Librarians have a keen interest in teaching.  Many of our OSUL librarians teach complete classes in areas of specialization for colleges and departments, as well as freshman seminars.  Librarians at OSU also teach information literacy through our suite of online courses or in individual class sessions for disciplinary faculty.  Other OSU librarians teach within their primary assignment particularly supervisors who must train or teach their staff in groups or individually for new tasks and work.

So how can we do it better?  Particularly how do we reach students who are accomplished at multi-tasking and use of digital media, but perhaps are less accomplished at finding and using information?

Flipped Classrooms

This won’t be the first or last time I mention the EDUCAUSE series 7 Things.  One released in February 2012 talks about Flipped Classrooms.  You can find it at this address:  http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7081.pdf

“The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed.  Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session, while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions.”

Another article in the Chronicle of Higher Education talks about this concept as well.  http://chronicle.com/article/How-Flipping-the-Classroom/130857/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

How might this concept be useful in your teaching?

Key Trends in Teaching

Check out the interesting postings in this blog –  http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/02/three-trends-that-define-the-future-of-teaching-and-learning/  There are a series of three on curriculum, teaching and learning, and learning environments.

iPad Apps

When I attended the Apple Executive Briefing at Apple Headquarters last fall with others leaders from OSUL, we were provided with an iPad during the meeting, fully loaded with a series of educational apps.  Basically, they expected that we would play with those apps during the course of the day.  And we certainly did.  Granted not everyone has an iPad or other tablet but even a casual engagement with apps will show you exciting and new ways that teaching is and will continue to change.  At this site, the writers provide information on apps they have found of value.  http://appsineducation.blogspot.fr/2012/03/jackpot-ipad-lessons.html and also a nice site on Pinterest http://pinterest.com/techchef4u/ipad-lessons/.  If students are using these options in elementary, middle and high school, what expectations will they bring with them to college about the manner in which they will learn and be taught?.

Khan Academy

No discussion of new ways of teaching would be complete without talking about Khan Academy.  http://www.khanacademy.org/  “Watch. Practice. Learn almost anything for free.  With a library of over 3,000 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 317 practice exercises, we’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.”  Khan Academy was recently featured on 60 Minutes as well http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57394905/khan-academy-the-future-of-education/

MOOCs

Ever heard of MOOCs? Massive Open Online Courses.  The most interesting example thus far is the course, Build a Search Engine, which is taught by two prominent scientists (from Stanford, Google, and Virginia).  This New York Times article gives a great overview – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/moocs-large-courses-open-to-all-topple-campus-walls.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all and a second article moves the discussion forward about programs offering informal credentials at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/education/beyond-the-college-degree-online-educational-badges.html.

MITx

Not to be left out, MIT has launched a new initiative called MITx.  http://www.mitx.mit.edu/  “MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses for free to a virtual community of learners around the world. It will also enhance the educational experience of its on-campus students, offering them online tools that supplement and enrich their classroom and laboratory experiences.  The first MITx course, 6.002x (Circuits and Electronics), will be launched in an experimental prototype form. Watch this space for further upcoming courses, which will become available in Fall 2012.”

Perhaps even more interesting is a provocative entry in The Atlantic by Megan McArdle entitled “Envisioning a Post-Campus America.” http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/envisioning-a-post-campus-america/253032/   She posits twelve outcomes if this sort of distance learning becomes the norm.  A few to pique your interest:

• “online education will kill the liberal arts degree”
• “professors (course developers) will be selected for teaching instead of research brilliance”
• “95% of tenure-track professors will lose their jobs”

And here’s some thoughtful reaction from the MIT faculty – http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/06/how-could-mitx-change-mit

What do these last three mean for us?  How would we deliver library services and content in this environment?  How can we improve the teaching we currently provide?  Definitely food for thought.

Karen Smith-Yoshimura (OCLC) has been leading a study with a number of librarians about social metadata for libraries, archives and museums.  Parts 1 and 2 are now available at (http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/reports.htm).   Part 3 has been posted first to members of the Research Libraries Partnership and will appear publicly at the same link in the next month.

