Pecha Kucha: Snapshot of Emerging Trends and Practices (2012)

Panel 19, June 19, 2012, 11:00am-12:30pm
Moderator: Alison Hicks (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Presenters: Samuel Wicks (University of Pittsburgh); Tina Gross (St. Cloud State University); Sarah G. Wenzel (University of Chicago); Carolyn Palaima (The University of Texas at Austin); Laura Shedenhelm (University of Georgia); Barbara Alvarez (University of Michigan)
Rapporteur: Lisa Gardinier (University of Iowa)

Slides: http://salalm.org/2012/06/23/pecha-kucha-2012/

Alison Hicks introduced the presenters and explained the pecha kucha format. Generally speaking, pecha kucha presentations are 20 slides for 20 seconds each for a presentation of 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

In the first presentation, “What Digital Collection? Issues of Collection Development, Cataloging Trends and Standards, and Ethical Considerations of Underground Music in the Caribbean and Latin America,” Samuel Wicks explored initial considerations in planning a digital collection for Latin American punk music. A collection such as the one proposed potentially includes media in a variety of formats, including text, images, audio, and video, from a variety of original carriers, including audio cassettes, vinyl records, ephemera, and fan zines. Wicks discussed open source digital collection management software, briefly reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of systems in relation to this project, including Archon, DSpace, ICA-AtoM, and Greenstone. Ultimately, CONTENTdm provides the most robust platform capable of handling audio and video files in addition to text and images, as well as allowing the creation of compound documents to group related items. Wicks created a “materials and techniques” metadata elements to more adequately describe objects such as album covers. Wicks also looked for other punk collections. He found a variety of projects, such as museum exhibits in Slovenia and Reno, Nevada; the Fugazi Live Series with the support of the original band; and fan-created digital collections like Killed by Death Records and Kill from the Heart. Finally, Wicks briefly discussed the challenge of identifying and obtaining copyright permission from members of sometimes obscure punk bands that have not been active since the early 1980s.

Because Wicks had to leave for the airport immediately after his presentation, there was a short question and answer period before moving on to the next presenter.

Miguel Valladares-Llata (University of Virginia) asked about the availability of the presentation. Hicks confirmed that she would post the presenters’ slides on the SALALM blog.

Laura D. Shedenhelm (University of Georgia) asked if links would be included. [At the time of writing this report, the slides have been posted on the SALALM blog, but links have not been compiled and posted.]

Meagan Lacy (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) commented that her library had difficulty identifying the copyright owners of a journal included in a digital collection. The journal itself did not include any copyright information. The library chose to post the content with a note that the copyright holder should contact the library and the library would remove the material if requested. Wicks commented that a similar practice is commonly seen on YouTube, in which content is posted with a note that the person posting the material does not own it, does not intend to profit from it, and will remove it if requested.

An unidentified librarian from NALIS commented that Greenstone is capable of handling audio files, as the NALIS Digital Library runs on Greenstone and includes mp3 files, notably in the storytelling collection. [Wicks later verified that the version of Greenstone he used was not capable of supporting audio files.]

Kumaree Ramtahal (University of the West Indies, St. Augustine) asked Wicks to elaborate on the process of uploading video in DSpace. Wicks used KeepVid to extract a file from YouTube and other streaming video.

In the second presentation, “Developing Local Cataloging Procedures for Access to Foreign-Language Films,” Tina Gross discussed providing better access to foreign films for patrons. Standard cataloging practice focuses on the physical object which, in the case of films, describes the location of the publisher, not the production of the original film. Patrons looking for foreign film, however, frequently want to search by country of production. Two new MARC fields, 257 and 044, have been introduced to capture “Country of Publishing/Producing Entity.” However, many integrated library systems are not configured to include that as a searchable field. Further, many OPACs do not distinguish between the MARC coding for the primary language of the film and the subtitles, making it difficult to search for a film based on its original language. Gross and the staff of the St. Cloud State University Library reasoned that activating the search functionality of the new MARC fields or language coding was a low priority for their ILS vendor, especially with the impending implementation of RDA, but still an important search strategy for their patrons. Gross and her colleagues chose to add local subject headings in the 655 genre/form fields:

• Foreign language films – Language.

• Motion pictures – Country.

These headings are browseable in the old catalog interface and appear as genres in the next-generation catalog with faceted search capabilities.

