Does your department routinely need to assess, validate, and transform MARC metadata? If so, MarcEdit is a tool that can support these needs. In this webinar, we will explore the basics of installing and using MarcEdit. We will also give an overview of how to leverage available documentation and community expertise to gain proficiency in MarcEdit. The facilitators will illustrate how to start using MarcEdit with real-world uses of the tool in their departments. This webinar will be led by Natalie Sommerville, Interim Head of the Resource Description Department at Duke University Libraries, and Jacquie Samples, Head of the Metadata & Discovery Strategy Department at Duke University Libraries.

Register Here!

Presenter:

Natalie Sommerville, Interim Head of the Resource Description Department at Duke University Libraries, and Jacquie Samples, Head of the Metadata & Discovery Strategy Department at Duke University Libraries

Despite the Americans with Disabilities Act and relevant state building codes, many library buildings fail to deal with a range of everyday disabilities among users and staff.

Some libraries were constructed before the ADA was first passed in 1990 and have not been required to conform with the act. A few more recent libraries have simply ignored aspects of the ADA.

In addition, many everyday disabilities are not covered by legislation or building codes and are often ignored in building planning.

This program will review accessibility options and some possible solutions. Although by far the best time to deal with accessibility issues is before design and construction begin, many things can be done later.

Register Here!
Presenter Fred Schlipf will review issues and problems in library building accessibility, with a variety of possible solutions. Attendees are also welcome to describe accessibility problems at their libraries and what they have done to deal with them, or simply to raise accessibility issues for discussion with the group attending. Registrants are invited to send accessibility questions or issues with photos in advance to support@carli.illinois.edu. Please send your questions for Fred Schlipf by July 7.

Fred Schlipf is coauthor of The Practical Handbook of Library Architecture: Creating Building Spaces that Work. He has consulted on about 200 library construction projects and has visited library buildings at every opportunity. He has been an adjunct professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois since 1970, where he specializes in practical issues in library architecture, and he was director of The Urbana Free Library from 1974 through 2007. He has a PhD from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.

This webinar is offered as part of the BLC's participation in the Professional Development Alliance.

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. 

The series runs for four consecutive Wednesdays, starting on June 16th and ending on July 7th. 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) | Workshop Recording 

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) | Workshop Recording

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) | Workshop Recording

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. 

Unix Shell (Wednesday, July 7th, 1-5pm) | Workshop Recording

The UNIX Shell, also known as the command line, allows you to communicate with your computer directly - to string together commands and automate tasks that would otherwise require many separate steps if done through a graphical user interface (GUI). This automation not only helps you be more productive, but also improves the reproducibility of your workflows by allowing you to save and then repeat them with a few simple commands. Learning the Shell is a step in understanding how other programming languages work in a command line environment. Join us for a gentle introduction to the UNIX Shell!

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. 

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 

Queer Discovery: Archives, Linked Data, and Trans History

In honor of Pride Month, this webinar will feature K.J. Rawson (Associate Professor of English & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University) and his work with the Digital Transgender Archive and the Homosaurus: An International LGBTQ Linked Data Vocabulary. Participants will explore how queer stories can be documented, preserved, and made accessible via digital platforms.

• Presentation Slides

K.J. Rawson works at the intersections of the Digital Humanities and Rhetoric, LGBTQ+, and Feminist Studies. Focusing on archives as key sites of cultural power, he studies the rhetorical work of queer and transgender archival collections in both brick-and-mortar and digital spaces. He has co-edited special issues of Peitho and TSQ and co-edited Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). Rawson’s scholarship has appeared in Archivaria, Enculturation, Peitho, Present Tense, QED, RSQ, TSQ, and several edited collections.

K.J. Rawson is founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning online repository of trans-related historical materials, and he is the co-chair of the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an international LGBTQ linked data vocabulary.

This presentation is part of the BLC LGBTQIA+ Speaker Series.

Thank you for attending the first virtual BLC Forum! All recordings are available on the BLC's Vimeo channel. Some of the events (Caucus meetings and the social/networking presentations) were not recorded, but we have included presentation slides when available.

All BLC Forum Recordings (please note that you will need the password shared via BLC.Announce to access the recordings)

Presentation Slides

• Panel Presentation: Confronting Implicit Bias in the Catalog: Perspectives from BLC Member Librarians 

• 36 Questions for Civic Love

• Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion COI Overview & Keynote: Legacy Persistence: the historical framework and institutional characteristics that shape academic library leadership and organizational culture by Del R. Hornbuckle

• HR in Academic Libraries: Common Challenges and Collective Solutions

• Radical Self-Care

• Overview: Identifying Administrative and Procedural Efforts Towards Upholding EDI at BLC Member Libraries
  • Presentation Slides are available upon request; please email BLC Executive Director Charlie Barlow (cbarlow@blc.org).

Driven to democratize access to emerging technologies and the knowledge it affords, the Academic Library is well positioned to provide access to 3D Printing services to support the design learning pedagogy in higher education. Additive manufacturing technologies allow you to design, 3D print, and test your design in real time. In this 2-part series, you will learn about 3D Printing and develop an understanding for how the technologies can be implemented in the Academic Library.

This webinar has been postponed. The new registration link will be shared when it becomes available.

Presenter:

Elisandro Cabada is an Assistant Professor and the Medical and Bioengineering Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he provides emerging technology services to support higher education. His research interests include studying the barriers to access, pedagogical affordances, and application of emerging and immersive technologies in research and instruction. Elisandro is a recipient of the 2021 Best Emerging Technology Award, awarded by the ALA RUSA Emerging Technologies Section.

Dr. Nettrice R. Gaskins is an African American digital artist, academic, cultural critic and advocate of STEAM fields. In her work she explores "techno-vernacular creativity" and Afrofuturism. Dr. Gaskins’ work explores how to generate art using algorithms in different ways, especially through coding. She also teaches, writes, "fabs" or makes, and does other things. She has taught multimedia, computational media, visual art, and even Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles with high school students who majored in the arts.

Register Here!

Event recording

Resources shared during the talk

About the BLC Virtual Chat

As trust in the written word continues to fray, are educators doing enough to prepare students for the new world of reading? In particular, what are practical ways to incorporate critical thinking and reading into library instruction? Who’s job is it to help students become deep and analytical readers? What opportunities for collaboration are there  at your institution for librarians, writing centers, and disciplinary faculty to facilitate conversation across campus towards improving students’ reading skills? 

This conversation with Alison Head will explore what fresh ideas can be surfaced to inspire librarians and educators to improve teaching and learning about critical reading while suggesting new avenues for inquiry and experimentation. During a virtual conversation with BLC library workers, the reading essay’s author, Alison Head, will reflect on these issues, drawing on 12 large-scale PIL research studies she has designed and directed since 2009, and her experience developing and teaching new media courses as the Roy Disney Visiting Professor at Saint Mary’s College in California for 10 years. Alison is also  Editor for the PIL Provocation Series, and was a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman-Klein Center, 2011-2015, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2011-2020, and, since 2016, has been a Senior Researcher at the metaLAB (at) Harvard. 

This event is co-sponsored by the BLC and Project Information Literacy, a nonprofit research institute. The 50-minute virtual discussion, which is limited to 35-40 participants and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

About Alison’s Essay

For many decades, professors have held onto the notion that college develops students into critical and analytical readers, who can arrive at a deeper understanding of texts through inference and making connections of their own. In “Reading in the Age of Distrust,” Alison argues many educators and librarians may be overlooking how the task of reading has dramatically changed in a world plagued by an endless stream of misinformation while students are increasingly prone to distrusting of news and information. 

The PIL Provocation essay argues that college students must be taught how to be skillful, discerning readers, who can engage actively with texts and better understand the source of information and how it is being disseminated at warp speed across a vast universe of connected networks. For today’s students, these critical reading skills are urgently needed in a chaotic world where information is a free-for-all and even the smartest people can get fooled. 