Part 1 – Environmental Scan

The first report “provides an environmental scan of sites and third party hosted social media sites relevant to libraries, archives, and museums” and includes detailed reviews of 24 representative sites.  (p.9, part 1)

Here are a few trends and themes that emerged from the environmental scan: (part 1, pp. 10-12)

• Size – “A critical mass and sense of community … generates more user contributions and more outreach to new communities.”
• Moderation – “The moderated sites tend to have fewer contributions than those that are not. Strict credentialing can be a barrier to more broad-based participation.”
• Social Media Features – “The most popular user contributions across all sites reviewed were comments and annotations, followed by tags.”
• User-contributed Content – Of the user-contributed conetent that would most enrich the metadata created by libraries, archives, and museums, more than half improve description.”

Here a few examples from the report which might provide examples for how we could incorporate social metadata in our work:

• Duke Medical Center’s Demystify Our Images – “site appeals to alumni to identify the people in a group of ‘mystery photos.’” (part 1, p. 17)
• The Victoria & Albert Museum’s Wedding Fashions – “asks the public to upload up to three photographs showing features of any one wedding.  The comments to the photographs may also include links for additional context.” (part 1, p. 24)
• Wikipedia – the University of Washington conducted a study about the impact of their presence on Wikipedia.  They found that “UW’s presence on Wikipedia drove increased web traffic to their archival collections.” (part 1, p. 56)

We also have examples ourselves such as the Archives’ From Woody’s Couch blog and the Japanese Studies blog which focuses on our Japanese collections.

Part 2 – Analysis of Survey Results

The second report provides “an analysis of results from a survey of site managers” of the sites reviewed in part 1.  “The survey focused on the motivations for creating a site, moderation policies, staffing and site management, technologies used, and criteria for assessing success.” (p.9, part 1)

A interesting aspect of the survey was determining what the site managers saw as success criteria.  A nice chart on p. 50 of the part of the report provides response to five choices:

• Adding new content
• Engaging new audiences
• Engaging audiences you did not expect
• Engaging and supporting existing audiences
• Gathering additional metadata about existing content.

Part 3 – Recommendations and Readings on Social Metadata Features

Part 3 (not yet publicly available) will report on “social metadata features most relevant to libraries, archives, and museums and factors contributing to success.” (p.9, part 1)

• “We believe it is riskier to do nothing and become irrelevant to your user communities than to start using social media features.” (p. 8, part 3)
• They recommend:
  • Establishing clear objectives for using social media
  • Motivating your users and leveraging their enthusiasm to contribute
  • Looking at other sites to get ideas before starting
  • Inviting user contributions without worrying too much about abuse or spam
  • Adapting existing policies or creating new ones for social metadata
  • Deciding on what metrics you need to measure success
  • And many more recommendations (p. 9-18, part 3)

These reports provide lots of food for thought.  I particularly enjoyed the review of a large set of sites including screen shots from many.  Check it out!

I’ve been a Facebook user for some time as well as this blog, but I’ve now taken the leap into Twitter — @CarolDiedrichs

Digital Humanities has been cropping up for me in a number of places these days.  Here are few examples:

Could digital humanities to undergraduates boost information literacy?

This Inside Higher Education piece talks about a panel at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities where panelists discussed weaving digital humanities research in undergraduate education to boost information literacy.  The examples given are very similar to the work done by our own Melanie Schlosser and Louis Ulman in the English Department using library collections.  Check out this presentation in the Knowledge Bank by Louie and Melanie — https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/34122 as well as this in Media Manager https://digitalhumanities.osu.edu/.   The article can be found here:  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/27/could-digital-humanities-undergraduates-could-boost-information-literacy

Anvil Academic

A new platform, called Anvil Academic, has been announced as a joint project by the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) and the Council for Library and Information Resources (CLIR).  One of the goals of Anvil is to “build a peer-review infrastructure for research that cannot be easily represented in text.”  Anvil is seen as a technical partner for traditional academic publishers.  It will be an interesting project to follow.  More detail can be found here – http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/13/anvil-academic-aims-provide-platform-digital-scholarship and here – http://www.clir.org/initiatives-partnerships/anvil-academic-publishing

Digital Humanities at OSU

Things are happening too here on our own campus.

