Category: ARL Libraries

Dean of Libraries at Binghamton University


Binghamton University is seeking an innovative, visionary, and collaborative leader to serve as its next Dean of Libraries. . . . One of four research universities in the SUNY system, Binghamton enrolls more than 18,000 undergraduate and graduate students in its six schools and colleges. . . . The Binghamton University Libraries lay claim to more than 3.2 million books and journals and an expanding network of 225 electronic databases. The Binghamton Libraries is comprised of four physical locations: Glenn G. Bartle Library, Science Library, University Downtown and the Annex. Faculty, staff and more than 100 student employees deliver an array of critical services, including digital scholarship, open repository and digital preservation and more.

https://cutt.ly/U1Xe2iw

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"Texas Universities Reach Historic Deal with Elsevier: TLCUA Saves Texas Universities Millions Collectively"


All TLCUA members will receive a discount on journal subscriptions—some as high as 30%—while still maintaining significant amounts of access to journals and combined, will realize a savings of over $4.75M annually. Beyond initial cost savings, Elsevier agreed to a maximum annual increase of 2% over the course of the license agreement, with some years as low as 0%, which is significantly lower than industry standard. . . . TLCUA and Elsevier have agreed to partner on a pilot project to revert ownership of journal articles back to original authors—and not just those at TLCUA-member institutions. Currently, authors transfer copyright of their work in exchange for that work being published. This pilot will provide for rights to go back to authors after a period of time that will be collaboratively determined with Elsevier. . . . Further, all TLCUA-member authors who choose to publish their work under an open access license will have access to discounted author publication charges (APCs). TLCUA also negotiated a license template that removed non-disclosure terms, restrictions on sharing usage data, and 44-year-old limitations on interlibrary loans (i.e., CONTU Guidelines) to expand library collaboration and improve how libraries can share information on journal usage.

https://cutt.ly/G1Yu8IU

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University of Washington: "Elsevier Negotiation Update 11/2/2022"


At $2.6M per year and an annual 2.5% increase, the Elsevier journal package is the most expensive annual expenditure for the University of Washington (UW) Libraries. For context, the total UW Libraries collections budget for the Seattle campus is approximately $16 million, and we spend about $13 million on ongoing subscriptions. Immediate access to 2,500 Elsevier journal titles published in the current year represent about 15% of the Libraries annual collections budget. . . .The Elsevier journal package reinforces the scholarly publishing model based on paywalls and rationing of access, inequitable opportunities for publishing, and excessive pricing and annual price increases that undermines a scholarly ecosystem where the open sharing of knowledge is critical to accelerating change for the public good. . . .As a result, the Libraries will be unable to maintain immediate access for all titles in our current list of 2,500 Elsevier journal titles on ScienceDirect. There is no choice but to begin identifying which journals need to be available for immediate access to meet patient care needs as well as long term use for research, teaching, and learning. The Libraries will continue to provide faculty, students and staff access to published articles through alternative access options such as PubMed Central, Google Scholar, and interlibrary loan — most requested articles are delivered within a few hours or business days.

https://cutt.ly/bMZQwIf

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"Research Data Management Needs Assessment of Clemson University"


The faculty, staff, and graduate students at Clemson University were surveyed by the library about their RDM needs in the spring of 2021. The survey was based on previous surveys from 2012 and 2016 to allow for comparison, but language was updated, and additional questions were added because the field of RDM has evolved. Survey findings indicated that researchers are overall more likely to back up and share their data, but the process of cleaning and preparing the data for sharing was an obstacle. Few researchers reported including metadata when sharing or consulting the library for help with writing a Data Management Plan (DMP). Researchers want RDM resources; offering and effectively marketing those resources will enable libraries to both support researchers and encourage best practices. Understanding researcher needs and offering time-saving services and convenient training options makes following RDM best practices easier for researchers. Outreach and integrated partnerships that support the research life cycle are crucial next steps for ensuring effective data management.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13970

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Paywall: "Expanding Your Institutional Repository: Librarians Working with Faculty"


Since a successful institutional repository will contain a higher percentage of the contributors’ materials, we implemented a system to upload faculty publications more effectively to our academic library’s institutional repository.. . . The success of this method is indicated by the increase in articles that have been uploaded to our institutional repository; as a result of the implementation of this program, the number of publications in our university’s institutional repository by these authors has increased 174 %.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2022.102628

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Investments in Open: Association of Research Libraries US University Member Expenditures on Services, Collections, Staff, and Infrastructure in Support of Open Scholarship


In total, 46 of the 102 institutions provided full or partial results. Summary results are divided into the following categories: read-and-publish or transitional agreements, article processing charges (APC) or OA funds, non-APC-based OA publishing models, institutional repository services, OA journal hosting and publishing services, and open monographs.