About PIL’s Provocation Series

During 2021, Project Information Literacy, a research institute in the U.S. that studies students’ information practices, is offering virtual chats with PIL Provocation Series authors about their recent essays. Reaching beyond any one discipline or, indeed, any singular notion of what “literacy” means today, each essay  in the PIL Series offers new insights, drawing from scholarship and the flow of current events, to provoke thought and conversation among practitioners and across boundaries. This Series seeks to facilitate discussion and share ideas about improving teaching and learning while exploring new avenues for inquiry, experimentation, and further research.

Laura Hibbler

Associate University Librarian for Research and Instruction, Brandeis University

Alison Head

Executive Director, Project Information Literacy

Editor, PIL Provocation Series 

Image © Kevin Carden

Leaders and team members aim to attain goals, to meet objectives, and please all of their stakeholders and employees along the way. This webinar will focus on a key leadership distinction: excellence versus perfection, and how a leader or team member’s overall effectiveness is influenced by how aware they are of their own inclination (and that of their team members) toward each dimension. The discussion will cover:

• What does it mean to be an “excellent leader or team member” versus a “perfect leader or team member”? What happens to a team member or leader, and the organization they support when their journey toward excellence diverges to a quest for perfection?
• How metrics and key performance indicators can work for, and against a team member or leader’s effectiveness. And, how might one shape these important measures to motivate toward excellence.
• Coaching team members who may be seeing the pursuit of perfection as a surrogate for achieving excellence. How to help them view their own contributions through the lens of excellence, and to help them refocus their efforts and energy accordingly.

Register Here!

Presenter Garry Sanders is Principal, AssistLeadership, LLC and is an Executive Coach having earned a Certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University, and the designation of Professional Certified Coach by The International Coaching Federation. He is coaching leaders and team members at universities, businesses, and government agencies around the United States. He says that he “practices imperfection daily.”

The BLC Access Services COI will hold a virtual meeting on Friday, May 14th from 10:00am-11:30am. The agenda and login information will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

This workshop will provide a hands-on introduction to Tableau, a free tool for creating data visualizations. Its drag-and-drop interface provides tools to build a variety of visualizations with no coding required, and visualizations can be embedded in websites by copying and pasting embed code. In this workshop, participants will create an interactive dashboard together along with static charts. Resources will be shared to help attendees continue learning how to use this resource beyond the workshop.

Register Here!

No prior experience is required but attendees will need to download and install Tableau prior to the workshop: https://unc-libraries-data.github.io/Tableau/download.html

Presenter:

Lorin Bruckner, Data Visualization Services Librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill

With the staggering amount of information being created and shared today, how can we strengthen our skills to separate truth and fact from misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information? When information changes quickly, how can we grow our ability to make decisions based on the most accurate and trusted sources we have at the time? Come to gain ideas and practices to improve your information literacy.

Register Here!

Presenter:

Lisa Hinz, Extension Educator, Leadership and Civic Engagement, University of Minnesota Extension Center for Community Vitality

Are you interested in fair use, but not interested in long lectures on the topic? Would you like to test your fair use knowledge and have some fun? If the answer to either or both of these questions is yes, then join us as we play the Fair Use Gameshow! Your host, Sara Benson, the Copyright Librarian at the University of Illinois will ask fun, challenging fair use questions to the audience and our panel of esteemed copyright experts will chime in with their opinions. Join the fun as the panel including Melissa Ocepek, Assistant Professor at the iSchool, Pia Hunter, Access Librarian and Online Learning Consultant at the University of Illinois College of Law, and Barbara Kaplan, Faculty Outreach Librarian at the University of Illinois College of Law discuss the many nuances of fair use.
 

Register Here!

Presenters:

• Sara Benson, Copyright Librarian at the University of Illinois;
• Melissa Ocepek, Assistant Professor at the iSchool at the University of Illinois;
• Pia Hunter, Access Librarian and Online Learning Consultant at the University of Illinois College of Law;
• Barbara Kaplan, Faculty Outreach Librarian at the University of Illinois College of Law

The Heads of Resource Sharing (HRS) Committee will hold a meeting on Monday, May 3rd from 11:30am-1pm. The agenda and log in information will be distributed via the HRS list-serv.

In October 2020, the BLC announced the launch of the OpenBLC pilot initiative to support faculty adoption of OER across the 19 member libraries, supported by a generous grant from the Davis Educational Foundation.

During the 2020-2021 academic year, the OER Community of Interest will lead a core group of librarians and staff from the member libraries in designing a workshop series for faculty to increase their understanding and awareness of open textbooks. The Presidential Grant from the Davis Educational Foundation will fund $200 stipends for up to 50 faculty members who attend a workshop and review an open text in the Open Textbook Library, a collection of 800 freely available electronic textbooks supported by the OEN.

Register Here!

Faculty at any of the 19 BLC member libraries are invited to attend this workshop for an overview of the current state of Open Educational Resources (OER) as tools to facilitate access, inclusivity, and equity, and as tools to change the landscape of higher education pedagogy.

Workshop participants will have an opportunity to explore OER in their discipline, and will leave with a stronger understanding of their role as OER consumers, creators, and advocates.

Share your expertise by writing a review of an open textbook in the Open Textbook Library, a collection of more than 850 freely available electronic textbooks.

This workshop will be offered once in April and once in May 2021. More information about OpenBLC can be found via this link: blc.org/openBLC

The BLC Business COI will hold its monthly April meeting on Wednesday, April 14th, from 10am-11am. The agenda and login details will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

This one-hour, interactive webinar serves as a follow up to the December 2020 presentation “Decolonizing Subject Headings and Collections.” The presenters will address issues raised by attendees of the prior presentation as well as questions posed by participants for the current session. The upcoming webinar will be a discussion with attendees on practical aspects of addressing biases within cataloging and libraries. To enable a wider ranging dialogue tailored to participant needs, attendees are encouraged to submit questions or comments prior to the session.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

CARLI invites you to attend a series of eight webinars focused on academic library support of undergraduate research held from 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. CST on four days, March 25, 30, 31, and April 1. Attendees will learn about supporting students in remote research experiences, providing research consultations in a pandemic environment, integrating information literacy into undergraduate research, building and leveraging relationships across campus to support undergraduate research, fostering inclusion and equity through course-based undergraduate research experiences, and more! Please register for each day that you wish to attend.

This series is moderated by Stephanie Davis-Kahl, University Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University 

Find out more about the series and register for each session here.

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The BLC’s Technology Community of Interest will hold an informal virtual Spring meeting for open discussions and knowledge sharing on library technology topics. The event is free and open to all BLC members.

When: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 2-4pm Eastern Time

Registration: please fill out this short Google form by March 19th

Agenda (draft, subject to change, participants can suggest additional topics via the registration form): 

• Welcome – Yueqing Chen and Emily Singley, Co-Chairs
• COI Business: 2021 Tech Survey results – Viral Amin / Kara Hart / Matt Sylvain 
• Open discussion / knowledge sharing around Covid impact on library services, user expectations, and support for online learning; Post-pandemic considerations
• Interesting library technology projects and innovations 
  • OpenAthens
  • Lean Library
• Discussion and planning for COI initiatives
  • Connect the inventory to other institutional data including data produced by the library? E.g. ILS and FTE, or discovery system and library transactions
  • Support for next-gen resource sharing and controlled digital lending (CDL): ReSHARE, Rapido, Alma-D, Tipasa, etc.

Tired of spending lots of time developing social media graphics and marketing materials for your library? Get an overview of how the free version of Canva can help you create easy and attractive graphics. We will look at examples, learn to use the various elements, and design a graphic together!