THATCamp Unconference

One of our first innovation fund projects is a proposal by Melanie Schlosser and Louis Ulman to host a THATCamp Unconference about digital humanities.  One of the proposed outcomes is to “fashion a working definition of digital humanities for our campus that reflects the wide spectrum of work being done here as well as the needs of the OSU community going forward.” The unconference is sponsored by a robust set of campus partners:  the Ohio State University Libraries; the College of Arts and Sciences, Division of Arts and Humanities; the Office of the Chief Information Officer; The Goldberg Center; the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing; the OSU Foreign Language Center; the Humanities Institute; the Digital Media Project, and the College of Arts and Sciences Technology Services.   There’s a lot of interest on our campus around this issue – THATCamp closed its registration at 60 a full 7 weeks before the conference! Details at https://english.osu.edu/news/thatcamp-unconference-digital-humanities-wins-major-grant?page=1 and http://osu2012.thatcamp.org/

CIC Digital Humanities Summit

The CIC is hosting a conference on digital humanities this week.  Teams from each CIC campus will converge in Lincoln, Nebraska.  This summit is targeted at faculty working in digital humanities.  We’re pleased that the Libraries was asked by the College of Arts & Sciences, Division of Arts & Humanities to join the 5 person team attending from OSU.  Lisa Carter will represent us on that team.  http://www.cic.net/Home/Projects/DigitalHumanitiesSummit/Home.aspx

Strategic Plans

One strategy in the Libraries’ draft strategic plan includes development of a responsive, reliable environment for managing research data in partnership with the faculty, OCIO and the Office of Research.  While the issues of research data in the sciences are those that come first to mind, there are also pressing needs for research data management in the humanities particularly digital humanities.  That sense we have is borne out in the inclusion of research data as a key strategy in new draft strategic plans for the College of Arts & Sciences.

If you want to learn more about digital humanities, here are a few links for exploration:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/

http://digitalhumanities.org/centernet/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities

There are a number of OSU specific items that don’t warrant a full posting individually but are interesting to me – and hopefully to you as well.

Funding for Area Studies

Back in the spring 2011, the federal government approved a budget which included significant cuts in Title VI of the Higher Education Act.  That budget went into effect on October 1.  The cuts reduced the budget to these Department of Education programs by 40%.   Title VI has for many years provided the funding for a variety of academic centers at universities including Ohio State.  If you check out the Office of International Affairs website at http://oia.osu.edu/area-studies-centers.html, you will see that Ohio State has five Area Studies Centers, four with full Title VI NRC and FLAS funding:

• Center for African Studies
• Center for Latin American Studies
• Center for Slavic and East European Studies
• East Asian Studies Center
  • Institute for Chinese Studies
  • Institute for Japanese Studies
  • Institute for Korean Studies
  • Middle East Studies Center

These centers have been generous in sharing some of their federal funding with the Libraries to enable us to build larger and more significant collections to support these areas. While the Libraries also allocates funding from its materials budget to these areas, the additional funding has provided for much of the growth in these collections.  We have already heard from many of the centers that they will have to reduce or eliminate their assistance to us.  This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education provides more detail – http://chronicle.com/article/Language-and/127122

Early English Books Online – Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP)

Many years ago, Ohio State agreed to be a phase 1 partner in the EEBO-TCP project lead by the University of Michigan (http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/index.html).  The mission of the project follows:

The Text Creation Partnership’s primary objective is to produce standardized, digitally-encoded editions of early print books. This process involves a labor-intensive combination of manual keyboard entry (from digital images of the books’ original pages), the addition of digital markup (conforming to guidelines set by a text encoding standard-setting body know as the TEI), and editorial review.

The website goes on to talk about the core values and principles behind the project:

The TCP are mindful of the long-term needs of libraries, scholars and the larger society. TCP projects are notable for the quality and cost-effectiveness of their content, as well as for the underlying principles of the Partnership that:

• Convey robust rights of use to scholars;
• Protect the public domain rights of the larger society to access out-of-copyright materials;
• Present the user with accurately keyed, modern texts that are faithful to the spellings and organization of the original works;
• Ensure that this content will migrate forward through shifts in technology to represent editions of enduring value to libraries.

I was reminded of this project by an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education which spoke to its value to scholars.  Check it out at http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-future-of-primary-texts-online-is-almost-here/32921

Book Depository Statistics

Donna DeGeorge prepares a annual report of depository statistics after the close of each fiscal year.  Here are few interesting comparisons between FY10 and FY11

The OSU Libraries is a large organization.  Much of my responsibility revolves around relationships outside the libraries.  One of the wonderful things about returning to the University for me was the large number of long term relationships I had with our library faculty and staff.  But, as time progresses many of those individuals have retired and we continue to hire new people.  Most of the occasions I have for talking with you are formal or in large groups – staff appreciation events, general meetings, committee meetings etc.  We also have the Conversations with the Director events which provide another point for engagement.  I would like the opportunity to continue to get to know you as individuals.

