ARL Libraries – Page 2

"UC Berkeley Library to Copyright Office: Protect Fair Uses in AI Training for Research and Education"

If the Copyright Office were to enable rightsholders to opt-out of training AI for research and teaching fair uses, then academic institutions and scholars would face even greater hurdles in licensing content for research purposes. It would be operationally difficult for academic publishers and content aggregators to amass and license the "leftover" body of copyrighted works that remain eligible for AI training. Costs associated with publishers’ efforts in compiling "AI-training-eligible" content would be passed along as additional fees charged to academic libraries, who are already financially constrained to preserve TDM and other fair uses for scholars. In addition, rightsholders might opt out of allowing their work to be used for AI training fair uses, and then turn around and charge AI usage fees to scholars (or libraries)—essentially licensing back fair uses for research. These scenarios would impede scholarship by or for research teams who lack grant or institutional funds to cover these additional expenses; penalize research in or about underfunded disciplines or geographical regions; and result in bias as to the topics and regions studied.

https://tinyurl.com/5cd2vc85

Paywall: "Implementing a Rules-Based Chatbot for Reference Service at a Large University Library"

While some chatbots or virtual assistants generate automatic and custom responses to user input, this paper explores the implementation of a rules-based chatbot, where all responses have been input and configured by library staff. Details are provided to describe the process before, during, and after the initial implementation with data and observations from the pilot in mid-2023.

https://doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2023.2268832

"USC Press and University Libraries Launch Open-Access Publishing Platform"

The University of South Carolina Press and University Libraries are embarking on a new collaborative venture: Open Carolina, an open-access publishing platform. . . .

Many ventures into open scholarly resources are planned as temporary pilot operations because they are funded by time-limited grant pools. Thanks to consistent funding from the Libraries, Open Carolina has a sustainable model that will allow scholars with limited publishing funds to share their research via the platform, partially or totally foregoing associated fees. In its inaugural year, the Libraries aim to fund four full-length books and support is in place to make the program sustainable for years to come and allow Open Carolina to grow steadily.

Open Carolina will offer opportunities to a wide range of scholars and researchers regardless of university affiliation.

https://tinyurl.com/yn7zd3ta

University Librarian at University of California, Berkeley

Comprising 22 libraries, the UC Berkeley Library has one of the world’s most comprehensive academic research collections, from the trove of primary documents chronicling the West at Bancroft Library, to the collaborative and innovative spaces at the Moffitt Library, to the vast and unparalleled collections at Doe Library — a beacon of information standing in the shadow of the iconic Campanile. Together, these libraries help sustain UC Berkeley as a leading producer of knowledge. The Library holds more than 13 million volumes in its world-renowned collections. Materials include paintings, lithographs, papyri, audio and video recordings, and ephemera such as leaflets from the Free Speech Movement, a note from Helen Keller to Mark Twain in honor of his 70th birthday, and vintage costumes worn by Berkeley’s beloved mascot, Oski. The Center for Connected Learning, a "collider space" where students will have access to one-stop consultation on retrieval, evaluation, and use of advanced information resources and will acquire skills required for 21st century information literacy will soon be open in Moffitt Library.

https://tinyurl.com/3368pf5k

Washington University Libraries: "New Grant to Preserve Born-Digital Poetry"

The Washington University Libraries were awarded a two-year grant by the Mellon Foundation to support an exploration of essential questions surrounding the acquisition, discoverability, preservation, and use of born-digital poetry collections. The $250,000 award will enable the University Libraries to develop online resources and systems to process, preserve, and steward the collections of a new generation of digital-native poets. . . .

The first of its kind to focus on issues of acquisition, preservation, and wider access to born-digital materials, the project will process a wide range of digital materials from the archive of poet and academic Mary Jo Bang. Consequently, the project will eventually make it possible for students and researchers to access born-digital collections and gain a better understanding and insight into the unprecedented ways in which poetry is created in a digital era. The project also aims to lay the foundation for new benchmarks and guidelines on preservation and access to born-digital archives at libraries and museums and for personal poetry archives.

https://tinyurl.com/3baahaj5

"USC Appoints Alumna Melissa Just as New Dean of Libraries"

Library veteran Melissa Just has been named USC’s new dean of libraries, effective Nov. 27. Just — a Trojan who received her doctoral degree from the USC Rossier School of Education in 2007 and spent several years early in her career at USC Libraries — has worked in academic libraries for nearly three decades.