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

In this brief course, we will cover the basics of finding and evaluating health information online, including government and NGO websites intended for use by patients and families with different needs and reading levels, and more advanced sources for those who may want to delve deeper into health and biomedical research. We will go over some basic guidelines for evaluating health information reported in the media and beyond, and for questions to ask your health providers.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The BLC's Heads of Resource Management Committee will hold a meeting on Monday, March 15th from 1:00pm to 2:30pm. The agenda and login information will be distributed via the Committee's list-serv.

If you could step back in history, with whom would you like to have a conversation and lunch?

If Harriet Tubman is your choice, please join Kathryn Harris as she presents her first-person presentation as "Harriet Tubman". Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most famous Conductor on the Underground Railroad and Ms. Harris tells her life story, including not only her own escape to freedom, but also the trips she made back South to free her family and others so that they could also experience the "sweet taste of freedom".

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The BLC Access Services COI will hold a virtual meeting with the Co-Chairs of the BLC's Controlled Digital Lending Working Group on Friday, February 26th frm 10am-11:30am. The agenda and login information will be distributed via the COI's list-serv.

Recent shifts toward social distancing and remote learning have highlighted a widespread interest in virtual and online resources for enrichment and instruction. Though the unique experience of engaging with collections cannot be exactly replicated in the virtual world, technologies exist that can provide opportunities to enhance and extend object-based learning in a wide range of ways. This session explores the opportunities and instructional challenges of encountering objects in virtual and augmented reality. We will use two of our Digital Scholarship in Museum Partnerships projects, one focused on middle schoolers, and one on college-age learners, as case studies, to illuminate the technological, theoretical, and design work required to create high-impact virtual learning experiences. Our goals are to de-mystify both the technology and design processes, and to demonstrate how they can be used to supplement rather than replace traditional object- and space-based instruction.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at member libraries as part of the BLC's participation in the Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance page.

Python is a general-purpose programming language widely used in data science, web applications, and scripting to automate common tasks. In this hands-on Introduction to Python workshop, participants will begin learning Python through a brief analysis and visualization of tabular data. While we won't be doing a deep dive into Python syntax, this experience with Python will help participants develop a sense of the language's features and how it might be used in their work.

Register Here!

Presented by Scott Bailey, Digital Research and Scholarship Librarian at NC State.

This webinar is offered to staff at member libraries as part of the BLC's participation in the Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance page.

In a continuation of Atla's September webinar “Creating Patron-Driven Acquisitions For Your Library,” Dr. Jeffrey Waldrop, now Dean of the Mercer University Libraries, describes how he brought the PDA model originally developed at Fuller Seminary to a much larger and different institution. This webinar will discuss how to partner with faculty and other stakeholders to encourage the adoption of a PDA model, restructure budgets and staff in support of it, and reflect the diversity of changing student bodies and online education through a balance of print and e-textbooks.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at member libraries as part of the BLC's participation in the Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance page.

Creating faculty partnerships in the online environment without the benefits of daily face to face interaction generates a number of obstacles. This session will show how to build strong, respectful relationships with faculty. From tenacious outreach to long term goals of collaboration, faculty will soon realize that the academic librarian is a force they cannot live without.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at member libraries as part of the BLC's participation in the Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance page.

The BLC Associate University Librarians/Associate Directors COI will hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday, February 9th from 2:30pm-4:00pm. The agenda and login information will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The Best Practices Group of the BLC's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion COI will hold a meeting on Tuesday, January 26th from 10:00am-11:00am. The agenda and meeting details will be shared via the COI's list and BLC.Announce.

This session will explore practical strategies and interactive tools to facilitate information literacy instruction in an engaging online learning environment. Discover how librarians at Nova Southeastern University assessed their traditional one-shot face-to-face instruction and adapted their experiential learning activities using effective low-tech, low-cost tools.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at member libraries as part of the BLC's participation in the Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance page.

The BLC Business COI will hold its January 2021 monthly meeting on Wednesday, January 20th, from 10am-11am. The agenda and login details will be distributed via the COI's list-serv.

This first psychoeducational webinar of the two-part series Redefining Self-Care in the Midst of a Global Pandemic will discuss what is needed in addition to routine self-care during a global pandemic. Characteristics of different types of stress, including traumatic stress, will be reviewed as well as the range of stress responses. The speakers will propose additional self-care steps during the current health crisis and provide considerations for when professional help may be beneficial.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at member libraries as part of the BLC's participation in the Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance page.

The BLC Continuing Resources and Metadata Management COI will hold a virtual meeting on Friday, December 18th from 2pm-3pm. The agenda and login information will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

Storytelling has been happening for over a century in libraries, but its applications are too often presumed to be narrowly focused on serving children. The skills involved in navigating a dynamic exchange between teller, audience, and story are applicable to the most pressing problems facing libraries and librarians in the 21st century, those of communicating our knowledge and value. This talk will feature storytelling insights based on over 40 interviews from the Storytelling @ Work project, and combining insights from librarians with those from storytelling applications in advancement and fundraising. Participants will leave with narrative structures for building informative and emotionally compelling stories from their own knowledge and experience to communicate their value.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

Building on 15 years of developing workflows and systems for managing all aspects of library grantseeking at the University of Arizona and University of Florida, this grant webinar series will share best practices including checklist examples for guidelines and workflows, funding alerts describing funding opportunities for libraries, and templates for sharing submitted and pending proposals with library employees. Behind the scenes stories will divulge unusual ways ideas were generated for fundable projects, and how ideas developed through engagement with a diverse array of experts and assets. Stories will share details of what happened after project teams received their awards, and ways by which teams managed to complete projects successfully. Featured projects will highlight a variety of grant-funded activities including outreach, digitization, training, acquisition of materials, planning and collaborations with diverse partners and for diverse materials.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to all library workers at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The BLC Resource Sharing COI is holding a virtual meeting on Monday, December 7th from 1pm-2pm. The agenda and meeting login details will be distributed via the COI's list-serv.

Are you an employee? A manager? Do you have a spouse? Children? Friends? Acquaintances? Do you volunteer in an organization? Are you on committees? Do you ever deal with people in any context at all? Of course you do! This 60-minute webinar is an invaluable tool in understanding your own personality style, as well as understanding those with whom you interact.

We’ll look at common characteristics of the four primary styles – the good, the bad, and the ugly! You’ll find out how we are all so different... and yet so alike. Why do they do the things they do and why do you react the way you do?

As you learn about yourself, you’ll undoubtedly experience an “aha!” moment regarding someone else (or several “someone elses”!). This is an opportunity to discover what makes them – and us – tick!

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to all library workers at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

This webinar will provide an overview of selected official statistical information collected in the People’s Republic of China, with a particular focus on economic and financial data on Mainland China. It will explore options beyond the official statistics and ‘known data’ and discuss what needs to be considered when ‘thinking’ about data used for economic and financial research.

• Webinar Slides
• Webinar Recording

Attendees will be able to:

• Identify China's information custodians.
• Identify and use suitable tools to find and access different information sources related to China.

Edward Lim is the Business & Entrepreneurship Librarian at the University of Connecticut. He joined in March 2020 just as COVID-19 unfolded, so he has been working remotely from Singapore. Edward has been a business librarian since 2011. Previously he worked at New York University Shanghai in China as the Reference and Research Services Librarian for Business. His time at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore allowed him to experience stints in library user experience, marketing & outreach, and access services. Follow @BarbarianEd on Twitter and ask him anything.

Jiebei Luo is a Data Services Librarian at Boston College’s O’Neill Library, where she provides services and support related to research data acquisition, management, curation and visualization. She offers a variety of data instruction workshops and research consultation sessions for faculty and students. She is currently also serving as the interim liaison librarian for economics and business data. (Her research interests center on data literacy instruction, evidence-based statistical analysis, data visualization, scholarly communication, and library assessment.)

Over the last several months, three BLC Leads program alumni from UMass Amherst have worked together with other staff at their institution to plan how the University Libraries - W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Science and Engineering Library - would address and respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Jennifer Friedman, Sarah Hutton, and Rebecca Reznik-Zellen have leaned on the lessons learned during their participation in the Leads program to lead planning groups, discussions, and programming related to change management, rapid organizational pivot, and how to support our staff in remaining resilient through great uncertainty.

