Hesburgh Libraries Research Articles

Product Ownership of a Legacy Institutional Repository

Many academic libraries have developed and/or purchased digital systems over the years, including digital collection platforms, institutional repositories, and other online tools on which users depend. At Hesburgh Libraries, as with other institutions, some of these systems have aged without strong guidance and resulted in stale services and technology. This case study will explore the lengthy process of stewarding an aging service that satisfies critical external needs. Starting with a brief literature review and institutional context, the authors will examine how the current product owners have embraced the role of maintainers, charting a future direction by defining a clear vision for the service, articulating firm boundaries, and prioritizing small changes. The authors will conclude by reflecting on lessons learned and discussing potential future work, both at the institutional and professional level.

A workflow for workflows: Case management at the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries

The University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries strives to be a transformative research library that acquires, preserves, organises and stewards knowledge in all forms. This includes the creation of digital collections using rare, unique and/or high-interest materials. Prior to the efforts described in this paper, there was a great deal of siloing among the different units charged with stewarding the digital collection process at Hesburgh Libraries. The Digital Collections Workflow (DCW) team was convened as a way to bridge the gaps between units to improve efficiency and reduce redundancy. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the state of digital collections work at the Hesburgh Libraries before, during and after the DCW process. The authors will discuss in detail the design and implementation of the case manager methodology and the Digital Collections Oversight team that was born out of the DCW discussions.

A workflow for workflows: Case management at the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries

A workflow for workflows: Case management at the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries

Product Owners at Hesburgh Libraries: Increasing Stakeholder Engagement and Accountability through Continuous Organizational Enhancement

The hierarchical decision making structure of academic libraries and consequently established cultural norms can affect the implementation of project management, hindering effective stakeholder engagement and ongoing ownership of and accountability for library products and services. The Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame offers a strategy for navigating structural issues which emphasizes making incremental organizational changes that empower agile decision making responsive to stakeholder demands at appropriate levels. This study, a discussion of the Libraries’ experience, focuses on the implementation of one specific role designed to improve the development and maintenance of library products and services, the product owner.

Using NLP to Generate MARC Summary Fields for Notre Dame ’s Catholic Pamphlets

Three NLP (Natural Language Processing) automated summarization techniques were tested on a special collection of Catholic Pamphlets acquired by Hesburgh Libraries. The automated summaries were generated after feeding the pamphlets as .pdf files into an OCR pipeline. Extensive data cleaning and text preprocessing were necessary before the computer summarization algorithms could be launched. Using the standard ROUGE F1 scoring technique, the Bert Extractive Summarizer technique had the best summarization score. It most closely matched the human reference summaries. The BERT Extractive technique yielded an average Rouge F1 score of 0.239. The Gensim python package implementation of TextRank scored at .151. A hand-implemented TextRank algorithm created summaries that scored at 0.144. This article covers the implementation of automated pipelines to read PDF text, the strengths and weakness of automated summarization techniques, and what the successes and failures of these summaries mean for their potential to be used in Hesburgh Libraries.

How to Move a Mountain: The Preparation and Transfer of One Million Volumes to an Off-Site Storage Facility

ABSTRACTIn late 2013, Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame embarked on an audacious journey to renovate its iconic fourteen-story building. Driven by an immediate pressing need to reduce the footprint of physical collections in the library, a massive project commenced in the fall of 2014 to prepare approximately one million volumes for transfer to an off-site high-density mobile shelving storage facility. The project was carried out in two large phases that involved coordination of work and schedules between the renovation committee, vendors, and multiple library teams, including the Collections Preparation Team that was responsible for ensuring that all items moving off-site had accurate catalog records and were barcoded. This article provides background information about putting the project together and describes how the work to prepare titles for transfer was organized and completed under a very short deadline.

Managing Library Software Development: A Case Study in Developing an Inventory Management System for Off-Site Storage Using an Outside Contractor

Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame established an off-site storage facility in 2015, with only one year to transfer 450,000 items. This necessitated the implementation of an inventory management system (IMS) to track the location of and efficiently retrieve individual items. After conducting an environmental scan of other institutions, the library decided to develop an open source IMS and to contract a developer for the purposes of implementing a working prototype. Working with a contractor required a well-planned development process and a close working relationship. This article describes the project management challenges, development workflow, and lessons learned.

Catholic Pamphlets at the Hesburgh Libraries

Catholic Pamphlets at the Hesburgh Libraries

The Future is Flexible, Extensible, and Community-Based: Stories of Successful Electronic Resources Management

Centralized Online Resources Acquisitions and Licensing (CORAL) is an open source electronic resources management system originally developed by the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries. The CORAL system consists of five modules designed to manage the library electronic resources life-cycle, including licensing and contact information, procurement and activation workflow, usage statistics, and the storage of documentation. CORAL was designed as a flexible and customizable management system, with the ability to utilize each module independently or as a suite to maintain the electronic resources management needs of individual institutions. Scott Vieira of Rice University, Steve Oberg of Wheaton College, and Andrea Imre of Southern Illinois University Carbondale present on the functionality of CORAL and demonstrate the system’s flexibility and extensibility in managing library electronic resources.