Just, who will hold the Valerie and Ronald Sugar Dean’s Chair of the USC Libraries, joins the university following 6½ years as library dean at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. In that role, she oversaw the strategic, fiscal and operational success of a library system serving 26,000 students and 1,000 faculty across 17 colleges, schools and professional programs.

https://tinyurl.com/37mb2cz4

"Wayne State Names Paul Bracke Dean of School of Information Sciences and University Libraries"

Paul Bracke has been selected to serve as the next dean of the Wayne State University School of Information Sciences (SIS) and University Libraries. . . . Bracke will join Wayne State on Oct. 16, 2023.

Bracke is currently dean of the Foley Center Library, the primary library for Gonzaga University’s Spokane, Washington, campus, a position he has held since 2016. For the last two years, he has also served as associate provost for the Institute for Research and Interdisciplinary Initiatives. . . .

Bracke was previously an associate dean at the Purdue University Libraries. At Purdue, he provided leadership in technology, digitization, research services and assessment and developed internationally recognized research support services, including data management services and institutional and data repositories. He also directed projects that explored the intersections of digitization and open access publishing and of digitization and scholarly workflows in the social sciences.

https://tinyurl.com/2b5379yc

Executive Director at Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) seeks a highly strategic and innovative thoughtful leader, who will effectively collaborate with the ARL membership to advance the Association’s aspirations, strategic goals, and commitments in line with its mission, vision, and values. As a thought leader and consensus-builder on the ways in which universities and other research institutions create, integrate, preserve, and disseminate knowledge, the new Executive Director must be a persuasive, influential champion, and advocate of efforts to build sustainable models of scholarly communication. The Executive Director must also advocate for important public policy issues facing its membership in the 21st century and to sustain and enhance research library services in support of ARL member institutional missions.

https://tinyurl.com/y7vchytk

"ARL Awarded Grant to Continue Research on Institutional Expenses for Public Access to Research Data"

The US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), in collaboration with Duke University, the University of Minnesota, and Washington University in St. Louis, all of whom are members of the Data Curation Network (DCN), a $741,921 National Leadership Grant to examine institutional expenses for public access to research data. This research builds upon ARL’s existing Realities of Academic Data Sharing initiative.

https://tinyurl.com/378dzab6

"Association of Research Libraries and California Digital Library Receive Grant to Advance Data Management and Sharing"

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the California Digital Library (CDL) have received a $668,048 National Leadership Grant from the US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to assist institutions in managing and sharing federally funded research data. This project will build a machine-actionable data-management plan (maDMP) tool by enhancing and developing new DMPTool features utilizing persistent identifiers (PIDs). CDL and ARL will work together to further strengthen institutional capacity for tracking research outputs by piloting the institutional integration of maDMPs across an academic campus and building community across institutions for maDMPs.

https://tinyurl.com/35x9d45z

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Less Than 50% Have Web Usability PSGs: "Web Usability Practice at ARL Academic Libraries "

Expanding on previous research, the authors applied quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate Web usability policies, standards, and guidelines (PSGs); resources; and usability testing, including mobile testing and usability laboratories, at the academic members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Survey results indicated that less than 50 percent of the libraries have Web usability PSGs. The perceived importance of usability testing has a significantly positive correlation with the testing performed, ARL ranking, mobile website testing, and availability of usability laboratories. Limited resources hindered initiatives aimed at improving usability.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901567

Vice-Provost & Chief Librarian at Western University

Western Libraries is the fourth-largest academic library system in Canada and is dedicated to supporting research, teaching, and learning at Western. Western Libraries comprises five libraries and three centres distributed across the University campus and is a member of the Ontario Council of University Libraries, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries. Recognized for the quality of its staff, the access and services provided, and its outstanding collections — which include over eleven million items in print, microform, and various other formats, as well as online access to tens of thousands of digital resources — Western Libraries supports the University’s mission of providing the best student experience among Canada’s leading research-intensive universities.

https://tinyurl.com/uptyhsvh

Michigan State: "Neil Romanosky Recommended as Dean of MSU Libraries"

Romanosky currently serves as dean of university libraries at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a position he has held since 2019. His accomplishments in this role include developing a strategic plan for the libraries with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion; overseeing the alignment of the Ohio University Press and five regional campus libraries into the university libraries portfolio; working with campus partners to launch libraries-led, university-wide task forces on research data management and improving student study spaces; and spearheading Ohio University’s joining the HathiTrust, allowing for expanded university access to digital collections and other collaborative academic and research tools and services.