• Webinar Slides
• Webinar Recording

Their presentation will provide an overview of how to shift/pivot quickly to plan for the increased support of multimodal learning on campus (pandemic as catalyst). They will also share their approach to fostering and sustaining a culture of compassion and empathy for our staff and colleagues during an extraordinary time of change. Lastly, there will be a discussion of how rapid organization has inequitable impact on professional vs classified staff.

Presenter Information:

Jennifer Friedman (2018 BLC Leads cohort), Head, Research Services, UMass Amherst
Jennifer is the Head of Research Services at the University Libraries, University of Massachusetts Amherst. She leads a department of 11 librarians who serve as the liaisons to a wide variety of departments across Arts, Business, Humanities and Social Sciences. Jennifer also coordinates the Libraries’ Academic Liaison Program, which includes Research Services librarians and librarians from seven departments in the Libraries. She is a member of the Libraries Leadership Council.
 

Sarah Hutton (2018 BLC Leads cohort), Head, Student Success & Engagement, UMass Amherst
Sarah is the Head of Student Success and Engagement at the University Libraries, University of Massachusetts Amherst. She oversees a department dedicated to connecting the Libraries with the undergraduate student population, with a focus on the representation of student voice in scholarship, and compassionate, holistic support of the student success model. Currently she manages a department of 11 full time staff, and prior to the pandemic shutdown, 30-40 student employees. Sarah serves on the Libraries Leadership Council, and is an executive member of the University’s Faculty Senate.
 

Rebecca Reznik-Zellen (Inaugural BLC Leads cohort), Head, Science & Engineering Library, UMass Amherst
Rebecca is the Head of the Science and Engineering Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. The Science and Engineering Library is a department of 9 full-time staff and 15-20 student employees, prior to the pandemic, that serves all of  the STEM-focused Schools and Colleges on the campus, approximately 50% of undergraduate and graduate student majors and faculty. Rebecca is a member of the Libraries Leadership Council.  

The BLC is pleased to bring  this webinar and Q&A session to our member libraries. Please join Chris Freeland, Director of Open Libraries, from Internet Archive for an overview of how controlled digital lending works. Attendees will learn how Internet Archive acquires books; how they are scanned in our scanning centers; how they are made available to blind and print disabled patrons; how they are made available to readers one-at-a-time via controlled digital lending; and how they are connected to Wikipedia and other resources. The session will also cover how libraries can join the Open Libraries program to provide access to these books for their patrons, as well as how Open Libraries can be used to make decisions about physical collections.

• Webinar Recording
• Webinar Slides (opens in new window)

About the presenter:

Chris Freeland is the Director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive, working in support of the organization's mission to provide "Universal access to all knowledge." Before joining the Internet Archive Chris was an Associate University Librarian at Washington University in St. Louis, managing Washington University Libraries' digital initiatives and related services. He holds an M.S. in Biological Sciences from Eastern Illinois University and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from University of Missouri-Columbia. His research explores the intersections of science and technology in a cultural heritage context, having published and presented on a variety of topics relating to the use of new media and emerging technologies in libraries and museums.
 

The BLC Special Collections COI will hold a virtual meeting on Friday, November 6th from 11am-12pm. The agenda and login information will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

As libraries continue to work online or in a hybrid format, the need for well-designed and effectively facilitated meetings rises. Disorganized or poorly run Zoom meetings can lead to wasted time and frustrated teams. Attendees will learn techniques they can use immediately to plan for a meeting and develop a participatory environment where all attendees are proposing ideas and contributing to the meeting's success. 

This session will be led by Angel Truesdale - Social Sciences and Business Librarian at UNC-Charlotte. 

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

Employee engagement can be challenging. In this fun and interactive workshop, participants will learn how to engage staff in meaningful ways while creating a culture of positivity and respect. Based on real life situations and years of communicating and working with staff, managers from Wake County will explore the key factors they discovered that contribute to a happy work environment. Participants will have an opportunity to share ideas that have worked in their organizations.

Register Here!
Brandy Hamilton is currently a Regional Library Manager within the Wake County Public Libraries system, in the greater Raleigh Area. She holds a BA in English and an MLIS from the University of South Carolina. She has more than 18 years of library and management experience. Brandy has been active in the North Carolina Library Association for 18 years, holding a variety of positions. She is the current Chair for the Leadership, Administration, and Management Section of the association.

Rita Bhattacharyya is the Adult Services Department Manager within the Wake County Library System, located in the greater Raleigh area. She holds a BS in Social Work from Texas Tech University and a MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rita began her career as a youth services librarian and transitioned to adult services in 2014. Her professional interests are making sure that the library system provides exceptional service to all areas of the population.

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

Consortial partners, commercial developers and related technology-focused organizations came together in mid-2018 to create new resource sharing solutions amidst an environment of increasing market consolidation and concerns about worsening service. ReShare is an open source, community-owned resource sharing solution which can be self-hosted or hosted by a service provider to extend a shared index and resource sharing functionality to groups of libraries. Presenters will demonstrate the software, describe the partnership that created it, and will provide insight into planned future developments, with special focus on the specifications being developed for a suite of tools to facilitate controlled digital lending while making use of interlibrary lending workflows, controls and safeguards. More on the website: https://projectreshare.org/

• Webinar Recording

Please note that this webinar is open only to staff at BLC member libraries. The webinar will be recorded and shared within the BLC.

The challenges students face when conducting research can feel overwhelming. In this presentation, Reference Outreach & Instruction Librarian Linda Mork, a former high school English teacher, K-12 media specialist, and academic librarian, will offer ideas about teaching concepts from the ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy in order to help students of all ages understand and navigate the information ecosystem and provide strategies to help move them past common research roadblocks.

Register Here!

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The BLC's Continuing Resources and Metadata Management COI will hold a virtual meeting on Thursday, October 15th, from 2:00pm-3:00pm. The meeting agenda and login information will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

Librarians across disciplines unexpectedly inherit archival collections and are often faced with supervising materials despite lack of expertise and training. This situation proves especially challenging for theological libraries because of the variety of materials these collections include. Ranging from ephemera and photographs, to diaries, bibles, and congregational records, these collections offer hidden resources that document local communities and organizational history. Taking the time to minimally organize these collections creates opportunities to connect with faculty and patrons, and supports institutional and alumni relationships. 

Register Here!

The BLC's Business COI holds monthly virtual meetings; this month's meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 13th at 10am. Login information and any agenda items are shared via the COI's list-serv and Slack channel. 

The BLC Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion COI has three working groups, focusing on different areas of EDI work. The Caucuses group will meet on Monday, October 5th from 1:00pm-2:30pm. Login information and details are available via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC's Health Sciences COI October meeting will take place on Thursday, October 1st at 11am. The agenda and login information for the meeting will be distributed via the COI's list-serv.

Are you losing patrons because your web site is too difficult for them to use? Are there unintentional roadblocks hidden in your web pages? This presentation will share ideas on how to improve things to benefit all of your audiences. Things like:

• Using good link text
• Effective alternative text for images - when to use ALT and when not to
• Information architecture - can your users easily find relevant information
• Simple usability tests to uncover hidden blind spots
• Page structure - does your site have it?
• Easy ways to test your site for accessibility
• How does your website sound? Using screen readers
 

Register Here

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The COVID pandemic challenges consortia and libraries to innovate. In this two-part session SCELC Staff will share how it responded to these challenges. First, a debrief on recent pandemic-related obstacles that SCELC converted into successful programming, and the strategic assessment techniques that drove our response. Second, we will break into hands-on breakout sessions, where attendees work together in groups, employing SWOT analysis principles to assess their own organizational challenges, with some guidance from pain points identified in the May 2020 ICOLC pandemic planning call.

