2024 Core Forum

As the role of the library continually evolves to serve all ages of lifelong learners, careful consideration and planning in design allows your organization to shine as a true, multi-generational community asset. While the professional world grapples with the nuances of a "five-generation workplace," libraries are uniquely tasked with serving the full population not just as a library, but as a flexible community center. Doing so successfully requires a level of adaptability and creativity that begins with the built environment and supports and enhances programming, planning and services long into the future. Nationally, a number of library systems are adopting hybrid partnership models that further blur this line between traditional library, community center and senior center through blended funding methods and creative wide-reaching partnerships. Whether your system is on the leading edge of pioneering new possibilities or enacting small, incremental changes locally, our team of library and design professionals will inspire creativity and energy to improve the lives of your community members of all ages.   Viewed through the lens of recently-opened and currently in-design library projects, as well as national perspectives on emerging best practices, topics will include diversity, equity and inclusion, accessibility, patron awareness, organizational partnerships and advocacy.

The session will discuss ongoing work to streamline a workflow for preparing collections for digitization. In managing the digitization workflow, preservation staff noted that substantial time was spent on resolving vendor and staff questions caused by lack of sufficient detail in the minimal metadata spreadsheets prepared pre-digitization. At the same time, digitization projects were experiencing setbacks when condition issues with the original material were not addressed early enough in the project. It became apparent that improved metadata and preservation planning would result in a more efficient workflow overall.

Streamlining the workflow has also facilitated goals beyond meeting the requirements for successful digitization. Revisiting pre-digitization metadata creation has helped ensure that this work aligns with digital collections metadata requirements, thereby improving the usefulness of the spreadsheets beyond managing digitization. Revising the workflow also offered a chance to incorporate basic preservation activities and advocate for larger improvements for the original material as part of digitization projects. The poster will discuss the collaboration between departments in Preservation and Cataloging & Metadata Services to improve the digitization workflow as well as how lessons learned continue to revise the workflow.

Embedding EDI into organizations requires strategic tools and practical approaches to create impact and represent diverse individuals and equity seeking groups. Our organization has undertaken several projects to address issues of inequality and access. These efforts have been coordinated by the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Strategist, the Community Engagement Librarian and the DEIA committee. Examples include hosting a Drag Story Time in collaboration with the Campus Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office, expanding and developing more formal prayer spaces in the library with the Muslim Student Association, hosting a Library Night @ Varsity Volleyball with Athletics and Recreation, having our local public library’s Bookmobile weekly stop on campus, creating a pronoun usage guide, developing diverse library displays and reading lists to represent cultural observances during the year and a Black History Month reading event.

Discovery products providing a single search interface to library collections have become industry standard in large academic libraries since their emergence in the late 2000's.  The process and parameters by which libraries select and evaluate these products is, however, neither standardized nor well represented in the literature.  This presentation begins to fill in gaps by discussing libraries' procurement processes and assessment methods including usability studies, drawn from both the literature and real life.  Presenters proceed by offering insights into how commercial discovery products use more standardized and proven metadata schemas like MARC, gleaned from mapping metadata for implementations of EDS (EBSCO Discovery Services) and Primo (Ex Libris).  It concludes by offering a preview of novel research using metadata to benchmark the precision and relevance of search results from proprietary discovery products, reinforcing the importance of maintaining the integrity and accessibility of legacy metadata.

Representatives from the committee and other practitioners will discuss the latest news and questions about browser technology changes, troubleshooting, Federated Credential Management (FedCM), results from the 2023 Library Automation Perceptions Survey, and whatever is on the audience's mind. How are changes affecting your institution's current authentication system? How are resource vendors responding? Ask questions and make suggestions. If we can't address your concern in the session, we'll make sure the Core Authentication and Authorization Committee gets details out to the community in future communications. The FA Committee web page has resources that provide an understanding of authentication technology from foundational to expert. This session follows up on previous information sessions at ALA and Core Forum

Explore how artificial intelligence can revolutionize libraries by enhancing accessibility, streamlining operations, and fostering community connections. In this session, Brian Pichman will share innovative AI applications tailored for libraries, focusing on open and transparent solutions that empower both public and academic institutions. Discover strategies for integrating AI technologies in marketing, user interaction, and information dissemination, ensuring libraries remain at the forefront of knowledge and technology in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

While many associate creativity with individual work in the fine arts, creativity–the development of a valuable new product, idea, or problem solution–is vital to innovation, solving problems, and facilitating change. While some elements of creativity are dependent on a person’s inherent interests and abilities, creativity is significantly influenced by a person’s context. In other words, an individual’s creativity largely depends on whether their environment supports creative work. Creativity is constantly demanded of libraries as they face challenges and bans, technological changes, and fluctuations in the characteristics and interests of their user populations. While the value of creativity may seem obvious, the practices needed to cultivate it in the workplace are less understood. This presentation will draw on both quantitative and qualitative data collected by the presenter from academic library staff and leaders over the last several years to identify barriers that both library staff and leaders face when trying to cultivate a creative work environment. It will then provide attendees with specific strategies that can contribute to a work environment that encourages creativity among employees while countering destructive environmental elements that can contribute to bullying, low morale, and burnout.