Column Editor’s Note: Thank you to all of the 2010 Charleston Conference attendees who agreed to write short reports that highlighted sessions they attended.  All attempts were made to provide a broad coverage of sessions, and notes are included in the reports to reflect changes in the session titles or presenters that were not printed in the conference’s final program.  Slides and handouts from many 2010 Charleston Conference presentations can be found online at http://www.slideshare.net/event/2010-charleston-conference, and the Charleston Conference Proceedings will be published sometime in Fall 2011.

In this issue of Against the Grain you will find the second installment of 2010 conference reports.  The first installment can be found in ATG v.23#1, February 2011.  We will continue to publish all of the reports received in upcoming print issues throughout the year. — RKK

In this surprisingly interesting presentation, McCracken, co-founder of Serial Solutions, explained how the need for bibliographic standardization for serials is analogous with the need for standardization while providing access to information on ships.  McCracken showed that ships, much like serials and other forms of accessible data, have many different identifiers.  What he found while first developing Shipindex.org is that there are many access points to identifying a ship.  In order to standardize the access to ship data, there must be a unique vessel identifier, or what McCracken calls a “meaningless” identifier.  This is an identifier that does not change, though the data described by it may change.  Therefore, once a ship is given an identifier, it then needs data that make it truly unique, such as ship passengers, captain names, and more.  So though there may be hundreds of ships named Elizabeth, only one will have specific passengers and crewmembers.  McCracken successfully showed the need for standardized access points in order to facilitate research.  He did this by giving examples of past errors and challenges, and how accessing information on ships parallels the access to information in all research, but especially historical research.

Double-Booked: When Does E-Book /P-Book Bundling Make Sense? — Presented by Bob Nardini (Coutts Information Services);  Lenny Allen (Oxford University Press)

Nardini noted that institutions are struggling with issues of format proliferation, space, usage and budget.  As a result, the majority of librarians say “no” to the purchase of the same item in print and electronic versions.  Nardini indicated it is still mostly a print world in terms of Coutts’s clientele.  Electronic books support “opportunistic” reading and distance education communities, while print reading tends to be more in-depth.  The bundling of print/eBook into one price, with a reduced mark-up for the bundle, makes sense when high usage is anticipated and to support different reading styles.  Making both versions available may also reinforce the usage.  So, when it comes to “double-book” purchases, perhaps librarians should say instead, “Yes, but….”  One problem is to better integrate this option into the mainstream acquisitions workflow.  University of Toronto libraries was interested in reducing the number of print copies purchased for its large system.  As a result, Coutts paired with Oxford University Press to offer the bundled price of individual titles to University of Toronto.  The program has just been launched.  Unfortunately, no one from the university participated in this session.

In a session that raised many issues, Dr. Holley observed that whether the library purchases books for faculty is of less importance to many of them, since they are no longer as dependent on monographs.  Contributing to this is their increased reliance on eBooks, though they don’t often make the connection that it is the library which purchases them.  Some faculty members buy their own books because: the library might turn down their requests; most books are relatively cheap and affordable; they prefer a proprietary version of an eBook; they can get them faster from Amazon than the library can; if they buy their own copy, they can keep them forever and/or mark them up; and finally, they can potentially donate or sell them when they are done.  Faculty are buying their own books from Amazon, the out-of-print market, and traditional resources.  Their impression is that libraries don’t know how to deal with Kindles and other eBook providers in terms of ownership.

There is still a need for faculty to make requests from the library for difficult-to-acquire materials such as foreign titles, esoteric books, grey literature, privately-published materials, and expensive items priced higher than faculty members are willing to pay.  The consequences to the library if faculty made their own purchases: the faculty would have one less reason to interact with the library, and therefore be less likely to support the library financially or politically; an increase in the potential development of “bootleg” departmental libraries; and ultimately the possibility that the university administration might provide less support for libraries and give the money directly to the academic department.

The consequences to the library collection are that with the loss of faculty input on purchasing needed items, there is more likelihood of missing items of potential interest to other users.  Also, there could be a skewing of the collection toward more esoteric and expensive items with reduced probable use.  These issues are increasingly important as libraries implement patron-driven acquisitions models.  According to the Ithaka report (www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/faculty-survey-2009), faculty view libraries increasingly as purchasing agents.  This raises the question of whether the library should be investing its funds in other directions, such as building special collections or digitizing humanities resources.