Sarah G. Wenzel followed with her presentation, “Patron- or Demand-Driven Acquisition: Strategies for Successful Implementation.” At Chicago, selectors were allowed to implement patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) however they best saw fit for their collections and patrons. This case-by-case implementation was chosen to foster support and buy-in from the selectors. Wenzel and her colleagues were seeking solutions to three primary questions: how to supplement selection without a budget increase, how to streamline and speed up selection, and how to serve faculty and other patrons who normally have little or no contact with the selector. The PDA program has not changed existing approval plans but adds a new approach to slips titles, or titles that are not completely peripheral to the collection but not core titles either. In Wenzel’s experience, this has not interfered with purchasing and she has made titles available by PDA rather than adding them to a desiderata list. Slips profiles have required some tweaking. Wenzel gave the science collections as an example in that they added “how-to” titles for programming languages, which they normally do not purchase but there is a point-of-need demand. Other selectors have imposed price limits on purchases and budget ceilings on call number ranges to preserve their existing budgeting patterns. Wenzel and other selectors use usage and PDA purchase statistics available through Ebrary to inform purchases, especially in fields in which they have little contact with faculty and students. Since records for PDA titles are loaded in the online catalog, purchases are not constrained by the availability of the paper book, but can be bought on demand, be it tomorrow or in five years. If a publisher ceases to offer their content by PDA but the library has already bought it, the library does not lose access, as opposed to the risk of losing content in a leased collection. Overall, selectors at Chicago who have participated in the PDA program and have spent the time to tailor their profiles have been happy with the program. Chicago would like to see more vendors offer PDA purchasing as the practice enriches the library’s catalog and provides greater access to patrons.

In the next presentation, “Collaborative Digital Archiving: A Non-Custodial Approach,” Carolyn Palaima discussed the Primeros Libros project as a case study. In this project, the University of Texas at Austin has worked with Texas A&M University and the Biblioteca Lafragua of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla to digitize New World incunabula, beginning with those published in Mexico. The collection is defined, also the first step in building a digital collection, as books printed in the New World before 1601, of which there are 220 known titles and 136 known to still exist. Primeros Libros' initial focus are those printed in Mexico and to include as many exemplars of each work as possible. The next step in such a project is to identify lead partners in content, technical aspects, and digital preservation. University of Texas and Texas A&M are the initial partners, with 16 and 18 primeros libros respectively. The main Mexican partner, the Biblioteca Lafragua, was chosen more for its willingness to commit to the project than for its holdings. Initial content partners had as little as one item to contribute to the project. Scanning standards were developed by University of Texas  and Texas A&M. The project website with access to the complete collection was designed and is hosted by University of Texas. In terms of digital preservation, the TIFF images are stored with the Texas Digital Libraries Preservation Network and the Repositorio Digital Mexicano. All partner institutions receive a complete collection of TIFF and/or derivative images. The primary documentation for partnership is the project agreement and the digitization standards. Both are available in English or Spanish on the Primeros Libros website. Both University of Texas and Texas A&M set up scanning stations and trained staff to digitize their collections of primeros libros. A mobile scanning station was set up in Puebla with trained staff, which can travel to other content partners in Mexico. Other content partners are brought into the project based on institutional holdings. The project is non-custodial as materials do not have to be physically acquired by the organizing institution, digitization takes place locally, each partner receives a complete collection of the digital images, and the framework of the project can be adapted to the needs of participating collections. The project achieves a consolidated collection of dispersed holdings, allowing comparison of copies across institutions, and demonstrates international collaboration. University of Texas has used the non-custodial model in previous digital collections, notably the Human Rights Documentation Initiative and the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive (AHPN).

Links:

• Primeros Libros Project Agreement

The following presentation, “Library Outreach Using Library a la Carte (TM)” by Laura D. Shedenhelm discussed adapting selective dissemination of information (SDI) as a value-added service to Library à la Carte, an open-source content management system intended for subject and course library guides. Shedenhelm learned SDI in library school and used it early in her career in law firm libraries. In her current position as the Bibliographer for Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, she has used it to open lines of communication to faculty and students by capturing content about Latin America, Spain, and Portugal in otherwise general works, especially those that are not classed in the usual F and PQ call number ranges. While some of these titles would be readily apparent from scanning the New Titles List, the link for that list is a small one on the library catalog. Many of the chapters in other general works are searchable unless the table of contents is listed in a catalog record and are delayed in their inclusion in index databases. Shedenhelm used to gather new titles and relevant chapters in a document that she e-mailed to her liaison departments but she now maintains a Library à la Carte page, “Spanish & Portuguese: New Works in the Libraries.” Once a month she creates a list of the newest material and saves the old list as attached files, which are available for a year.

