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Roadmap to Library Publishing

First, I’ve determined that there is no one “roadmap” that will lead my library into digital publishing. So, instead of creating a map, I’m going to do the best I can to sketch out the terrain ahead and think about questions that can guide our path.

Broader Context

This section tries to address two main questions: What is happening in the world of scholarly publishing that is relevant to North Park? What is happening within the North Park setting that is relevant to a library published endeavor? Quick thoughts:

  • Continued movement toward Open Access. There is still work to be done in our local context but that is the clear movement. The Covenant Quarterly and Journal of Hip Hop Studies indicate this trend is taking root on campus.
  • Institutional branding. There is a renewed focus in institutional branding and online presence. There could be powerful connections to make here.
  • Publishing and the North Park mission. My sense is that North Park values diverse contributions to the academic community more than creating a specialized repository
  • Chicago. There might be some opportunities to promote North Park within the regional context through research and student projects.

Scope

We need to define the scope of this project. There are many different efforts that fall under the broad category of “digital publishing”, including:

  • Institutional Repositories
  • Digital Humanities
  • Data Repository
  • Open Educational Resources
  • Campus multimedia (lectures, performances, etc.)

Of these options, I think the most appropriate level and scope would be an institutional repository that contains simple/static documents such as PDFs. A next step would be to curate multimedia from across campus.

Even within this scope, the library will need to make editorial and collection development decisions to make sure that (1) we have a critical mass of content and (2) that there is some editorial scope. I think we should prioritize the following content areas and focus on building relationships with relevant parties.

Student Research

  • Honor’s Projects and Papers
  • Student Research
  • Master’s Thesis
  • NPPress Student Research
  • Covenant History Papers
  • Partnerships with different courses/programs.

Faculty/Staff Scholarship

  • Journal Articles
  • Faculty/Staff Presentations and other “gray” literature
  • Papers from campus symposiums
  • Offer hosting/support for existing campus projects

Political Realities/Soft Skills

We would need some strong support from across campus to take on this project and lead the campus here. Given the proposed scope of this project, here are the people I think it would be important to connect with:

  • The President
  • Provost
  • Campus Deans
  • The University Marketing and Communication Office
  • Honors Program
  • Seminary Faculty
  • Faculty/Tenure Committee
  • NPPRESS Leadership
  • Student Research Committee

Some of these needed connections blend into the next set of questions that seeks to define the scope of this project and effort. I think if we have 5 strong allies (willing to contribute the content they are responsible for) that would make a strong starting point.

Management

Do we have the technical and social workflows to produce, distribute and preserve this content? There are many overlapping questions here, but here is an attempt to list the important ones:

  • Do we have the rights/permissions to publish these materials? Who will work with each group to determine these permissions and who will maintain the paperwork?
  • Do we have the staff expertise, staff time, and faculty/staff connections to successfully manage this projects?
  • What is the ongoing cost of this project in terms of hosting costs, incentives and open access fees, etc.?
  • Where does this rank compared to other library/institutional priorities?
  • What are peer institutions doing? What can we learn from them?
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Review/Notes – “Analyzing and Selecting the Best Discovery Solution for Your Users and Organization(s)”

Brian C. Gray presenting Analyzing and Selecting the Best Discovery Solution for Your Users and Organization(s). Library website: http://library.case.edu/ksl/.

How to make a decision? Gray worked with OHIOLink and started with a list of specifications as well as how all the user audiences would work with each service. Wanted the search to be comprehensive, not federated, able to be embedded in other library resources, and ease of maintenance. Gray worked with a small group of people and focused on making decisions quickly.

What are the challenges? All the products are very different. Very different. Librarians and average library user have very different expectations and viewpoints. Hard to answer the question – “what is this tool searching?” – because of the complexities in the index. Thinks about the diversity of users – can you provide customized tools for different communities? Discovery process changes rapidly – perhaps too fast for librarians to manage. How difficult is it to change and maintain our holdings? Have someone that works with all users, someone with cataloging/metadata expertise, IT and webmaster, financial agent.

Advice: Take advantage of trials. Make sure staffing is sufficient. Don’t take too long in making the decision. Do local inventories: processes, technology, expertise, time, and financial resources. Define your local goals! Gray’s goals included: drive usage to certain resources, increase resource usage, change user behaviors, help people brainstorm ideas, speed up research, challenge the “google mindset,” change library instruction, reduce the number of access points, provide a common tool, what’s your long term plan, what’s your level of commitment? Beyond goals, prioritize things. Things like: user needs, local customizations, addition costs, what level of control do you have, multilingual interface, user customization options, how does it work with backend management tools, usage statistics, facets customization, what level of support do you require, can you add local content?

