#er&l

Robin Champieux, the Scholarly Communications Librarian at OHSU, gave an excellent presentation at the ER&L Conference in Austin, TX a couple weeks ago. We’ve been getting a lot of requests for Robin’s presentation, and the slides are now available here. 

Electronic Resources and Libraries is pleased to congratulate Nora Burmeister, one of two student travel awards to attend ER&L in Austin, Feb 22-25. Read excerpts from Nora's winning essay and ...

Ah! I am so so so so so (ad infinitum) excited right now! I just got word I've been selected to receive a travel grant from Taylor and Francis to attend the Electronic Resources and Libraries conference in Austin, TX! I'm beyond thrilled. Libraries and technology are my two loves (aside from Sherlock and Eleven, of course) and I cannot wait to hob nob and match wits with brilliant librarians from around the country/world. 

Many of you will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day at the ER&L conference in Austin, TX this year. There are two session we wanted to let you know about.

First, Robin Champieux, Scholarly Communications Librarian for Oregon Health & Science University, is doing a session titled, "Across the Cycle and Beyond the PDF: Libraries and Librarians Innovating Scholarly Communication."

In this session Robin will talk about how librarians can be involved in their campus' scholarly communication efforts in new and and impactful ways. She will use several case studies to illustrate her points. As OHSU is a PlumTM Analytics customer, it will be interesting to see how she uses PlumXTM metric information for scholarly communication. (Monday, March 17, 4:00pm–4:45pm, Salon D/E)

If you cannot go to Austin this year, much of the conference, including Robin Champieux's session will be streamed live. For more information on the Live ER&L Conference go here.

The EBSCO sponsored lunch is also on Monday, March 17. During this lunch, Larry Traynor of Plum Analtyics will give an introduction to altmetrics and PlumX. (Monday, March 17, 11:45am-1:00pm 3rd floor Grand Ballroom)  Please RSVP here for lunch.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference was held March 17-20th. Along with several other colleagues from my institution, I attended virtually. Here are some of my [long overdue] conference highlights.

Conference Highlights

Day 1

Session: "Electronic Resources Workflow Analysis and Process Improvement"

Presenters

Rosalyn Raeford, Duke University

Beverly Dowdy, Duke University

Rosalyn Raeford and Beverly Dowdy spoke about how Duke University used a non-library solution (IBM’s Business Process Manager) to solve electronic resource workflow and transparency problems. It was interesting to hear how Duke is able to communicate and keep track of conversations within the BPM. This has allowed them to measure the amount of internal discussion required to move resources through the electronic resource life cycle. Although I am still not certain how (or if) Duke integrated BPM with their ILS (specifically their Acquisitions module for purchase orders and cost information), their talk provided insight on how implementing new systems can help identify and solve bottlenecks and quality issues.

Day 2

Session: "Getting to Know Your Electronic Resource Workflows"

Presenters

Rafael Escobar, University of Michigan

Emily Campbell, University of Michigan

While Raeford and Dowdy’s talk showed how a new tool/system can help identify workflow problems, Rafael Escobar and Emily Campbell discussed how they addressed gaps and inconsistencies in their electronic resource workflows at the University of Michigan through formally mapping them. Through one-on-one interviews and focus groups they created more than 20 Electronic Resource flow charts, established a staff responsibility matrix, and made network diagrams to visualize the impact of their work. Ultimately, the flow charts provided them with visual proof of which processes were over-complicated or causing duplicate work. The network diagrams then showed the dynamism of electronic resource work. Escobar and Campbell finished their workflow-mapping project in six months – which did not surprise me. It would have been interesting to see how they mapped some of the more unstable electronic resource workflows – such as access problem-shooting, where a variety of steps can be taken depending on the issue being reported.

Day 3

Keynote: "The Courage of Our Connections: Thoughts on Professional Identities, Organizational Affiliations and Common Communities (Keynote)"

Presenter

Rachel Frick, Digital Federation Association

Rachel Frick’s keynote talk pulled together a lot of the conference’s themes. It was engaging, and made me reflect on my own work and what I hope to do over the course of my career. She spoke about change in terms of the opportunities it creates, and encouraged networking and network-building. It wasn’t surprising that Frick touched on the growing influence of data (data-driven decision making, research data, data curation, and linked and open data), but I did appreciate that she asked attendees to separate the content from the container and to think creatively about how data is used and analyzed. Frick also argued for data and local content to be a part of everyone’s job – that we shouldn’t silo data/e-resource work to specific job descriptions. Instead, we need to harness the power of our local network. Frick also asked her audience to own the responsibility of the success and longevity of the library profession. We need to interact, lead and not just focus on what is easy to count. We can’t wait for other people to figure out what we should be and how we should move forward. Instead, library people need to collaborate and communicate with lots of different [non-MLIS] people and organizations. Frick finished her talk by stressing the importance of building in time to learn, play, and explore new ideas. 

Frick recommended the following books/resources during her talk:

Networked: the new social operating system by Harrison Rainie and Barry Wellman

"Breaking the barriers of time and space: the dawning of the great age of librarians" by T. Scott Plutchak

Too big to know : rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren't the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room by David Weinberger