Register Here

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

In this overview of the redesigned PubMed interface, Margot Malachowski will demonstrate how librarians can teach their students how to apply search strategies using PubMed best practices. Participants will learn how to instruct students in the usage of PubMed features, and how they can participate in iterative design through feedback channels.

• Webinar Recording
• Webinar Slides in PowerPoint (with notes) & in PDF (without notes)

About the Presenter:

Margot Malachowski (she/her) is an Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Network of the National Library of Medicine, New England Region (NNLM NER) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA. At NNLM NER, Margot supports health information outreach through hospital libraries, public libraries, senior centers, adult literacy programs and public health organizations. Margot worked as the Community Outreach Librarian for Baystate Health in Springfield, MA from 2008-2016. From 1996-2008, she worked in public libraries in Amherst, MA, Carrboro, NC and Durham, NC.

A library’s social media presence has the potential to increase community engagement and bring your current programming to an online audience. Even with limited staff and time, Libbie Hough - Communications Manager for Orange County Public Library - will share best practices for marketing library services and events as well as ways to manage user engagement over time. Learn how social media platforms can help your library build local partnerships and connect with your community online.

Register Here

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The BLC's Alma/Primo Collaboration Working Group will hold a virtual meeting on Monday, September 14th from  1:00pm-2:30pm. Login information and agenda topics will be shared via the working group's list-serv.

Due to a large online student presence in part by two fully-accredited online degrees at Fuller Theological Seminary, the David Allan Hubbard Library recognized this pedagogical shift and developed its own patron-driven model in library acquisitions as a departure from "classic" collection development methods.

Presented by Daniell Whittington, Executive Director, Emilio Núñez, Assistant Director, and Audrey Chun, Electronic Resources Librarian & Head of Electronic Services, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Register Here

This webinar is offered to staff at BLC member libraries as part of the pilot Professional Development Alliance. To learn more about the Alliance, and to see all available webinars, please visit the Professional Development Alliance Pilot Project page.

The BLC Health Sciences COI is holding a virtual meeting on Wednesday, August 5th, 2020 at 3:30pm. The agenda and meeting login details are being shared via the COI's list-serv.

The first meeting of the new Science and Engineering COI will take place on Thursday, July 30th, 2020 from 2:00-3:30pm. This new COI combines the now inactive Chemistry and Engineering COIs, and broadens its scope to include BLC librarians in other science disciplines. The login details will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC's Media COI will hold a virtual summer meeting on Wednesday, July 15th at 2:30pm. The agenda and login information will be distributed via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC's Health Sciences COI will hold a virtual summer meeting on Tuesday, July 14th, from 3:00pm to 4:00pm. The agenda and login information will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC's Heads of Resource Management Committee will meet on Friday, May 22nd from 10:30am-12:00pm. The agenda and login information will be distributed via the Committee's list-serv.

The Resource Sharing COI will hold a meeting on Monday, May 11th from 10:00am-10:30am to discuss recommendations for returning library materials. Login details will be distributed via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC Leads 2017 and 2018 participants will meet virtually on Thursday, April 6th from 10:00am-11:00am for a group discussion. The readings and call in information have been shared via the BLC.Leads List-Serv.

The BLC's AUL/AD Community of Interest will hold its next virtual meeting on Monday, April 13th, 2020 from 10:00am-12:00pm. The agenda and login instructions will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The Heads of Resource Management Committee have scheduled a meeting on Wednesday, April 1st, from 10:00am-11:00am. Location details and the meeting agenda will be shared via the Committee's list-serv closer to the date.

The Access Services COI will a virtual meeting on Friday, March 27th from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. The agenda and remote login options will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC Resource Sharing COI is scheduling a series of deep dives into software and workflows of particular interest to its members. 

The second in the series is a webinar with Rapid's Mike Richins. The recording and slides are available below.

• Recording
• Slides

Please email questions about Rapido to the Resource Sharing COI Co-Chairs for them to forward to the presenters.

Tips for Implementing a Library Mentoring Program

A library mentoring program can contribute to staff success by providing onboarding support and building relationships. This webinar will cover the essential needs to consider when creating a mentoring program, and offer practical recommendations on how to start building a mentoring program in your library.

• Webinar Slides

• Webinar Recording

Learning outcomes:

• Participants will be able to
• Articulate the benefits of a library mentoring program
• Understand the basic needs for administering a library mentoring program
• Decide on the next steps for their institutions

Presenter bio:

Laura Evans (levans@amherst.edu) is the Head of Cataloging/Metadata at Amherst College. Previously, she was the Assistant Head of Cataloging at Binghamton University, where she participated in the library’s mentoring program as both a mentor and a mentee. She is also a member of the ALCTS Mentoring Program Subcommittee, and is the author of the article Supervisors as Mentors, published in College and Research Library News in July/August 2019.  

Library Staff Training on Mental Health: How Staff Can Better Serve Challenging Patrons and Their Behaviors

Academic libraries are more than the books they house, they are the combination of the collections they steward, the services they offer, and the spaces where they make their patrons feel comfortable.

As staff in libraries serving primarily students and faculty, it is important to have an understanding of the ways in which patrons can experience a variety of mental health challenges, and how library staff can handle these patrons in a caring and professional manner.

Students in particular can experience a range of issues, stemming from the pressures of a new environment, increased expectations, and lack of a support network. As a result, they may become depressed or self-harming, anxious, disruptive, and have other issues that can be distracting, scary and troublesome to staff and other patrons. 

This workshop will: 

• Provide a better understanding of the range of mental health issues presented by patrons that might affect a library setting; 
• Identify clear ways to take action in a variety of scenarios to keep all patrons and staff safe; and 
• Bring library staff together to share the training experience and support one another.

This training is fun, will give participants specific language to use and new approaches to implement, will give participants information about mental health which will be useful to them personally, and is interactive and empowering.  Presenter Jon Mattleman has over three decades of work in public service, facilitates 75+ trainings a year for library staff, parents, and professionals, and gives people tools they can use immediately. Learn more about Jon at www.jonmattleman.com

Workshop Logistics:

The BLC is pleased to bring this workshop to our member libraries on Monday, February 3rd from 10:00am-12:00pm. Registration will close on Thursday, January 30th.

Register here 

• Capacity: This workshop is limited to 40 participants. We encourage libraries who wish to send multiple participants to limit to 2-3.
• Participants are encouraged (not required) to submit examples of issues faced at their institutions. These examples will be anonymized and used during the workshop.
• Coffee and lunch will be provided
• Directions: Attendees are encouraged to take public transit or carpool to the workshop, as there may be limited parking available near Boston College's Theology and Ministry Library (TML). The TML is on the Green Line. There may be limited parking available in the parking garages located in Boston College's Newton Campus, a short walk to the TML. For more directions, please visit https://libguides.bc.edu/tml/visit
• There will not be a remote option for this workshop.
• Please contact Mei Mendez (mmendez@blc.org) with any questions.

The latest installment in the BLC Expanding Knowledge Webinar series will take place on Thursday, December 12th from 11:00am-12:00pm. 

• Slides
• Webinar Recording

Join Molly Brown and Regina Pagani to learn about a collaboration between Boston Public School educators and the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections that brought high school students into the archives to do primary source research. In this webinar we’ll share strategies for creating and sustaining partnerships with external collaborators, the process of incorporating archives into curricula, and specific activities for engaging students in primary source research. Using our collaboration with Boston Public School educators as a guide we'll discuss using experiential and hands-on techniques of teaching with archives.  Anyone interested in archives, teaching with primary sources, and growing your collaborative network is welcome! 
 
After this webinar attendees should be able to: 

• Envision how to use collections to engage local partners 
• Identify collection strengths and how to leverage them for collaboration  
   

About the presenters:

Molly Brown

Molly Brown is the Reference and Outreach Archivist at Northeastern University’s Snell Library. Molly holds a BA in History and English Literature from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. She received an MA in History and MLIS with an archives concentration from Simmons University. Molly’s work at Northeastern centers on community collaboration, archival access, and experiential learning with primary sources.

