2018 Charleston Library Conference

These short “pecha kucha-like” sessions will feature four PowerPoint presentations of 6 minutes and 40 seconds each. We will have time at the end of the session intended for Q&A for all presenters. Come for a lively, rapid-fire group of talks.

1) French eBooks (Claude Potts, University of California Berkeley)
France’s publishing industry is among the most robust in all of Europe. French remains one of the most important languages for scholarship, and thus publications in all formats continue to be acquired by North American research libraries across the disciplines. Despite the efforts of both public and private ventures such as Cairn, Casalini Libri, Classiques Garnier Numérique, Harmathèque, OpenEdition – some of the leaders who have developed platforms and purchase models for academic libraries, French language ebooks remain little used compared to print. Even after they’ve been purchased and added to discovery systems, an analysis of usage patterns shows that researchers at UC Berkeley are checking out the physical books when the digital surrogate sits on the proverbial book shelf gathering virtual dust.
This presentation posits that it is not the language in which the books are published that acts as a barrier to access but the paucity of the metadata for these digital works. Though this problem is not unique to French publications from Europe, it is endemic to many digital monographs from the non-English speaking world, thereby marginalizing valuable scholarly content. The critique comes at a time when controlled vocabulary and Library of Congress Subject Headings are being passed over in favor of more easily obtainable descriptive metadata such as publisher-supplied summaries, table of contents, and user-supplied tags. Is there a role for libraries to ensure that ebooks in non-English languages are discoverable? If so, what role should vendors and regional/national consortia play?

2) Forming Cooperative Relationships for Collections: A Winding Road of Map Stewardship (Barbara Ferry, Smithsonian Libraries)
In 2017, the Smithsonian Libraries became aware of large collections of maps housed in various locations at the Smithsonian, as well as two dedicated volunteers working since 2006 to catalog and digitize more than 35,000 maps. The volunteers were losing their sponsor, and the Libraries stepped in to provide space and oversight of the project while the disposition of the collection came under review. Working with the Smithsonian Archives and the National Museum of Natural History, we obtained grant funding to house the most vulnerable annotated maps, as well as to plan for collections care. We also tackled important issues including copyright and U.S. classification of the maps. As more Smithsonian museums and units have learned about the project, the number of maps in the project continues to grow, while we navigate the evolving stewardship of the collection.

3) Streaming Video PDA: Brace Yourself, Usage is Coming (Marianne Foley, SUNY Buffalo State College)
Low usage statistics for library resources are a big concern at SUNY Buffalo State College library, so we were unprepared for the popularity of a new streaming video PDA program. Though it was slow to take off, when it did, usage increased rapidly. After depleting the initial budget for the resource, we allocated more funds and then quickly depleted those additional funds. At that point, we changed to a mediated model to help control the costs but that greatly increased work for our Acquisitions Department and raised collection development questions we had not considered when we began the PDA program. To continue to offer a streaming video PDA program, we reviewed various models and controls before deciding on an approach that we hope will give users good options, curtail costs, and minimize workloads.
We will provide a quick summary of our program’s explosive growth, what we did to control costs, the unforeseen consequences, and how we tried to enhance the experience for everyone. We’ll conclude with the current state of video streaming PDA at our library. This session will provide practical information for small to mid-sized academic libraries that have recently begun or are contemplating streaming video PDA.

4) Creativity, Community, and Entrepreneurship: Empowering users with library resources, services, and space (Beth Marhanka, Georgetown University)
The mission of the library is to empower people to solve problems and create new knowledge. In today's world, this charge includes democratizing access to the resources our communities need to be productive.  Libraries need to keep evolving to stay relevant and providing access to digital media and creative production tools enables users to stay intellectually engaged in today’s world, to launch new businesses, and to communicate important ideas more effectively.