Institute For Museum And Library Services Research Articles

Assessment of the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL): Impact on the Research Productivity and Careers of Academic Librarians

Objective – This article reports the survey findings from a mixed-methods assessment of the six-year Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL). The Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provided funding for IRDL from 2014-2019; during this time, 124 academic and research librarians participated in a year-long continuing education program for novice researchers. This article assesses the effectiveness of IRDL in meeting short-term and long-term goals related to research productivity, job performance, and identity as a researcher. Beyond the assessment of IRDL itself, the study addresses the implications of IRDL for creating effective research continuing education programs and institutional support for librarian research. Methods – In the first part of a two-phase study, we surveyed all 124 librarians who completed the in-person summer research workshop and year-long online follow-up program. The lead researcher invited those who completed the survey to participate in the study's second phase, a focus group or an in-depth interview. Results – Eighty-nine participants responded to the survey, for a 72% response rate. The results show that IRDL was successful in helping a majority of participants complete their IRDL project and conduct new research. Participants reported work-related benefits of participating in the program, including tenure, rank promotion, merit-based salary increases, and new employment opportunities. IRDL contributed to developing personal learning networks, research collaborations, and a sense of identity as a researcher. IRDL increased the research confidence of the participants by providing them with research methods instruction, coupled with an opportunity to practice what they have learned during a year-long support program. Conclusion – This assessment study confirms that IRDL is an effective program for novice librarian-researchers who want to improve their research skills, develop new research relationships among their peers, and advance in their careers. It also provides insight into the conditions for a successful continuing education and research support program. Many librarians experience anxiety about conducting and disseminating their research; IRDL demonstrates the importance of placing novice researchers in a supportive environment, where research is viewed as a positive experience that is directly related to professional success. These experiences lead to increased confidence and identity as a researcher, which contributes to increased research productivity.

Breaking Down Barriers Through the Creation of an International Digital Library for Children

A research project, begun in the fall of 2002, expects to tap the potential of the Internet for breaking down barriers and building tolerance and understanding through access to exemplary children’s books from all over the world. The creation of the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) is the focus of a five-year project being conducted by the University of Maryland/College Park and the Internet Archive with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). This paper describes the project, discusses initial research findings and outlines the direction of ongoing research.
 Jessica Anthony, and Brewster Kahle

DRAS-TIC Linked Data: Evenly Distributing the Past

Memory institutions must be able to grow a fully-functional repository incrementally as collections grow, without expensive enterprise storage, massive data migrations, and the performance limits that stem from the vertical storage strategies. The Digital Repository at Scale that Invites Computation (DRAS-TIC) Fedora research project, funded by a two-year National Digital Platform grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), is producing open-source software, tested cluster configurations, documentation, and best-practice guides that enable institutions to manage linked data repositories with petabyte-scale collections reliably. DRAS-TIC is a research initiative at the University of Maryland (UMD). The first DRAS-TIC repository system, named Indigo, was developed in 2015 and 2016 through a collaboration between U.K.-based storage company, Archive Analytics Ltd., and the UMD iSchool Digital Curation Innovation Center (DCIC), through funding from an NSF DIBBs (Data Infrastructure Building Blocks) grant (NCSA “Brown Dog”). DRAS-TIC Indigo leverages industry standard distributed database technology, in the form of Apache Cassandra, to provide open-ended scaling of repository storage without performance degradation. With the DRAS-TIC Fedora initiative, we make use of the Trellis Linked Data Platform (LDP), developed by Aaron Coburn at Amherst College, to add the LDP API over similar Apache Cassandra storage. This paper will explain our partner use cases, explore the system components, and showcase our performance-oriented approach, with the most emphasis given to performance measures available through the analytical dashboard on our testbed website.

The Emergence of the Field of African American Museums

This article offers an overview of the field of African American museums, describing the growth and variety of museums created, basic operational characteristics, their service to their communities, and perceived challenges in the present and future. The data were obtained through two national surveys, each of which had a focused purpose to serve the Association of African American Museums (AAAM), and were funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Data from those surveys describe the outlines of the field of African American museums, many of which are small and undercapitalized, but driven by vital missions and a passionate commitment to their communities.