Regina Pagani

Regina Pagani is the Arts, Humanities, and Experiential Learning Librarian at Northeastern University’s Snell Library. She holds a BA in History and English Literature from St. John’s University and an MLIS with an archives concentration from Simmons University. She is interested in experiential learning opportunities across the library’s collections, services, and space

The Heads of Resource Management Committee will have an in-person meeting on Thursday, December 5th from 10:00am-12:30pm. Location and agenda details will be shared via the Committee's list-serv.

Atlas staff will provide an overview of the ILLiad 9.1 release for the BLC member libraries. While the webinar will be recorded, we encourage attendance for the opportunity to ask questions of the staff. The webinar will take place on Tuesday, December 3rd at 10:00am.

Register Here!

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the webinar.

The BLC Special Collections COI will hold a virtual meeting on Monday, November 18th, from 1:00pm-3:00pm. The agenda and login details will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC Resource Sharing COI will hold its Fall Meeting on Wednesday, November 13th at Wesleyan University, from 9:00am-3:00pm. The meeting will take place in the Develin Room (2nd floor) of the Olin Library. Additional information, including options for remote participation, will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The Heads of Resource Management Committee will have a virtual meeting on Thursday, October 24th from 10:00am-12:00pm. Log in and agenda details will be shared via the Committee's list-serv.

The Fall meeting of the BLC Media COI will take place on Friday, October 11th from 11am-2pm at UMass Amherst. The agenda and additional information will be shared via the Media COI list-serv.

The Heads of Resource Management Committee will have an in-person meeting on Thursday, September 26th from 10:00am-12:30pm. Location and agenda details will be shared via the Committee's list-serv.

The next meeting of the Alma/Primo Collaboration Working Group will take place on Monday, September 23rd from 10:00am-12:30pm at Northeastern's Snell Library, room 322.

Agenda and additional details will be distributed via the Working Group's list-serv.

A number of the BLC member libraries currently use the document delivery services from ReprintsDesk.  The Article Galaxy Collection is a new offering from ReprintsDesk and may be of interest to supplement your current offerings.  The Collection features articles from over 40,000 journals and chapters from over 450,000 books, ideal for filling gaps in your collection holdings. To hear more about The Article Galaxy Scholar Collection, plan to attend the informational webinar on  Tuesday, September 17th at 2pm. 

• Webinar Recording

During this 30-minute webinar, Reprints Desk will provide an overview of the Article Galaxy Scholar Collection of journal articles with special copyright royalty rates and demonstrate how their services streamlines article acquisition workflows both directly and through integrations with systems such as EBSCO, Alma, ILLiad, Odyssey and RapidILL. The webinar will include a brief demo of the Article Galaxy Scholar Platform currently in development, which will provide semi-automated mediation service for on-demand document delivery.

The webinar will be recorded and shared via the BLC website upon completion.
 

The BLC Special Collections COI will hold a meeting on Tuesday, August 13th, from 10am-1pm at Tisch Library, Tufts University. The first part of the meeting will be held in conjunction with the Resource Sharing COI, in order to discuss the results of the recent survey on resource sharing and special collections materials at BLC member libraries. The agenda and login information for those attending remotely will be shared via the Special Collections COI list-serv.

The BLC is pleased to announce the next webinar in the Expanding Knowledge series: De-mystifying E-resource access - What every librarian should know, presented by Emily Singley (Boston College) and Viral Amin (Bentley University). The webinar will take place on Friday, May 17th, from 1:00pm-2:00pm. Register and find more information below.

• Slides
• Webinar Recording

Have you ever been unable to access an e-resource? Do you wish you understood why? Access and authentication of library e-resources is an increasingly complex area often only understood by a few “techy” people in the library. In this webinar, Viral Amin and Emily Singley of the BLC’s Technology COI will provide a roadmap to e-resource access designed to give librarians the vocabulary and knowledge needed to better understand patron frustrations and make more informed collection development decisions. Attendees will gain a fundamental understanding of how different authentication methods work (including EZProxy and Shibboleth) and will also learn where the access environment is heading and how current trends will impact libraries and users in the future.
 

Learning outcomes:

• A basic understanding and vocabulary for common library e-resource access mechanisms (e.g., EZProxy, Shibboleth)
• Awareness of implications of e-resource access options when making collection development decisions
• Knowledge of current trends in the area of e-resource access, including RA21 and SciHub

Presenters:

Emily Singley is the Head of Library Systems at Boston College, where she manages library technology services. She previously held technology positions at Harvard University, Southern New Hampshire University, Curry College, and the University of Minnesota. Emily is the Co-Chair of the BLC's Technology COI. She can be reached at emily.singley@bc.edu

Viral Amin is the Electronic Resource Librarian at Bentley University.  In addition to the duties for that role, he provides Reference, Instruction, and Liaison services for Math, Finance, and Economics.  In previous positions, his responsibilities included Technical Services, Library IT, and Data Management. Viral can be reached at vamin@bentley.edu.

What you’ll learn:

• How e-resource access works - taking a look under the hood, breaking it down
  • IP Authentication (EZProxy)
• The future of e-resource authentication
  • Federated Identity management (e.g., Shibboleth)
  • RA21
• Why it matters and what *you* can do
  • Piracy (SciHub)
  • Privacy

The webinar will be recorded and shared with BLC members. Please contact Mei Mendez (mmendez@blc.org) with ideas for other professional development opportunities.

The Heads of Resource Management Committee will hold a virtual meeting on Wednesday, May 1st, 2019, from 10:00am-12:30pm. Login information and the meeting agenda will be distributed via the HRM list-serv.

The Boston Library Consortium’s Media Community of Interest is happy to announce our spring program: The Section 108 Dilemma: Red Tape, Video Tape, and Digital Conversion

Friday, April 26, 2019, 10:00am-3:30pm | Brandeis University, Waltham, MA | Sponsored by the Boston Library Consortium (BLC)

Slides

• Panel One: Section 108, Fair Use, and Copyright (presentation notes)
• Panel Two: Academic Libraries Video Trust: Crowdsourcing Copyright, Digitization, and Access (presentation notes: American University Poster and VHS Search Log, Northeastern University Notes)
• Panel Three: Workflows from Shelf to Screen: Best Practices 
• Panel Four: Vendor Expertise/Collaboration 

About this Event

As older formats become obsolescent, today’s academic libraries are making decisions about weeding and preserving older audio and video formats. But it isn’t simply a decision to keep or to save: copyright law and technical work for conversion are complex considerations. This program attempts to help unpack the red tape and skills involved in preserving analog video and audio with experts on copyright, analog to digital conversion, and new initiatives.  Please learn about the dilemmas, find answers, and contribute to the discussion that academic libraries need to have.   A flyer for the event is available here.

Event Program (link will open a pdf document)

Speakers:

Kyle Courtney, Program Manager and Copyright Advisor, Office for Scholarly Communication, Harvard University

Kyle K. Courtney, a lawyer and librarian, serves as Copyright Advisor for Harvard, working out of the Library's Office for Scholarly Communication. He works across the University to help establish a culture of shared understanding of copyright within the Harvard community. His “Copyright First Responders” initiative is in its 6th year at Harvard, and he runs a parallel national network that has spread the program to libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions in Rhode Island, California, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska (Massachusetts coming soon). He is a published author and nationally recognized speaker on the topic of copyright, technology, libraries, and the law.

