CNI: Coalition for Networked Information

Academic Libraries Join the Fight Against Climate Change

Lisa Spiro
Executive Director, Digital Scholarship Services, Fondren Library
Rice University

Ashley Fitzpatrick
Fondren Library Eco-Rep
Rice University

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey dumped over 50 inches of rain on Houston, causing approximately 100 deaths and $125 billion in damage. Research indicates that Harvey’s impact was worsened by climate change. More recently wildfires, floods, and droughts–as well as concerted action by climate activists–have demonstrated the urgency of fighting climate change. The library community is beginning to take action; for example, the American Library Association (ALA) recently adopted sustainability as a core value and launched the “Resilient Communities: Libraries Respond to Climate Change” grant program. Rice University’s Fondren Library is one of five academic libraries to have won this grant. Fondren’s core grant-funded activities include organizing a panel discussion featuring four Houston women at the forefront of climate justice work, screening a documentary on queer responses to climate change, becoming a climate resilience hub, and developing a workshop for middle school students focused on understanding air quality data in their neighborhood, a frontline community. The grant is part of a broader series of sustainability initiatives at Fondren, including the development of a sustainability plan, the formation of a staff “Green Team,” and the appointment of a student “eco-rep.” This interactive presentation will examine how and why academic libraries should prioritize sustainability initiatives, using Fondren’s experiences as a model for community and student engagement around climate change. Participants will then engage in discussion about how the library community can come together to fight climate change.

https://library.rice.edu/sustainability

Adapting Library GIS Services in the Age of COVID-19: Challenges, Changes, and Planning for the Future

Michael Shensky
GIS and Geospatial Data Coordinator
University of Texas at Austin

When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted regular campus operations at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) in March 2020, the UT Libraries had to quickly adapt to providing geographic information system (GIS) services to meet the needs of students, faculty, and staff who were suddenly working from off campus. Core GIS services like research support consultations, guest lectures, and workshops which had traditionally been provided via live, in-person interactions required particularly significant transformations. While there was initial concern that changes to established procedures might negatively impact GIS services, in many cases the opposite actually proved true–when forced to explore new ways of doing things, the UT Libraries ended up discovering previously hidden efficiencies and opportunities. Among these discoveries were newfound avenues of virtual collaboration via Zoom meetings, new sources of data about our services which could be used for assessment purposes, and attendance numbers for virtual events that surpassed expectations. While there have been unexpected benefits of adjusting to a virtual model of providing GIS services there are still challenges to overcome and questions about the future format of GIS services that need to be resolved. This project brief will provide an overview of the ways in which the UT Libraries adapted GIS services to meet the needs of the university community, the positive outcomes that have resulted from these changes, the difficulties that are still being dealt with, and the work that is underway to further improve services and prepare for a post-pandemic future.

Building Hyku for Cross-Consortia Partnerships

Kirsten Leonard
Executive Director
PALNI

Jill Morris
Executive Director
PALCI

The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) is partnering with the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI) (representing 94 academic libraries in Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, and New York), to pilot a collaboratively run open source, multi-tenant, consortial institutional repository (IR). The goal is to deliver ultra low-cost hosting, discovery, and access to digital material for member libraries both with the tool and by partnering across consortia and with commercial partners working on a community-owned product. Delivering materials digitally and reducing costs are even more critical due to economic pressures and staff reductions in this current crisis period. Project collaborators aim to create a consortial IR service individual libraries may use, customize, and brand as their own, while building the capacity and functionality required to share underlying infrastructure, hosting, and administration/staffing costs across institutions. The project is in the second year of an IMLS-funded grant building on the work done by Hyku founders.

https://www.hykuforconsortia.org/about-the-project/ https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/lg-36-19-0108-19 https://hykucommons.org/

Presentation

Computer Lab Access Amid COVID-19 Restrictions: The Sprint to Maintain Support for Any Distance Users at UT Austin Libraries

Fred Gilmore
Senior Information Technology Manager
University of Texas, Austin

Safety precautions put in place to address the pandemic on campuses have resulted in the removal or reduction of access to lab computing resources, connectivity, and licensed software (in University of Texas libraries’ case, titles such as Matlab, Adobe Creative Cloud, NVivo). Concurrently, coursework has moved almost exclusively online, many times without equivalent computing support for the curriculum in place. This discussion will explore the attempts to address this need at a Tier 1 institution and the solution selected, Apache Guacamole. The final product allowed us to provide access to both Macs and PCs, as well as meet our university’s requirements for single sign-on and multifactor authentication. We will discuss our selection process, solutions that were trialed but ultimately not selected, use metrics, user adoption/input, and how we see the service evolving over time. Specific attention will focus on evaluation of these solutions based on cost effectiveness, security, maintainability, and low barriers of entry given the short runway the pandemic allowed to roll out an enterprise service.

https://labs.lib.utexas.edu/

Dismantling Racism in Collaborative Collections

Shanee Murrain
Director of Community Engagement
Digital Public Library of America

Ann Hanlon
Head, Digital Collections and Initiatives and DH Lab
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) was founded in 2013 with a mission to ensure equitable access to the nation’s cultural heritage. In 2019, DPLA developed a new strategy that emphasized our commitment to empowering institutions and communities that have been historically marginalized, underserved, and underrepresented and promoting diverse and inclusive collections and stories. As part of this work, in September 2020, DPLA launched the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection, a collaborative project that provides access to 200,000+ archival materials that help tell the story of the critical role Black women played, and continue to play, in the voting rights and civil rights movements. In order to address the inclusion of harmful language in collection metadata, the DPLA Metadata Working Group created a Harmful Language Statement to explain the work librarians and archivists must do to balance the preservation of the history of people who have experienced trauma and harm with sensitivity in how it is presented to users. In addition, in the summer of 2020, the DPLA Network Council drafted and approved a statement on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, and Social Justice (IDEAS) to commit DPLA contributing institutions to address “deficits in the ways our profession has documented Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, the LGBTQ community, and others whose voices have been drowned out by those with more power or organizational standing.” In this session, DPLA community manager Shaneé Yvette Murrain and former DPLA network council chair Ann Hanlon, Head, Digital Collections and Initiatives and Digital Humanities Lab at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee will discuss opportunities, challenges, and learnings encountered during the creation of the IDEAS Statement and the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection, as well as outlining next steps for DPLA and member institutions in creating more diverse and equitable collections, and anticipated challenges as this work continues.

Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection: https://www.BlackWomensSuffrage.org

IDEAS Statement: https://pro.dp.la/hubs/dpla-membership-ideas-statement

Harmful Language Statement: https://blackwomenssuffrage.dp.la/harmful-language-statement

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