ACRL 2015 Wrap Up

Here is my ACRL wrap up!

Let me record the sessions and panels I attended and then give some brief thoughts on the conference.

This is what the end of a conference looks like

Schedule Made through my Google Calendar

Wednesday, March 25

• Opening Keynote with G. Willow Wilson
• Opening Exhibits Reception (I did the hard work of talking to vendors in preparation for my product review blog post this night)

Thursday, March 26

• Paving a Two-Way Street: The Rewards and Challenges of Archival Projects with Community Partners
• Contributed Papers 9: Successful Student Advisory Boards: Best Practices; Unleash your library's HIPster: Transforming student library jobs into high impact practices; Design-Model-Build: Leveraging a library remodeling project to engage students and promote sustainability on campus.
• ACRL 75th Anniversary Invited Panel - New Roles for the Road Ahead (note: the "online monograph" put together for this panel is available here)
• Keynote Session - Jad Abumrad

Friday, March 27

• Invited Paper - Searching for Girls: Identity for Sale in the Age of Google
• Contributed Papers 19: They'’ve Found It. Can They Read It? Adding Academic Reading Strategies to Your IL Toolkit (the presenters set up a blog with strategies); Blurred Lines: Tying Recreational Reading to Research in an Academic Library;  Children's Books in the Digital World: The Bigger Picture for Our Graduates
• Contributed Papers 23: Seeing the Forest and the Trees: The Integrated Digital Scholarship Ecosystem Project; Seeking Sustainable Solutions to 21st Century News: A Case Study of Born-Digital Preservation; Revolutionary by Design: HathiTrust, Digital Learning and the Future of Information Provision

Saturday, March 28

• Contributed Papers 26: Making Sense: Can Makerspaces Work in Academic Libraries? [I asked a question about Makerspaces contributing to academic coursework; a really nice person gave me her business card with the url to the UTC Studio written on the back]; Library Learning Spaces: Investigating Libraries and Investing in Student Feedback; Implementing a Culture of Creativity & Making: The Rutgers University Art Library Lego Playing Station
• Contributed Papers 30: Assessing Library Internationalization Efforts and Impacts: Tools and Strategies; Looking Through Their Eyes: Improving Library Services for English as a Second Language Learners by Exploring Their Experiences and Perceptions of Academic Libraries Abroad and in the United States; You’re No Fun Anymore: The Ethics of Acquiring Electronic Devices in Light of E-Waste, Sweatshops, and Globalization
• Closing Keynote - Lawrence Lessig

Obviously, one of the best parts of a conference is that you can select what sessions and panels to attend based on your interests, job description, aspirations, goals, etc. I did that a lot, especially with the Contributed Papers 19 (more of my interest) and Contributed Papers 9 (my job duties). I also tried to tap into the pulse of the formal body of the professional association by attending the 75th Anniversary: New Roles panel. I have to admit, this panel left a very bad taste in my mouth. I actually panicked for a moment, thinking I was in the wrong place; I had chosen the wrong career. I examined my reaction later, and observed I can be inflexible in continuously applying what a "library" is to me, historically, to what it should be in the future. However, I also feel resistant to putting what libraries do in economic terms, by using the words "value added" and "return on investment," which turns libraries into another cog in the capitalism gear. I also feel resistant to the idea that we have to prove our value as librarians, but that is more of an idealogical issue for me -- I feel that libraries and librarians are inherently valuable, and if folks don't recognize that, it's a reflection of their stupidity. What other profession has to deal with remaining "relevant" and all the anxiety that brings the way we do? I just get fed up with it. And here my aggression is aimed more at academic institution administrators who may be too short sighted to see the inherent value we possess.

And, as usual, I deeply enjoyed the ACRL keynotes because they are wider and more entertaining than real, applicable panels, but they get me thinking about big picture issues, and often inspire me. I particularly took Jad Abumrad's keynote as a call to creative arms, which spoke to me as an artist/writer and a liver of life. Lawrence Lessig's keynote was also inspiring, but in a political and economic way that seemed to call for the unburdening of information from out beneath the chains of profits and capitalism. I appreciate that idealism.