We have designed a new series of events to foster this – Dine with the Director.    Dine with the Director is a new concept that we’d like to test at University Libraries for the next six months (April-September). Each month, a call for volunteer lunch or breakfast guests will be sent to you. Three or four will be selected to dine with me for lunch or breakfast in my office suite. This setting will provide us with an opportunity to have a more intimate conversation over an informal lunch or breakfast.  We can certainly we can  talk about work, but I’m also simply interested in learning about you, your family, your interests, what you do when you’re not working, etc.  With 11 locations across campus, this program will provide another way of maintaining lines of open communication with me on a one on one basis. We will evaluate the program after six months and continue if it is successful.

Next Steps

This is the official call for volunteers for lunch on Friday, April 27^th.  Please send Quanetta your name at batts.8@osu.edu.

I have a handful of odds and ends that don’t warrant a full blog posting but are specifically related to things that are happening at OSU Libraries.

Planning for RDA Implementation

A new cataloging code (like MARC, but not like MARC) is being adopted.  In January the  Executive Committee agreed that the University Libraries will fully implement RDA beginning June 1, 2012.   This code has been in development and testing at the national level and our Cataloging staff have been actively engaged in that process.   To actually implement the code locally will require training for all staff performing original and copy cataloging.  That training will become available this spring. Please watch for forthcoming announcements about when training will be offered and information on how to sign up for training.  Sessions will also be scheduled for public service staff curious to see how RDA records display in our catalog and WorldCat. In addition to training a variety of other work will be undertaken in preparation for RDA implementation with the Cataloging Process, Policy and Training Committee taking a leadership role in developing local policy and procedures. We will also be working as needed with Library IT to prepare for implementation.

Please note that this decision does not impact Law, Health Sciences, or the Regional Campuses unless they make separate decisions to implement on a parallel timeline.

We’ve now exhausted any specific knowledge I have about this subject.  Magda El-Sherbini is our expert along with others in Cataloging and Special Collections Cataloging.

 Valentine Video with a Shout Out for the Library

Sorry I missed sending this out in a more timely fashion, but here’s a video from our campus which includes a shout out for the Libraries.  In early February, President Gee issued a video challenge asking students to e-mail their favorite place on campus. Here’s the mash-up video, just in time for Valentine’s Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxFchtadNaA.

Trademark Funding

I’ve shared the chart below with you about the trajectory of our trademark and licensing funding.  Success like our basketball team is having – this weekend’s appearance in the final four – is often a factor in the rise and fall of this budget.  Failures can also have an impact.  Next year should be an interesting year for this funding given the successes and failures of our athletic program.  This recent article in OnCampus gives a great overview of where this money comes from and how it is allocated.  Check it out at http://oncampus.osu.edu/2011/12/shirts-for-scholarships/

I collect a variety of odds and ends that I find interesting but don’t warrant a full blog posting.  Here are the latest.

New Columbus Metropolitan Library App

As a heavy user of the CML, I had created a bookmark/website link as an app for the Columbus Metropolitan Library.  In March CML released an app for both the iPad and the iPhone, perhaps other platforms as well.  I have realized that OSU Thompson does not appear as a location in this new app.  I’ve asked about it and CML reports that it will appear in the next version of the app.  Check it out on their home page at http://www.columbuslibrary.org/ or get it in the App Store.

iPAD Apps for Children’s Books

Yes, it is true – there are eBook readers designed especially for children (http://www.leapfrog.com/leappad/index.html) as well as apps that run on any Apple or Android platform.  I don’t know about you, but I see more and more extremely well-behaved children in restaurants absorbed in a game or book on mom or dad’s phone or iPad.  They are our future students.  Here’s a nice article about 10 iPad apps based on classic children’s books – http://www.mediabistro.com/ebooknewser/ten-ipad-apps-based-on-classic-childrens-book_b12733.  Also check out these examples – http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/great-interactive-ebooks-kids-android-ipad/

OhioLINK – OCLC Collection and Circulation Analysis Project 2011

This OCLC report by Julia Gammon (Akron) and Ed O’Neill (OCLC) was conducted to “gain a better understanding of how the resources of OhioLINK libraries are being used and to identify how the limited resources of OhioLINK member libraries can be utilized more effectively.”  The study collected and analyzed circulation data for books (30 million items in the final set used for analysis) in the OhioLINK union catalog using FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) analysis.  It would take me pages to explain what FRBR does, but put most simply, it helps you look at items from a title level (all formats and types of holdings) rather than each type of format of the same content as separate.  Check out page 14 for a better explanation of FRBR.

