LoomWare

Transforming Library Workflow at UPEI

Melissa Belvadi presented at APLA on some of the transformative workflow changes taking place at UPEI.

The first section talked about how we are using Evergreen, CUFTS and GODOT to manage our serials workflow. Since only 400 of our 35,000 serials are print, we moved to managing all of these in our eJournal database - CUFTS. Some customization by the good folks at SFU allowed us to do this easily and, we think, elegantly. The end result is a user-focused presentation of journals to our users and a simple interface for staff. James Murphy, who works in Circulation and Acquisitions, presented at NASIG with SFU on this process.

The next section talked about how we are using a set of Excel sheets for our Acquisitions workflow since Evergreen (which we switched to a year ago) doesn't have one. The key piece here is that the staff love the new process and do not miss the behemoth Sirsi ILS at all.

Part 3 was a brief mention of how we are using the GODOT system to provide our own ILL form instead of using the default RELAIS form which is sad at best. This has resulted in a cleaner patron form and fewer requests for stuff we don't have.

Part 4 described how we are using Redmine to manage the cataloguing workflow for our special collections material. This project management software was a perfect and flexible tool for automating the workflow and passing pieces back and forth. The lesson from this is using the tools that fit, rather than fitting yourself to cumbersome and expensive tools that don't.

The last piece talked about how we are doing Reserves, using a combination of Evergreen bookbags and Drupal pages. This one is a moving target so is hard to describe in great detail, other than to say that the team at UPEI has a great deal of flexibility to do this in any number of ways. We will also look at the new Reserve module coming in the next version of Evergreen and decide if it is a better way to go.

New Library Staff at UPEI

New Staff at Robertson or Starting Soon

I thought I would start introducing new staff at UPEI on LoomWare, starting with May 08.

Chris Bulman has started an 18-month term as our Digitization Technician. Chris is a gifted photographer, digital artist and a whiz with digitization. Chris will be setting up our new digitization facility (more on this later) and will also work closely with the Systems team on our new Fedora Repository and Virtual Research Environment.

Melissa Belvadi will join the team in July as the new Emerging Technologies and Metadata Librarian. Melissa will be coming from Maryville University in St. Louis where she is the Systems and Services Librarian. Melissa has lots of experience with open source, having developed her own OpenURL server, so me thinks she will be right at home here at UPEI :-) She will oversee the Systems and Metadata/Cataloguing units which will be combined into a single "Emerging Technologies and Metadata" group.

ACRLs Top Ten Assumptions

Letterman's Top 10 for Libraries...

I was a bit disappointed with the "Top ten assumptions for the future of academic and research libraries" released by the ACRL Research Committee. The 10 are:

1. There will be an increased emphasis on digitizing collections, preserving digital archives, and improving methods of data storage and retrieval.
2. The skill set for librarians will continue to evolve in response to the needs and expectations of the changing populations (student and faculty) that they serve.
3. Students and faculty will increasingly demand faster and greater access to services.
4. Debates about intellectual property will become increasingly common in higher education.
5. The demand for technology related services will grow and require additional funding.
6. Higher education will increasingly view the institution as a business.
7. Students will increasingly view themselves as customers and consumers, expecting high quality facilities and services.
8. Distance Learning will be an increasingly common option in higher education, and will co-exist but not threaten the traditional bricks-and-mortar model.
9. Free, public access to information stemming from publicly funded research will continue to grow.
10. Privacy will continue to be an important issue in librarianship.

My main disappointment is that the research enterprise and the libraries role and impact, especially with respect to building a framework for "eScience" and data archiving, is not mentioned. Given the ACRL membership, I would think that this would be a top 10 item. It seems to underly a number of the 10, but I think it is so important it needs to have its own number. I also think the use of "distance education" is too restrictive and limiting to make it to an assumption. "Online Learning" is a much better way to frame this important assumption. The lack of any reference to the life-long learner is also a an issue for me: while this is an oft and over-used buzzword, it is a key assumption, especially when applied to the local community and their role in each institution's future success.

If you would like to get your 2 cents in you can do so at Reply online by April 30, 2007, at https://marvin.foresightint.com/surveys/Tier1Survey/ACRL/156

Learning Starts at Home

Lessons in Learning: Canada's biggest economic challenge: Improving workplace learning in Canada

This is a personal bugaboo for me: educational institutions are all about learning, yet we generally do a lousy job of training our own staff. This piece from CCL reinforces my concern. Canadian institutions spend only 1.55% of overall payroll on education. My personal benchmark is that a fast-moving unit like an academic library should spend 2-3% of payroll on staff training. For most of us the actual number is more like .2-.5%, a ludicrous amount for capacity building. I recently requested an increase in the staff training/travel budget from .5% to 1.5% and I am confident that it will happen. Now that makes us average - still not good enough...