Good morning from Calgary.  The Designing Libraries for the 21st Century conference wraps up here today. This short event has been packed with fabulous presentations and opportunities for useful conversations. There’s something particularly heartening about hearing people who are deeply engaged in digital initiatives — for example Joan Lippincott of CNI, James Mullins of Purdue and Jim Neal of Columbia — speak about the physical realm of research libraries. The presentations will be available on the conference website within the next two weeks.

It’s been interesting to reflect on Queen’s “Library of the 21st Century” planning that resulted in the building of Stauffer Library and the renovation of Douglas almost twenty years ago, and the welcoming environments we have in all of our physical facilities. Those involved in developing them had great foresight, and that’s our charge as well as we think about the changes of the past two decades and those ahead in the 21st century.

As helpful as it has been to be here, I’m looking forward to getting back to Kingston and the scent of lilacs in the air. I hope you all have a wonderful May long weekend.

May is a busy period of many external meetings. The ARL meeting was followed closely by the OCUL Directors Spring Meeting in Waterloo, beginning May 9th with a meeting of the Executive and concluding Friday afternoon with a tour of the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Topics included copyright, the report of the Citation Management Task Group, and developments in Scholars Portal repository services. A meeting synopsis and documents will be available in the next few weeks. Margaret Haines became Chair of OCUL following this meeting and I was appointed Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect for 2012-2014.

CARL Directors are meeting in Calgary May 14th to 16th. Amongst the topics under discussion will be concerns about the effect of the recent federal budget cuts on the programming of Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Pam Bjornson and I will facilitate a session on developments in research data management initiatives, and half a day will be devoted to CARL strategic planning. I’ve been elected to the CARL Board and begin my two-year term at the end of this meeting.

Many of us will be staying on in Calgary for the Designing Libraries for the 21st Century Conference, May 16th to 18th.  There will be tours of the Taylor Family Digital Library and the program promises to be inspiring, informative and particularly helpful for our own space planning process.

The 160th ARL Membership Meeting just wrapped up in Chicago with a renewed call to action for ‘collective collections.’ The Task Force on 21st Century Research Library Collections has written a very brief paper summarizing issues and challenges of building 21st century collections and emphasizing new models of networked collections, teamwork and collaboration across institutions.  The paper observes that “Twentieth-century research library collection were defined by local holdings, hailed as distinctive and vast” and now, “as libraries transition from institution-centric collections to a user-centric networked world, distributed collections should grow correspondingly.” Strategic discussion points include the behaviour of scholars/researchers, content, publishing and infrastructure. The paper will be posted soon on the ARL website.

The only disappointment of the meeting was that the session I was to convene this morning had to be cancelled. It would have been an honour to introduce speaker Clifford Lynch (thunderstorms prevented his arrival), who was going to discuss scholarly identity issues and developments. Discussions around scholarly identity are bringing attention to a number of critical issues relating to the sharing of faculty research, profiles and interests. Fortunately we did hear a bit on this topic from Deanna Marcum, now Managing Director of ITHAKA S+R, who spoke about ORCID (Open Researcher & Contributor ID). “ORCID aims to solve the author/contributor name ambiguity problem in scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current author ID schemes.” What does this mean to us? It relates to efforts to support researchers in sharing and connecting and to generally improving access to information, like DOI does at the article level.

In the realm of public policy, there is considerable tension around US copyright, with the reconvening of a Section 108 Study Group to consider changes to section 108 of the US Copyright Law. Promotion and adoption of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries will continue, and I had a brief conversation with one of the facilitators about how it might be adapted for the Canadian context when Bill C-11 passes. ARL has launched a Joint Task Force on Services to Patrons with Print Disabilities, in response to the Report of the Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities (2011). Our own work in relation to the AODA Information and Communication Standard will be useful for this group, and vice versa.