For those of you looking for new research projects, the full data set for individual institutions is available from the project website at http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/ohiolink/circulation.htm.  Figure 3 in the report shows the spreadsheets for OSU.

Here are a few conclusions that the authors draw

• “The academic richness and histories of the OhioLINK member institutions are reflected in the uniqueness of their library collections. Unique items are not limited to a few large institutions but are widely distributed across many different types of member institutions. The membership should avoid collection practices that homogenize the state-wide collection through unnecessary duplication.
• Individual institution members commented with surprise on the low use of their non-English language collections. Further study is needed to discover potential causes and trends of these collections’ usage patterns.
• The most fascinating result of the study was a test of the “80/20” rule. Librarians have long espoused the belief that 80% of a library’s circulation is driven by approximately 20% of the collection. The analysis of a year’s statewide circulation statistics would indicate that 80% of the circulation is driven by just 6% of the collection.”

The full report is available at http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2011/2011-06r.htm

Usability Testing for e-Resources Discovery: How Students Find and Choose e-Resources Using Library Web Sites

An interesting article by Amy Fry and Linda Rich at Bowling Green State University is published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship, v. 37, no. 5 (2011), pp. 386-401.  Here are a few key take-away for me:

• “Students Stick With What They Know.  If students have used something successfully in the past, they will return to that resource for other research questions.”  The authors go on to recommend that “libraries should get specific in our promotions, capitalizing on the brand recognition students already have and marketing brands that students will remember.”
• “Students Do What Their Professors Tell Them To Do.  If a professor requires students to use a particular database, they will. … As a result, librarians should collaborate closely with teaching faculty to develop guides, promote collections, and teach students about resources.”
• “Therefore, getting to that ‘one search box’ for all of the library’s content is crucial to helping students.”
• “Students Generally Understood the Term ‘Database’”
• “Subject Lists are for Librarians.”

From the Director – March 9, 2012 – Update on Implementation of the Organizational Structure

For the past year, as decisions have been made they have been announced individually in this blog and through postings to liball or NewsNotes. My posting today is to give you a new update on our progress on the various issues (the last update was on November 10, 2011). We are now moving out of the intense 1st year of reorganization and going forward, announcements such as these will simply appear in liball, NewsNotes, and this blog as appropriate. We will not continue to track them as a group, though you can be assured that we expect continued progress on these issues.

Issues with new updates

• Strategic planning

o The draft strategic plan has been completed and is now available at http://library.osu.edu/staff/administration-reports/2012to2014StrategicPlanTracker.pdf

OAA currently establishing the process for review of support unit strategic plans so this will remain a draft until it can be approved or revised as needed for the OAA review process. We expect that process to be conducted this fall after they have completed review of the strategic plans for the colleges. However, we consider this draft plan as our functioning plan and are beginning execution and implementation.

• Committee structure review – Conduct full review of committee structure in light of new organizational structure

• The new committee structure has been completed and announced January 3, 2012. A call for volunteers for committee service was held and appointments were made with staggered terms as of February 3, 2012. The new committees have begun their work.

• Middle East Studies –Review level of support in Area Studies for Middle East Studies (in light of Dona Straley’s retirement on 12-31-11)

o Ali Hassan (in addition to being the contact for Arab and Islamic Studies) will be the contact for Persian Studies.

o Miroljub Ruzic will be the contact for Turkish.

o Patrick Visel is the contact for coordinating functions for all Middle Eastern Studies matters. In many cases, Patrick could be the first person you refer an individual to for reference assistance and he will coordinate if the patron needs to work with Ali or Miroljub. Patrick is also the first point of referral for inquiries about class sessions, workshops and lectures.

• Position review process – Determine process and structure for making additional decisions re filling positions

o The Executive Committee completed a second review process of positions at its meeting on February 7, 2012. The committee approved moving forward with 8 positions including:

•  HR Generalist – Member of the Libraries HR Team who performs workforce planning, selection and recruitment, orientation, onboarding and exit processing, training, performance management, employee relations, and supervision activities.

• IT Help Desk-Support Specialist (A&P position)– Provides frontline support for users of all Library IT systems including, e-resources, catalog, web applications, desktop applications, computer hardware, etc.

