Erik Mitchell

Assessing the Value of Metadata in Information Services

While it is common for communities to value their libraries and other information institutions, measuring both the overall value of an institution and the value of its specific information services can be difficult, particularly in a rapidly changing environment in which the relevance of these services and allocation of resources can change in very short periods of time. This column explores notions of value in libraries in general and information services specifically and considers ways in which one key service, metadata, has been used as a measure of library value. In turn, the column also explores how metadata work itself is valued in light of increasing use of automated and outsourced metadata acquisition, processing and discovery platforms. Staying focused on the changing value of metadata, the column concludes by considering the impact of current value measures as well as new measures in supporting decision making and resource allocation for metadata related services.

Is RDA Ready?: An Analysis of Case Studies on RDA Testing

In 2010 and 2011 a number of libraries engaged in RDA testing in order to evaluate its readiness for adoption. Case studies from these testing experiences are now emerging in the literature and provide an interesting community-sourced view of the uses, impact and challenges associated not only with RDA but of the shift to new metadata models and systems. This column explores these case studies, identifying common themes and unique experiences while also exploring what the adoption of RDA will mean for libraries. In examining the experiences of these libraries, this column asks questions about how libraries might prepare themselves for RDA adoption and what key research questions remain in this area.

Research Support: The New Mission for Libraries

Research support services are growing areas of importance in academic libraries and are part of the libraries’ larger goal to provide wider support for research-related services. Ithaka’s Library Survey 2010 indicated that research support services, along with teaching facilitation, are the two growth areas projected by library directors (Long and Schonfeld 2010, 13). In addition, the LITA 2012 National Forum (http://www.ala.org/lita/ conferences/forum/2012) focused on library development of data services, in part to meet this growing area. Although support of these services looks good on paper, the process of both developing new data services and using them to support research services can be difficult. In addition, these types of services represent new work in the field of Web librarianship as well as new opportunities for collaboration. In this month’s column, I explore background studies that define the boundaries of library research support and touch on specific examples of these types of services. A series of studies in 2010 and 2011 explored the intersection of faculty research, institutional support, and library services (Kroll and Forsman 2010; MacColl and Jubb 2011; Research Information Network 2010; Research Information Network and Research Libraries UK 2011). While each of these reports provides a unique lens to help us understand research support, they also touch on some common themes. Each of the studies describes a complex environment in which researchers operate. For example, John MacColl and Michael Jubb (2011) explored the complex relationship between a researcher and external entities such as his or her professional community and funders, as well as the internal community of institutional support (e.g., libraries and administration). This model underscores the many overlapping

Cloud Computing and Your Library.

The number of ways in which we access information is making our personal computing environment very complex. My own personal computing infrastructure includes two personal computers, multiple data-subscription services, two external hard drives, a smartphone, and an MP3 player. While my information technology access is fragmenting, my need to access my information at any one point or place is growing. This creates tension between how I manage information and its availability in my everyday life. I recently found that my library has been dealing with these same issues as we reexamined how well our computing infrastructure supports our library services. As part of this discussion, we talked about cloud computing but were not sure how it fit our needs. Like many organizations, we had multiple local servers, each of which supported different applications. Implementing a new application meant finding available resources and ensuring that this new application would not conflict with our current environment. This was only one of a number of underlying technical issues that added a level of complexity to providing user services. We wanted a platform that offered us easy scalability along with redundancy and security but found that achieving this with traditional in-house servers was cost-prohibitive. Looking for an easier way to allocate technology resources, and wondered if cloud computing might help fill that need. Cloud computing refers to a wide field that includes hosted applications, Web-based client services, and distributed, platform-independent server architectures. Cloud services tend to be grouped into three types: software, platform, and infrastructure. Our library was already a heavy user of hosted software services and wanted to find out how a

Trending Tech Services: Programmatic Tools and the Implications of Automation in the Next Generation of Metadata

Metadata management and migration is an important and complex task that requires conceptual and technical expertise. This work is facing new challenges as the volume and speed of metadata work increases and as metadata librarians consider new formats and uses of metadata. In this article the author explores tools that support programmatic work with metadata and considers the functional differences between the tools and the literacies required for librarians to use these tools.