One of the best sessions of the meeting was “Open Scholarship: The Impact on Research, Teaching and Learning.” The Canadian speaker we had recommended for the session, Parminder Raina of McMaster University, was excellent.  He talked about the open data aspects of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, for which he is the Lead Principal Investigator. Other speakers discussed open education resources and digital humanities as forms of open scholarship that make information and creative works easily available to the world community. All of this relates to our libraries’ emerging roles in e-research and e-course services and open access to information.

I’m sure there are things to catch up on back on campus and I’m looking forward to being back there Monday. Have a good first weekend of May!

Can you spell F-U-N? Thanks to Kim and her partners in spelling crime Michele, Jeff and Lucinda, and judges Darlene, Amy and Professor Tracy Ware, the 3rd annual Libary Teem Spelling Bee was a morning of great camaraderie and effervescence. Wordwizard Walls produced a word list that was far from banal. Michele kindly stepped in as MC, for Jeff had to abnegate the role. He sounded as poorly as someone with bronchopneumonia. The spellers appeared insouciant after the first round (though never lackadaisical), until they found themselves in a quandary. All were assiduous, never acidulous. Lucinda was as gentle as a zephyr yet as implacable as a sergeant in the effort to propagate Canadian spelling, noting that “the American is not tolerated.” That was her prerogative. She and the judges were never capricious. Unfortunately nobody wore knickerbockers, played a ukulele, did a pirouette or brought along a whirligig. Fortunately there was no need for a catafalque. And nobody became lachrymose, for there is no ignominy at a libary spelling bee. Congratulations to the tenacious team of Patrick, Sam and Susan. And now, best wishes to Sam, Jane and Lucinda at Kingston Literacy’s Grate Groan-Up Spelling Bee!

This week held so many interesting events… Thank you to Gillian and WHOLE for organizing the fabulous talk by Professor Wendy Craig, whose research on bullying is so compelling. Thank you to Jeff Moon for leading the way with the Queen’s Research Data Centre, at the inaugural meeting of the new advisory committee and an informative session with the Statistics Canada staff responsible for the RDC program. And thank you to everyone who has provided me with feedback arising from the report of the Organizational Assessment Project Group — I’m very impressed with and grateful for the constructive comments I’ve received.

A particularly interesting initiative got under way this week, with the first meeting of the Campus Master Plan Advisory Committee. The initial work of this committee is to guide development of a new master plan, and then the committee is also responsible for ensuring implementation and follow-up strategies so that ongoing campus development is consistent with the campus master plan as a “living” document. As the planning unfolds there will be a website providing information for stakeholders, but meanwhile I thought you might be interested in a good recent example of a campus master plan: Cornell University’s Comprehensive Master Plan earned the Award of Excellence in urban design at the 2008 Design Exchange Awards event in Toronto.

“Interesting” in the challenging sense of the word has been the work of many in assessing the current situation surrounding Access Copyright and the model license agreement developed with AUCC. We hope to provide more information about this in coming days.

The Senate Library Committee had its last meeting of the academic year last Friday and discussed the Library user experience (brand idea) project, highlights of 2011-12, the report of the Organizational Assessment Project Group, and the need to review the committee’s mandate as part of a review of committees by the Senate Operations Review Committee. The latter will be the first task of the committee when it reconvenes in the fall.  As for Senate itself, see highlights from the April 17th meeting of Senate here.

OCUL recently provided an update on Scholars Portal’s “TDR” status. On January 16th, 2012, OCUL’s Scholars Portal Journal platform began the formal audit process to become certified as a Trustworthy Digital Repository, and an on-site visit was conducted on April 17th and 18th. The audit, being carried out by the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), will measure Scholars Portal’s administrative oversight; processes for digital object management; and infrastructure, security, & risk management strategies against the newly certified ISO 16363 standard.  CRL has previously conducted audits of Portico, HathiTrust, and, most recently, Chronopolis. For more information see:  http://www.ocul.on.ca/node/1219.

