2019 Charleston Library Conference

Over the last few years we have seen a flurry of activity aimed at improving the accessibility of ebooks in libraries. Inspired by wide-scale audits such as the Big 10 Academic Alliance and JISC, ebook platforms have been held to account and encouraged to improve the Accessibility of their services. Libraries have become better educated on Accessibility in service of their students and to help evaluate the products they choose to purchase. However, ensuring Accessibility for all requires a strong commitment from platforms and publishers, and publishers vary widely on the extent to which Accessibility is part of their publication workflows. If publishers aren’t taking the initiative to create accessible files, there is a limit to the usability of that content on any platform.

Given this reality, how can we continue to move the industry forward? How can libraries be assured that what they are buying is accessible to all? How can our industry exert more pressure on the supply chain to partner in achieving this goal? This panel will explore the various efforts underway to encourage increased transparency about Accessibility features and broader participation from publishers in creating Accessible ebooks. It will discuss the standardization efforts underway as well as new tools, certifications, and rating systems that create new possibilities for informed decision making and that could drive real progress toward ensuring accessibility for all.

Note: George Kerscher, Chief Innovations Officer, DAISY Consortium, contributed to the content and preparations for this session but isn't attending.

BitViews is an open-source blockchain application that validates, aggregates, and disseminates online usage data of author’s approved manuscripts (AMs) deposited in open access repositories worldwide. The public ledger thus created provides reliable data to assess non-citation research impact, thereby incentivizing researchers to maximize visibility by releasing their open access AMs. The cost of the project is to be shared among libraries through a new crowdfunding mechanism.  

In 2018 we presented practical examples of 3D/VR in the academy. One year later and momentum has grown. Our update will cover the likely impact of the OpenXR standard, the recent IMLS symposium series, recently released hardware, and new applications in public and academic libraries as well as departmental initiatives. As before we’ll provide a basic grounding in 3D/VR and related areas, showing what it is and why it's important to libraries.

Standardization of resource access is of keen interest to many libraries and librarians, especially in light of the new RA21: Resource Access for the 21st Century initiative. With a more standardized approach to resource management, there are persistent concerns including concerns for patron privacy, how the library can benefit from new access management systems, and the nitty-gritty of exactly what implementation looks like. In this session, we will hear from Michelle Colquitt of the Gwinnett Technical College Library, a Technical College System of Georgia Library that participates in the GALILEO consortium, regarding their pilot site implementation of OpenAthens authentication. This discussion will focus on the adoption of OpenAthens as an access management system: to include onboarding, workflow considerations (changes to teaching/chat reference services, content management—in Alma/Primo, SpringShare’s LibGuides, Blackboard LMS, and reporting), and the state of OpenAthens almost a year later. OpenAthens administrator-level functions will also be discussed. This discussion also will cover work with the college’s internal IT department, consortia-level support, and experiences with OpenAthens’ and EBSCO support teams. Andrew Nagy, director of software as a service innovation at EBSCO Information Services, will provide context about how better to understand the changing landscape of authentication, especially in terms of how SAML technology will replace IP authentication. Bring your questions, comments, and concerns for Michelle and Andrew as they help assuage your fears about managing your electronic resources with an access management system.

Partnering consortia, PALNI (the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) and PALCI (the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium) are collaborating to produce an affordable, open-source, collaborative institutional repository solution based on the Hyku software. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the British Library is piloting a shared repository service with several museums and cultural heritage organizations using the same software. An institutional repository (IR) provides libraries, museums and the academic community a place to capture, preserve, and make accessible the important research, special collections, and other types of information they create. Libraries, campuses, and museums benefit from having the infrastructure and tools provided in an IR solution to manage assets and disseminate them to the larger public. However, many libraries do not have an institutional repository. Findings from a PALNI environmental scan showed 70% of the PALNI members did not have an IR solution due to cost, inefficiency, or overly-rigid solutions. In addition, trends toward market consolidation have further limited libraries’ choice of vended IR software solutions.