Jessica Fjeld, Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor, Cyberlaw Clinic, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School, Cyberlaw Clinic

Jessica Fjeld is a Lecturer on Law and the Assistant Director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She focuses her legal practice on issues impacting digital media and art including intellectual property; freedom of expression, privacy, and related human rights issues; contract; and corporate law. Recently, she has emphasized work with AI-generated art, the overlap of existing rights and ethics frameworks on emerging technologies, and legal issues confronted by digital archives. Before joining the Clinic, Jessica worked in Business & Legal Affairs for WGBH Educational Foundation, where she advised the American Archive of Public Broadcasting along with numerous WGBH productions. She holds a JD from Columbia Law School, where she was a Hamilton Fellow, James Kent Scholar and Managing Editor of the Journal of Law and the Arts; an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts; and a BA from Columbia University. 

David Shea, Student attorney for the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic

David Shea is a second-year law student at Harvard Law School (HLS). He is currently a student attorney in the HLS Cyberlaw Clinic while taking coursework in Copyright law. He is also interested in criminal justice reform with a particular bent on sentencing and prison reform which has led him to a position as both Lead Article Editor and Executive Online Content Editor for Harvard's Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. David is a member and active participant in Harvard's Prison Legal Assistance Program (PLAP) and has interned at the Federal Public Defender's Office in Baltimore, Maryland. This summer David plans to begin a career in white collar defense and general litigation with a Washington D.C law firm. Before pursuing his J.D., David received an A.B. in History from Princeton University and a Masters in Urban Planning (with coursework in Real Estate Finance) from The University of Southern California before working for a number of years in private real estate investment.

Sarah McCleskey, Head of Resource and Collection Services, Hofstra University

An academic librarian with over 25 years’ experience in a variety of institutions, Sarah McCleskey has been Head of Resource and Collection Services at Hofstra University Library since 2004 and previously held positions at Clemson University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, working with film and media, architecture and the fine arts. She has expertise in project planning and management, collection management, copyright and scholarly communication, licensing, film programming, fundraising, and personnel management. She is a frequently published author and professionally active, with experience organizing and facilitating at numerous conferences. Sarah serves on the Academic Libraries Video Trust advisory board, and has just completed a three year term on the editorial board of the Journal of Copyright in Education & Librarianship. Sarah holds both an MSLS and MA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA in Latin and Politics from Randolph-Macon Woman's College.

Jonathan Iannone, Digital Media Supervisor, Northeastern University Libraries

Jonathan Iannone is a Recording Studio Supervisor at Snell Library Recording Studios at Northeastern University. He has many years of experience digitizing media for various projects. He understands and implements preproduction, production and post production solutions in a academic setting in a very active recording facility within Snell Library. Jonathan has a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College with a Minor in Communication Studies. 

Kimberly Kennedy, Digital Production Coordinator, Northeastern University Libraries

Kimberly (Kim) Kennedy is the current Digital Production Coordinator at the Northeastern University Library.  She manages A/V and paper-based material digitization.  Before coming to Northeastern, she worked as a Scanning and Document Delivery Associate in the MIT Libraries.  She has a MSLIS from Simmons University and a BA from Tufts University.   

Chris Lewis, Media Librarian, American University

Chris Lewis has been the Media Librarian at American University in Washington DC since 1992. He has an avid interest in film of all genres including documentary, film noir, international film, and arthouse cinema. He has also been an innovator in outreach to users – using blogs, social media, posters, and web pages - and was an early enthusiast for streaming video. He has been driving videotape conservation efforts at AU since the first month he arrived – when a videotape with a particularly bad case of sticky shed clogged one U-matic player after another to the chagrin of a consternated faculty member.

Phil Salvador, Collections Coordinator, American University

Phil Salvador is the Visual Media Collections Coordinator at the American University Library. Among his collection management responsibilities, he implements the library’s VHS conservation workflow. He has worked at the American University Library since he started a student employee ten years ago, and he received his Master's in Library and Information Science from Catholic University in 2015. He loves ephemeral media and seeing what unique titles the library has in its collections.

Meghan Bergin, Metadata Coordinator, UMass Amherst Libraries

Meghan Banach Bergin is the Head of the Metadata Unit at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  She serves on the ALA ALCTS Program Committee and the New England Technical Services Executive Board and is a member of Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC).  Her areas of expertise are in metadata, technical services management, scholarly communication, and digital preservation.  In her spare time she enjoys practicing yoga and riding horses.

Gabe Stetson, Coordinator of Digital Curriculum, Reserves, and Media, UMass Amherst Libraries

Gabe Stetson is the Coordinator of Digital Curriculum Reserve and Media at the UMass Amherst Libraries.  While the primary focus of his work these days is addressing course material affordability issues, he still enjoys digging through dusty basement collections of obsolete media and the challenges associated with preservation and access.

Bryce Roe, Manager of Audio Preservation Services, Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)

Bryce Roe is the Manager of Audio Preservation Services at Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), where she confers with collection-holding institutions and individuals to evaluate their audio collections and develop preservation proposals. Bryce earned her MLIS in Archives Management from Simmons College, and a BA in Music with a concentration in Ethnomusicology from Oberlin College.

Dawn Aveline, Director of Preservation Programs, Preservation Technologies

Dawn Aveline joined Preservation Technologies in January 2019, bringing with her 8 years’ experience in library and archives preservation. In 2010 she entered UCLA’s Master of Library and Information Science program with a focus on Archival Studies. She worked as a student assistant in the UCLA Library Preservation Program, until graduating in 2012 and joining the Library full-time as Associate Librarian/Preservation Specialist. In 2013, Dawn was appointed Preservation Officer and Head of Preservation and Conservation for UCLA Library. She led a team of experts engaged in preservation support and advocacy for the University’s collections. During her tenure Dawn facilitated the department’s relocation and implemented the expansion of the Audiovisual Studio, adding film scanning and grooved media transfers, an eightfold increase in compact cassette and micro-cassette digitization, and doubling the video transfer capabilities.

Event Logistics:

For questions, contact the event committee: Laura Jenemann (ljeneman@bu.edu), Debra Mandel (d.mandel@northeastern.edu) , Joanna Fuchs (jmfuchs@brandeis.edu) and Mei Mendez (mmendez@blc.org).

The event will take place in the Treasure Room of the Brandeis Library. Please refer to this campus map to note the Library's location.

Driving & Public Transit Information

From Mass Pike I-90 Eastbound

• Take exit 14 for I-95/Rt 128. Keep left for 95/128 North. While on the ramp, exit immediately onto exit 24 for Route 30. Bear left onto Route 30. Turn right at the first traffic light onto River Road. Follow this for 1.5 miles, where it turns into South Street. Brandeis is one-half mile ahead on the left, at 415 South Street.

From Mass Pike I-90 Westbound

• Take exit 15B for Weston, Rte. 30. At the end of the ramp, turn right onto Park Road. At the traffic light, turn right onto Route 30. Turn left at the next traffic light onto River Road. Follow this for 1.5 miles, where it turns into South Street. Brandeis is one-half mile ahead on the left, at 415 South Street.

From I-95/Route 128 Southbound

• Take exit 24 for Route 30. At end of ramp, proceed through traffic light (across Route 30) onto River Road. Follow this for 1.5 miles, where it turns into South Street. Brandeis is one-half mile ahead on the left, at 415 South Street.

From I-95/Route 128 Northbound

• Take exit 24 for Route 30. Route 30 is one of several options at this exit, so follow signs carefully. Turn left at the top of the ramp onto Route 30. Turn right at the traffic lights onto River Street. Follow this for 1.5 miles, where it turns into South Street. Brandeis is one-half mile ahead on the left, at 415 South Street.

Commuter Rail (Fitchburg Line/South Acton Line)

• Commuter train service is available from Boston's North Station (Fitchburg/South Acton line) to the Brandeis/Roberts Station that borders the campus. See MBTA site for schedules.

Parking Information:

Visitor Passes
For anyone driving to the event, you will need to get a visitor pass from Public Safety. When you enter campus, you will go to the Information Booth located at the Main Entrance. You will tell the parking attendant that you are here for a BLC event at the Library. The attendant will ask you some vehicle information before issuing the pass. Your visitor pass will allow you to park in any area designated as blue.  

