Educating a New Cadre of Experts Specializing in Digital Collections and Digital Curation: Experiential Learning in Digital Library Curriculum

Integration of experiential learning into the library and information science (LIS) courses has been a theme in LIS education, but the topic deserves renewed attention with an increasing demand for professionals in the digital library field and in light of the new initiative announced by the Library of Congress (LC) and the Institution of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for national residency program in digital curation. The balance between theory and practice in digital library curricula, the challenges of incorporating practical projects into LIS coursework, and the current practice of teaching with hands on activities represent the primary areas of this panel discussion.

EAST by Northeast

The Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) is a shared print initiative involving 48 libraries across the Northeast. Initiated in 2012 with a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, EAST addresses directly the growing need for academic libraries to ensure that monographs and journals of scholarly value are not inadvertently discarded as they undertake weeding and deselection programs to free up space for other library services. EAST is currently completing a large-scale analysis of collections across 40 of the participating libraries. This analysis will provide insight into both uniqueness and overlap across the libraries’ holdings and will result in agreements by the libraries to retain circulating monographs in their local collections for an agreed upon time period and to make those materials available to researchers and scholars from other EAST libraries. In parallel to this collection analysis, EAST is implementing validation sampling across the libraries to better understand volume availability and condition and the role they may plan in retention decisions. The project team has developed an innovative sampling methodology and tools to support the study. As the largest shared print initiative to date, this project will secure a substantial portion of the scholarly record that is held in the Northeast and positions EAST as an important component of the growing network of shared print initiatives nationally.

Library and Information Science Education and eScience: The Current State of ALA Accredited MLS/MLIS Programs in preparing Librarians and Information Professionals for eScience Needs

The purpose of this study is multifaceted: 1) to describe eScience research in acomprehensive way; 2) to help library and information specialists understand the realm of eScience research and the information needs of the community and demonstrate the importance of LIS professionals within the eScience domain; 3) and to explore the current state of curricular content of ALA accredited MLS/MLIS programs to understand the extent to which they prepare new professionals within eScience librarianship. The literature review focuses heavily on eScientists and other data-driven researchers’ information service needs in addition to demonstrating how and why librarians and information specialists can and should fulfill these service gaps and information needs within eScience research. By looking at the current curriculum of American Library Association (ALA) accredited MLS/MLIS programs, we can identify potential gaps in knowledge and where to improve in order to prepare and train new MLS/MLIS graduates to fulfill the needs of eScientists. This investigation is meant to be informative and can be used as a tool for LIS programs to assess their curriculums in comparison to the needs of eScience and other data-driven and networked research. Finally, this investigation will provide awareness and insight into the services needed to support a thriving eScience and data-driven research community to the LIS profession.

Utilizing Building Usage Assessment: Determining Deployment of Student Workers in an Academic Library

Generating, collecting, and analyzing building usage statistics can greatly increase the ability of an access services unit to meet the changing dynamic of patron needs in an academic library. By analyzing three different data points, the Access Services Unit in Malpass Library at Western Illinois University was able to determine the most effective and efficient way to deploy the student workforce to meet the demonstrated needs of the patron population throughout the day. This article will examine those data points and how they were analyzed in order to improve the services provided by the Access Services Unit.