Patron-Driven Print Acquisitions: A New Phase in a Changing Environment — Presented by Carolyn Morris (Coutts Information Services);  Marcia Anderson (Arizona State University)

Morris and Anderson described a two-pronged patron-driven acquisitions project at Arizona State University.  In response to economic difficulties and budget cuts, technical services positions were eliminated and the approval plan was stopped.  To streamline selection and acquisitions, the library implemented patron-driven processes for both e and print books.  Using their Coutts approval plan profile as the guide, ASU loaded four thousand MARC records into the ILS in Fall 2010.  The eBook PDA plan was implemented easily.  The print PDA plan was more complicated because orders are filled as quickly as possible from in stock sources.  This requires staff intervention and manual searches for the fastest source for each book.  On average, the library receives two print book orders per day and one eBook order per day.  This presentation was based on less than 90 days of data.  A follow-up session next year with a larger pool of data would be interesting.

Ayer provided an overview of the history, intended scope, editing, and principles that govern the construction and management of Wikipedia.  The presentation was divided into three parts.  In the first part, the speaker provided details about the history of Wikipedia and the current contents.  The second part of the presentation was called “Editing in 90 seconds.”  The presenter discussed the process of editing articles and guiding principles for the construction and editing.  The last part of the presentation focused some of the ongoing projects, including those by universities and academics, and the opportunities for librarians to become involved in the creation and editing of articles, using their expertise to fill in gaps.  Librarians should consider the “Citation Needed” tag as an invitation to edit.  A question and answer session followed the presentation.

This session deviated slightly from the program description, and the absence of two of the presenters may have altered the content.  The result however proved to be informative.  Gunter acted both as panel moderator and panelist, filling in for the absent Sidi.  Bhate was also absent.  Five questions were provided to panelists in advance of the conference.  The questions addressed what drove the panelist into the area of semantic technology, what are key advantages of using semantic technology and how has it helped enhance user’s experience, what problems have been solved or new enhancements were created by the implementation of semantic technology, what were key lessons learned in getting started, and what are the key next steps in developing semantic applications.  Gunter, Kerner, and Marshall each presented their answers which were then followed by a Q&A segment with questions from the audience and Gunter as moderator.  Although each speaker’s response to the questions provided insight into the current state of semantic technology, perhaps the most compelling tidbit from this presentation was the answer to the Q&A question as to why it is important for librarians to know or understand semantic technologies.  Kerner asserts that this will suffuse all information platforms and offers an opportunity to get in on the beginning of implementation into platforms.

Patron-Driven Acquisition of Monographs: Results and Implications — Presented by Michael Levine-Clark (University of Denver);  Becky Clark (Johns Hopkins University Press);  Matt Nauman (YBP Library Services);  David Swords (EBL)

Swords presented data from a study of twenty-nine libraries engaged in patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) of eBooks.  The data show that when libraries offer short-term loans of eBooks, the price per transaction is less than if the books were purchased.  The number of transactions is higher, leading to greater customer satisfaction.

Levine-Clark discussed cost-savings that resulted from the University of Denver’s six-month PDA pilot with EBL.  He suggested that library collections be redefined as materials potentially available for purchase, as opposed to materials owned or leased.  Collection management becomes risk management as titles are added and removed from the catalog based on multiple decision rules.

Clark presented the results of an online survey of members of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) about PDA.  Almost all university presses responding were concerned that PDA will have a negative impact on sales or at least make forecasting sales more difficult.  Most respondents have not yet opted into PDA options by eBook vendors and are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Nauman examined the impact of PDA on traditional book vendors.  He pointed to the need for a new business model whereby the vendor presents a universe of content that is discoverable and attainable by patrons in different ways.  The vendor will provide discovery tools and infrastructure for new work flows.  This might require annual subscription fees for database maintenance as well as transaction fees.