This session will describe a project funded in-part by IMLS to further develop the multi-tenant Hyku IR software and to create a new model for ultra low-cost hosting, discovery, and access to digital material. Presenters will describe the opportunities that present themselves when consortia step outside of their normal boundaries and collaborate more broadly with other consortia, coordinate across projects, and partner with commercial partners to create community-owned open source solutions. Attendees will learn how the consortial IR service developed in Hyku will allow individual libraries to customize and brand an IR as their own, while scaling to serve multiple consortia simultaneously, reaping the benefits of sharing the underlying infrastructure, hosting, and administration costs across institutions.

As libraries further explore new services and ecosystems, which rely on machine to machine to business to human interoperability, balancing proactive innovation with adequate measures, governance, and policies around data security and patrons privacy is a key to our success. Creating customized services and platforms and to further automate burdensome workflows and routines depend on registering micro behaviours of patrons and staff, studying them, and apply sophisticated routines to maximize utilization and effectiveness. But how can we do so in a way that is that is secure, respectful, and transparent?

Lehigh University Libraries are at the forefront of open source development through its deep investment in working on FOLIO, VuFind, VIVO, Islandora, and other open source initiatives, it also plays a leadership role in communities such as The Open Library Foundation (OLF) and Open Library Environment (OLE). In addition, Lehigh Libraries are uniquely situated organizationally as part of a merged organization together with Technologies, Security, and the Center of Innovation in Teaching and Learning. As such, the focus around technology and its application across campus is constantly reviewed, challenged, and adapted.

In this session Boaz Nadav-Manes (University Librarian) and Eric Zematis (Chief Information Security Officer) will describe how they cross traditional boundaries to create flexible frameworks, policies, and right-fit solutions to meet the diverse needs of the library and broader university community. Participants will leave the session with a greater understanding of ways by which they and the library can continue to provide leadership in how information is appropriately used and understood while upholding cherished values of personal privacy.

Managing access to subscribed services in an era of abundance is a major challenge for libraries. Users have come to expect a seamless, personalized experience on their mobile devices, but traditional approaches to access management force librarians to choose between the anonymous ease of onsite IP authentication or the access friction experienced by users authenticating across multiple resources with Single Sign-On.

Building on the work of the RA21 initiative, a recent NISO Recommended Practice on Improved Access to Institutionally-Provided Information Resources charts a way forward. It will enable libraries to provide seamless, privacy-preserving and one-click access to its subscribed content from any device, any location, and from any starting point in the research process.

The implementation of these recommendations will be led by the Coalition for Seamless Access, starting with a beta phase implementation in the fall of 2019. But how is user and data privacy protected? How is access simplified? How will numerous library use case scenarios be accommodated, and will current accessibility standards be implemented and supported?

In this session, we’ll discuss how these concerns are being addressed by a consortium of industry partners including librarians, access providers, publishers, and standards organizations. We’ll also discuss how the coalition will manage this service for publishers and libraries while continuing to improve this user experience, provide governance on data policy and privacy issues, and maintain core web services specific to this initiative.

Our speakers have decades of experience in librarianship and the provision of access to scholarly information and are grounded in creating and implementing practical solutions to library access issues. There will also be a demonstration of this service with time provided for Q&A.

Sponsored by Innovative Interfaces. The digital age has given us everything faster, easier, and better. So naturally your students and professors expect great experiences from the library, but technology has not kept pace. A recent survey shows that visits to campus libraries have declined over the last five years as people turn to the internet for information – even though only 8% of people trust the information they find there. Based on this first-of-its-kind research, Innovative has taken bold steps to build a new kind of discovery experience for students, professors, and researchers. Innovative’s new Inspire Discovery provides the most comprehensive and contextual results ever available. Discovery uses native linked data to reveal multi-dimensional relationships and uncover new, unexpected connections and ideas.

