Working from Home: How We Managed Our Team Remotely with Technology

Abstract

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the College’s library and the office of institutional research & training (OIRT), along with all departments of our college, shifted to working from home (WFH) overnight. This column shares examples from the literature regarding experiences and lessons learned from both the corporate world and academic libraries’ experiences managing teams remotely with technology. Finally, we share how the College’s academic library and OIRT transitioned to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic with the variety of online tools we already used, but further enhanced during this experience, to communicate and collaborate effectively with our team members.     

Telling Their Story with Data: What Academic Research Libraries Share on Their Websites

Abstract

Communicating library data with external stakeholders is a growing area of importance in the profession, and library websites provide an easy way of disseminating this information. Determining the types of data that will be most impactful in telling a library’s story is vital to an effective online data display. This research project reviewed the websites of 143 academic research libraries to determine if the libraries were publicly sharing general library data via a dashboard or other data display. For those libraries sharing data, information was recorded on the types of data shared, the types of data visualizations utilized, the age of the data presented, and whether multi-year trends were represented. The results showed that just under half of the academic research libraries in the study population had general library data displays on their websites. Most focused on traditional types of library data, such as collection size, reference and help desk interactions, instruction sessions, and circulation numbers for physically-held materials. Data visualizations were used infrequently.     

高校图书馆电子阅览室有效利用之探讨

高校图书馆电子阅览室的蓬勃发展,为全校师生和教职员工提供了一个先进、快捷的网络环境,促进了学校的全面提高与发展.但读者对电子阅览室的利用状况并不令人乐观.文章从高校图书馆电子阅览室的利用现状入手,分析现状形成的原因,提出如何有效利用电子阅览室的对策.     

Managing an Academic Reference Department

Abstract

To be an effective academic head of reference in the 21st century will require many of the same characteristics and skills necessary in the 20th century. While the traditional ways of providing reference services are changing, the fundamental need to provide access to information remains, and effective utilization of staff and other resources is paramount. Balancing the increasing pressures from shrinking budgets, growing costs, proliferation of expensive electronic resources, and high expectations from faculty and students creates a greater need for strong management expertise. The head of reference must be both an exceptional manager and an exceptional librarian.     

Changing Information Requirements for Local Company Projects

Students in their senior-level capstone strategic management class at an Association of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-accredited business school analyzed issues facing local companies for their project, rather than studying Fortune 500 companies. Although area small and mid-sized enterprises benefitted from the analysis and students gained valuable experience through the “consulting” project, business reference librarians had to adapt their library orientation for locating business information and identifying resources for the local companies, most of which were privately held. Integrating the library orientation and assistance into the closed loop assessment is discussed. Suggestions for replicating the project as well as areas for future research are included.     

A Survey Study on the Adoption and Implementation of Automation Projects in Federal University Libraries in the South-West of Nigeria

This article reports on a survey study on the adoption and implementation of automation projects in federal university libraries in the south-west of Nigeria (SWN). The objectives are to ascertain the implementation status of automation projects, discuss the accruable benefits, investigate the library management system software being used, determine the modules already activated and fully implemented and their web presence, highlight the challenges encountered, draw conclusions and recommendations on enhancing successful implementation of library automation projects in Nigeria. The method used for gathering data for the study is questionnaire-based survey, using google form template. The findings of the study are that all the six federal university libraries in the SWN have adopted and implemented automation; two out of them are using open source integrated library automation software (Koha), one library uses in-house built integrated library system (ILS), while the remaining three use different proprietary software for their automation projects; and all the ILSs being used for automation projects are interoperable. The conclusion from the study is that the effective performance of libraries lies in the ability to access research materials and other relevant information contents with remarkable ease. This becomes achievable when libraries adopt and implement automation in their respective domains.     

Providing Access and Preservation Services to Collections in Remote Storage Facilities

ABSTRACT

As libraries continue to acquire, catalog, and preserve paper-based collections, and the early promise of digital technologies to put everything online has not yet been fully realized, the need to physically retain little used analog collections has intensified. Thus a growing trend in the field of academic and public libraries is an increased awareness of the importance of remote storage facilities (RSF). A recent American Library Association meeting featured speakers who were involved with such a facility. The speakers offered tips and hints on surviving and even thriving in one successfully. The authors of this article hope that by documenting the highlights of these presentations, other librarians and staff in the planning, construction, or implementation phase of a RSF will be better prepared for the challenges and difficulties they will face when trying to provide access to and physically maintain a collection geographically distant from their main library.     

Building Faculty Support for Remote Storage: A Survey of Collection Behaviors and Preferences

A seismic retrofitting project required the UCSB Library (University of California, Santa Barbara) to permanently reduce its on-site collections by 120,000 volumes. To accomplish this successfully, a strong collaboration with the faculty was essential. This article describes a planning process in which the library worked with a faculty committee to implement a campus-wide survey of faculty and graduate students regarding their behaviors and preferences in accessing and using the collections. The survey outcomes informed a common understanding of which physical materials should remain on-site and which could be moved to storage with the least impact on research and teaching.     

高校图书馆以项目制推动服务创新的实践探索与思考——以东北大学图书馆服务创新立项工作为例

[目的/意义] 图书情报领域正在出现新业态、迎来发展新契机，传统的业务组织模式依赖单一馆员、单个职能部门已无法有效地完成紧急性、临时性、复杂性任务，无法更好支撑高校图书馆的新发展，无法更好应对全民阅读、"双一流"建设、文化传承、读者需求多元化等不断出现的外部新挑战，为此需要变革图书馆的组织体制，更好地发挥馆员的主观能动性与创造力。[方法/过程] 借鉴项目制的原理，结合东北大学图书馆服务创新立项工作的实践，探索高校图书馆适应新挑战、新任务的方式方法。[结果/结论] 运用项目制更有利于组织开展高校图书馆服务创新活动，有利于调动馆员的积极性和创造性，促进高校图书馆服务能力的提升。     

Rethinking the Library Game: Creating an Alternate Reality with Social Media

In recent years, libraries have made efforts to create games, often for the purpose of information literacy instruction. Games can provide an interactive alternative to traditional instruction by introducing research tools and resources while also teaching problem solving skills within a collaborative learning environment. Despite the benefits, the limited resources of most libraries make it difficult to build games that appeal to a generation of students accustomed to games like World of Warcraft. It is a challenge to find a balance between the right format and the available skills and assets. The desire to create an engaging game within the confines of existing resources led the University of Alabama Libraries to create the Web-based alternate reality game Project Velius. Serving the research needs of faculty and more than 30,000 students, the University Libraries are a vital part of Alabama's oldest public university. University of Alabama librarians leveraged popular social media sites and applications, including Facebook and YouTube, along with the story-driven alternate reality game format, to build a game that would engage undergraduate students. The game's two main goals were to provide informal information literacy instruction and highlight important library resources, balanced with the desire to provide a fun and interesting game experience. In the creation and execution of Project Velius, the librarians-turned-game developers learned much about this new medium, including the complexity of writing a compelling story, the importance of precisely tracking player progress, and the need for an easily re-playable game. Looking forward, the successes and shortcomings of this initial project will guide the plans and, through this article, hopefully help colleagues understand some of the challenges and rewards.