The Theater of Information Engagement: Designing Immersive Information Experiences in Libraries

In April, I had the opportunity to attend the Museums and the Web conference in Portland, Oregon (http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/). I was there to talk about my own work in cloud computing, but I was also very interested to discover how our museum colleagues approach information seeking and patron engagement in their information systems. During the conference, I attended sessions on responsive Web design, 3-D digitization, 3-D printing of museum artifacts, community outreach, museum literacy, and digital curation. In each session, I found that our museum colleagues face similar design, technology, and user engagement issues as libraries and archives but there were also subtle differences in how they address these issues. In this column, I would like to touch on two key ideas related to information engagement that stood out to me as an “outsider looking in” at this conference. The first idea is that information engagement in museums is similar to, yet different from information seeking in library contexts. The second idea focuses on the relationship between physical and digital spaces museums and libraries. The column concludes by exploring the implications of these two differences for information experience design in library information systems. To get started, I consider the qualities of information engagement for museum patrons.

Linked Data Publishing for Libraries, Archives, and Museums: What Is the Next Step?

At a recent Digital Dialogues session at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), Ed Summers made the comment (loosely transcribed), “With the rest of the world publishing their data in the HTML format, does it make sense for libraries to publish our data in other ways?”1 I found this to be a compelling and slightly controversial question but also wondered about the logistics and mechanism of data publishing for our resources using HTML pages. I have always conceptualized and taught HTML as a dissemination technology, albeit one that lacked the rich semantic structure required to be a good fit with metadata publishing efforts. Many advocates of linked data (LD) point to the use of HTML as a publishing platform as a useful first step. The use of LD in HTML succeeds in introducing the core idea, supports some commonly used functionality, and lowers the overall barrier of entry. This initial step and the development of critical mass can help support wider adoption and management of LD in back-end systems, including identifying and storing data relationships, dereferencing URLs to enhance data and publishing LD using data, and encoding models that support these advanced uses. At the same time, the publishing of LD in HTML documents immediately enables new uses and finds common ground with non-library information publishers. Because of this, the implications of including LD in ordinary Web documents can be considerable. Search engines are using LD for contextual display and advanced searching, and social media sites are using LD to extract data for use in sharing sites and platforms.

Bringing Information Literacy into the Social Sphere: A Case Study Using Social Software to Teach Information Literacy at WFU

This article presents an approach to teaching information literacy in an academic course from a socio-technical perspective. It includes an overview of the course framework, a review of course contents, and an analysis of student responses provided through pre- and post-course surveys. The premise of the course design was that students bring a set of technical and information skills to class that address specific but not generalized information literacy goals. By designing a course to engage students from this perspective, the instructors hoped to find a new method for approaching information literacy instruction.

Bringing Delivery into the Fold: A Discussion of Cross-Departmental Document Delivery Service Implementation in Academic Libraries

SUMMARY The provision of resource request and delivery services in libraries is being re-designed in response to a shift in patron needs and expectations. The design of these services needs to include definitions of patron needs/expectations, staffing and systems components, and local policies and capabilities. This article includes a review of literature on the use of delivery services, a survey of current practices in interlibrary loan departments, and a review of the policies implemented and technical decisions made at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University during the ILL/Document Delivery integration process.

Optimizing Storage in High Density Shelving

This article is the first in a series exploring approaches to studying the storage density and overall efficiency (as measured in terms of number of items stored) in high density book storage facilities. The article explores foundational questions associated with increasing the number of items in high density configurations when using relatively traditional shelving facility. The parameters of the high density configuration draw on two storage models: the so-called “California” model, employed at the Northern Regional Library facility, and the “Harvard model.” Through initial analysis of the item sizing and shelving approaches of these models, this article engages in rough analysis of how these models could be adjusted and adapted to fit a specific use case at the Northern Regional Library facility. The article concludes with an analysis of potential methods for applying the theoretical findings in the real-world case of the Northern Regional Library facility through shelf-use analysis and real-world item measurement.