We’ve Come So Far, Who Knew! One Librarian’s Experience With E-Books and Beyond — Presented by James Mouw (University of Chicago)

At the University of Chicago, they are still uncertain about patron acceptance of eBooks (many faculty still prefer print,) but a recent survey they conducted of graduate and professional students indicated that this group would like more eBooks.  Mouw shared statistics of eBook collections compared with their print counterparts in NetLibrary and Oxford Scholarship Online, which gave good ideas on analyzing collection use .  Many hits to eBooks come from MARC records, highlighting the importance of having those collections in the library catalog.  He stressed the future importance of having library holdings hooked to Google searches.  They have added Hathi Trust titles to their catalog.

They have a pilot PDA program where any patron can initiate a request, with payment through subject selectors’ discretionary funds.  He sees the issue with PDA as a balance between building collections and spending money wisely.

Issues in eBook acquisition mentioned were: you aren’t always notified at the same time when print and an e-versions of books are available; ILL is still a big question;  e-readers are still “consumer models,” not “library models;” and buying versus leasing content.  The session was succinct and gave all the content advertised.

Will the non-profit ORCID initiative (www.orcid.org/) lead to an author disambiguation solution?  About two dozen attendees listened to (and later questioned) Kochalka as he presented steps taken so far.  ORCID has members in 25 countries and a board of directors, both representing various stakeholder sectors; others can engage, too.  Communication is underway with NISO and other id registry initiatives.  Evident needs: Profiles and communities; research impact studies; refinement in collection development; bibliometric research.  Challenges: variant names; unique “common name” problems in each country; and language conversion issues (e.g., from Chinese to English, not converting easily back to Chinese).  Questions to be resolved: Will ORCID be a vehicle or a storage mechanism?  What is the overlap between user and third party uploaded data?  What will be the provenance, controls? Mechanics that need to work:  ISNI (standards) links to partner systems; user control and privacy systems; local language support; publication claiming that includes more than journal literature.  Between the Nov. 2009 and 2010 on-site and virtual participants’ meetings, ORCHID’s “development in progress” initiatives and plans included: “building the sandbox”, alpha prototyping, beta development, public beta rollout, etc.  To complete the build and ensure future maintenance, ORCID needs not only funding, angels, and sponsors, but also to find the right schema and privacy balance.

The two ladies talked about the situation they had at their university library which required them to seriously weed out their monographs collection.  The problem was MOLD, which was attacking their print periodical collection.  In order to move the periodicals to a safer location, the monographs collection needed to be significantly weeded out.  Foote and Gardiner devised a strategy for weeding the monographs by organizing cohorts of faculty and library that gave perspective on what would be good to keep in the collection and what would be good to take out.  They also developed collection guidelines that would be the factors used for choosing to remove a particular title from the collection.  Then, a cart of the de-selected books would be taken to the back and removed, not only physically from the collection, but from the online catalog as well.

Mrs. Foote and Ms. Gardiner were both very personable and well-spoken throughout the presentation.  The title and description of the presentation were both accurate.  The presentation was educational and informative, and I came away from it with a better perspective on how to weed a collection and still preserving its academic integrity.

OCLC Senior Research Scientist Connaway presented findings from her and Timothy Dickey’s meta-analysis of 12 recent user behavior studies conducted in the U.S. and UK.  JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded the research in an effort to help identify needs for user-focused systems and services.  Strong themes emerging from the findings included convenience influencing the choice of resources, an eagerness to begin searching in a basic Google-like mode, a preference for using natural language, refining down from large sets of results, seeking for chunks of information, and “squirreling away” of downloads.  As a strong contrast, users frequently reported dissatisfaction with OPACs as an opaque system.  One implication for libraries might be to develop contextual help via IM or Chat within the library catalog.  She cautioned, though, that “screenagers” (12-18 year-olds) reported some discomfort with the idea of texting with librarians.

Report URL: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekers.aspx.

Do Humanities & Social Sciences E-books Get Used? — Presented by Matt Barnes (ebrary);  Neil Sorensen (ebrary);  Carol Zsulya (Cleveland State University)

This small, but well-attended, session focused on the common assertion that eBooks are underutilized and underappreciated by users in the Humanities and Social Sciences.  The core of the presentation highlighted various empirical data, drawn from ebrary usage statistics, demonstrating that eBooks within traditional humanities and social science subject areas have been increasingly accessed over the past several years.  Often, the percentage of increase within these subject areas has outstripped the rate of growth for other (natural or hard science) fields.  Presenters suggested that the increasing familiarity and ease with e-formats might account for this increase, and that attitudes towards e-resources within the humanities and social sciences might be changing.  In addition, a number of independent studies of faculty groups were cited, indicating that immediacy and accessibility of resource outweighed format preferences.  The presenters were unable to address profundity of use, level of textual involvement by researchers with eBooks, and the depth of immersive reading taking place.  The question, then, remained, were eBooks being utilized more frequently because they were gaining greater acceptance within user communities, or were they simply more prevalent in the marketplace and, therefore, a momentary compromise in the face of an immediate research need.

