Faye A. Chadwell

What's Next for Collection Management and Managers?

The world of librarianship has been a study in steady change for some time now. Because it is clear that change will remain a constant in the future, this issue of What’s Next for Collection Management and Managers? focuses on the challenges that change creates and the need for collection managers to understand both the reasons for resistance and the advantages of change management. Examples abound regarding how change has affected the work of collection managers. Simply glance at the program for any number of conferences to find samples of the most recent development that is wreaking havoc in the stacks, miring staff in workflow adjustments, or panicking those among us who just want to do things the way we always have done things. Predictions about the impact that change may have on collection managers’ work are equally abundant. In its founding year, the associate university librarians and associate directors who make up the Taiga Forum were challenged to come up with a series of 15 provocative statements to inspire discussion and the development of innovative ideas that would bring about significant change in libraries. Several of these predictions directly concern collection management: In the next five years:

What's Next for Collection Management and Managers? User-Centered Collection Management

We as collection managers like to think that we administer our collections in ways that always keep our users in mind. But let’s be honest. What we had in mind was often what we thought our users wanted. In academic libraries we often set out to build collections of materials that matched a conceptual notion of a curriculum-based collection or a comprehensive collection rather than an expedient and useful collection based on users’ real needs and demands. All too often we have focused our collection building and management on establishing procedures and policies that lightened our workload rather than those allowed users easier access to the materials they sought. Think of all the years that many libraries did not circulate copies of videos or bound journals. These days we have no fear with loaning videos and bound journals in addition to laptops or mp3 players! Certainly it is all too easy to be critical of collection managers for not having had a more user-focused approach; however, this type of collection building and management did lead to the development of some world-class libraries. Though it is true that we should have considered our users’ needs more carefully than we did, this consideration was not always an easy task to pull off. Many of us still remember the days when staff and volunteers spent countless hours in the stacks tallying usage statistics by hand while reshelving print journals. It was also extremely onerous to poll users’ attitudes about services in the not-so-halcyon days before Surveymonkey evolved. Fortunately, the transition to the digital world has facilitated putting the user at the center of collection management. In the digital realm it is easier than before to gather and analyze statistics that keep collection managers better informed about users’ needs and behaviors. Any number of products and services are available to help us sort and analyze the daily deluge of

The future of open access and library publishing

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide a vision for how academic libraries can assume a more central role in a future where open access (OA) publishing has become the predominant model for disseminating scholarly research articles. Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyze existing trends related to OA policies and publishing, with an emphasis on the development of repositories managed by libraries to publish and disseminate articles. They speculate that these trends, coupled with emerging economic realities, will create an environment where libraries will assume a major role in the OA publishing environment. The authors provide some suggestions for how this major role might be funded. Findings – The trends and economic realities discussed will lead to new roles for academic librarians and will change the existing roles. Originality/value – This article provides insights for academic libraries and their institutions to consider a dramatic shift in the deployment of subscription dollar...

Assessing the Value of Academic Library Consortia

ABSTRACT The value proposition of academic library consortia often focuses on the benefits a member library expects to receive in return for its paid membership in a consortium. This article takes a look at the literature of library and information science as well as the Web sites of 45 academic library consortia to understand how consortia communicate their benefits, especially in terms of financial value. It initiates a discussion about how academic library consortia could adopt assessment measures that strengthen their value proposition and improve the ways they demonstrate their impact and the impact that their members wield within higher education.

Open Textbooks at Oregon State University: A Case Study of New Opportunities for Academic Libraries and University Presses

INTRODUCTION This article describes a joint open textbook publishing initiative begun in 2013 between Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries and Press and the Open Educational Resources and Emerging Technologies unit of Oregon State University’s Extended Campus. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM This initiative combines the Open Access values and project management resources of OSU Libraries, the book production (peer review, editing, design, marketing) expertise of OSU Press, and the technological development skills of the Open Educational Resources and Emerging Technologies unit. Authored by OSU faculty and focused across some of the University’s signature areas, the initiative seeks to establish a sustainable model for research libraries and university presses to collaborate with each other and other partners to publish open textbooks that will benefit students on both economic and educational levels. The article analyzes how open textbooks fit within the emerging library publishing movement, examines the implementation of the OSU open textbook publishing initiative, and conveys some lessons learned for other libraries to consider as they entertain the possibility of similar collaborations. NEXT STEPS A description of next steps includes tracking course adoptions of the textbooks as well as establishing sustainable digital publishing platforms and business models.