Tomorrow there’s a free event that I’m sure will be well worth attending at Kingston Frontenac Public Library (Central Library – Wilson Room) – Shelter: a journey with poetry.  Poets Mary Cameron, Eric Folsom (Kingston’s Poet Laureate), Joanne Page and Carolyn Smart will read new works inspired by Frances Greenslade’s novel Shelter. I’m particularly looking forward to it, as this is the book I’ve been assigned for this year’s Kingston Reads event.  See you there?

Queen’s draft Strategic Research Plan 2012-2017 was discussed at Senate this week. It’s been very interesting listening to and participating in many discussions leading to this document, and gratifying to see the section on libraries and technology (p.21-22) and an observation in the research cluster of society, culture and human behaviour (p.37):

7.1 Libraries and Technology

Libraries and information technologies represent a key component of research infrastructure, essential for facilitating the creation, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Since its inception, Queen’s has seen the wisdom of investing in its libraries and researchers have collaborated with librarians to develop excellent research collections, services and facilities. In recent years, the internet and other advances in technology have provided unparalleled opportunities for expanding the availability of research, and libraries have worked collaboratively to leverage those opportunities. The Queen’s Library collections have vastly expanded with the digital environment and the CFI-supported Canadian Research Knowledge Network and other consortia. Now, and moving forward, facilitating access to knowledge encompasses more than scholarly publications; it relates to a range of needs and opportunities for e-research.

E-research encompasses all digital research creation and output. Specifically, it comprises data production and curation, computational science, high speed networks, high performance computing and storage, social networking, publishing and the use of physical spaces for social interaction.(28) Queen’s researchers must be able to participate fully in the emerging e-research paradigm which enhances discovery, excites interdisciplinary exploration and deepens research impact world-wide.

Working together and in collaboration with regional and national groups, the Library and IT Services envision a seamless distributed infrastructure of services for the deposit and repurposing of data. There is a strong foundation on which to build these initiatives. As a participant in the Ontario Scholars Portal, Queen’s is already part of an advanced data infrastructure. Scholars Portal stores and provides access to over 11 million journal articles, has developed a robust numeric data infrastructure and a geospatial portal, and is developing new research data infrastructure as a member of the International Polar Year Data Assembly Centre Network. Scholars Portal is in the final steps towards ISO certified Trusted Digital Repository status. Locally, Queen’s has substantial experience, such as the HPCVL, a Statistics Canada Research
Data Centre and a strong social sciences data service in the Library where staff perform data mark-up, storage and retrieval. As well, Queen’s has the advantage of a network of liaison librarians deeply embedded in Faculties who can help bridge the researcher to their discipline resources and help with connections across the research spectrum. In recent years, there has been growing activity and interest amongst researchers in the storage, mark-up and retrieval of research data. We also have outstanding physical libraries that already provide vibrant community space and could be further enhanced as collaborative research space.

Access to scholarly publications will be no less important, but it will not be limited to those purchased from publishers and will include research output made available in Open Access models. Such models provide rapid, free access over the internet to works that scholars have traditionally produced without expectation of payment. Many academic institutions are supporting Open Access by building digital repositories to distribute faculty scholarly articles and other research outputs that are also peer-reviewed and published. At Queen’s, the QSpace repository delivers theses, articles and special collections to scholars world-wide, and the Open Journal System service provides a platform for publishing online journals. As a member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Queen’s supports the principles of Open Access and the exploration of new income models for peer-reviewed scholarly publishing.(29) With many governments adopting policies to make publicly funded research freely available, Open Access has grown beyond a movement to an emerging imperative, and no doubt will increasingly shape the way in which research will be undertaken in the future.

28 ARL/DLF E-Science Institute, http://www.arl.org/rtl/eresearch/escien/escieninstitute/index.shtml
29 Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice, http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/papers/imguide.shtml

…

Of particular importance to the vibrancy of the research carried out in this cluster is a high-quality University intellectual infrastructure (libraries, colloquia, visiting scholar series, performing arts centre) and the time dedicated to creative thought and dialogue.