Ultimately I am glad I went to this conference as it helps me navigate the development of my professional career, but next time I will remember to be more relaxed -- I stressed too hard about proving my professionalism, and it had adverse effects on my health.

**Edited to add (5/5/2015)
Today I discovered the ACRL 2015 Virtual Conference Web site!
You can view the keynotes without a login, and you can view the other presentations as screencasts using your login.

But most importantly, I also discovered the closing highlights montage, and briefly at 1:04 someone you may recognize is grabbing a beer for her coworkers from Gale in the exhibit hall!

ACRL ~ Archives Panels

I went to a panel presentation called "Paving a Two-Way Street: The Rewards and Challenges of Archival Projects with Community Partners," presented by Eva Guggemos (Pacific University), Joanne Riley (University of Massachusetts Boston), Kathleen Spring (Linfield College), and Rachael Woody (Linfield College). Besides its focus on archives and community, I liked this panel because it had a very local flavor (Linfield College is in Oregon) while also embodying the theme of community by demonstrating cross-continent and cross-institution collaboration. Images of the actual archival documents that composed the case studies were an added bonus to viewing the presentation, as was the historical or regional significance of the projects covered in the case studies!

Archival Projects with Community Partners!!! #acrlcommunities let's get this party started #acrl2015
— ₭elci M. ₭elci (@kelci_kelse) March 26, 2015

Joanne Riley from UMass Boston was the first to speak, and she covered a couple archival collaborations with community partners: one with The Irish Ancestral Research Association, another with the Boston Police Department Archivist Margaret Sullivan, and lastly with alumnus and Board of Visitors member Jim Conway. In all cases, Ms. Riley discussed how these projects transformed into a two way street, which largely involved making the data contained in the archive records more usable and engaging with the community of creators, stewards, and/or users of the archival information, often by creating a need for the information by building it into course curriculum.

Professional standards constrain agency of community volunteers in community partnership archival projects #acrlcommunities #acrl2015
— ₭elci M. ₭elci (@kelci_kelse) March 26, 2015

Next up was Eva Guggemos from Pacific University, and her talk focused largely on the technical aspects of an archives project that was composed of community collaboration from the get-go, WashingtonCountyHeritage.org. Ms. Guggemos described the process of engaging with specific community groups that wanted to add to the archive, the training method, the data quality check process, etc. and identified bottlenecks and gave recommendations for streamlining similar processes.

How cool would it be to be a @winearchivist? Oregon wine pioneers going on the record! #acrlcommunities #acrl2015
— ₭elci M. ₭elci (@kelci_kelse) March 26, 2015

The third speaker of the panel was Rachael Woody, who probably has the coolest job title (and probably coolest Twitter handle) ever: Wine Archivist (@winearchivist). Ms. Woody works with local Oregon wine pioneers to document their stories and wine achievements, while also enlisting the help of Linfield students with these projects. Her portion of the panel focused on the process of building good relationships, which is a cycle that begins with partnership and moves along the wheel to expectations, process, outcomes, and sustainability. I have to admit, her presentation made me thirsty for a good pinot noirs, as apparently Oregon is pinot country!

Last up was Kathleen Spring, who discussed the Dory Project -- a project that combined a regional cultural phenomenon with a local community member. Dories are fishing boats that have been historically used for fishing in Pacific City, Oregon, and as such, carry significance of the town's past. This project is interesting because the data collection phase of it, which was originally slated to end nearly two years ago, is still going! It seems the project has become more about the social process rather than the final archival product, and has generated digital collections, a live theater drama at the community playhouse, a poster exhibition, an art exhibit, and student and faculty scholarship. Ms. Spring also reiterated the themes of sustainability, project momentum, bottlenecks, and researcher needs. It seems that scope and scope creep was a huge theme for this presentation.