Rights Well: An Authors' Rights Workshop for Librarians

This article seeks to make a compelling case for authors’ rights training through emphasis on academic librarians’ dual roles as both authors and as liaisons to research and teaching faculty. Using the example of the Rights Well Workshop developed at Oregon State University Libraries, the article demonstrates the value of training librarians as authors in order to further develop their own understanding of copyright transfer and negotiation. The workshop provides a customizable model that librarians can use when educating faculty in other disciplines about author rights, with emphasis on the practices of the publishers relevant to the targeted discipline.

What's Next for Collection Management and Managers?: Assessing the Value of Collection Services

It seems disingenuous to communicate that a strong focus on assessment is “what’s next for collection managers and management.” Haven’t collection managers been engaged in assessment ever since librarians started managing collections—especially as a way to gain better funding from stakeholders and funding agencies? Consider a North American Review article published in 1850. The article covers several contemporary reports about public libraries in Great Britain and the United States. This overview included discussion on a report commissioned by Parliament to assess the public libraries of Great Britain and Ireland, comparing these to major libraries in the rest of Europe. As quoted in North American Review, the Committee of Parliament noted in its report that:

What's Next for Collection Management and Managers?: Sustainability Dilemmas

In 1987 in the work Our Common Future (the Brundtland Report) the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development issued a benchmark definition of sustainable development, a concept and a movement that has captured the attention of scholars, researchers, activists, politicians, and even library professionals around the globe. Sustainable development is development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations, World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, 54). Over time, this definition has come to express what is also meant by sustainability. Often the two terms are used interchangeably. In the library profession, multiple library and information science (LIS) authors have taken up the challenge of initiating conversations about sustainability for libraries and academic libraries. There has been quite a bit written on “greening” library buildings and instituting practices that are sustainable. Jankowska takes libraries to task for their sustainability efforts, calling on academic libraries to begin to “focus on creating more responsible operational models in terms of environmental impact if they are to keep information open and free to all, and if they are to support broader goals of scholarly community sustainability” (Jankowska 2008, 324). Specifically, Jankowska warns libraries that while the “digital and technological revolutions have made a significant impact on the mission and methods of libraries, these new trends are also seriously threatening the sustainability of libraries (Jankowska 2008, 323). Jankowska and Marcum provide an overview of the literature, covering the broad implications of sustainable development in academic libraries that include not only scholarship and collections but also green library buildings, green practices and operations, and measurements of sustainability (Jankowska and Marcum 2010, 161). Jankowska and Marcum’s review of the literature draws attention to those LIS authors who have written

The "Get It" Department: Oregon State University's Strategic Realignment of Collection Services

In 2010, Oregon State University Libraries underwent library-wide strategic realignment. We sought to transform the Libraries’ structure and create units with renewed and innovative purposes. We wanted to position ourselves to anticipate and address users’ needs and expectations both now and in the future. One unit that OSU Libraries created was the Collections and Resource Sharing Department (CRSD). Colloquially referred to as the “Get It” Department, CRSD combines collection development, acquisitions, access services, and interlibrary loan into a single unit. The department’s purpose is to focus on user-centered collection services employing a number of strategies. This article discusses the factors that influenced the creation of this department, including a campus-wide strategic realignment and a growing prevalence and demand for unmediated collection services such as patron-driven acquisitions. We will also address the challenges this new department faces as well factors that need to be in place to make this initiative successful. NOTE: The presentation given at the Charleston Conference is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1957/19175.

What's Next for Collection Management and Managers? Successful Collaboration

Collaboration is not new to libraries and library professionals. There is an ample number of successful examples of library collaboration in the United States and Canada, especially related to collection development and management. In the United States, a long history of system-wide planning within the University of California (UC) system developed into a stellar model of collaboration among the UC campus libraries. The UC system’s successes, such as the establishment of two shared storage facilities or the formation of Melvyl as an integrated access point for materials in all UC libraries, culminated in 1997 with the creation of the California Digital Library (University of California Libraries 2009). The California Digital Library originated as one of four strategies put forth in the final report of the UC’s Library Planning and Action Initiative Advisory Task Force. This task force was charged to “identify organizational, budgetary, and functional changes required to ensure the continued scholarly and economic vitality of the University of California’s libraries” (University of California 1998, 3). Specifically, the task force sought to visualize some effective and collaborative means of confronting an increasingly unsustainable model of scholarly communication, largely the serials economic crisis, that threatened “the ability of UC’s libraries to support adequately the university’s education, research, and public service missions” (University of California 1998, 3). On the other side of the continent, cooperative collection development efforts between Duke University and the University of North Carolina began in the 1930s. The “visionary presidents and librarians of Duke University and the University at North Carolina used funds from the general education board to overcome the economic limitations imposed by the Depression and, through cooperation, begin to build the world-class institutions of higher learning and libraries they have now become” (Research Triangle Cooperative Collections 2005). In the 1950s, North Carolina State University joined