Johann van Reenen

Reference as Outreach: Meeting Users Where They Are

ABSTRACT Academic libraries have seen a dramatic decline in face-to-face traditional reference desk interactions over the past decade. Due to new initiatives at the University of New Mexico, reference services are flourishing even though traditional desk reference interactions are declining. Incorporating more engaged librarians within the academic and surrounding communities has expanded reference services and created new opportunities for librarians to consult with users in multiple settings. The establishment of a virtual service desk has increased the accessibility and visibility of the library to “meet users where they are” in an electronic environment.

Consortia vs Reform: Creating Congruence

When Shall We Be Free? The inability of research libraries to offer the collections their users desire has become more pronounced each year. In response, libraries have moved in two directions: the rapidly growing consortial movement and the movement to advocate and support reforms in scholarly communication. However, if libraries do not pay careful attention, these two directions may, at least partially, cancel one another out.

Acesso aberto e conexidade: estimulandoinovações inesperadas com o uso de arquivosabertos institucionais

O autor revisa um trabalho passado feito com o Ibict e o progresso mundial do Movimento de Acesso Aberto. Ele apresenta e defende a teoria de que o acesso aberto e um sistema adaptativo complexo criado a partir da publicacao academica utilizando a Internet. O acesso aberto poderia ser a causa de uma cascata de complexidade crescente que leva a oportunidades que modificarao o sistema. Ele escolheu a conexidade global que se espalha, criada pela Internet e pelos espacos de conteudo que ela proporciona para colecoes abertas, como um ‘agente simples para quebras do status quo’. Ele discute a influencia da conexidade nas infinitas variedades, na criatividade, no trabalho, na mudanca, no conhecimento e na economia da informacao. Estudos de caso das Bibliotecas da Universidade do Novo Mexico sao apresentados.

Library budgets and academic library rankings in times of transition

An analysis of the ability of a particular library to significantly increase its Association of Research Libraries (ARL) ranking in a reasonable time period is presented. A discussion follows to show why this is not a useful objective at a time when academic libraries are transitioning to new types of products and services made possible by emerging technologies. Various initiatives are under way in the USA and Europe to create more meaningful performance measures for academic libraries.

Archiving the relaxed consistency web

The historical, cultural, and intellectual importance of archiving the web has been widely recognized. Today, all countries with high Internet penetration rate have established high-profile archiving initiatives to crawl and archive the fast-disappearing web content for long-term use. As web technologies evolve, established web archiving techniques face challenges. This paper focuses on the potential impact of the relaxed consistency web design on crawler driven web archiving. Relaxed consistent websites may disseminate, albeit ephemerally, inaccurate and even contradictory information. If captured and preserved in the web archives as historical records, such information will degrade the overall archival quality. To assess the extent of such quality degradation, we build a simplified feed-following application and simulate its operation with synthetic workloads. The results indicate that a non-trivial portion of a relaxed consistency web archive may contain observable inconsistency, and the inconsistency window may extend significantly longer than that observed at the data store. We discuss the nature of such quality degradation and propose a few possible remedies.

Library Information Technology Collaborations at the University of New Mexico

ABSTRACT Information technology services and programs at the University of New Mexico are delivered by a mixture of distributed and centralized operations. Collaborations between the distributed services, largely in academic areas, as well as with central Information Technologies have been developed largely around point of need, historical arrangements, and personal interests. Recent changes in the leadership for Academic Affairs, the Office of the Vice President for Research, Information Technologies, and the University Libraries provided an opportunity for evaluating the current state and proposing new ways of working together. The authors describe several collaborations where the University Libraries have engaged with campus units in developing new or improved service and approaches to working together.

Improving scalability by self-archiving

The newer generation of web browsers supports the client-side database, making it possible to run the full web application stacks entirely in the web clients. Still, the server side database is indispensable as the central hub for exchanging persistent data between the web clients. Assuming this characterization, we propose a novel web application framework in which the server archives its database states at predefined periods then makes them available on the web. The clients then use these archives to synchronize their local databases. Although the main purpose is to reduce the database scalability bottleneck, this approach also promotes self-archiving and can be used for time traveling. We discuss the consistency properties provided by this framework, as well as the tradeoffs imposed.

Working in a digital world: new leadership practices for the development of a digital library workforce

Os progressos da biblioteca digital sao parte de um movimento global em muitos setores da sociedade rumo ao trabalho virtual e servicos eletronicos disponibilizados pelos avancos da tecnologia da informacao. Este ambiente requer novas atitudes e habilidades na forca de trabalho e, por isso, lideres que compreendam as mudancas por que passa a economia da informacao e como tratar e desenvolver tal forca de trabalho. Este artigo explora metodos para desenvolver os recursos humanos e estimular a criatividade para capitalizar o imenso potencial das bibliotecas digitais no sentido de educar e fortalecer a mudanca social. Ha uma falta de trabalhadores tecnicamente habilitados e, acima de tudo, de inovadores. Retencao e recrutamento sao um dos maiores obstaculos ao avanco dos servicos da biblioteca digital e aos produtos de informacao.