Boston Library Consortium

For Librarians and Library Staff

The Boston Library Consortium offers services to librarians and staff at member libraries ranging from resource sharing and e-resource licensing to professional development and programming on issues of importance to academic and research libraries.

For Students, Scholars & Researchers

Those affiliated with the Full Member libraries of the Boston Library Consortium can take advantage of access to and borrowing of materials from these libraries.

Our Members

Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Internet Archive
Williams College
University of Rhode Island
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Bentley University
Boston College
Boston University
Wellesley College
State Library of Massachusetts
University of Connecticut
University of New Hampshire
Wesleyan University
University of Massachusetts Lowell
University of Massachusetts Boston
Brandeis University
Northeastern University
Tufts University
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
University of Massachusetts Medical School

Red Tape on Videotape: Legal Issues in the Preservation of VHS Collections

Over the last few years, the BLC's Media COI has led a collaborative effort with the Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic to address the avenues open to libraries who, faced with deteriorating VHS collections, are...

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BLC Forum 2021

The BLC is taking Networking Day virtual in 2021 with BLC Forum!

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Member Events

June 16, 2021

Training

BLC Library Carpentry Series

The Boston Library Consortium has partnered with the New England Software Carpentry Library Consortium (NESCLiC) to host 3 workshops using lessons from the Library Carpentry curriculum. These are stand-alone sessions, so you can attend any or all of them. There will be opportunities to discuss questions you may have about the lesson topics as they relate to your library in a collaborative environment. These sessions lead into Taking the Next Step: Library Carpentry & Data Stewardship, led by Thea Atwood.

The series runs for three consecutive Wednesdays, starting on June 16th and ending on June 30th. Each workshop is scheduled for 1pm-5pm, allowing for office hours with the instructors. Registration for the workshops is limited to 25 attendees, and will be closed when that number is reached. Workshop instructors will be in touch with registrants prior to the sessions in order to provide additional details.

Introduction to Data (Wednesday, June 16th, 1-5pm)

In the first session of our Library Carpentry series we will cover the Introduction to Working with Data from the Library Carpentry curriculum. We will discuss why understanding data matters in libraries, examples of places where a computational approach to problems can save time, and the basics of regular expressions. Bring your ideas and questions about jargon that you find frustrating (what is an API, anyway?), data that you collect or want to combine with other kinds of data, and tricks that you have learned when it comes to dealing with data in libraries,

Working with Spreadsheets (Tidy Data) (Wednesday, June 23rd, 1-5pm)

Spreadsheets are a common way to organize, store, and manipulate data in library work, but have you ever wondered how you could make your spreadsheets better? Or why your dates turn to five-digit numbers when you aren’t looking? Or what those little green tags that alert you to “numbers stored as text” mean? In this session we will look at how you can make your spreadsheets work for you, how you can create ways to help a group enter data consistently, and how you can make sure that the data in your spreadsheet can be used in other software, both now and in the future.

Cleaning Data with OpenRefine (Wednesday, June 30th, 1-5pm)

A large part of working with data is cleaning it up so that you can analyse and display it. In this session we will look at OpenRefine, an open-source software that offers tools to explore your data, make mass updates, and export it in a variety of formats, all while keeping track of each step so you can undo actions or repeat the process on other datasets.

New England Software Carpentry Library Consortium (NESCLiC)

The New England Software Carpentry Library Consortium, affectionately known as NESCLiC (https://nesclic.github.io/) an association of academic libraries and information technology organizations, joined the larger Carpentries organization as a community of practice focused on building data science skills in research computing, and extracting, wrangling, storing, analyzing, and visualizing data. Since we formed in 2017 we have had four cohorts of people go through the Carpentries Instructor Training and have participated as instructors in workshops at our own institutions and for organizations like the New England Chapter of the Association for Information Science & Technology.

June 24, 2021

Training

BLC Workshop: RDA: Continuing Electronic Resources

This instruction session provides basic cataloging instruction for the RDA instructions relevant to continuing resources in electronic form, including serials and integrating resources such as online databases. All examples are provided using the MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data (MFBD).

Learning Outcomes:
Participants will be able to apply the RDA instructions specific to continuing and electronic resources, identify and distinguish serials and integrating resources, and understand major and minor title changes.

The session will be recorded, and the recording and ancillary materials will be posted on this page.

About the presenter:

Bobby Bothmann is professor and catalog & metadata librarian in Library Services at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Bobby catalogs all formats and attends many meetings. He is a member of the editorial board for Cataloging & Classification Quarterly and an active member of OLAC (OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers) where he has served in various leadership roles including treasurer and president. Bobby is a past chair of the Cataloging and Metadata Management Section (CaMMS) of the Association of Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) and of the CaMMS Competencies and Education for a Career in Cataloging Interest Group, and a past delegate on the Cataloguing Section Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutes (IFLA), where he contributed to the recent revision of the International Cataloguing Principles.

This workshop is brought to the BLC membership by the Continuing Resources & Metadata Management COI, with support from the BLC Innovation Fund.

June 29, 2021

Meeting

BLC Science and Engineering COI Meeting

The BLC Science & Engineering Community of Interest (CoI) will hold a general membership meeting on Tuesday June 29 from 2-3:30pm.

The meeting will include introductions, discuss recruitment of new members, event planning, and group administration and co-chair terms of service. Anyone with an interest in science and/or engineering librarianship is welcome to attend!

If you are not already a member of the BLC Science & Engineering listserv, please sign up here: http://lists.unh.edu/mailman/listinfo/blc.science

July 07, 2021

Webinar

BLC Webinar: Taking the Next Step: Library Carpentry & Data Stewardship

Library Carpentry provides you with an introduction to tools used to automate and improve processes and research. These tools are a piece of data stewardship, or the responsibility one has to ensure their data are safe, accessible, usable, and trusted. Each individual that works with data on a campus -- from a librarian compiling usage statistics to an anthropologist coding a survey -- has a hand in data stewardship. Further, as funding agencies and sponsors begin to closely examine non-compliance, skills associated with good data stewardship practices will be critical to the future success of research efforts.

In this talk, we will explore the link between Library Carpentry, libraries, and data stewardship, as well as next steps you can take on your campus and beyond to further your skills and service offerings.

About Thea Atwood:

Thea (pronounced “tey-ah”) Atwood is the Data Services Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her MSLIS from Syracuse University in 2012, where she focused on e-Science Librarianship -- an early iteration of the Data Science certification. Atwood leads the Data Services program at UMass Amherst, which includes providing individual data management consultations, workshops, and oversight in the development and support of the data repository. More broadly, she works to initiate culture change around data management practices, including through implementation of a research data management strategic plan. When Atwood is not leading through change, she is at her home in western Massachusetts, where she enjoys painting, bullet journaling, and hanging out with her spouse, goofy three-year-old, and two cats.

July 14, 2021

Meeting

BLC Media COI Virtual Meeting - July 2021

The BLC's Media COI will hold a meeting on Wednesday, July 14th from 10:00am-11:00am. The agenda and login details will be shared via the COI's list-serv.