The complete list of papers/presentations available can be found here. The meeting took place October October 14–15, 2009 in Washington, DC. Audio of the presentations is also available.

Here are the Titles of the Sessions (Each Session Includes Presentations by One or More Presenters):

+ New Models for Federal Depository Library Collections: Report on Findings from a Study Commissioned by ARL and COSLA

+ Potential Library Roles for Supporting Current and Future Public Access Initiatives

+ The Science, Technology, Innovation Agenda of the Obama Administration

+ Why Are Special Collections so Important? Exploring the Value Proposition of Special Collections

+ Building on Our Strengths: Opportunities for Special Collections in the Digital Age

+ The Federal Depository Library Program: A Focus on Strategies for Regional FDLs and Digitization Sponsored by the Public Policies Affecting Research Libraries Steering Committee

+ Options for Research Library Support of Small Publisher Operations

+ ARL Survey on E-Science and Data Support: Initial Findings

Who Was There? (PDF)

Source: ARL
Hat Tips: OATP (Open Access Tracking Project) and Peter Scott

From the Announcement:

Dr. Paul LeClerc, the French literature scholar who has guided The New York Public Library into the digital age—one of the most dramatic transitions in its history—has announced that he will retire from his position as President in the summer of 2011.

At a meeting of its Board of Trustees today, Dr. LeClerc said he is “both astonished and pleased at how much our library system has changed” in his 16 years at the helm.

[Snip]

A committee headed by Mrs. Marron and Vice Chairman Joshua L. Steiner will begin the search for a new Library President.“With today’s announcement Paul has provided us with the opportunity to ensure a smooth transition in leadership, giving us ample time to conduct a thorough search to fill this unique leadership position,” said Mrs. Marron.

Dr. LeClerc came to The New York Public Library in 1993 from Hunter College where he had been President since 1988.He spearheaded the creation of a digital library, launching the first NYPL.org website—and continues to oversee the digitization of the Library’s catalog; its 700,000 image Digital Gallery; and the vastly growing field of downloadable e-books, videos, and music.The Library, which recently created an integrated catalog of research and circulating materials representing 14 million items, has also entered into new partnerships with Google, Flickr, Apple (iTunes U), Kirtas Technologies, and numerous others that provide expanded access to the Library’s resources.All of the Library’s branches now provide free wireless access to the Internet, and the Library offers 3,600 free public-access computers, with training for those new to computers.

Much More About Dr. LeClerc in this Announcement

Source: New York Public Library
Hat Tip: Library Stuff

Yesterday, we posted highlights from a new report (available for $92/U.S. from Primary Research) titled, “The Survey of Higher Education Faculty: Use of Digital Repositories and Views on Open Access.”

Today, news of another study from Primary Research with free highlights.

“The Survey of Higher Education Faculty: Level of Faculty Satisfaction with the Academic Library” is a 100 page report and costs $89.50/U.S.

Here are a Few Highlights:

The report presents the results of a survey of more than 550 higher education faculty in the United States and Canada. Faculty present their opinions on what academic libraries should be spending more money on; they render judgments on journals, books, e-books, workstations and other info technologies, library facilities and even additional librarians.

The report details the level of faculty satisfaction with library creature comforts, information literacy efforts, hours of access, research support for faculty, collection adequacy and other areas. Data is presented in the aggregate and for 12 criteria including academic field, size of college, type of college, academic title and other factors.

+ 28.44% of faculty said that they were highly satisfied with their academic library’s level of physical comfort.

+ Satisfaction was high on the issue of the library staff’s capacity to deliver help when needed. More than 47% said that they were highly satisfied and 38.53% said that they were satisfied with their library’s capacity to deliver help when needed.

+ Only 14.33% of the faculty in the sample said that they were highly satisfied with the adequacy of their college library’s materials collection for their own personal scholarly pursuits.

+ More than 44% of US-based faculty but only 30.77% of Canadian faculty were highly satisfied with their academic library’s inter-library loan services.

+ 27.44% of faculty in the sample felt that their library should increase spending on traditional print books.

