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On Saturday, March 16, a standing-room-only crowd—especially notable for one of the first warm days of spring and the day of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade—packed into Queens Public Library's (QPL) Queensbridge Tech Lab, a makerspace in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. Drawing them to the space was the Queens Name Explorer Edit-a-Thon, hosted by QPL’s Memory Project, Wikimedia NYC, OpenStreetMap US, and Urban Archive.
Susan Ivey was named one of Library Journal’s 2023 Movers & Shakers for her work making data resources more accessible for researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. We recently reached out to learn more about what that role requires from her and what benefits it provides the university’s researchers.
Great data stories thrive at the intersection of information and emotion, and a handful of approaches can help library staff interpret data in memorable ways for advocacy using data storytelling. Data storytelling for libraries is in demand. The IMLS-funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians (DSTL) planning grant project guides users through advocacy arguments, data as evidence, audience attitudes, and narrative strategies to produce a tailored guide for crafting an effective data story.
#NoTechforICE was started by the national Latinx and Chicanx social justice advocacy group Mijente in 2018, when it became clear that government agencies such as ICE and CBP were purchasing public, private, and commercial data to gather information to aid in the sweeps and deportations of undocumented immigrants. Two companies that have entered into contracts with ICE, LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters—which owns LexisNexis competitor Westlaw—are staples of college and university database subscriptions, and the campaign has caught the attention of academic librarians nationwide.
The LC Labs department of the Library of Congress recently published a comprehensive report on its Humans-in-the-Loop initiative, which crowdsourced volunteers to train a machine learning (ML) tool to extract structured data from one of the library’s digital collections. It also explored the intersection of crowdsourcing and ML algorithms more broadly. The project resulted in a framework that will inform future crowdsourcing and data enrichment projects at LC, and the report offers other libraries and cultural heritage institutions insights and advice for developing engaging, ethical, and useful crowdsourcing projects of their own.
The latest report from Ithaka S+R, “Big Data Infrastructure at the Crossroads,” released December 1, offers critical findings and recommendations on the ways higher ed researchers, scholars, and technicians can partner with university and college librarians to support data research. The report was built from quantitative results and interview transcripts produced by a cohort of librarians at each participating institution.
The Association of College & Research Libraries and Public Library Association have launched Benchmark: Library Metrics and Trends, a new digital resource for data analysis and visualization designed to “help libraries plan, make informed decisions, and tell the story of their impact.”
The 2021 ParkScore rankings, conducted annually by the Trust for Public Land, show a significant shakeup. It’s not because of major changes to the parks in the past year, but to the scoring: this year the Trust added equity to its decision matrix, which includes access, investment, amenities, and acreage. The resulting change in the lineup of top-scoring park systems shows how inadequate measuring overall access is for learning whether everyone is well served.
University of Washington iSchool researchers present an overview of the Open Data Literacy project's work to date, and share highlights from a survey of the current landscape of open data in Washington State's public libraries.
Simmons University School of Library and Information Science has partnered with seven academic health sciences and research libraries and science publisher Elsevier to establish the Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA), a free online professional development program. RDMLA launched on October 7.
LJ's 2019 Placements & Salaries survey showed that the top job skill cited was again reference and information services (10 percent), but in second place for the first time was user experience/usability analysis (9 percent). This is the first year that LJ asked graduates about soft skills training in conflict resolution, cultural competency, customer service, design thinking, ethics, and leadership.
LJ's 2019 Placements & Salaries survey considered how and when LIS students and grads conducted their job searches, and learned that 44 percent are hired before they finish their degrees. Job seekers are leveraging not only traditional outlets, such as listservs and employment sites, but social media and networking opportunities, too.
LJ's 2019 Placements & Salaries survey looked at grads entering the LIS field and at the salaries they command. This provides a snapshot of graduates' job-seeking experiences at 41 ALA-accredited institutions and identifies comparative trends from previous years. Two schools are new this year, 35 schools used our survey, and six schools created independent assessments.
LJ's 2019 Placements & Salaries survey learned that full-time grads earned on average 6.2 percent more than they did last year. Top earners tend to have private sector and special collections jobs.
Following an investigation into Santa Cruz Public Libraries’ use of Gale Analytics on Demand, a California grand jury reported on June 24 that the use of data analytics tools by libraries “is a potential threat to patron privacy and trust.”
The Panorama Project—a multi-partner library and publishing industry initiative to research the impact that libraries have on book and author discovery, brand development, and retail sales—this week announced the launch of “Panorama Picks,” a free program offering librarians, publishers, and booksellers a topline assessment of regional library demand for recently published ebook titles.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology are transforming a whole host of industries, from healthcare to marketing and finance—and they have the potential to do the same for academic libraries.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has requested that National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Records Management sign off on a records retention schedule that would potentially destroy detainee records in 11 item categories, including accounts of solitary confinement, assault, sexual abuse, and investigations into deaths in ICE custody.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services issued its most recent Public Libraries Survey (PLS) Report on August 2, offering a look at public library use, financial health, staffing, and resources in the country’s 9,068 active public libraries in FY 2015.