If for some reason, there is no attendant at the Information Booth, you will need to go to Public Safety in Stoneman to get a visitor pass. To get to Stoneman, from the main entrance you will turn right up the Loop Road. You will pass the Science center on your left and on your right, you will see the bridge crossing South Street. On your right-hand side is Stoneman it is across stair leading up to the Usdan Castle.

Parking
With a visitor pass, you can park in any lot or area designated as a Blue Zone. Areas to park:
Along the Loop Road from the Usdan Student Center to the Chapels, Kutz Hall lot, North Parking Lot, the small lot in front of the Heller School, and the small lot in front of the Library across from the Mandel Center.

Lodging:

The following hotels are located near Brandeis University. 

Boston Marriott Newton (5min car ride to campus)

2345 Commonwealth Avenue

Newton, MA 02466

617-969-1000

Best Western TLC Hotel (10min car ride to campus)
380 Winter St.
Waltham, Massachusetts 02451
781-890-7800

Courtyard Boston Waltham (10min car ride to campus)
387 Winter St.
Waltham, Massachusetts 02451
781-419-0900
866-419-0999

The Westin Waltham Boston (10min car ride to campus )
70 Third Avenue
Waltham, Massachusetts 02451
781-290-5600 front desk
800-937-8461 reservations

The Spring in-person meeting of the Heads of Resource Management Committee will take place on Monday, April 1st from 10:00am-12:30pm. Location and other information will be shared via the HRM list-serv.

The Health Sciences COI will have its Spring virtual meeting on Monday, March 25th from 10:30am-11:30am.  The meeting agenda and login information will be shared in the COI's list-serv.

The Expanding Knowledge Webinar series for the Boston Library Consortium opens 2019 with a webinar addressing the changing roles of subject liaisons. Anna Marie Johnson, Head of Research Assistance & Instruction at the University of Louisville Libraries and the author of the recent article "Connections, Conversations, and Visibility: How the Work of Academic Reference and Liaison Librarians Is Evolving," published in Reference & User Services Quarterly in January 2019, will talk about this resesarch and its implications for subject liaisons and their colleagues.

The webinar, titled Exploring New Competencies for Subject Librarians: What Are They? Do We All Need Them? And How Do We Acquire Them? will take place on Tuesday, March 5th, 2019 from 11:00am - 12:00pm.

The webinar recording and slides are now available. Please take a look at them here:

• Recording
• Slides

Based on the presenter’s sabbatical research and ten years of experience training new research and subject librarians , this presentation will explore the new work that librarians are being asked (or feeling like they need) to take on such as data management, digital scholarship, copyright and scholarly communications, research assignment consultation, and more. In addition, the layer of one’s subject responsibilities can either provide direction or additional complexity and what does that look like? Finally, even if we see a need for new competencies, how do we acquire them, given the realities of our day-to-day work? What can we let go of? This presentation is intended to provide a starting point for these conversations at the participants’ libraries.

Find out more about Anna Marie Johnson here.

This webinar will be recorded and shared with BLC member libraries.

The Spring Meeting of the Media COI will take place on Friday, February 15th from 11:00am to 1:00pm, at Boston University's Mugar Library. Should the meeting be cancelled due to snow, the alternate date is Friday, March 8th, from 11:00am to 1:00pm.

The agenda and virtual attendance instructions will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The BLC Special Collections COI will hold a virtual meeting on Wednedsday, February 13th from 10:00am to 11:00am. The meeting agenda and login information will be shared via the COI list-serv.

The BLC's Health Sciences COI will have a virtual meeting on Tuesday, January 15th, 2019 from 10:30am-11:30am. The login information will be distributed via the COI's list-serv.

The Continuing Resources and Metadata Management COI will meet on Friday, November 30th, 2018, from 10:00am-12:00pm, at Snell Library, Northeastern University. Meeting details and remote participation information will be shared via the COI's list-serv.

The Special Collections COI will have a virtual meeting on Tuesday, November 20th at 3pm. Login details are available via the COI list-serv.

This webinar will review key points from the workshop and provide key steps that the BLC could take to accelerate the transition of scholarly communications to open access. The webinar will provide a clear understanding of the strategic and practical aspects of transitioning to OA, give attendees the ability to create and implement their own OA2020 roadmap within their own institutions, and provide best practices in managing and leading the open access transformation.

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

Webinar presenter Marilyn Billings is the Head of the Office of Scholarly Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She provides leadership in alternative scholarly communication strategies, including open access, open education and the role of digital repositories in today’s academic environment. She provides oversight of the UMass Amherst institutional repository ScholarWorks @ UMass Amherst and provides leadership and inspiration for the campus’ Open Education Initiative established in 2011. From November 2017 – July 2018, she held the position of Interim Director of Instructional Innovation at UMass Amherst. Current research interests include the Open Scholarly Commons and how various open initiatives tie into that broader framework. At the national level, she is a member of SPARC’s OER Advisory Committee, the Library Publishing Coalition Board and is an Open Textbook Network presenter.

For more information and a listing of presentations, please visit http://works.bepress.com/marilyn_billings/

Date:                     Tuesday, October 30

Time:                     9:30-3 

Location:              UConn Homer Babbidge Library, Heritage Room 4th Floor

Parking:                South Parking Garage: rates are here (it is about a 5-10 minute walk from there to the Library)

Campus Map:    https://maps.uconn.edu/

Call information for the Chemistry COI meeting can be found in a message to the COI's list serv.

Participants in the 2018 BLC Leads program are invited to a Summer Meet Up at Boston College's O'Neill Library.  Details about the agenda are forthcoming. 

Visitor parking is available in the nearby Commonwealth Garage, as indicated on this map.

This 3-day in-person event is part of the BLC Leads 2018 leadership program for BLC member libraries.

It will be held June 19-21, 2018 at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA.

See BLC Leads 2018 for details of the full program.

The BLC's ALMA/PRIMO Collaboration Working Group's next meeting will be held on April 9th from 10-12:30 at Northeastern Universiy in the Snell Library, Rm. 322 (Office of the Dean on the 3rd floor).  Coffee service and lunch will be provided. Virtual attendance is available. Further details will be sent to the COI listserv prior to the meeting.

Members, please RSVP through the COI listserv

The next BLC Resource Sharing COI Meeting will be on March 1st, 2018 from 9:00AM-2:00PM at Northeastern University, Snell Library, Room 90.

Special Guests:

Rachel Frick (Executive Director, OCLC Research Library Partnership)

Dennis Massie (Program Officer, OCLC Research)

Presenting - “The Value of Resource Sharing”

Key Themes:

Resource sharing must be considered in the context of the entire library, not in isolation.

Opportunities to collaborate are abundant and must be prioritized.

Most libraries lend so that they can borrow.

Data can help us understand our environment; rethink our priorities, policies and procedures; and demonstrate the value of collection-sharing.

Patrons are the key to everything!

Agenda and more information to follow.  

HRM Meeting.  UMass - Amherst.

Joint meeting of the AUL/AD COI and the Heads of Resource Management (HRM). Venue TBD.

Venue TBD.

Venue TBD

The location of this meeting is Tufts University. Further details TBA.

Location: Sherman Function Hall, Brandeis University 

Holistic Librarianship: Broad Thinking for Diverse and Creative Solutions

The Radisson Hotel Manchester Downtown, Manchester, New Hampshire

Picturing Frederick Douglass by John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier 

Thursday, March 24, 2016—Noon to 1:00 pm

State Library of Massachusetts—Room 341, Massachusetts State House

Registration Link:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/software-carpentry-at-university-of-connecticut-registration-21392610875

Registration Link:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/boston-college-libraries-data-carpentry-workshop-tickets-20995895288 

The annual BLC Board retreat will be held at the Warren Conference Center in Ashland, MA.