Borrowing a motif from the Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First,” Novak, McKee, and  Stamison describe the ambiguous nature of migrating to e-content for libraries, consortia, and vendors.  Novak notes that after a decade of transition, the CMU libraries are 71 percent e-content.  Even the workflow is now electronic.  The future needs for libraries lie with standardized license agreements, shelf-ready material, and patron-driven acquisitions.  The challenges are re-conceptualizing the bibliographers’ contributions and time-consuming negotiations with consortia and vendors.  McKee reports that among the consortia of 32 libraries, two-thirds have budgeted for e-content despite severe decreases in operating budgets.  Most of GWLA’s libraries are experimenting with e-options including EBL, MYiLibrary, pay-per-view, Primo, mobile apps, and open source “Variations.”  What libraries need are unbundled e-content, a single eBook format, common sense licenses, interlibrary loan privileges, and non-proprietary apps.  Stamison notes that vendors and libraries are hindered by the concept that “it’s all electronic. It should be easy.”  New users are digital-era native.  Information solution providers must take this into account as they refocus their products with the help of customer advisory boards.

Dubnjakovic presented an excellent overview of the current trends in sheet music publication.  She began with a review of Western music notation, from the medieval music manuscripts of the monks and the development of printed music in 1498 through the twenty-first century advent of music processing software such as Finale and Sibelius.  And what of “mutopia”?  Musicians now have two choices for sheet music: the pScore (print score) and the eScore (electronic score).  Each has advantages and disadvantages.  The pScore remains more available for performers and works well for music analysis.  The eScore is portable, customizable, instantly available, and easily transposable (a godsend in certain performing situations).

Models for distributing eSheet music fall into two categories:  producers and vendors.  Producers, who usually offer the music for free, include individuals, societies, and creators of large-scale digitization projects.  Vendors provide content from a variety of sources.  eSheet music sellers can be all-purpose (Amazon Kindle Store) or be a database access provider.  Metrics concerning eSheet music publication remain in development; most databases to date are not Counter-compliant.  Standardization issues need to be addressed.  Despite these issues, the mutopia of eSheet music is a welcome development in the world of electronic resources.

The presentation clearly matched the topic as advertised.  Due to the previous session running over, this session got off to a late start.  (Unfortunate, since there was so much information to cover.)  The speakers’ Powerpoint was very beneficial.

A major take away for this presentation is this: the end users’ needs are the library’s needs, and the end users wanted a library where there is:

•  space that inspires study and learning

•  quiet space for contemplation

•  space that serves as a gateway and accessibility for study, learning, research, and related resources

•  space that fosters community spirit and involvement

Ultimately, the library needed more space for the users.  They had rows of stacks and documents stored and only 10% of floor space for users.  They more than doubled user space creating nooks and crannies, mini info commons, meeting room areas, and gathering areas using furniture and equipment that fosters studying and learning.  Weeding allowed the library to create the space users wanted.  This presentation gave all the detail on how it started, what steps were taken, the importance of good public relations, prepping faculty and staff, using liaisons, and being prepared for resistance.  The talk ended with astounding numbers like 7,000 linear feet of bound journals weeded from the library and 1,500 linear feet weeded from storage.

Back to the Future: Old Models for New Challenges — Presented by Sanford G. Thatcher (Director Emeritus, The Pennsylvania State University Press;  Free-lance Acquiring Editor)

Thatcher’s presentation provided the audience with much food for thought.  He provided a historical perspective of publishing concepts and a view of how these practices still apply today.  Thatcher noted that if University Presses cannot make the transition to the digital age, they will face “dark days.”  Some of the smaller presses have already disappeared.  Three practices from the past should be resurrected:  publishing by subscription, which would require soliciting subscriptions in advance of printing and allow the publisher a means to predict expenses; patronage, backers who would be willing to provide funding or some other incentive would be engaged prior to printing (this model has also been compared with a form of patron-driven acquisition); and advertising, the new digital age provides an opportunity for the publisher to place advertisements in electronic books.  Thatcher noted that if presses are to survive the new challenges, they must change back to the 18th Century way of thinking about publishing.