Source Primary Research

Do you want to play a game? Tomorrow is the 2nd Annual National Gaming Day.

From the Announcement:

Through a donation from Hasbro, more than 16,700 public libraries in the U.S. will receive a box set of their highly popular card games, Monopoly Deal, Scrabble Slam and Pictureka! Hasbro is the exclusive partner of National Gaming Day 2009. In 2008, more that 14,000 people of all ages participated in National Gaming Day.

ALA’s National Gaming Day focuses on the social and recreational side of gaming. Gaming at the library encourages patrons of all ages to interact with diverse peers, share their expertise and develop new strategies for gaming and learning. At the library, kids can socialize with their friends and play board and video games while surrounded by books, librarians and a real world of knowledge.

More than 900 libraries are participating in this year’s event.

Examples of Activities

The Pima County (Ariz.) Public Library is inviting teens to show off their Wii skills on National Gaming Day. The Beatles RockBand game is expected to be a huge hit with the entire family. Kids and adults will be belting out their favorite fab four tunes.

Anderson (Ind.) Public Library will devote the entire day to gaming activities. In recognition of National Gaming Day, the library will host a nationwide public library Rock Band 2 Tournament (on the Xbox 360) and a Dungeons and Dragons workshop.

See Also: National Gaming Day Web Site/Blog

See Also: The Librarian’s Guide to Gaming: An Online Toolkit for Building Gaming ala @your library

See Also: News Release: Read, learn, play in U.S. libraries

Last year, more than 14,000 people participated in gaming activities in more than 600 libraries across the country on National Gaming Day. After the 2008 celebration, many libraries reported younger kids playing with older kids; families playing together; grandparents playing with grandkids; and kids making friends with the library’s staff. This year’s event promises to be even bigger, with more libraries participating and more games in the mix.

Two Documents Were Released by the Harvard University Provost:

+ Statement on the Report of the Task Force on University Libraries (2 pages; PDF)

+ Report of the Task Force on University Libraries (56 pages; PDF)

Here are a few portions from both documents that help to summarize the report.

Harvard’s library system now includes 73 separate libraries with 1,200 full-time employees, 16.3 million volumes, 12.8 million digital files, over 100,000 serial titles, and millions of manuscripts, photographs, musical recordings, films, and artifacts of all kinds, making it by far the largest university library in the world.

Core Recommendations of the Task Force

1. Establish and implement a shared administrative infrastructure.

2. Rationalize and enhance our information technology systems.

3. Revamp the financial model for the Harvard libraries.

4. Rationalize our system for acquiring, accessing, and developing materials for a “single university” collection.

The Harvard University Library system needs to rationalize the manner in which all parts of the University collect and provide access to materials, and orient its focus more clearly toward ensuring access, as opposed to the current default model of building collections by acquisition.

5. Collaborate more ambitiously with peer libraries and other institutions.

Harvard should enhance its efforts to work with other libraries and cultural institutions to build a sustainable information ecosystem for the 21st century. In some cases, this collaboration will mean building upon existing efforts to work directly with partner institutions, such as MIT. In other instances, this collaboration should include entering
into new or expanded consortial arrangements, such as BorrowDirect.

Much More After the Click
(more…)

A new blog post by Joshua Kim focuses on the importance of audiobooks in the academic library.

Three cheers for the educators at Syracuse and UW Madison for refusing to purchase new Kindle’s until the speech-to-text feature meets accessibility standards. It is beyond stupid that Amazon neglected to provide spoken menu options, therefore making it impossible for sight impaired readers to access the speech to text feature.

[Snip]

When it comes to advocating for audiobooks to be included in academic library collections I’ll admit to some strong vested interests. I’m a huge audiobook fanatic. Too much of my money goes to Amazon to pay for my Audible platinum membership.

We wonder if the author knows that it’s likely he has access to a treasure trove of audiobooks from his public library that he can download from any Internet computer from sources like OverDrive and NetLibrary. According to his brief but very impressive bio, Mr. Kim is senior learning technologist and an adjunct in sociology at Dartmouth which is located in Hanover, NH. The Howe Library (the public library in Hanover) does offer audiobooks by way of a statewide program.