CORAL: Implementing an Open-Source ERM System

The presenters focused on the benefits and challenges of implementing an open-source electronic resource management (ERM) system called Centralized Online Resource Acquisitions and Licensing (CORAL) at their libraries. Originally developed by the University of Notre Dame's Hesburgh Libraries, CORAL offers libraries the option to reorganize ERM workflows and collect information about their electronic resources into one central place without having to commit funding for new software from the ever-shrinking library budget. CORAL currently includes four modules: Organizations, Resources, Licensing, and Usage Statistics. In addition to the challenges that are faced in any ERM system implementation, such as collecting and preparing data and training staff, issues specific to using an open-source application in an academic library were presented.

Charting a Course through CORAL: Texas A&M University Libraries' Experience Implementing an Open-Source Electronic Resources Management System

In 2010, after two previous unsuccessful attempts at electronic resources management system (ERMS) implementation, Texas A&M University (TAMU) Libraries set out once again to find an ERMS that would fit its needs. After surveying the field, TAMU Libraries selected the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries–developed, open-source ERMS, CORAL (Centralized Online Resources Acquisitions and Licensing). This article documents the selection, planning, and implementation of CORAL at the Texas A&M University Libraries as well as future plans for the system.

Using Appreciative Inquiry to Support a Culture Shift in Transition

The authors explore the appreciative inquiry framework and its potential value for supporting staff and faculty during a transition leading up to and for the year following the hire of a new University Librarian. Appreciative inquiry occurs in four distinct phases: discovery, dream, design, and destiny, known as the 4-D model; currently the Hesburgh Libraries are between stages 3 and 4. The authors define the appreciative inquiry framework and its four phases; provide a context for the current cultural environment, and discuss major recommendations made at all employee levels during a baseline strategic planning process, the introduction of a balanced scorecard approach and the results of an internal climate survey—all of which pointed to the need for a major culture shift in the libraries; and finally, apply the appreciative inquiry framework to explore how the needed changes identified can be supported during the leadership transition.

Relevance of Library Collections for Graduate Student Research: A Citation Analysis Study of Doctoral Dissertations at Notre Dame

This study focused on determining the extent to which collections of the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame met the needs of graduate students. This study data (2005–2007) consisted of a citation analysis of 248 dissertations and focused on the following questions: What were the graduate students citing in their dissertations? Did the library own the cited items? How did the disciplines compare in their citation patterns? The data showed that over 90 percent of the 39,106 citations were to books and journals. The libraries owned 67 percent of the items graduate students cited in their dissertations. The libraries owned 83 percent of the Arts & Humanities, 90 percent of the Engineering, 92 percent of the Science, and 75 percent of the Social Sciences sources in the top 1,000 most cited titles, indicating a need for funding for further development of Social Sciences collections in the Hesburgh Libraries.

Graduate Students and the Library

This study sought to determine the extent to which the Hesburgh Libraries of the University of Notre Dame meets the needs of its graduate students. It focused on how Notre Dame graduate students found research materials and how useful the Hesburgh Libraries’ collections were in their research and studies. Information gathered through this project indicates the level of usefulness of library resources and collections for one of its main constituents—graduate students. Graduate students’ contacts with the library, regardless of method, were almost always for their own research pursuits, not for faculty research. Graduate students at Notre Dame had more limited contacts with librarians and with library outreach research services. Most respondents (62.8 percent) preferred to use remote access to obtain copies of electronic items identified as relevant to their research. Across the board, however, graduate students were generally satisfied with the various library services. The survey showed that 44.6 percent and 41.1 percent of the respondents rated the library as “very useful” and “useful,” respectively, in their research. The data collected has provided a better understanding of graduate student research behavior, methods of library access, and levels of satisfaction with library resources, which will inform local practices and has the potential to do the same at other institutions of higher learning nationwide.

Citation Patterns of the Faculty of the Anthropology Department at the University of Notre Dame

This study sought to determine the extent to which the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame meet the needs of the anthropology faculty. It did that by focusing on how useful the University Libraries’ collections were in their research and publications. This article describes both the methodology employed and the findings of this citation analysis. The study looked at the following questions: What were the faculty of the anthropology department at the University of Notre Dame citing in their published research? Where were they publishing their research? Did the library own these cited items and the publications in which the faculty were publishing? The study found that the anthropology faculty's citations overall were 47 percent and 45 percent book and journal citations, respectively. In addition, the library owned only 41.48 percent of the items anthropology faculty were citing in their research. This study also found that the library owned 72 percent of the publications in which anthropology faculty publishe...

Missing Items: Automating the Replacement Workflow Process

Academic libraries handle missing items in a variety of ways. The Hesburgh Libraries of the University of Notre Dame recently revamped their system for replacing or withdrawing missing items. This article describes the new process that uses a customized database to facilitate efficient and effective communication, tracking, and selector decision making for large numbers of missing items.