Good to see many of you at the all staff meeting yesterday. The brief slides that accompanied my comments are posted on the QUL Staff Website, at the bottom of this page: http://staff.library.queensu.ca/rap.  As discussed, please continue to provide me with comments flagging anything you see as potential issues or benefits of the proposed organizational structure changes.

Have a good weekend, and study your dictionnairy for Tuesday’s spelling bee!

If you’re looking for inspiration in the next few weeks, I suggest doing what I did yesterday afternoon: attend a session of the Three Minute Thesis Competition. Each one of the amazing grad students seemed to be saying “my research is so cool!” and I agreed. One of my favourites was a woman who explained her research on dark matter and then finished with a flourish — “and that’s  why I love physics.” Next week I’ll be on the panel of non-specialist judges, probably wishing I could give everyone a 10.

Another very interesting few hours for me this week was a visit with Meg Einarson to Fort Frontenac, where we were invited for lunch and a tour of the library with our hosts. We were fortunate to run into the director, Major Andrew Godefroy, who provided a wealth of information about the library and its role in the army’s advanced officer development programs and the army’s research and development work. I learned that some of their library users are Queen’s students and faculty.

Meg and I also attended a meeting of the Library Advisory Committee for the Humanities and Social Sciences this week to provide information on fundraising priorities. We’re planning to provide a broader update for all staff, but essentially we talked about the repackaging of priorities stated in our budget document two years ago and for the Queen’s campaign. Sandra and Katie are working on the design of a new online giving section of the library website that will appear prominently on the homepage and align with a library section of Advancement’s online giving site, which Meg is working on.

The Library User Experience Project we’ve been working on with Marketing & Communications is coming along nicely. The project group met this week to review a report of the findings of focus groups held a few weeks ago, and that’s now posted on the group’s page on the QUL Staff Web. A teaser: “Several participants identified the helpfulness of the staff as the best thing about the Library.” This focus group report isn’t the final report: the next stage is for Marketing & Communications to review the findings and provide advice on ways to apply the themes in our communications. We’ll be receiving that report later in April.

In case you haven’t seen it through other channels, I’d like to point out this upcoming forum: Alan Harrison, Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic), is hosting an open discussion for the Queen’s community about the university’s new budget model, just prior to the next scheduled Senate meeting on April 17, at 2:30 in Robert Sutherland Hall, Rm. 202. RSVP to provost@queensu.ca.  In the OUL we’re continuing our work of gathering information and input for the development of the model and will be engaging in discussions with the group of faculty business officers late next week.

For an end-of-week treat, I recommend taking a break in the W.D. Jordan Special Collections & Music Library to see the marvelous display, Charles Dickens at 200: A Celebration of the Author and the Dickens Collection at Queen’s. The display was created by professors Shelley King and Catherine Harland of the English Department and Pam Manders, and draws on the library’s wonderful Dickens collection. There will be further information appearing to promote the display, which will continue until December.

I’ve had a chance to look around a few other academic libraries recently — McMaster in some detail and Johns Hopkins at a glance — and always appreciate the feeling of coming home to Queen’s. Every place has its strengths and weaknesses, including ours, but it always strikes me how much we have to be proud of at QUL: strong connections with our faculties, deep expertise in significant areas, engaged students, appreciative researchers, inviting physical spaces and more. That “more” includes our collaborative communities such as OCUL; for the latest OCUL Quarterly Newsletter, see http://www.ocul.on.ca/node/629 (do take a look — it’s always informative).

At the same time, there’s no resting on laurels. Earlier this week I attended a meeting of the SPARC Steering Committee meeting and the CNI spring membership meeting in Baltimore. The SPARC group is always impressive for its open access advocacy role, and the CNI sessions I attended read like signposts for our future:

• Reinventing the Research University to Serve a Changing World (James J. Duderstadt)
• National Status of Data Management: Current Research in Policy and Education
• Competing Priorities: Sustainability, Growth and Innovation in Digital Collections
• Creating the Digital Preservation Network
• Transforming Research Support Services
• Climate Data for Our Future: Acquired, Analyzed, Archived
• Too Big to Know (as in the book by that title, by David Weinberger)
• Key Trends in Teaching and Learning: Aligning What We Know About Learning to Today’s Learners (Phillip D. Long)

If you follow the links and would like any further details on the discussions, let me know.