Cairn University is one of the first academic libraries to test this new tool and see firsthand how students and professors respond. In this session, Stephanie Kaceli, Library Director at Cairn University, will share their involvement with the day-to-day development of Discovery, how they determined the needs of their library for next generation software, and how staff and students are navigating the new interface.

Academic libraries must provide modern tools that are fast, comprehensive, and intuitive. Cairn University will be one of the first to offer this next generation technology. Join us to hear more about their ground-breaking solution.

What you’ll learn in this session:

• Cairn University’s experience searching their data with contextualized results, being a part of the day-to-day development process, and how staff and students have responded so far

• Insights from a first of its kind study, where academic professors and researchers share their personal experiences
• An update from Innovative staff on how they built a discovery experience from the ground up based on BIBFRAME, not MARC records

Blockchain! Is it the new frontier for scholarly publishing?

New technology developments have wowed the world since the beginning of time.  There has always been those who doubt these new developments and unfortunately, these doubters slow up progress.  The scholarly publishing industry has not moved swiftly to adapt to new technologies as we have seen the uptake of digital books to take over 15 years. It has been over 12 years since the first iPhone was launched and still some publisher’s content both book and journal are still not available on the mobile device.

Most folks only equate Blockchain against the hype of bitcoin.  However, Blockchain is so much more than bitcoin.  Most folks truly do not understand Blockchain and its capabilities and potential.  This talk’s objective is set to change that by addressing the following topics.

1.    Primer on Blockchain and its capabilities
2.    What Blockchain is and what it is not
3.    How will Blockchain interact with the semantic web
4.    How Blockchain will help the scholarly publishing industry achieve new partnerships
5.    Discover the potential applications that publishers can avail themselves to use within their businesses
6.    Last but not least how it will create the railroad tracks for the semantic web.  

This session will provide the insight and answers to all of these topics and the presenter will share his advice as to the recent developments in not only the scholarly publishing industry and other related industries.

This session will be the talk of the conference and you will be able to provide your colleagues with your new great insights about Blockchain and why it is the new frontier for scholarly publishing.

Much is shared about large OER initiatives and the subsequent cost savings for students. But we hear little about the faculty experience. What is it really like to convert an existing course using open material? Where do faculty find resources? What support is available to them? How long does it take? To see widespread benefits of OER, the discovery and adoption processes must become easier for faculty who are on the front lines of change. This panel will bring together faculty experiences from a range of campuses to share challenges and practical solutions.

Certain platform designs can inadvertently negatively affect the discoverability and access of e-journals. NISO's PIE-J (Presentation and Identification of E-Journals) offers guidelines on how best to avoid this. In this session, two publishers discuss how they used the PIE-J guidelines in their platform design to ensure discoverability and access of e-journal content over time.

This session offers the perspective and "know-how" of actual publishers who have gone through the process of comparing the PIE-J guidelines to their platforms, making changes, and improving access and discoverability of their e-journals. Publishers can gain insight into why this is important and how it can be done, while librarians and other stakeholders will get a look into the complex back-end technological requirements and challenges of creating well-functioning, well designed platforms. The session offers an opportunity for library-to-publisher and publisher-to-publisher dialogue and possibly helpful contacts for those interested in embarking on similar platform redesign or enhancements.

Immersive content for higher education and beyond exists along a continuum that correlates ease of creation, prevalence of availability and cost to deploy. Virtual Reality, 360 video, 3D objects, and Augmented Reality may be accessible on a multitude of platforms (freely available or costly) using mobile devices (low cost or expensive hardware). Libraries and publishers are progressing along this continuum at equal pace, but with a shared awareness that in the not-too-distant future the continuum will compress, and content will be accessible as easily, or more easily, than the content is today. What challenges does this pose for the library and its industry partners? Join us in exploring this question as Sarah Howard of Queensland University of Technology and David Parker of ProQuest share where QUT and ProQuest are on this continuum at present, and the risks and opportunities to traverse thinking 10 years out.