The Authority File

Shifting funder mandates. Hybrid open publication. Institutional repositories. Libraries as publishers. These are just a few of the issues COUNTER’s Code of Practice (COP) 5 addresses. Learn how these items and others impact COUNTER reports and the ways librarians can demonstrate their value to their university administration and other stakeholders using new metrics in COP 5.

Institutional repositories are not part of the service package libraries have traditionally offered their patrons, but the institutional repositories at Utah State University and Illinois Wesleyan University have both recently celebrated their tenth anniversary and continue to support their library’s missions. In this episode, Dylan Burns and Stephanie Davis-Kahl discuss what it took to start the...

How can librarians motivate publishers of every shape and size to implement COUNTER compliant reporting on their products? Does a publisher ever adjust their subscription rate based on COUNTER usage statistics? Bill, Iris, Lorraine, and Stuart explore the answers to these questions and others relevant to publisher-library relations in this week’s episode.

In February of 2018, Choice released the first in a series of white papers designed to provide actionable intelligence on issues important to academic librarians. That white paper was titled, The Evolving Institutional Repository Landscape, and was written by this week’s guest Judy Luther. In this episode, Judy talks with Bill about the current state of the institutional repository: what instituti...

What did it take to build consensus on standards in the scholarly publishing marketplace? Who were the key players, and how did they motivate publishers, aggregators, and librarians to work together? This week, Bill dives into the history of COUNTER and uncovers a few gems about the people that worked tirelessly to bring digital standards to scholarly publishing.

In this episode, Lorraine Estelle of COUNTER, Stuart Maxwell of Scholarly IQ, and Iris Hanney of Unlimited Priorities discuss COUNTER credentialing and how the COUNTER standards allow libraries and publishers to assess value. They discuss the underlying logic of digital standards, and how consistency, credibility, and comparability are key to the development of standards in general.

This week Wendy Queen, Director of Project MUSE; Barbara Kline Pope, Director of Johns Hopkins University Press; Dean Smith, Director of Cornell University Press; and Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Research Data Management and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries offer their thoughts on the future of open publication and the tension between th...

Sayeed Choudhury of Johns Hopkins’ Sheridan Libraries details the collaboration between the library, JHU Press, MUSE Open, and the Black Press Research Collective. Together they are producing a “new aggregation” that connects primary sources and peer-reviewed scholarship across multiple platforms. Learn how that collaboration came about and why bringing in researchers’ voices was so important to s...

Open access publication in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is well established, though still a marginal percentage of the market, while in the humanities and social sciences, open publication is still in its infancy, without a firmly planted business model. Hear how Dean Smith, the publisher of Cornell University Press, navigates the sometimes fraught and binary pos...

Publishing open access used to mean posting the full text or a .pdf of a work online, but the world of open academic book publishing is growing new forms and containers as well as new business models. In episode 34, Wendy Queen, Director of Project MUSE, and Barbara Kline Pope, Director of Johns Hopkins University Press, weigh in on the promise of open academic books, the experiments shaking up tr...

This week, explore some of the tensions that spring from expanding the classroom beyond its physical confines and opening it up to anyone willing to put in the time and effort through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Does the amount of time instructors have to put into these classes match the educational outcomes for the participants? How far can the mission of an institution extend before fin...

What is cognitive load, and how does it affect student learning? Does video use increase or decrease the cognitive load on the part of the viewer? This week, Michael Carmichael of SAGE Publishing and Dr. Jeffrey Karpicke of Purdue University discuss the ways student behaviors and the environments in which they learn are shaping how they learn. They also discuss how presenting content through video...

From how-tos and brief explainers that break down complex concepts into bite-sized chunks of information to long-form documentaries and feature films, video has found its way into almost every corner of higher education. But what makes for a successful educational video, and how would we judge that success? This week Michael Carmichael, Video Publisher at SAGE, and Dr. Jeffrey Karpicke of Purdue U...

What do we know about students’ learning comprehension and video use? What do students say about their desire to interact with video in different types of learning environments? How are learners—from kindergarten students all the way up through adults—actually learning from videos, and how might video producers increase engagement with the videos being used in varied learning environments? These a...

What do academics and librarians get wrong about financial evaluation and assessment? Is there a difference? What is a book’s unit cost within the library, and why does it matter? How do a library’s public relation efforts dovetail with its finances? In this week’s episode Bill wraps up his conversation on library finances with University of West Florida Dean of Libraries, Robert Dugan, co-author...

How do institutional procurement policies impact spending? When is leasing a good option for libraries? When is buying? What parts of the budget should be allocated on a nine-month versus a twelve-month cycle? Robert Dugan, co-author of the ACRL title, Financial Management in Academic Libraries: Data-Driven Planning and Budgeting, walks listeners through the warren of budgeting, procurement, and r...

Why is a library’s budget a political document? Dean of the University Libraries at the University of West Florida and author of the recent book, Financial Management in Academic Libraries, Robert Dugan, explains in this week’s episode that budgets express how library management prioritizes services and programs. Without unlimited resources, libraries have to rank what they do and then commit to d...

When the decision is made to consolidate the map room or to reallocate the microform and microfiche space to lounge seating, how are those decisions made and why? In this week’s episode, Dean of the University Libraries at the University of West Florida and author of the recent book, Financial Management in Academic Libraries, Robert Dugan, details the process of developing a strategic plan for a...

In a world of fluid authorship and textual explosion, the very definition of a document is evolving in unexpected and exciting ways. Old categories give way to new, and items that seemed clearly outside the bounds of textuality are finding their way into the mix. Sound, video, and games all inform our understanding of texts. In this week’s retrospective episode Joe Janes, the author of the book Do...

With data breaches like those that struck Equifax, Target, and a host of organizations varying from industrial to governmental, how can libraries best protect their patrons data and, more fundamentally, their privacy? When is it ok to pass along data to a vendor? What policies best reflect the ideals and values of libraries and librarians? In this retrospective episode, Bobbi Newman and Bonnie Tij...

How do you increase the library’s profile and usefulness for freshmen students? Raymond Pun and Meggan Houlihan, authors of The First Year Experience Cookbook, published by ACRL, offer some ideas on collaborating with other organizations on campus, coordinating activities for freshmen around information literacy, and tools for strengthening librarians’ instructional services. In this special retro...

Leslie Madden, Laura Carscaddon, and Denita Hampton talk with Mark Derks about how library managers can navigate change in their libraries and help their employees approach change with positive attitudes.

Leslie Madden, Laura Carscaddon, and Denita Hampton talk with Mark Derks about constructing work teams and Eileen Wasserman’s methods for respectful interaction in the workplace.

Mark Derks continues his conversation with Leslie Madden, Laura Carscaddon, and Denita Hampton. They discuss the Meyers-Briggs Personality Type test and team-building tips from their experience at Georgia State University Library.

Mark Derks, filling in for Bill Mickey, talks with Leslie Madden, Laura Carscaddon, and Denita Hampton about their recent book, Now You’re a Manager. They share lessons from their journey into management, and how they worked their way up to their current roles.