Feb./March 2016 - Did You Know These 3 Things?

Mar.

2016

ISSUE

No. 2-3

DID YOU KNOW. . .

#1 . . . The NELLCO Symposium 2016 is a thing of the past?

Almost 60 members and 13 exhibitors gathered last week in Albany for the 5th Annual NELLCO Symposium!

The NELLCO Interest Groups each met during the course of the 2-day event to work on a benchmarking project (dubbed ALLStAR (Academic Law Libraries: Statistics, Analytics and Reports; see below)), establish plans for the coming year and exchange ideas and information about their areas of expertise. Karen Green (new England Law|Boston) and Gilda Chiu (Brooklyn Law School) organized the Acquisitions and Collection Development Interest Group; Jessica Panella (University of Connecticut Law) and Merle Slyhoff (University of Pennsylvania Law) the Interlibrary Loan Interest Group; and Lee Sims (Rutgers Law) the Reference Interest Group.

In addition, there were two topical unconference sessions. One, led by Merle Slyhoff and titled Cards Against NELLCO, invited participants to think creatively about the future of NELLCO and about the Symposium. The second, led by Margie Maes (LIPA) and titled Taking Responsibility for Preservation: A Call to Action, engaged participants in a discussion about the various ways in which libraries are participating in preservation efforts and projects.

Attendance this year was down slightly from prior years. The NELLCO Board of Directors is currently in conversation about the future of the Symposium. We would like to increase attendance, and especially engage our Affiliate Members, who are not currently well-represented at the conference. Any ideas that you may have to share about any aspect are most welcome as we try to determine the future of the NELLCO Symposium. Please e-mail me at tracy.thompson@nellco.org.

#2 . . . NELLCO and Yale Law Library are partnering on a benchmarking project?

Academic Law Libraries: Statistics, Analytics and Reports

In 2015, the Yale Law Library embarked on a benchmarking project with 4 other major law libraries: Harvard, Berkeley, the University of Chicago and Cornell. Under the leadership of Teresa Miguel-Stearns at Yale, these 5 institutions established a protocol and a series of best practices to gather a defined set of data points to be used as benchmarks. Once the group tested their process in what they referred to as a 'shakedown cruise,' they turned to the larger law library community to enhance the data set and thereby the value of the data.

In order to expand their project to the entire academic law library community, they sought out NELLCO as a strategic partner in the implementation of this powerful project. As law libraries are increasingly asked to justify staffing needs, expenditures, etc., the anecdote is no longer sufficient. Today's decision-makers want data. The goal of ALLStAR is to put that data at your fingertips.

We have engaged Counting Opinions, the company that has provided the backbone for the ACRL Trends and Statistics survey for years, to develop the ALLStAR interface using their LibPAS software. The vision behind ALLStAR is not just as a tool for benchmarking, but to have a single portal for all of your library's data. ALLStAR will be able to output that data in all of the reporting formats your library needs every year, whether for ABA, IPEDS, US New and World Reports, etc.

More information will be forthcoming about the project, but please let us know if you're interested so that we can make sure to keep you informed!

#3. . . The Computers in Libraries Conference was held this month in DC?

Computers in Libraries 2016 Conference

A brief report by

Linda Wen

Head of Collections and Bibliographic Services

Pence Law Library

American University Washington College of Law

Wisdom from the Library of Congress wall:

READING MAKETH A FULL MAN

CONFERENCE A READY MAN

AND WRITING AN EXACT MAN

I attended the annual Computers in Libraries 2016 Conference held in Washington DC March 8 - 10. This was the second time I attended this most comprehensive North American conference on library and information delivery technology. Featuring a keynote speech and 25 program sessions in 5 tracks daily, supplemented by 15-minute cybertours during breaks, the CIL Conference 2016 continued to be a to-the-point and innovative tips-loaded conference of probing the technology and business trends currently in play.

With the theme, Library Labs: Research, Innovation, & Imagination, the CIL Conference 2016 put a lot of gravity in the Knowledge Ecosystem, social media, Big Data, and open source. The conference emphasized how libraries can be more innovative to have more impact on the knowledge ecosystem: learning from other industries, finding strategic partners, and creating value for the library user communities. Multiple programs focused on research into social media and data mining to help with engaging communities and designing strategic services. To quote one attendee: "We need a statistical analysis literacy component to our profession." Another keyword of this conference was Big Data. There were heated discussions on how the librarians can embed themselves in the research process and data management with the rise of Big Data.

This CIL Conference is an inspiring event of learning and networking. I would say literally it will take me all year to process the creative ideas and practices. The following open source applications or services are prominent in my notes:

TAGS, a GoogleSheet to archive & structure data scraped from social media.
Project Outcome: a service that helps libraries to analyze their data & tell their stories
Google Fusion Tables: Bust data out of silos and get more from data.
Tik Tok: a Javascript tool to easily create beautiful, simple, mobile-friendly, vertical timelines.
Storify: a tool uniting traditional story telling with engaged audiences.

Challenges present opportunities!

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