CNI: Coalition for Networked Information

The Software Preservation Network Project

Zach Vowell
Digital Archivist
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Jessica Meyerson
Digital Archivist
University of Texas at Austin

The Software Preservation Network project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, is building community infrastructure to support software preservation at scale as part of the larger effort to ensure long-term access to digital objects. The project is currently soliciting community input in the form of use cases, proposals to the project’s software preservation forum, and conference calls. In addition, the project is conducting a qualitative study of the need for software preservation among cultural heritage organizations and coordinating legal research on the bases on which cultural heritage organizations might use legacy software. The briefing will include an update on the software preservation study, plans for the August forum, project partnerships and collaborations, overview of project deliverables, and a discussion on possible implementation strategies.

http://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/
http://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/spn-forum/

Presentation (PDF)

Starting a Textbook Revolution: Project Partners On and Beyond Your Campus

Steven J. Bell
Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services
Temple University

Alison Armstrong
Associate Director for Research and Education
The Ohio State University

Kevin Stranack
Community Services and Learning Coordinator
Simon Fraser University

Textbook affordability is an issue of growing concern in higher education. Academic libraries, working collaboratively with campus partners, have led the way in program innovation to improve student access to course learning content. Attendees will hear from three institutions taking strategic approaches to advance the adoption of open educational resources (OER) through partnerships on and beyond their campus. At Temple University the Library worked with the Teaching, Learning and Technology Roundtable to gain support for the start of an alternate textbook project, and now a coalition of campus partners is expanding this into a textbook affordability initiative with expansive goals for OER adoption. Librarians at Simon Fraser University invite authors, reviewers, instructional designers, translators, graphic designers, and others to come together to collaboratively, or individually, produce high-quality open textbooks. A key strategy for the Ohio State University Libraries is to partner with the Office of Distance Education and eLearning to develop or promote the use of OER learning material while working with consortium learning partners on other open learning projects. The presentation will wrap-up with five core strategies for a campus-wide textbook revolution.

http://guides.temple.edu/alttextbook
http://affordablelearning.osu.edu/

Presentation (PDF)

The Stewardship Gap Project: Initial Research Results and Insights

Myron Gutmann
Director, Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder

Jeremy York
Project Manager
University of Colorado Boulder

Interest in research data to facilitate discovery, drive innovation, and promote trust in science and scholarship is well established. However, we know little about the total amounts, characteristics, and sustainability of data that could be used for these purposes. This briefing will present initial results of the Stewardship Gap Project. The goal of the project is to investigate and characterize, if it exists, the gap between the amount of valuable data that is being produced through sponsored projects in the United States and the amount that is being effectively stewarded and made accessible. Initial results pertain to a set of in-depth interviews conducted in Fall 2015 with researchers in a broad variety of fields.

The Stewardship Gap is led by Myron Gutmann, University of Colorado Boulder and Francine Berman, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

http://bitly.com/stewardshipgap

Presentation (PDF)

Text and Data-Mining on Licensed Collections

Peter Leonard
Director, Digital Humanities Lab
Yale University

Many academic research libraries now spend more on electronic licensed content than they do on print materials. These commercial databases offer the promise of easy access to vast quantities of digitized material, but are under restrictions of both copyright and licensing agreements. Robots Reading Vogue, a project of the Yale University Library DHLab, is an effort to build DH tools on top of such an archive, allowing exploration and experimentation on 400,000 pages of Vogue magazine while still respecting copyright. Yale Library worked with ProQuest, the company which digitized Vogue for Condé Nast, to secure full access to the raw data underlying the commercial product. Any user of the site can explore patterns in the data, using affordances such as an n-gram search tool, but the hyperlinks to individual articles only resolve if the user has access privileges to the ProQuest content. We hope this projects serves as one possible model for ensuring researchers’ rights to fully explore the contents of vendor-digitized, licensed content.

http://dh.library.yale.edu/projects/vogue/

Presentation (PDF)

Transformational Online Reference with a Proactive, Context-sensitive Chat System: Using Triggers to Encourage Patrons to Ask Questions

Jan Kemp
Assistant Dean for Public Services
University of Texas at San Antonio

William Glenn
Head of Reference Services
University of Texas at San Antonio

At a time when many libraries continue to experience low reference activity, the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries have seen a 489% increase in chat usage from 2013 (4,600 questions) to 2015 (27,000 questions), after implementing Zopim, a proactive, context-sensitive chat system that was created for online businesses. Based on two years of data, this presentation will discuss transformational outcomes following the implementation of the Zopim system, which, in addition to including configurable chat widgets throughout the library website and within resources such as Summon, also features context-sensitive triggers that proactively invite users to chat. For example, if a user stays on the “Find Databases” page for 60 seconds, a chat box automatically pops up with the prompt, “Let us know if we can help you find a database!” In fact, Zopim triggers currently account for over 60% of our chat questions. The complexity of these online transactions is also notably higher than the complexity of questions received at the physical Information Desk. Sixty-four per cent of chat questions are READ level 3 and above, compared with 21% of questions asked at the Information Desk. This presentation will provide information about the configuration and management of the system and the changes in chat staffing to support the high-demand service.

http://lib.utsa.edu (displays chat widget)

Presentation (PDF)

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