A team made up of digital humanities librarians and other academic partners has developed an interactive website that visualizes the impact of Trump administration’s family separation policy’s enforcement and the emerging humanitarian crisis it has engendered.
This year's Notable Government Documents reflect what's going on in the world, with refugees and climate change looming large. The agency itself experienced a remarkable few months, with more in the offing.
The transformation of magazines continued apace in 2017, showing signs that some publishers have found the sweet spot within the print-digital mix. The ten best publications of the year illustrate that trend.
“We are all walking stories, so it's vital that as librarians, we learn the art of listening to story…” says Irvin, an assistant professor in the library and information science program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. “[We need to be] willing to share our own stories so that we best relate to patrons, communities, and stakeholders.”
In this age of outcomes measurement, many academic librarians are focused—and rightly so—on making sure they best serve students. Yet students are not the only population of end users on an academic campus. Faculty, too, are conduits not only to students but to library users in their own right. As well, studies of faculty attitudes such as Ithaka’s often show that, even as faculty increasingly depend on library-brokered online access to expensive databases and electronic journals, the off-site availability of modern resources may leave many faculty members less aware of the crucial role of the library in their and their students’ workflow.
As libraries continue exploring ways to weave online social media into their core service, a Pew study suggests popular Internet gathering spots such as Facebook and Twitter are not effective places for generating meaningful or honest conversation about significant news events. Not only are people not more willing to discuss controversial issues online than they are in person, in fact, the reverse is true.
Younger Americans and Public Libraries examines the ways Millennials—those born between 1985 and 1998—engage with libraries, and how they see libraries’ roles in their lives and communities
EBSCO Information Services and Infotrieve this month launched a new partnership that will pair the metadata and search functionality of the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) with the e-content access and management features of Infotrieve’s Mobile Library, enabling “mutual customers to combine their search, content access, rights management, and document delivery into one platform,” according to a joint announcement. Essentially, the deal will let researchers purchase immediate access to content that shows up in search results, but to which they don’t already have full text rights.
New research sheds light on how faculty members spend their time. The bottom line is they have too little of it to do all that is expected of them. This creates opportunities for academic librarians to save them time.
Gale today launched Analytics On Demand, a new geographic information system (GIS) that combines local demographic data with information from a library’s ILS to generate real-time reports on circulation trends and patron lifestyles. Powered by business analytics provider Alteryx, with regularly updated demographic and consumer lifestyle segmentation data from Experian Mosaic, the foundation of the new service is built on the same tools as Gale’s DemographicsNow: Business and People.
The last of a series of Pew Research Center studies examining the changing face of library service in the 21st century was released in March, offering a look at library use that breaks Americans down into nine different groups of library users. The report, “From Distant Admirers to Library Lovers,” caps three years of Pew research on libraries funded by the Gates Foundation, and looks to identify what users—and some non-users—value about library service, and where they may see room for improvement.
The numbers you put to work every year are here. See the list of average book prices for 2013 and 2014 to date, produced in partnership with Baker & Taylor.
EBSCO has rolled out Research Starters, a new feature for EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) that presents student researchers with short, citable summaries on frequently searched topics. Drawn from sources such as Salem Press, Encyclopedia Britannica, and American National Biography, more than 62,000 of these 500- to 1,500-word summaries are accessible, offering students an authoritative overview of their chosen subject, as well as links to other research starter summaries, or peer reviewed research where they can delve deeper into a topic.
Does your library offer a readers’ advisory (RA) service? If so, you’re in good company—and a lot of it! All of the public librarians who answered a survey recently developed by LJ with NoveList and the RUSA/CODES Readers’ Advisory Research and Trends Committee said that they conducted personal RA in-house. Methods varied, however.
The omnibus spending bill signed into law by President Obama on January 17 has plenty of wrinkles and details, but one of them is a change that expands the number of federal agencies operating under a mandate to make research they fund available to the public after one year.
Reading a novel appears to produce quantifiable changes in brain activity, according to an Emory University study published this month in the journal Brain Connectivity.
Agricultural research can take seasons to come to fruition, meaning the data researchers gather is voluminous, tracking things like weather patterns and crop yields over years. A failure to establish data standards and sharing practices means that most of these raw figures never make it out of the hands of the researchers who gather them. With new open access standards coming to federally funded research, though, agricultural researchers will need share their data more effectively, and a team of scientists and librarians at Purdue University may have the first blueprint for the field.
LJ Columnists Barbara Fister and Michael Stephens discussed improving student understanding of how information is created and stored, as well as ways to keep students engaged with MOOCs during their presentations for The Digital Shift: Reinventing Libraries last week.
Clemson University’s Cooper Library has a new addition that may seem out of place at first glance—a study hall filled with stationary exercise bikes. The space isn’t being taken over by the phys ed department, though. The bikes are FitDesks, specially equipped cycles with attached desktops that allow riders to be readers as well, and they’re part of a new study by Clemson psychologist Dr. June Pilcher on the effects of exercise on productivity and learning.