The speakers discussed the details from collaborative projects being done at both the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and Harvard University.  The libraries were both faced with large backlogs of non-English materials and did not have the necessary language expertise to reduce the backlog and catalog new similar materials.  The libraries determined it was necessary to develop a new process for the creation of cataloging records for their newly acquired non-English approval plan titles.  The University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and Harvard University libraries worked with their book vendors and MARCnow to build partnerships to create workflows to make both the materials and satisfactory cataloging records available to library patrons in a timely manner.  The service evolved over time as the three parties discussed expectations, needs, and resolved problems.  A question and answer session followed the presentation.

The audience’s anticipation was echoed in the front of the room by the unusual amount of executive suits on stage prior to the start.  The faceoff which was about to begin was the result of a series of interviews with Web-scale discovery product vendors, and subsequent letters to the editor, published in The Charleston Advisor earlier in 2010.  In one of these letters, Stan Sorenson from Serials Solutions suggested a “head-to-head, live comparison” to enable librarians to decide for themselves which product best meets their needs.

The faceoff began, introduced by Machovec.  Bucknall explained the rules and moderated the process, which followed a structure very similar to a presidential debate.  Burke and Buschman represented Serial Solutions’ Summon, and EBSCO Discovery Service was represented by Brooks and Gorrell.  Each side was presented with two questions, with three minutes to answer each, regarding the need for web-scale discovery products, and why they thought their product was the best.  This was followed by a live demo where each side received a different reference question to answer using a live version of their product projected on a large screen.  Despite initial fumblings by both sides, the searches were completed, giving each rep the opportunity to point out specific features of their system.  For the summary and rebuttal, each side defended statements and countered claims made in The Charleston Advisor.  The gloves came off, for now.

This well-organized and skillfully presented session recounted the experience of Duke University Library in the implementation and deployment of an E-Reader collection.  Speakers emphasized the ramifications for such a program throughout the library system and detailed the level of involvement needed from a variety of departments.  This presentation focused on the roles of Collection Development, Acquisitions, and Cataloguing in program management.  For the purposes of this experimental trial, the E-Readers employed were the Kindle from Amazon and the Nook from Barnes & Noble.  Notable within the discussion were the choice of a patron-driven development model, the need to market and advertise the resource, the role of the library catalogue in connecting patrons to the E-Reader option, and the challenges of original and individual cataloguing.  Also considered were issues of technical support, insurance concerns, vendor relations, and the applicability of vendor support to an institutional market.  Speakers concluded that the E-Reader had been embraced by the patron community, that use remained high and continuous, and that the demographics of use was evenly distributed across patron groups — undergraduates, graduate students, staff, and faculty.

Chicago Collaborative (www.chicago-collaborative.org/) member organization representatives Rockwood and Tagler provided a mini-review on STM publishing, with Rockwood covering the roles and responsibilities of the initial key players:  authors, scientific editors, and peer reviewers/referees, and Tagler covering the persons and departments later in the process (upon article acceptance):  editorial, art and design, compositing/printing, online hosting, marketing, rights and permissions, and archiving.  STM publishing involves a variety of publishing scenarios-for profit, non-profit, and hybrid, and of the top 100 ISI impact factor journals, 75% are society-published.  The act of publishing (involving an ongoing investment), provides selection, dissemination, and validation for the results of scientific research.  Rockwood reviewed what peer review is and is not designed to do, as well as some ethical issues in publishing.  Tagler provided options for current and future production offerings: article versions and issues in the online environment — archiving, delivery, archive provision, and disaster recovery strategy.  Economic challenges abound, there is pressure to keep up, and there is uncertainty about the sustainability of traditional business models includes Open Access (author pays), public access, and government mandated deposits.  Audience questions included questions about reporting plagiarism and issues of assistance for non-native English speaking authors.