• Archives Research Services (A&P position) – Facilitates timely delivery of reference services to our patrons and is a key contact for faculty and students who use the collections in their scholarly activities (both OSU and external).

• Undergraduate Engagement Librarian (Faculty position – internal search) –Responsible for developing, assessing and maintaining student-focused learning experiences for undergraduate students. Will coordinate Libraries’ role in First Year Experience and general undergraduate education campus outreach to increase student information literacy. Will work to cultivate relationships with faculty and academic support staff across campus to develop innovative and engaging programs that help students develop strong research, information evaluation, and content creation skills.

• Security Manager (A&P position) – Provides day-to-day oversight and serves as primary manager of security operations in all library locations with primary focus on the Thompson and Science & Engineering Libraries.

• Head of Digital Library Initiatives (Faculty position in IT Division)– position description under development

• Special Collections Cataloger (A&P position) – Responsibilities include original and complex copy cataloging of books, manuscripts, and collections held in the diverse special collections.

• Publishing Support (A&P position) – Uses standard web skills to customize and improve the user interface of our local installation of the Open Journal Systems software. Communicates regularly with publishing partners and program management. Assists with planning, research, and outreach activities as needed.

• E-Resources Access (A&P term position) – Implement new systems and enhance existing systems for managing e-resource usage stats, holdings, usage rights, and record loads

 • Digitization –Create a strategy for managing and expanding capacity to create digitized content across OSU collections – including access, storage, and prioritization issues.

• Trisha Davis was re-hired on a short term contract to design and conduct a digital asset survey. That report has been submitted and analysis is underway.

• Innovation fund project is examining productivity and appropriate use of book scanning technology.

• New Collection Reformatting Review Sub-Committee will be organizing a call for project proposals and begin prioritizing projects.

• New Digital Reformatting Working Group will begin to develop policy and procedures to enhance digital reformatting activities.

 • Desktop support – Review current desktop support oversight and contract with OCIO

• In concert with the OCIO, the Desktop Support unit has been returned to the Libraries.

• The unit’s name was subsequently changed to Infrastructure Support to better reflect its scope of responsibilities.

• Special Collections Cataloging –Evaluate options for organization, staffing, and organizational placement of Special Collections Cataloging

• A temporary employee, Tabia Gaston, has been hired to conduct a collections survey. Work is now underway on designing and executing that survey. This will give us a baseline understanding of what unprocessed and uncataloged special collections exist as we determine how best to proceed. Our new strategic plan also has a key strategy around processing, highlighting and exposing our distinctive collections.

• A term hire of a manga cataloging project manager is in process to assist in enhancing access and management of a combination of backlogs, gifts, and shifts in treatment of existing collections.

• Copyright/IP management service –Develop plan for creating an expanded copyright /IP management service capacity that can operate to support activities across the Libraries. Determine a short term strategy for managing the existing services upon the retirement of Trisha Davis on 8-31-11

• The position, Head of Copyright Resource Center, was approved for filling in phase 1. Sandra Enimil will begin April 2, 2012.

• E-resources technical support – Review e-resources technical support (diagnostics, user support and troubleshooting) including procedures; assign responsibility and staff as needed

• The E-Resource Problem Solving Process Review Task Force submitted its report in September. Several of the group’s recommendations are under review and are informing planning for the next round of positions.

• Partly in response to their recommendations, a WorldCat Local Implementation Task Force is being formed to look at configurations for WorldCat Local and to identify projects that should be undertaken to enhance the discovery experience for OSU users.

• A term position for E-Resource Access (in Acquisitions) has been approved for filling in phase 2.

• Collection support functions – Review collection support functions across the Libraries to determine how best to organize to support ongoing relocations of physical collections

• Collection support activities in the Thompson Library have been realigned into various departments, mainly within Collections, Technical Services, and Scholarly Communication.

Issues with no changes for this update

• Hilandar –Address succession planning for the Hilandar Research Library with a search for an Associate Curator, who will also act as Eastern European Slavic librarian in Area Studies

• The Associate Curator position was approved for filling in the phase 1 position review process. Interviews have been conducted.

• Create divisional structures

• The position, Head, Reference and Research Services, was approved in the phase 1 position review and recruitment is underway. Interviews are scheduled for late March 2012.

• ILS, WorldCat Local, PastPerfect systems support – Review responsibility and oversight for several key systems/software and develop strategies for ongoing support and development

• A position of Catalog Systems Manager has been approved for filling in phase 1. Recruitment will begin in March 2012.