The crux of strategic collaboration: purposeful connections that advance institutional mission #acrlcommunities #acrl2015
— ₭elci M. ₭elci (@kelci_kelse) March 26, 2015

I didn't have much formal knowledge about archives work when heading into these talks, and they proved to show a variety of aspects of the work while being united under the theme of community engagement and collaboration. In a nutshell, I learned:

• Archives projects often are fueled by grants, and as such are running on a limited budget and a limited time window, in addition to being impacted by the fundability of what they archive
• Archivists work with everyone! In Universities/with Universities, with community organizations and historical societies, with industries, etc...
• Archival projects now, nearly by default, include digitization. Archives are no longer limited to organizing, accessioning, preservation, and/or finding aids... they also include metadata skills and standards, often combining technical services expertise with special collections expertise.

The presenters have made their Powerpoint slides available online, so feel free to check them out yourself!

ACRL ~ Preservation Panels

A couple weeks ago I attended the ACRL 2015 conference (if that link ceases to refer to the 2015 conference in the future, use the Proceedings link). One of my objectives was to go to a couple panels or sessions that specifically addressed preservation, and I was surprised to discover that few did. I figure the reason is two fold: ACRL largely focuses on the theory, mission, and technological intangibles that keep academic libraries moving forward (highlighted in the 75th Anniversary New Roles panel) rather than technical details of the physical, and that conferences that cover Rare Books and Manuscripts and/or Archives specific topics probably have more to say about preservation. While this might explain it, I still feel that ACRL and the trends of the librarian community are missing something important: who wants to keep spending money on digital content, when we could think about the preservation of the ebook or the ejournal instead? Anyway, here is a recap of a couple preservation themed sessions and panels.

Seeking Sustainable Solutions to 21st Century News: A Case Study of Born-Digital Preservation by Jennifer L. Bonnet and Jennifer E. Moore (presented paper: click here for the paper)

Only one of the authors, Jen Bonnet, was able to attend the conference, but she presented their study findings. Her research questions were:

from Jen Bonnet's ACRL presentation

According to her study, about half the stakeholders are actually attending to the preservation of born-digital Maine news content, which is great! This is so important because Tweets, info graphics, online polls, and Facebook posts are often forgotten when considering what is worth preserving, as many shrug off the transient, online nature of these items and consider them other that an official record. However, if one of the charges of libraries is to store and protect the cultural record, then these things matter, at least as a representation of the medium's zeitgeist. On the other hand, data from the survey also shows a prominent decline in the stakeholder's opinion of importance of preserving tweets and Facebook posts compared to born digital news articles -- here, again, is evidence that social media content is not perceived as valuable to our cultural record compared to articles.

There were some other interesting trends in Bonnet and Moore's study: nearly every type of digital news content was deemed neutral to very important (2.5 to 5 on the scale) to be preserved by all the stakeholders (except online news ads, which were rated below neutral on the scale at 2.1 -- those online ads are so annoying it's a wonder that anyone wants to preserve them).  Furthermore, all three groups of stakeholders that were surveyed (library and archival staff, archivists, and news workers) thought news organizations had the highest responsibility to preserve born-digital content.

Ultimately, I wished that the survey also had gathered data on what type of born-digital news content each of the stakeholders' institutions are actively preserving at the moment, so then we could see if the preservation policy covers mostly articles, or other content as well. Sure the Library of Congress is making progress with preserving the entire public Twitter feed, but it would be cool to see a news organization preserving their own Twitter feed!

This paper was one of those presentations that is really exciting but is also really frustrating: it gathered and presented many important figures, but it was not able to report any action in response. It definitely is valuable in two ways: it functions as both an environment scan and as a preservation survey analogy. First, the environment scan points the way towards prioritizing future endeavors for preservation of born-digital news content in the state of Maine (e.g. what to preserve; who should preserve it). Second, the preservation survey analogy is most strongly evidence to stakeholders that resources are required to address a documented problem -- in the preservation of physical collections, survey data is what gets the attention of library leaders.

from Jen Bonnet's ACRL presentation

Revolutionary by Design: HathiTrust, Digital Learning and the Future of Information Provision by Kent LaCombe (presented paper: click here for the paper)

Mr. LaCombe was on fire for HathiTrust! So much so, he gave the disclaimer that he did not work for them a couple times. He's just a librarian who has fallen in love.