Create a list of specifications; list them and then score them (yes/no or a numeric scale) and what are the “must have” features. Gray has a collection of great rubrics for evaluating discovery services.

Don’t take forever to implement – start in beta and make changes accordingly. You won’t be perfect, it will get better. Work with the vendors and take full advantage of their skills. Expect constant change.

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Review/Notes – “Advancement of Discovery through Openness and Interoperability”

Marshall Breeding presenting on Advancement of Discovery through Openness and Interoperability.

The history of discovery as an introduction. Library website offered a menu of unconnected silos and services (ILS catalogs, articles, open URL link resolvers, etc.). Very fragmented and confusing. There has been a movement toward web-scale or centrally indexed content. These services combine data from a wide range of subscription sources and combine them all in a consolidated index that takes advantage of usage generated data and customer profiles. Putting all of that information into a central index creates problems because of the differences in metadata (article level vs. title level metadata, full text, etc.). There are also technical challenges – there must be some relevancy rating to help the user filter the results.

Breeding expanded the view the include publishers, aggregators, libraries, the library community, and (finally) the discovery service providers. It seems like most views of discovery portray only the library, discovery services, and the content when discussing this ecosystem.

NISO Open Discovery Initiative – an attempt to work through the details to make sure it’s a healthy ecosystem. More information is posted here: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/odi.

How do you extend these services to other areas (Learning Management Systems, Google, etc.) to meet users where they are? Linked data is the larger horizon in the information ecosystem. Move away from library-specific schemes to open systems. [We can ask that of discovery services…but what about our own MARC records?] How will the open access movement change the way resources are discovered in (closed, commercial) systems? Right now, there are no open access discovery indexes…and there are lots of hurdles to building one. There are really no open source alternatives to discovery services.

What is the relationship between discovery services and resource management systems?

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Review/Notes – “Behind the Point-and-Click Discovery Tool: Integrating Critical Thinking in Finding Resources”

Rob Hallis presenting on Behind the Point-and-Click Discovery Tool: Integrating Critical Thinking in Finding Resources

History of discovery: silos of databases to federated searching to “pushed suggestions”. Pulled data = what you “pull” from a system; Pushed data = what a system (like Amazon) “pushes” at you. Is critical thinking an “autonomous activity?” I don’t think so! Move from a bibliographic paradigm to a constructive process where there is uncertainty and confusion. He is using “Seeking Meaning: A process approach to Library and Information Science” by Kuhthau. (http://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/all/vf-npu/Record/2557683).

Questions/Thoughts unrelated to the main presentation:

  • Do we really know enough about how students think/learn through online searching in any form (OPAC, database, discovery)?
  • He uses this metaphor for searching for information resources: online shopping. You know what you want and where to look – but you don’t click the first thing. You shop around. Is this a good metaphor? What’s a better metaphor/image to use?
  • These presentations are really demonstrating the huge range of what falls under library “instruction” – from simple multiple choice tutorials to walking through a very complicated search processes. I wonder if that’s even a meaningful term at some point. How involved in the thesis creation process are libraries/librarians? It seems like this presenter portrays libraries as very active in the thesis/research process from the very beginning…but is that the case at our institutions? That seems like the role of the classroom professor.
  • Many presenters use the passive voice or at least speak passively when talking about Discovery Services. For example, “the resources that the discovery services provide” instead of “discovery services provide resources.” I wonder what this reflects – a mistrust of discovery? A lack of understanding of what discovery layers do or how they actually work? Or is this verbiage trying to focus on the actions of the user over the actions of the discovery service?
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Review/Notes – “How Discovery Services Tie into University Missions”

Dana Belcher from East Central University presenting on “How Discovery Services Tie into University Missions.”

Why discovery? Lots of reasons! Foster a learning environment, educate students, keep up with changes in society. These resources are tied to the University’s missions statement. Moved the library webpages totally to LibGuides; a positive change. Selected EBSCO discovery because they already had a lot of EBSCO products and the price is right. Make sure you understand 100% of the products/services offered! They created a profile for each major/area to customize a database list. After that, they worked with EBSCO to better define the limiters and facets – especially making changes to better meet user needs. Instruction is focused on limiting/faceting a search instead of “choose this database” type instruction.

Advice:

  • Communicate with vendor – make sure you understand 100% of services, make sure your catalog loading is correct.
  • Communicate with library staff – make sure the terminology is shared, have a way to report problems.
  • It’s more work for you – be prepared.

Focus on meeting the needs of the University and the needs of students. Everything is tied to the strategic plan for the library.