As a result of the federal government shutdown, many resources that researchers, academics, and library patrons depend on—like the Library of Congress (LC) archives—have been rendered unavailable in the last week. The bad news is that, eight days in and with no clear end to this stalemate in sight, there’s no telling how long those resources might be on lock down. The good news is that a variety of other institutions are stepping up to fill in the gap and make sure a government shutdown doesn’t turn into an information shutdown.
Tech-savvy younger Americans are more likely than older adults to have read printed books in the past year, are more likely to appreciate reading in libraries, and are just as strong supporters of traditional library services as older adults, a new national report from the Pew Research Center shows. And, according to the survey of Americans ages 16–29, a majority of young adults say it is “very important” for libraries to have librarians and books for borrowing.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading today unveiled a new report on the role of museums and libraries in early learning, and issued a call to action for policymakers, schools, funders, and parents to include these institutions in comprehensive early learning strategies.
Having access to national studies helps academic librarians stay informed about their community members. Finding the time to read and analyze them—and make sense of possibly conflicting information—is a new “keeping up” challenge. Four studies in particular are most worthy of our ongoing analysis and reflection.
Virtually all parents surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project for its Parents, Children, Libraries, and Reading study—94 percent—say libraries are important for their children; nearly 80 percent say they’re very important.
A new report from Pew Internet and American Life, “Library Services in the Digital Age,” should be required reading for all in LIS education, especially those involved in strategic and long-range planning. For LIS educators, this is yet another call to action for reevaluating core and elective course content.
OverDrive is in the initial stage of rolling out more robust data and reporting tools that company officials say will allow libraries to improve their services.
The pending federal budget sequestration could cut the appropriations budget of the Government Printing Office by 5.3%, or approximately $6.7 million. In addition, the GPO is expecting that the sequester will force other federal agencies to cut back on ordering printing and information services from the GPO, which would also lower the agency’s revenue.
The University of Pittsburgh recently wrapped up a pilot test with Plum Analytics, one of several new companies in the emerging field of altmetrics. By examining how often a paper is downloaded, mentioned in the news, or linked to on social media sites, altmetrics providers offer researchers, funding agencies, and librarians a more immediate, quantifiable view of the impact an article is having on its field.
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project's Reading Habits in Different Communities report can help libraries in different kinds of communities better target their services.
Research collaboration startup Mendeley this week announced the launch of a new “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) citation style editor that will enable users to format citation styles and then contribute them to an open repository where they can be reused by other academics. Produced in collaboration with Columbia University Libraries with the support of a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the new editor was developed in response to frequent requests on Mendeley’s user feedback board.
Open Access is only one part of a larger shift taking place in the academic world—particularly the sciences—says Richard Price, founder and CEO of academia.edu. Price argues that academia is moving toward a system where the credibility of research, publications, and ultimately researchers themselves, is gauged not by the prestige of the journal in which works are published, but by the usage, citations, and professional feedback that the works generate online.
An open source program created as part of an effort to make the U.S. redistricting process more transparent was awarded one of five inaugural Strata Data Innovation Awards at last month’s O’Reilly Strata Conference, a gathering of leading minds in the emerging field of “big data.” The web-based program, DistrictBuilder, was developed by the Public Mapping Project, an effort to engage the public in the redistricting process.
The Brown University Library this month opened its new Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, a facility that offers students access to software used by a variety of disciplines in a state-of-the-art viewing and listening environment. The centerpiece of the lab is a video visualization wall made from twelve 55-inch LED screens, which can be used together to show a single seven foot by 16 foot image or video at 24 megapixel resolution, or linked to individual touch-screen monitors for groups or classes working on collaborative projects.
According to Younger Americans’ Reading and Library Habits, from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 83 percent of Americans aged 16-29 read a book in the past year, compared to 78 percent of all Americans over 16.
Frank Menchaca, executive vice president of publishing for Gale Cengage Learning, discusses digitization projects and the company’s new college courses for public libraries as part of a series of Q&As leading up to “The Digital Shift: Libraries, Ebooks and Beyond,” LJ’s third annual ebook summit on Wednesday, October 17.
John Wiley & Sons has announced that OnlineOpen, Wiley’s hybrid open access model for subscription journals that allows authors to publish an open access paper in their journal of choice, is now available in over 1,200 of the journals that Wiley publishes.
EBSCO Publishing last week announced new or expanded partnership agreements with OCLC, SirsiDynix, and Innovative Interfaces that will enhance discovery and offer easier access to many databases, e-journals and other content.
Of Americans aged 16 and over, only 2 percent have borrowed an ebook from a library in the past year, The Pew Internet Project announced today at the American Library Association conference in Anaheim, CA. Although the numbers are higher for ebook readers, they’re still small: only 12 percent have borrowed an ebook from the [...]