The Library Leadership Team has been addressing more immediate matters, also interesting.  General questions about access to course materials for the Blyth-Queen’s International Studies Program are being addressed by Sharon Musgrave and Jane Philipps, with the idea that online access will cover most cases.  Our Copyright Advisor, Mark Swartz, is being drawn into interesting questions about copyright in this context of course delivery in other countries and their copyright laws.  In an entirely different matter, Michael Vandenburg is working with ITServices on their investigation into the viability of an electronic business project management (EBPM) solution for Queen’s. An EBPM solution is essentially enterprise content management software, and relates to our own discussions of content management for documents we produce and use in the library.  ITServices has contracted with Image Advantage to help them gather requirements for a potential solution.  We’re advocating for a system that would replace QShare with something more functional and easier to integrate digital content into our workflows, and at the same time account for any situations where print documents are being stored and used as part of our workflows.  LLT has also reviewed the information I’ve gathered for including library-related information in the planning for the new budget model, which I’m now turning into a document I’ll share later in the month.

With the long weekend approaching, I hope the immediate future holds some rest and relaxation for everyone.  I’ll be finishing a short book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who talks about “doing mode and being mode” and notes, “If we’re not careful, it is all too easy to fall into being more of a human doing than a human being…” I love a play on words, especially such a thoughtful one. I’ll leave you with that, and wishes for a happy holiday.

In this week’s discussions with the Library Leadership Team, I provided an update on the university’s developing integrated planning framework, based on discussions with the Provost and presentations at a recent Board meeting. I’ve asked the Provost if he would come to a library All Staff Meeting to talk about the integrated planning framework, including the basic premise of the new budget model, and he said he would be delighted. We’re now working on scheduling a date.  In the LLT, we discussed how this university framework and the annual goals set by the Principal impact the Library’s strategic planning, annual budget plans and individual action plans, and Library annual reports.  This is something we’ll be discussing further with unit heads.  We also pulled out a document I prepared for the Provost in September, with background and timelines for various library planning initiatives spanning 2011 to 2013. (You may remember in my presentation at the University Librarian’s All Staff Meeting last September I provided the draft timelines for these initiatives.)  That document is posted on the LLT’s Restructuring Action Plan page in the QUL Staff Website, under Planning Documents & Updates.

The Provost-Deans meeting this week started with a tour of the Law building, as Dean Flanagan was our host for the meeting. We looked at the classroom renovations on the lower level — those of you who attended the recent all staff meeting know what an improvement it is over days gone by — and also the classroom beside the library. The conversation there was noteworthy for library space planning. The previous e-classroom, which as you’ll recall had rows of computers, was described as far behind the times. Now, the technology highlight is videoconferencing, and users with laptops and wireless access are a given. A tour through the Library was planned but in the end we viewed it from the moot court a floor above the entrance. That conversation was noteworthy as well, for budget model planning — when costs are associated with spaces, the question is whether those costs are shared across all faculties or the responsibility of the faculty housing the library. I related the annual SNAILS issue — Students Not Actually In Law School use the space, sometimes to the chagrin of law students.

Two other items of interest at the Provost meeting and with the LLT are programs related to incoming first year students.  A new summer orientation and academic transition program for incoming first year students and their families is being planned, and Sharon Murphy will bring this to the Queen’s Learning Commons Services Team. Sharon is also involved in the second item, the implementation of the Queen’s Common Reading Program.  The program was proposed as a partnership among the Library, the Vice Provost and Dean of Student Affairs Office and the Kingston WritersFest. All incoming first year students will be invited to read a designated book over the summer prior to arrival on campus. The idea is to provide a common, intellectual and community building experience and stimulate discussions between students, faculty and staff. Stay tuned for further information.