I’ve long thought that the academic librarian worry about Google’s book digitization effort is misplaced, and the real worry should be about the dominance that Amazon has in the digital book world. It is great that Amazon is finally getting some competition in the e-reader business, but I worry that their control of the audiobook market through Amazon will stifle the kind of innovations and partnership with libraries that I’m suggesting.

NetLibrary offers eAudiobook services to academic libraries. They have several thousand audio titles and from what I can tell the company does work with academic libraries. For example, The McDonald Library at Xavier Unversity has a page explaining how to download audio from NetLibrary (http://www.xavier.edu/library/help/netLibrary.cfm) and UNC-Greensboro has about 1100 audio titles from NetLibrary.

Does OverDrive have an academic library program? From what we can tell, they don’t but we plan to call OverDrive find out for sure. If they don’t have one perhaps they have one in the works. Last week OverDrive announced a program for K-12 libraries named AudioBook Classroom.

If Amazon does not provide this generation with the opportunity to fall in love with books through audio then they may loose the next generation of readers and book buyers. Providing audiobooks for check-out is an example where, by working together, Amazon and academic libraries can both increase overall reading and make their collections accessible to all learners.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

See Also: Regarding eReading devices, don’t forget the Ray Kurzweil in collaboration with the National Federation for the Blind is launching an eReader later this month. The software will be free and work on Mac’s, PC’s, iPhones and other devices. Revenue will come from content that will be for sale. Bakery & Taylor is a partner. The software will and will also have audio capabilities. More in this post.

Quite the uproar in Syracuse.

From the Article:

The Syracuse University Library system is facing the classic book-lover’s dilemma: too many volumes, not enough shelves. The stacks in the flagship Ernest S. Bird Library are at 98 percent capacity, the on-campus archives are totally full and dozens — if not hundreds — of new volumes flood in each day.

Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries, thought she had a solution. Her plan was to ship rarely used or redundant texts 250 miles southeast of campus, to a storage facility in Patterson, N.Y. Readers and researchers would’ve been able to request books before 2 p.m. one business day and receive them the next. Space in Bird would be freed up for new acquisitions, study halls and classrooms.

Thorin framed faculty and student concerns as being about wanting to be able to browse the collection and have easy access to books they know they need or might stumble upon in the stacks.

Wow! Browsing and serendipity in the same sentence. It’s good to know some people still browse and “stumble.”

But that plan went awry Wednesday night when more than 200 faculty and students flocked to first public airing of the issue, a University Senate meeting.

[Snip]

Lori Goetsch, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and dean of libraries at Kansas State University, said Syracuse’s is “not an uncommon story among large academic libraries.” For decades, major libraries have been developing off-site, high density warehouses where books and other materials can be stored efficiently but delivered quickly to readers who need them.

[Snip]

Much More About the “Syracuse Situation” in Complete Article

Source: Inside Higher Ed

In August we posted an item titled, “The Books Know One Wants to Borrow,” and reported about two Detroit area librarians (Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner) and how they find “interesting” (understatement) material as they weed their collections. For example, a recent post, Groovy, Baby Yeah featured a 1983 book with people wearing some hip and groovy clothing of the period. Mary and Holly remain on the lookout for this type of material and post their findings on the Awful Library Books Blog.

Now, move your calendar ahead three months and Mary and Holly are appearing on national television. That’s right, national tv, The Jimmy Kimmel Show.

From the WXYZ Story:

Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner are finding old books on library shelves in Plymouth, and in the process are enjoying their 15 minutes of fame. Mary and Holly flew west Wednesday to Hollywood, and they can hardly believe their instant notoriety.

“I am still trying to figure out how it’s caught anybody’s fancy,” Kelly laughed.

“It’s just something I never thought would happen in my life,” said Hibner. “National TV catches the attention of some little hobby you do, and there you are.”

When late-night host Jimmy Kimmel heard about the librarians’ hobby of taking outdated books out of circulation and blogging about them, he immediately saw the comedic possibilities.

You can watch segment online. Look for the video viewer on the right side of this page.

Source: WXYZ