The survey found that the total aggregate spending on open access for all 46 responding libraries was $32 million USD, with an average expenditure per institution of $785,940. This represents an average of 2.26% of the total library budget spent on open, ranging from 0.19% to 11.02% across respondent libraries. As a portion of the total amount of expenses spent on OA infrastructure, the majority of funds are invested in read-and-publish agreements (~$20 million) followed by institutional repository infrastructure with investments of 17% of total OA expenses (~$5 million) across the 46 institutions.

https://cutt.ly/nMuAMbT

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"Elisabeth Long Appointed Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Archives, and Museums at Johns Hopkins University"


Long has served as associate university librarian for information technology (IT) and digital scholarship at The University of Chicago (UChicago) since 2016, where she began her career in 1998. She currently oversees digital scholarship services for students and faculty at UChicago and is responsible for the library’s IT infrastructure that supports the preservation of digital archives, books, and data. She also served as interim library director and university librarian from December 2021 through April 2022.

https://cutt.ly/0NJJCUK

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

"Library Publishing Coalition Releases 2021-2022 Annual Report"


In addition to outlining the LPC’s finances, assets, and membership, the Annual Report highlights several programmatic milestones, including:

  • Deliverables from the Library Publishing Workflows project
  • A landscape scan undertaken by the Preservation Task Force
  • The launch of a joint project between LPC, ARL, and AUP to build connections between university-based publishing communities.

https://cutt.ly/eNDIWtC

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"How Open Is the U15? A Preliminary Analysis of Open Access Publishing in Canadian Academic Libraries"


Introduction: This study offers insight into open access (OA) culture at Canadian university libraries by detailing the degree to which librarians working at Canada’s U15 (a collective of research-intensive institutions in Canada) make their research OA, as well as exploring the depth and reach of any OA mandates these institutions have. Method: This study uses a combination of bibliometric analysis and a review of institutional OA policies, beginning with an examination of a six-year span (2014–2019) of librarian-authored publications, searching four key library and information science databases, followed by a systematic search for a university-wide or library OA statement, policy, or mandate on each of the U15 websites. Results & Discussion: The data suggest that Canadian academic librarians are personally motivated to self-archive and make their research open. The high rate of publication in Gold OA journals, combined with the fact that several of the key library and information science journals for Canadian librarians are already OA, points to the importance of OA publishing for librarians as a community, as does the high number of expressions of commitment to OA publishing. Given the lack of variance comparatively between schools with an expression and without, the authors cannot comment on whether the expressions of support correlate to higher proportions of OA articles. Conclusion: This article provides a snapshot of a positive OA publishing culture at 15 Canadian university libraries by presenting data that show that most libraries have an expression of commitment to OA principles and most Canadian academic librarians working at U15 schools ensure that their research is OA.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13831

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"An Assessment of Research Data Services through Client Interaction Records"


Research data services have become a key feature of academic libraries. In this paper, we provide an internal assessment of consulting reach and effectiveness for our Data Services provided by the University Libraries at Virginia Tech and using client records from 2016 to 2020. Through this assessment, we explore how service growth and reach across Virginia Tech has evolved with time. We also look more closely at these aspects for one college and discuss how we will use this data to assess the impact of our services. Finally, through the lens of client outcomes, we examine the trends of client interactions over the term of the study. Initially, we envisioned a successful service as one useful to the largest number of entities (primarily colleges and institutes) across Virginia Tech. However, analysis of the data we have gathered over the past 4 years leads us to consider target ing our service growth where it might be most useful. Rather than prioritizing services that are useful to the largest number of researchers, we instead could (and perhaps should) prioritize engagement with researchers and research communities for whom our assistance can make the largest positive impact on their research projects. This assessment of our client data demonstrates the utility of detailed client management records for periodic formative and summative assessment of research data services.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.14439

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

"The Challenging State of University Campus and Library Open Access Policies"


Introduction: This study investigates whether United States university libraries’ commitment to increasing open access (OA) to scholarly outputs as demonstrated by their support of campus level OA policies translates into adoption of OA policies that apply specifically to library employees. Method: This mixed-methods study used an anonymous survey and optional open-ended interviews of scholarly communications librarians at Carnegie Classification Doctoral Universities (Very High Research [R1] and High Research [R2]) to gather information about OA policies or statements at their institutions and/or within their libraries. Results & Discussion: Variation in campus culture and governance structure meant the path from creation to adoption to implementation of a campus and/or library OA policy was similarly varied. The research reveals librarians’ motivations for and contributions to advancement of OA on their campuses, and sometimes also within their libraries. Conclusion: Many of the rationales driving adoption of campus OA policies similarly drive adoption of library-specific OA policies. Those surveyed whose institutions did have library-based OA policies referenced both the importance of leading by example and alignment with institutional mission and values.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.13049

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UC Davis: " University Librarian and Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship MacKenzie Smith to Retire in June 2023"


“MacKenzie has led our library during a period of transformative change in how scholars create, access and share research,” said Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan. “She has made substantial contributions to the campus’s research enterprise at every level, from data science and informatics to the establishment of an undergraduate library research prize. MacKenzie has also elevated our library’s leadership role, within UC and far beyond, in advancing free and open access to research. We will miss her leadership and collaboration, but wish her all the best in her retirement.”

https://cutt.ly/yBQnEcD

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"OpenStack Swift: An Ideal Bit-Level Object Storage System for Digital Preservation "


A bit-level object storage system is a foundational building block of long-term digital preservation (LTDP). To achieve the purposes of LTDP, the system must be able to: preserve the authenticity and integrity of the original digital objects; scale up with dramatically increasing demands for preservation storage; mitigate the impact of hardware obsolescence and software ephemerality; replicate digital objects among distributed data centers at different geographical locations; and to constantly audit and automatically recover from compromised states. . . . In this paper, we present OpenStack Swift, an open-source, mature and widely accepted cloud platform, as a practical and proven solution with a case study at the University of Alberta Library. We emphasize the implementation, application, cost analysis and maintenance of the system, with the purpose of contributing to the community with an exceedingly robust, highly scalable, self-healing and comparatively cost-effective bit-level object storage system for long-term digital preservation.

https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v17i1.782

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