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.
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.