https://tinyurl.com/fuy6xtfy

"The State of the Field: An Excerpt From the 2023 Library Publishing Directory"

The most common material types reported in 2023 were journals (89%), conference papers and proceedings (80%), theses and dissertations (75%), educational resources (66%), and monographs (60%). Under half of respondents (46%) reported publishing datasets. Other material types reported include gray literature, newsletters, multimedia, expansive digital publications, and databases. . . . Over 80% of respondents provide copyright support and DOI assignment. Over half provide metadata services (71%), author advisory services (66%), training (66%), ISSN registry (64%), hosting of supplemental content (60%), cataloging (56%), and analytics (55%). The decline in the number of library publishers providing digitization services holds steady with 49% of respondents in 2023 identifying it as one of their services.

https://tinyurl.com/yhwp4pph

Access the entire directory.

"Lindsay Cronk named Tulane University’s New Dean of Libraries"

Cronk comes to Tulane from the University of Rochester, where she worked for the past six years, including the last two as the assistant dean for scholarly resources and curation. She also held the positions of director for collection strategies and head of collection strategies.

While at Rochester, Cronk oversaw seven departments, including digital initiatives, scholarly communication, metadata and rare books, special collections and preservation. She successfully implemented a variety of campus-wide initiatives and community partnerships, including establishing the libraries as the licensing clearinghouse of the university, initiating the campus affordability Access to Course Textbooks Commitment, co-authoring the university’s open access and copyright policies and supporting multiple web and system migrations.

https://tinyurl.com/59fu3mdv

Boston University: "Appointment of Mark Newton as University Librarian"

Mark has been at BU since 2019 and he has served as University Librarian ad interim since July 2021. During this time, he has led several critical efforts at the University level and within the libraries. Most importantly, he has actively led or been involved in the consultative processes over the last four years to set the vision for the future of the BU libraries. . . . Prior to his appointment as University Librarian ad interim, Mark served as BU’s Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Innovation, beginning in 2019. In this role, he directed efforts across the library’s technical services and platform support as well as its digital scholarship and open repository programming. . . . Prior to arriving at BU, Mark served as director of digital scholarship at Columbia University. He also previously worked as digital collections librarian and assistant professor of library science at Purdue University.

https://tinyurl.com/du8hsdkv

Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian at University of California Los Angeles

As the chief executive officer of the UCLA library system, the UL provides strategic vision for and operational leadership of the libraries, which support UCLA’s research and instructional missions by providing access to and delivery of information resources; developing, organizing and preserving collections for optimal use; supporting the discovery of and access to remote information sources; encouraging innovation; and promoting excellence. Among the UL’s responsibilities are overseeing the appointment, promotion and advancement of approximately 122 librarians campuswide; working closely with faculty to advance teaching and learning by engaging new services to enhance the student experience and support the entire research lifecycle; leading an aggressive fundraising program, including an annual giving program and stewardship of significant collections as gifts-in-kind; and providing administrative leadership for the UCLA Library Senior Fellows Program. The UL will lead the continuing effort to build a library of the future by making knowledge accessible both in person and online, advancing digital innovations, preserving global cultural heritage as part of post-colonial collecting, establishing community partnerships that preserve Los Angeles history, and supporting open publishing and new forms of scholarly communications.

https://www.arl.org/jobs/job-listings/a0I6T00000aKGJqUAO/

University of Hawaii at Manoa: Needs Assessment for Data Management and Sharing Training Courses

Data management is an increasingly fundamental skill for graduate students and researchers in the biomedical sciences, especially as National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies are now beginning to require data management and sharing plans as part of research. Since the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) Library provided little support for this area and existing data management and sharing instructional content are either out of date or fail to address the unique needs of the UHM research community, the UHM Library took steps to establish data management and sharing instruction services to meet the specific needs of the UHM research community.

https://hdl.handle.net/10125/104944

Vice Provost for University Libraries, University Librarian at University of Wisconsin – Madison