from Kent LaCombe's ACRL presentation

LaCombe framed his presentation very much in the context of the benefits of digital vs. print, addressing the issue of the subjective and sometimes ignorant meaning we place on physical artifacts, as well as the issue of serendipitous browsing discovery. Additionally, he addressed the benefits of repositories like HathiTrust vs. subscriptions to databases, namely in that pricing is stable and content accessibility is stable. He used Google Books as a reference point to support his opinion that digital book content is more discoverable than print book content, and kept referring to Google Books as a partner of HathiTrust.

from Kent LaCombe's ACRL presentation

A librarian asked a question during the Q&A portion of the presentation: What do you say to critics who ask what the benefit using HahtiTrust vs. the benefit of Google Books. LaCombe largely referred to the interface of HathiTrust as being more useful than that of Google Books. It was at this point that I really wanted to go up to the mic to share my own thoughts: what really sets HathiTrust apart from other library services, digital repositories, catalogs, and even Google is that it is a trusted digital repository and is OAIS compliant as such. It is totally set up to ensure the long term protection and access of the data stored in its mirrored server farm. HahtiTrust began when, after Google digitized the books of the pilot libraries' collections and handed the raw .tiff files over to the libraries, these pilot libraries got together to make a plan to preserve their files. I love HathiTrust because it assures me the digital content trend has devoted supporters who will ensure the future access to the digital records and that gives me a reason to celebrate digitized sources.

ACRL -- Preservation Products and Services

Many vendors in the exhibit hall at ACRL represent academic publishers, database providers, and library software providers. My goal was to identify a couple that helped in the field of preservation.

Scanners 

Scanners are the most modern preservation function, in supporting the theory that preservation equals access as well as the protection of the book or document as artifact. To scan an artifact in sufficient quality with sufficient metadata and to host it on a trusted digital platform means that the original is protected and the use of the digital copy is facilitated.

DLSG -- Digital Libraries System Group booth at ACRL 2015

Digital Libraries System Group provides "workflow scanning" for libraries to provide their patrons as well as for libraries to use for professional digital preservation. I talked to a sales rep about the Bookeye 4 V1, which is one of their most deluxe models. It scans up to 600 dpi, 33.5" x 25"and costs around $35,000. The other high end scanner that is even larger costs close to $80,000.

In both cases the physical scanner comes with workflow software that, depending on your purpose, automates setting your file specifications and saving the files and metadata. If you chose the Opus workflow software, the aim is to streamline your process and speed up your preservation workflow. DLSG also offers user-friendly software and ILL specific software.

Promotional materials provided by Image Access / Digital Libraries System Group.
A selection of scanners offered by the company.

Membership Networks

I did not expect this one. I stopped by the Lyrasis booth and discovered it is a library network with a strong emphasis on preservation.

LYRASIS's ACRL Booth #385 is open & ready to meet you! Stop by & say hi! pic.twitter.com/BFjwNYuDC2
— LYRASIS (@LYRASIS) March 26, 2015

From its website:

LYRASIS partners with member libraries, archives and museums and other cultural heritage organizations to create, access and manage information with an emphasis on digital content, while building and sustaining collaboration, enhancing operations and technology, and increasing buying power. We collaborate with members to enrich, expand, acquire, digitize, host, support, manage and share their important, and often unique, collections. 

Clearly digital preservation is a main tenent of the mission of the Lyrasis network, but it plays out in concrete ways. For example, Lyrasis has a leg of service dedicated to ArchivesSpace, creating a clear channel of cross innovation between ArchivesSpace developers and member libraries, collaborating on code enhancements and other enhanced participation in digitizing archives by using ArchivesSpace. Lyrasis also offers ArchivesSapce hosting services. In addition to the ArchivesSpace collaboration, Lyrasis also offers digitization services to libraries, museums, and archives looking to digitize their manuscripts, photographs, microfiche, maps, and large-format materials:

However, probably the coolest thing I found out about by visiting the Lyrasis booth is the classes they offer, which are available to anyone online. They are not free, though, and range in price from about $100 to $125. There are a few upcoming ones that look great:

Lyrasis promo materials courtesy of the company.