• ILS systems manager –Review ILS systems manager responsibilities [Nancy Helmick and Sue Rahnema]

• The Catalog Systems Manager position above will also address this issue.

• Collection management leadership –Develop an appropriate strategy to provide broad collection management leadership to facilitate the continuing shift to electronic publishing and content creation and use

• Jennifer Kuehn has been appointed interim head of Collection Development through June 30, 2012.

• E-reserves –Identify organizational location for e-reserves after retirement of Trisha Davis on 8-31-11

• This unit is currently reporting to Jennifer Kuehn through Interlibrary Services until June 30, 2012.

• E-Science – Initiate planning to build capacity to support e-research at OSU, particularly targeting current needs and opportunities in the sciences (as part of the OSUL participation in the ARL E-Science Institute). Issues include supporting data management planning, data curation, and storage management

• An e-science team within the Libraries has been appointed and is participating in CIC and ARL activities to investigate the issues further. A new quarterly meeting of representatives from OSUL, OCIO and the Office of Research has been initiated.

• Teaching and learning – Create strategies for aligning the Libraries’ teaching and learning initiatives more closely with the University’s e-Learning initiatives and with campus-level and departmental changes in curricula resulting from the Semester Conversion process; identify opportunities for greater collaboration with the Digital Union, the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching, the Undergraduate Research Office, and other campus units sponsoring teaching and learning initiatives

• Much work is underway to initiate new or expanded contact with these groups mentioned in the latter sentence. We are still working to get the revenue stream from our teaching re-directed to the Libraries. Our strategic plan will address the issue of an information studies curriculum and discussion will be initiated with Libraries’ faculty later this year.

Again we are making good progress on these issues. Your help and support along with the associate/ assistant directors has enabled us to move ahead.

Last week, in an email dated March 2, I shared the impact of the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) Service Center Integration on the Libraries’ staffing.  I want to provide more detail on those changes.   One of OAA’s top priorities for Fiscal Year 2012 is the implementation of three major cost savings/simplification projects.  The integration of the OAA Service Center—which will provide transactional support for a range of fiscal and human resources functions for the units reporting to OAA—is one of the projects.  The Service Center is expanding to include more processing staff in the central unit.  As a result, assignments within the OAA units, including the Libraries, are being adjusted to accommodate the changes.

The Libraries’ Planning and Administration Division will reduce the number of staff in the division by approximately three full-time equivalents (FTEs):  1.25 FTE’s in the Business Office; 1 FTE in HR; and 0.75 FTE in student hours.  Charles Smith (Human Resources), and Lynaya Elliott (Business Services), are the full-time Libraries’ staff members whose positions are being eliminated by this reduction in force.  The new positions in the OAA Service Center are expected to be posted later this week and the individuals impacted by these reductions will have the first opportunity to apply.  However, there are more individuals impacted across campus than positions available in the Service Center.  Therefore, if the impacted individuals are not the successful candidates for the central positions, the University will work with those individuals to examine what other options are available to them.  The job of Lola Klein, who currently fills a 0.75 FTE position in Planning and Administration, will be reduced to half-time.  Several student employees’ positions will make up the remaining 0.75 FTE.  Some of those students will be graduating in June and we will encourage the remaining to explore other available opportunities within the Libraries and the University.

I want to be very clear that these changes are not a reflection on the performance of the individuals affected or the department.  Their dedicated service to the University and the Libraries is in no way diminished by these decisions.

As I reported to you earlier, these changes are not immediate and will take place over the next several weeks and months. A number of functions currently performed by Libraries’ staff—payroll processing, new hire paperwork, job data transaction processing, purchasing functions, some travel and reporting activities just to name a few—will soon be handled at the Service Center.  For now, however, you should continue working with the staff in Planning and Administration as usual to manage these various activities.  The Center is scheduled to begin operations May 15.  We will let you know when these functions are being switched to the Service Center, and provide you with information related to any process changes and the appropriate new contacts.

Changes like these—even when expected and planned in advance—can still be disconcerting.  The consolidation of fiscal and HR functions into the Service Center has been anticipated for some time.  I want to emphasize that no further reductions are planned for any of the Libraries’ operations.  As I indicated in my blog post for February 29, the Libraries’ Executive Committee recently approved the addition of eight new permanent positions and one term appointment for filling in the foreseeable future.   We will keep you informed as these changes are implemented over time.