The LLT reviewed and approved a proposal for a project group led by our E-Books Specialist, Leslie Taylor, to explore a variety of questions around the rapidly evolving e-book landscape and prepare an e-book strategy document that addresses those questions. Jane Philipps will be the project sponsor for the group, and a project charge will be posted on QUL Staff Website once it has been prepared.

I’ll be at McMaster University on Monday and Tuesday next week, as a member of the team asked to conduct the first formal review of the Library.  This will be similar to the periodic reviews of all academic programs that the University undertakes. Information about the review is posted on the Provost’s website. I’m looking forward to two very full and interesting days, starting with the team’s breakfast meeting with President Patrick Deane, someone I still like to think of as belonging at Queen’s.

This is such a busy period for everyone, and I’m sure like me you find that a lot of your work is heads-down immersion in various priorities. Frankly, sometimes there is so much going on, much of it repetitive, that I’m not sure what to highlight in these updates,  and often there are things I don’t share if they involve others (I can’t shake my pre-social media notions of privacy).  Writers block!  What to do…  Sometimes I plunk words into google just to see what happens and I’m often rewarded, as in this statement that reads like a great first line for a novel: “It’s barely the middle of March and the scorpions are out already.” Better to be in Kingston than Phoenix!

This week the Library Leadership Team met with Assessment Specialist Laurie Scott to review a draft project charge for a group to review current practices relating to statistics gathering and reporting. The idea is to complete a scan of all types of statistics being collected and reported across QUL and to develop a plan that will address a number of issues, including eliminating duplication and ensuring that staff time is not being spent unnecessarily.  This work relates to the broader priority of benchmarking and performance measures related to planning and assessment.  Laurie will be posting information relating to this work on the staff web shortly.

You may recall that last spring we had a visit from a large group from the Library at Carleton. The Library Leadership Team reviewed plans for another group visit this spring, this time from the University of Ottawa Library.  Barbara Teatero and Sharon Murphy will be making arrangements for a variety of activities for the visitors, who will be here May 11th.

With the new IPads coming available today, e-textbooks and the Campus Bookstore made the local TV news yesterday, on CKWS.  The comment that “students say they’re excited about the prospect of more e-reading for class” reminds me to mention a comment made by Professor Anne Godlewska in a presentation to the Board two weeks ago, talking about interactive teaching methods in one of her large geography courses. She noted that the availability of e-resources through the library makes it possible to rely less on textbooks. I often think about the shifts in ‘units’ of information that have already happened — e.g accessing single articles instead of whole journals, following the news in 40 character tweets –  and those still to come. Often the thinking on e-textbooks is that they won’t be ‘books’ at all, but interactive compilations of other units of information, but I wonder if they’re the last stage for a form of content (and student expensive) that just doesn’t make sense any more.

At the start of this week Barbara Teatero and I had the pleasure of spending a few hours chatting with the University Historian, Duncan McDowall. As you may know, he’s working on the next volume of Queen’s history, spanning the years 1961-2004. We talked about the themes he sees emerging from his research on the library and gave him many names of people to interview. He has already read Hilary Richardson’s history pieces and spoken with her. I promised to follow up with information about the broader library systems landscape impacting Queen’s in this period. I’m sure you’ll all enjoy this excerpt from Hilary’s  GEAC and the library, 1980-1988: “In March 1980 the GEAC 8000 computer was installed in the Douglas Library Data Processing Office… The so-called “minicomputer” and its disk drive were each about six feet tall and were nicknamed “Archie” and “Bunker.””  Funny that just down the road at McGill a few years later, Archie (this time related to Veronica and Jughead) would be the name given to an early search engine.  In my own ramblings through the history of library automation I’ve stumbled on Marshall Breeding’s wonderful graph of mergers and acquisitions. Fascinating in many ways and also good for a trip down memory lane to my first integrated library system RFP experience, early 1990s.  Anyone remember MultiLIS?  If you have sources of Queen’s library lore you’d like to share, let me or Barbara know.

Have a good weekend!