and
untraceable. Are these the best of times
or the worst of times? Where will we be
in six months? And of course the network
world doesn’t just terrify and inform us,
but it also distracts us. Netflix and other
providers have had to scale back the speed
at which they feed our binge-watching
habits because there are so many of us at
home, in suspended animation, browsing
for distraction and amusement. Will we
stay the course watching Schitt’s Creek and
its reverse Beverly Hillbillies in their tiny
town in Canada? Stay tuned!
For those who work in the world of library collections, it’s just as head spinning.
Suddenly, whether on request from librarians or goodwill from information providers, we have jumped into an age of even
more plenty — of information. The global
drama is being played out in every form
of media ever invented, and we can spend
whole days sorting, scanning, and sifting
through the welter of information about
the COVID-19 crisis — and of course,
much more besides. Never have so many
had access to so much information about
something so small and
so dangerous.
Our readers turn
back to their computers and find that
their research li-
brary is offering a COVID-19 resource
page — only to discover that there’s
some COVID-19-specific information,
but there’s a lot more. It’s a welter of
variously themed information resources,
some they’ve heard of, some not, all
concentrated in a menu listing or two
and turned in their direction like a great
info-firehose. Publishers have leapt to
show social concern (and marketing
savvy) by opening up assorted resources
that are often available only via expensive licenses and making them available
for the duration of the emergency. For
example, in the commercial sector, publishers such as De Gruyter offer a huge
aggregation of near current and backlist
university press books — can Princeton
Press really be offering 6,000 titles for
free? Various information providers are
offering periodical indexes, research
databases, full text journals, and more
— some are freely open to all, some
to subscribers, others only to members
of specific libraries or consortia. On
the non-profit side, for example, The
Internet Archive has a National Emergency Library for the world, while HathiTrust offers Emergency Temporary
Access Services for its members. And
all these riches are offered with shortterm expiration dates estimating when
the emergency will lift.
So what do we
make of this chaotic
and erratic information
environment? We can
draw a few lessons:
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31
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11
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13
43
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Accessible Archives
ACS Publications
Adam Matthew Digital
AIP Publishing
American College of Physicians
ASME
ATG
85 The Charleston Advisor
8 The Charleston Report
87Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press
49Emery-Pratt
3 GOBI Library Solutions
37 INFORMS
88 Midwest Library Service
27 The MIT Press
7 OSA – The Optical Society
9 Project MUSE
15Research Solutions / Reprints Desk
21SAGE Publishing
17SLACK Incorporated
23 The Wall Street Journal
For Advertising Information Contact: Toni Nix, Ads Manager,
<justwrite@lowcountry.com>, Phone: 843-835-8604, Fax: 843-835-5892.
It’s mainly up to the librarians to figure
out how to translate this transitory Wild
West availability successfully, so that
information reaches those end-users who
will benefit from it. Every publisher wants
to show how generous they are, but readers
care less about specific publishers or their
generosity: they will use what they need
and they will look first of all for content
relevant to their teaching, learning, or
research. There’s the non-trival question
of how much work librarians can imagine
doing to make accessible all this “free”
information. They (we) do some of the
usual work: create websites, LibGuides,
instructional sessions (on Zoom, of course),
and liaison outreach to faculty.
We re-learn the lesson that many organizations have already discovered over
time — information being made available
for free is only the first part of the picture.
For example, almost 20 years ago when
Research4Life (https://www.research4life.
org/) began offering to emerging nations
access to hundreds and thousands of free
or very inexpensive high quality journals,
the founders quickly learned that turning
on and pointing the fire hose was only the
beginning — and that it was necessary
to spend a fair amount of time with the
users, conducting training and workshops
and managing the sudden “free” riches.
Training in use of e-resources continues
unabated to this day not only in R4L, but
also in libraries worldwide.
[By the way, there’s one thing that will
not work optimally in accessing these
“free” resources, and that is reliance on a
search engine. For specific searches, tools
like Google and Google Scholar can be
very powerful, but the user doesn’t learn
about the underlying structure of information resources nor how to understand
the riches and possibilities of a given site,
when all she sees are some hits from that
site mixed in with many others on a relevance-keyed search.]
And then there’s what may be the most
important lesson of all in this time of resource deluge: ephemerality is a critical
weakness. The offerings readers are now
being given are haphazard and as full of
holes as Swiss cheese, not chosen by any rational selection process, but instead offered
continued on page 85
86 Against the Grain / June 2020
<http://www.against-the-grain.com>