ISSN was published as an ISO standard in 1975, making 2025 its 50th birthday! What better way to celebrate than with a “this is your life-style” “roast”! Join the personifications of fellow identifiers (ISBN, DOI, ORCID, ISSN-L) as they celebrate the history, the drama, the accomplishments and joy around this important standard. Participants will bring these standards to life, feting our honoree. Attendees will come away with a better understanding of the significance of standard and its use today.
I am a librarian and a researcher in information science focusing on persistent identifiers, metadata quality, open science and digital preservation. I have been running the ISSN International Centre and coordinating its network of 93 member countries since 2014. I am a member of... Read More →
Regina Romano Reynolds is director of the U.S. ISSN Center and head of the ISSN Section at the Library of Congress. She was a member of the U.S. RDA Test Coordinating Committee and co-chaired the internal LC group that recommended LC projects based on the report of the Working Group... Read More →
Head, Serials Cataloging, University of Washington Libraries
Steve plans, organizes, and directs the work of the Serials Cataloging Unit at the UW Libraries. His background in serial standards began with his work as an ISSN Cataloger at the Library of Congress and currently serves as the coordinator of the CONSER Open Access Journals project... Read More →
In 2023, our Acquisitions department evaluated existing position descriptions for how well they met the current needs and challenges of the department and the broader library landscape. We found that staffing in our serials unit was still skewed toward print management even though over 80% of our subscriptions have moved to an electronic format. Several positions were redesigned to incorporate NASIG Core Competencies, especially related to the print and electronic resource life cycles. By using the core competencies to distribute print and electronic responsibilities among multiple staff members, we balanced the workload and prepared our area to better face future trends. This session will discuss the new position descriptions, the benefits of incorporating built-in cross-training, and how we worked with our campus HR office to build a job-family grid which provides opportunities for staff advancement.
This workshop is for library workers who want to get started on collection assessment, but who may not have the resources to launch large projects or programs. The workshop will guide participants through designing and acting on micro-assessment projects for library collections. A micro-assessment is a small collection assessment project aligned with your resources and your organizational priorities. It is tightly scoped and time-bound, designed to inform a specific collections decision or strategy. A thoughtfully designed micro-assessment can offer both actionable insights into your collections and valuable learning opportunities for library staff interested in collections work.
Through instructor-provided case studies and other exercises, workshop participants will practice (1) identifying narrowly focused, action-oriented collection micro-assessment projects; (2) scoping those micro-projects to align with available staff time and expertise; and (3) using small, manageable amounts of data to speak directly to a decision or action. Along the way, participants will learn practical tips for ensuring micro-assessments can also become the building blocks for a larger collection assessment program. As a final activity, participants will draft a micro-assessment proposal for their own institutions.
Helen McManus is the Head, Collections Strategy at George Mason University Libraries. Helen holds a PhD in Political Science and an MLIS, both from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has taught at George Mason University and The George Washington University.
"Diversity and Libraries: The Stigma of Mental Illness" describes the stigma of mental illness in libraries, regardless of strong diversity programs. The presenter will discuss the literature and the results of a short survey conducted by the presenter. The results of the survey will be analyzed and recommendations for improvement will be presented.
Acquiring electronic resources for academic libraries has evolved into a complex and multifaceted process. Juggling numerous requests from faculty, negotiating with vendors, managing budgets, and ensuring timely access. This presentation will explore how leveraging Jira, a robust project management software, can help you re-imagine the e-resource acquisition workflow, transforming it from a chaotic process into a streamlined and efficient operation. Jira, with its customizable workflows, robust tracking capabilities, and seamless communication features, provides a powerful platform for managing the entire lifecycle of e-resource acquisitions including trial workflows. We will delve into how Jira can be configured to: Streamline Request Processing Establish clear and concise workflows for each stage of the acquisition process, from initial request submission to final approval. Automate tasks, such as sending notifications and assigning requests. Utilize custom fields to capture essential information about each request, such as consortia options, trial availability, authentication method, usage statistics availability, VPAT availability and rating, and history of ILL requests. Enhance Communication and Collaboration Facilitate seamless communication and collaboration between library staff processing requests. Utilize built-in messaging and notification features to keep everyone informed about the status of requests and resolve issues promptly. Increase Transparency and Accountability Provide a clear and transparent view of the acquisition process for all stakeholders. Enhance accountability by tracking progress, identifying bottlenecks, and ensuring timely decision-making. By implementing Jira, libraries can significantly reduce staff burden, improve efficiency, and enhance the overall user experience. This presentation will provide practical tips and best practices for implementing Jira in an academic library setting, including customization options, and workflow design including trial workflows.
License agreements influence how libraries, students, researchers, and other users interact with electronic resources. A forthcoming open e-book by five law and licensing experts from institutions across the US – (“E-resource Licensing Explained,” to be published by ARL) – will empower academic librarians and library staff with licensing responsibilities to advocate for license terms that enable computational research. The guidebook includes easily-digestible legal explanations and pragmatic strategies for preserving rights that users already have under US copyright law, particularly in the face of restrictive license terms that would otherwise constrain or eliminate those rights. During this session, the guidebook’s co-authors and reviewers will share their own insights, challenges, and successes in negotiating for license agreements.
Head of Electronic Resources, University of Kentucky
Co-chair of the Continuing Education committee. You'll see me crocheting around the conference (most likely working on Christmas gifts). Ask me about crafting, my two greyhounds, coming in third-place on Jeopardy!, and all things electronic resources!
During the Fall and Winter quarters of 2024, librarians at UC Santa Cruz were faced with the challenge of tracking perpetual access for titles canceled for an ongoing serial cancellation project due to a budget shortfall. This required consolidating information from various spreadsheets and other sources, some of which were still being updated. This session will review the tracking process that we used, including how we consolidated the perpetual access information, how we verified our access with vendors, how we addressed subscriptions with print + online coverage and share tips for if another library is faced with this type of project.
The proliferation of open access business models has left libraries a step behind in the management of open access business processes. Open access support is often reliant on fragmented infrastructure. The institutional cost of open access is not limited to covering author-side payments or financially supporting fee-free open access publishing. There is an often-unrecognized labor issue. The lack of industry standard metadata and reporting mechanisms for open access business processes across the various stakeholders (e.g., libraries, publishers, data and infrastructure providers) has led libraries to individually develop manual workflows that stitch together disparate publisher dashboards, manual reporting mechanisms, data platforms, and their own institutional systems. In many libraries, supporting open access is new work that is covered by existing staff without additional resources to support the ever-increasing workload. Where this work is done in libraries, and by whom, can vary widely. This session will highlight how The Ohio State University Libraries is addressing the challenges of supporting open access in a landscape bereft of open access business process standards. This session will explore what steps stakeholders from libraries, publishers, and infrastructure providers might take together to operationalize open access business processes in a coordinated move away from individualized, manual labor heavy, legacy workflows still mired in a subscription world.
The common team structure within libraries, especially in technical services, can often lead to silos of processes as well as knowledge about our systems and our collections. With modern library service platforms (LSPs), it is important to recognize the interconnected system of records, specifically acquisitions and cataloging records. If this is neglected, it will negatively impact the data quality and the functionality of the catalog and ultimately, will affect the ability to collect data from LSP in any useful way. This presentation will examine causes of segmented workflows and provide guidance on overcoming silos and developing cross-departmental relationships to improve workflows and productivity. Strategies for collaborative workflows including examples of governance groups, shared documentation, tracking and others will be given.