In the final presentation, “Publish, Not Perish! Supporting Graduate Students as Publishing Authors,” Barbara Alvarez discussed a workshop on publishing for graduate students. Alvarez and a colleague observed that they saw graduate students mostly early in their studies and less as they progressed. They felt, however, that research was only the beginning and they could offer support through the publishing process as well. While publish-or-perish is often associated with junior faculty, it creates anxiety amongst graduate students as well, who are concerned with making themselves competitive in a shrinking academic job market. Graduate students, though, may be reluctant to ask for advice from their professors and senior faculty may be decades removed from the experience of publishing as an early-career scholar. University of Michigan Libraries now house the University of Michigan Press as a department within the libraries, including MPublishing, which provides publishing consultation services and employs publishing outreach librarians, providing a natural partner for this project. Alvarez and her colleagues first began with a survey to find if such a workshop was needed and to identify what questions students have about the publishing process. The survey reported interest from students at all stages of graduate studies, including beginning students. Working from the survey results, they sought to address the following in a one-hour workshop:

• the current publishing environment with information on Open Access and authors’ rights (covered by publishing consultants)

• what and when to publish (covered by an invited junior faculty member with a strong publishing record)

• how to select journals and publishers (covered by Alvarez)

• how to respond to reviewers’ feedback

Future plans include open sessions available to students in all disciplines on general issues such as authors’ rights and sharing the workshop model with subject librarians to create discipline-specific workshops. Overall, the workshop was well-received. Alvarez and her colleagues concluded that it makes sense for librarians to be involved in the publishing process as an extension of research training. Graduate students may find the rapidly changing publishing environment to be overwhelming but it is a natural topic for librarians to keep up with. The workshop also supports change in academic publishing by educating young scholars about Open Access and their rights as authors.

Link:

• Graduate Students’ Guide to Publishing: http://guides.lib.umich.edu/gradspublishing

Questions & Comments:

Palaima asked Alvarez if the LibGuide is freely available. Alvarez replied that it is.

Anne Barnhart (University of West Georgia) asked if Alvarez had worked with faculty, as she has noticed that faculty need guidance on publishing strategy as well. Alvarez replied that they are especially hoping to attract faculty to the discipline-specific and focused topic workshops. Faculty present a lot of opportunity for this program, such as inviting currently active faculty for informal, focused conversation with their colleagues and graduate students.

Meagan Lacy asked Alvarez what departments were represented in the graduate students who attended the workshop. Alvarez replied that the initial workshop focused on Romance Languages and Literatures students as an experiment. They are planning to talk with other subject librarians to share details and offer the survey for reuse, with hopes that others will approach their respective departments.

Alison Hicks asked Shedenhelm if her lists on Library à la Carte are available by RSS. Shedenhelm replied that it is available through the UGA Libraries website and is freely available. It takes her about 20 minutes each month to create the lists. Meagan Lacy asked if Shedenhelm manually compiles the lists or generates them through an automated process. Shedenhelm replied that she types the lists.

Margarita Vannini (Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica) asked Palaima to elaborate on the institutional relationships involved in digitizing the AHPN collection. Palaima replied that the AHPN was a very large project with lots of people working on it. The archive is approximately 80 million pages. Agreements signed with the AHPN require open access. Digitization was done on-site in Guatemala. UT sent hard drives which were returned full. The first batch was 11,000 documents which were sent to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to be processed into TIFF files and derivatives. The site launched in December has sparse metadata but is open access. It is structured much the same as the physical archive, with documents organized by provenance and original order. Researchers can browse the digital archive by year, much as they would do with boxes of documents. There is currently no metadata for names and places. UT is expecting another 10 million documents and is working with the TACC to extract metadata the document images. This is challenging because of different handwriting, formats, and other variables throughout the collection. It has been a major collaboration over a long period of time. As soon as the website went live it received heavy traffic.

Rafael E. Tarragó (University of Minnesota) asked Palaima if Primeros Libros is limited to New Spain or if it includes all of Latin America. Early publishing also took place in Peru. Palaima replied that choices were made at the beginning of the project to limit the initial collection to Mexico. They hope to expand the collection geographically in the future.

Hicks asked Wenzel if Chicago’s PDA program included print or just e-books. Wenzel responded that it is currently just e-books. One factor in that decision is the speed of delivery and that it is currently faster to deliver materials through interlibrary loan or unmediated consortial borrowing. It is unclear if PDA for print would be an improvement in service.

Alvarez asked Wenzel if PDA records are loaded after a title-by-title selection or if they are loaded in a large batch of PDA records. Wenzel replied that PDA titles are loaded by batch based on the refined slips profile she has set partly based on subject headings. For example, she does not purchase language learning or ESL materials so those records are excluded from any PDA batch load.