The General Library System (GLS) currently administers twelve libraries: Memorial Library is the flagship library and caters to the humanities and social sciences, along with the Business Library and Social Work Library. College Library serves as the undergraduate library, and is a hub for programs focusing on student support services and partnerships. The Science and Engineering Libraries (SEL) consist of Steenbock, Chemistry, Geology, and Astronomy, Math, and Physics (AMP). The Special Collections and Archives unit features one of the nation’s leading special collections for the history of science and medicine, including significant holdings for chemistry, science and religion, and optics and ophthalmology. Other special collections include the Mills Music Library, the Kohler Art Library, and the Gender and Women’s Studies Library. The University Archives serves as the official repository for all UW-Madison, UW-System Administration, UW-Extension, and Wisconsin Public Media records appraised to have permanent or archival value. The health sciences library, law library, and education library each report to their respective deans, while several other special purpose libraries report through various schools, colleges, or departments.

https://tinyurl.com/rb66rjat

ARL and CARL: Observations on Research Libraries’ Alignment with Institutional STEM Priorities

This report synthesizes the two associations’ joint exploration of the need for, and nature of, alignment of research libraries with their universities’ STEM priorities. The report notes the challenges to be overcome, and provides examples of the ways libraries are already working to strengthen and support STEM at their institutions. The report includes a summary of common themes as well as observations of each institution visited.

https://bit.ly/3qaF9Qq

UC System: "Re: UCOLASC [University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication] Statement on Retention of Author Rights in License to Publish Agreements"

As discussed at our joint UCOLASC and Council of University Librarians (CoUL) meeting held on February 15, 2023, the Project Transform Negotiating Team (PTNT) and Project Transform Working Group (PTWG) have learned that many publishers are requiring University of California (UC) authors to sign "License to Publish" (LTP) agreements, which purport to grant exclusive rights to publishers and contravene the spirit of the open access (OA) policies and declarations strongly endorsed by UC faculty.We find this now-common practice to be unacceptable and therefore ask you to prioritize the issue of author rights and act on our behalf when you negotiate with publishers. . . .

UCOLASC urges the Project Transform Negotiating Team (PTNT) to negotiate transformative open access agreements with publishers stipulating that authors only grant "limited" or "nonexclusive" licenses to publishers. Liberal Creative Commons (CC) licenses (e.g., CC BY) should be applied as the default choice, and licenses that restrict commercial and derivative uses of the work (e.g., CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, and CC BY-NC-ND) should function as originally intended with authors always free to do whatever they want with their own works.

https://bit.ly/43uzuDd

"Research Libraries Advance Open Scholarship and Community Engagement"

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published brief profiles of the eight institutions that participated in the 2021–2022 pilot program Accelerating the Social Impact of Research (ASIR). The pilot engaged small teams from eight ARL member libraries who wanted to share strategies to accelerate the adoption and implementation of open-science principles for social-impact and community-engaged research and scholarship.

https://bit.ly/3pZKqtU

"UC Berkeley University Librarian Jeff MacKie-Mason Announces Retirement Plans"

Among the hallmarks of MacKie-Mason’s tenure at the Library has been his commitment to open access. As co-chair of the University of California’s publisher negotiation team, he was instrumental in the university system securing a groundbreaking deal with publishing giant Elsevier. To date, UC has struck open access deals with 15 publishers, including all of the top five publishers of UC-authored articles. Together, these agreements make it possible for 54 percent of all UC-authored articles to be published open access, so they are freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

https://bit.ly/3IoEfGm

"Quick Poll Results: ARL Member Representatives on Generative AI in Libraries"

We conducted a quick poll of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member representatives in April 2023 to gather insights into their current perspectives on generative AI adoption, its potential implications, and the role of libraries in AI-driven environments. In this blog post, we summarize, synthesize, and provide recommendations based on the survey responses, aiming to offer valuable insights for senior library directors navigating the AI landscape.

https://bit.ly/3M9yVc2

"OA and the Academy: Evaluating an OA Fund with Authors’ Input"

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech established an Open Access Subvention Fund (OASF) in August 2012. Although it began as a two-year pilot project, the Fund has continued to the present. Anyone at Virginia Tech is eligible to apply for funding to offset the cost of an article processing charge to publish in an open access journal. To learn more about user perceptions of the OASF and open access in general, we surveyed everyone who had requested support. The survey, conducted during the fall of 2019, provided a means to gauge the needs of our users, seek feedback on the request and award process, and gather input on the fund guidelines. In this article, we review our findings in the hope that the lessons learned will be useful to other libraries in assessing similar open access subvention funds.

https://bit.ly/3nxjUHs