Reading Backwards

Langstraat, Carina

Bernier, A. (2011). On Reading Academic Literature (Strategically). [Lecture]. Retrieved from

San Jose State University INFO 285-14 Canvas site

Summary:

Bernier’s article tells you how to absorb vast amounts of information as quickly as possible.  It is geared toward how to accomplish this when doing research, but is applicable to life at large.  It's approach is basic and straightforward in nature.  No one is assuming I already know all this just because I am in information school.  His approach boils down to reading the conclusion of an article first and then the introduction.  When doing research, this allows you to quickly decide if the article is worth pursuing.  Seems obvious but this approach has been a game changer for me.

Evaluation:

The Bernier article on how to read academic literature is one of the best pieces of information I’ve read since I’ve been at SJSU.  When I started this program, reading strategically wasn’t as much a choice on my part, but a survival skill.  In my first semester, I wanted to immerse myself, get as much as I could out of the program, etc.  But with the amount of assigned reading combined with necessary research reading, it quickly became apparent that reading, as Bernier says, in a “once upon a time” fashion, wasn’t going to work.  What Bernier’s article has done for me is to relieve me of the guilt of strategic reading, instead emboldening me to enhance those skills.  For example, I’ve always read the abstract, the introduction, and then the conclusion in order to decide if the article was a keeper.  Doing it the other way around makes more sense because it’s a more direct route to the author’s punch line.

Cooperative Collection Development and ebooks

Micka, Tracy

INFO266, Fall 2016

Swindler, L. l. (2016). New Consortial Model for E-Books Acquisitions. College & Research Libraries, 77(3), 269-285.

Summary:

This article presents a sustainable model for the consortial acquisition of e-books and print titles needed to support multidisciplinary instruction and research. Using the model as a transitional program, the central goal was to shift the balance of monographic acquisitions to e-books over time, on a financially sustainable cost-neutral basis. The idea that ebooks and their print analogs complement one another for educational purposes is the underlying basis of the program.

How can they collectively acquire or share ebooks? Ebook sharing in a consortium is difficult, traditionally resulting in inequitable costs to the institutions involved, as price multipliers create limits to simultaneous access. Publishers, vendors, libraries, and users all have their own needs, some of which directly clash. Three important developments contribute to such difficulties: 1) changes in the means by which research libraries build collections; 2) eResources vastly expand the scale of a collection; 3) new metrics in measuring cooperative collection development in a digital environment (ILL doesn’t work for ebooks ).

One of the main principles for the model was to widely purchase multiple copies of ebooks, but limit print books to a single copy of a limited number of titles. Print books are stored offsite, and individual institutions have their own copies of eBooks. This acquisition mandate turned on its head the traditional notion of a successful shared collection as one that has a massive amount of unique titles. Since this new program is predicated on committing to automatically purchase the entire (monographic) output of participating publishers, success is measured by how efficiently money is spent to ensure each member institution can provide its users with immediate and unfettered access at a scale that would not be possible without the consortium. In this way, success is no longer measured by how many unique titles, but by how extensively titles have been duplicated within the consortium. Such metrics are based on the Association of Research Libraries’ call to think of collections as components instead of products (p. 273). As a result, the focus shifts from title-by-title purchasing decisions by individual subject librarians to wholesale block purchases dictated by policy-level decisions. Book vendors become critical partners for helping the consortium understand which publishers would work for their goals and for establishing new ways of sourcing, acquiring and processing ebooks and print books in tandem on a wholesale acquisition basis.

Problems encountered in the pilot program were numerous, and included:

• Failure to take full advantage of the book vendor’s profiling capabilities when deciding which print books were the most important to purchase
• Resource delivery mechanisms
• eBook platform response time
• Not always clear when print or eBooks had arrived / were available

Librarian & Patron Response

Interestingly, although patrons tend to report that they prefer physical books over ebooks, it was the librarians who tended to be more cautious / reluctant to duplicate eBooks. This is likely because users have come to expect instant access, and ebooks deliver this. Also, eBooks are a quick way for patrons to scope out if the title is even of interest, before having to go though the process of ordering the (off-site) print copy.

Shifting to eBooks is thus possible and acceptable, especially when you continue to purchase high-visibility/high-use titles and enable on-demand acquisition of print duplicates. Doing so through consortial cooperative collection development programs is also possible, with the following advice:

• Understand how your patrons use eBooks, the devil of purchasing decisions is in the details, remain flexible.
• The eBook publishing environment is unpredictable and evolving- again, remain flexible and willing to experiment
• Individual institutions will have to compromise sometimes in order to preserve the value of the consortium
• Librarians, publishers and vendors will have to to communicate with each other often and well
• Librarians will have to invest time  in educating staff and developing new metrics

My comments:

The basic ideas of this article are very instructive, though without a working background in acquisitions and only a basic understanding of the modern publishing environment, many of details are lost. The take-home is important, though: the program allowed the consortium to “bypass the perennial format fetish debates about e-books versus print books” (p 280), supporting what previous research has already found- that it’s a false dichotomy. The pilot program proved that what patrons say they prefer (physical books) and what they will come to accept and learn to use (ebooks), are two different things. It’s a whole new world- patrons, librarians, publishers and vendors are all adapting dynamically. The old paradigm has been shattered, so examples like this pilot program help us envision a new way forward.

Cumbersome Foreign Language Acqusition Processes and the Librarians who Overcome Them

Ward, J. H. (2009). Acquisitions globalized: The foreign language acquisitions experience in a research library. Library Resources & Technical Services,  53(2), 86-93.

This article looks at foreign language materials acquisitions, how they are influenced in the U.S. by “political changes, . . . the effect of the global marketplace’s growing need for personnel well trained in foreign languages and cultures[,] and the subsequently expanding boundaries of research” (p. 86), and how the focus in the library needs to be on the people who turn acquisitions into resources. 

The article includes a very interesting overview of the differences between the selection and acquisition process in the U.S. with North American vendors and the process when books are ordered from other countries.  The process is complicated by the publication norms in the vendor’s country, the extra fees incurred, and sometimes by irregular shipping standards.  Then there’s language proficiency.  In larger libraries, the selecting librarian, who might have the language skills, isn’t the librarian who will unpack the shipment, or catalog the books, or process them for circulation.   

Ward describes how Tech Services departments might solve these issues using both vendor-library cooperation and Tech Services staff members communicating with each other throughout the process.  Vendor records, while not necessarily in common U.S. formats, offer the librarians reference points for order records and the catalogers something to work with when building more accurate records; collaborative projects that included vendor records--OCLC, the Biliotheque national de France, and others--are described to illustrate the point. For the intradepartmental cooperation, Ward offers a case study of Rutgers University Libraries and the various issues that arose for those working to select, order, and process Western European, Asian, and Eastern European language materials.  The various vendors' dynamics, and the language skills that were needed at different points in the process, meant that “the workflow to acquire foreign language titles is typically characterized by less automation, longer processing times, and more frequent human intervention” (p. 93).  Focusing on the human factor and encouraging collaboration across the process is the simple but effective solution that can help get much needed foreign language materials into the hands of the patrons. 

H. A.