These sessions focus on innovative or entrepreneurial thinking in libraries – new ways to solve problems, new technology or existing tech utilized in new ways, etc. They will feature four10-minute presentations back-to-back, with a moderator for introductions, Q&A, and timekeeping.
1) What’s Past is New Again: Enhancing Discovery of Institutional Repository Content through Library and Commercial Partnerships (Jean Shipman, Judy Russell)
Researchers want rapid dissemination of their publications to share their findings, contribute to promotion and tenure, and improve their success obtaining extramural funding. Librarians seek to facilitate the discovery of institutional research by hosting journal articles within institutional repositories (IRs). A solution for both stakeholders has been achieved through an innovative partnership between an academic library and a commercial publisher.
A common concern with IR content is that the version that authors submit is frequently not the final peer reviewed version. This presentation shares the successful experience of a large academic research library and a commercial publisher who are partnering to incorporate into the University IR, information about articles by University authors from the publisher’s journals. This initiative has enabled the library to use a freely available application programming interface (API) provided by the publisher to identify journal articles by University authors and to ingest the associated metadata to enhance discovery and usage through the IR. Citations reference the published version of the articles and usage statistics are centralized and readily retrievable. Researchers are assured the “best available copy” of their article is being disseminated.
It is both expensive and time consuming for library staff to track down the manuscripts of all articles by University faculty – and responding to the requests for those manuscripts places additional burdens on the academic faculty. As more publishers facilitate ingest of articles from their journals in a similar manner, IRs could offer a more comprehensive collection of their faculty scholarship. Acquisition of the articles through automated processes would reduce the burden on both academic faculty and librarians.
2) Human-Animal Bond Researchers and Practitioners: Bridging the Gap with HABRI Central (Marcia Wilhelm-South)
Due to its breadth and interdisciplinary nature, the field of the human-animal bond can face unique communication challenges in connecting work from researchers to practitioners and from one field to another—and in helping researchers and practitioners to connect and collaborate with one another. Funded by the HABRI Foundation, HABRI Central takes up that challenge and bridges that gap. The site provides free global access to an index of more than 28,000 resources, from traditional scholarly outputs like journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters to other content like pamphlets, programs, and videos. The site is organized via a curated "disciplinary agnostic" tagging system connecting varied site contents that are similarly themed despite differing terminology. Using the HUBzero platform, HABRI Central also provides researchers and practitioners from all over the world with a collaboration hub for discussions, projects, and new research. HABRI Central brings content in from both subscription and open access sources, featuring and linking to leading peer-reviewed and evidence-based articles. Also included in the database is a listing of more than 800 unique organizations from around the globe that utilize and focus on human-animal interactions. Finally, this hub is also home to library contents original to HABRI Central, including white papers, videos, and an upcoming Open Access Journal (OAJ) sponsored by the International Association of Human-Animal Interaction Organizations (IAHAIO), a meta-organization comprising over 180,000 practitioners and researchers and which is already generating increased traffic to the site. This session will discuss the creation, content and feature set, and operation of this innovative approach to scholarly communication. HABRI Central was founded in 2012 and is run through a strong partnership between the Purdue University Libraries and the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine.
3) Will Blockchain Technology Solve Our Open Access Dilemma (Matthew Windsor)
This session will address the open access disruption of traditional publishing and the inherent flaws in the current OA environment. This disruption will be compared with the rise of cryptocurrencies and the technology required for maintaining a high standard of fault tolerance within a distributed model. We will examine how persistent digital identifiers can be coupled with blockchain record keeping to establish a more secure, verifiable method of peer review and impact factor. These new technologies will be essential to maintaining accuracy when alternative metrics are used in addition to, or in place of traditional citation/bibliometric analysis.
4) Reimagining Print Materials in a Health Science Context: Creating and Marketing a Wellness Collection (Margaret Ansell, Ariel Pomputius)
In a field in which out-of-date information can harm patients, the currency and immediacy of digital collections is highly valued. As a result, many health science libraries have de-accessioned much of their print collections and focused primarily on e-books (Haapanen et al, 2015; Lingle & Robinson, 2009; Tobia & Hunnicutt, 2008; Xiaoli & Kopper, 2006). However, print materials continue to be valued by health science library users for a variety of purposes (Houghton, 2017; Watson, 2016). This presentation describes how one academic health science center library found a role for print materials in the context of a wellness initiative, which possessed a clear purpose, allowed for creative marketing strategies, and was planned to complement wellness activities and services. The presentation will describe the process of selecting titles for the collection, the logistics of creating a special use collection after converting the majority of library space to study space, the marketing strategies used to advertise the collection, and the ongoing evaluation of the collection and its relation to user needs.