Workshop in the Care of Historic Mammal Taxidermy

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) proposes to present a one-day workshop focused on the preventive care and basic conservation treatment of historic mammal taxidermy for professionals who work with these collections, including conservators, collection managers, preventive care professionals, museum preparators, exhibition technicians, and taxidermists. This workshop was developed with funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and was presented in 2017 at the annual meeting of SPNHC in Denver, Colorado. It will be led by natural science conservators from the AMNH, and will provide participants with a thorough working knowledge of the preservation needs of historic mammalian taxidermy and how to address common condition issues. In addition to this knowledge, participants will leave with conservation references, and samples of common treatment materials. The workshop format will incorporate a combination of presentations, demonstrations, interdisciplinary group discussions, and hands-on experimentation. Two pre-workshop webinars on background and safety information will be offered for registered participants.

No Failure, Just Feedback: A Reflection on Experiential Space Assessment in an Academic Library

ABSTRACTGraduate students at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, funded by an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant (Experience Assessment: UX-A), were tasked with conducting two space assessment studies in the University of Tennessee Libraries. This article reflects on their experiences in conducting the study by understanding the history of academic library and library space assessment. The researchers provide an overview of their learning experience and best practices in space assessment. They also reflect on their experiences as UX-A students who had the opportunity to benefit from experiential learning and mentoring from experienced practitioners.

Launching a Risk Assessment Project

In 2017 Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM) received funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to conduct a risk assessment for collections. CM had already conducted two general conservation surveys (1989 and 2010) and an environmental survey (2011), all funded by IMLS. The next logical step was to do a risk assessment. The initial planning was done through the development of a funding proposal. Both the concept and the process had to be supported by administration and staff, which was ensured up front through the development of the grant application. At the time, we were fortunate enough to have a new administration that supported this project as a logical step toward developing a long-term collection care strategy. In the application we identified the most experienced subject matter expert as a consultant (R. R. Waller, Project Heritage Inc.). Waller has a longstanding relationship with CM, having been part of the core team in the general conservation surveys. Waller worked closely with the grant application team to develop the project schedule and internal team. Additionally, the grant application proposed the use of Waller's Cultural Property Risk Analasys Model (CPRAM) to assess our risks. One key element in developing the proposal was the acknowledgment of limited staff time. This was solved by including money to hire a Collections Associate dedicated to the project, full time for the two-year duration of the project. There is a steep learning curve for the process. Having this "gatekeeper" to manage the data being gathered maintains consistencey and focuses adequate staff time to keep the project moving forward. The overall goal of the project is to identify risks to the collections in a quantifiable manner. Using these data we will prioritize those risks and subsequently develop reasonable strategies to reduce the risks. This project will inform the overall strategic plan currently being developed for CM. By strategically including a few non-collection staff in the project, the risk assessment work will also promote better understanding and communication of collection concerns across the museum and our parent organization. This poster examines the initial phase of the two-year project. It demonstrates how we, at CM, are approaching the organization of the CPRAM, training staff, and beginning this complex project.

Toward Gigabit Libraries

Internet2's Toward Gigabit Libraries project, funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), aims to help close the digital divide that persists in small, rural, and tribal libraries. Through this project, Internet2 has created a Broadband Toolkit and customized Broadband Action Plan to help librarians learn about their broadband infrastructure and internal information technology (IT) environment. The goal of the project is to enable librarians to improve their broadband services and become stronger advocates for their libraries' broadband infrastructure needs.

Flying on Instruments: A Response to Beth Yakel’s Paper on Integrating Research and Teaching

Elizabeth Yakel’s paper reports on experiences and findings from the Preservation and Access Virtual Education Laboratory (PAVEL) project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. My comments are based on a reading of her paper and my own teaching experiences. This includes development and implementation of courses at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, development of a digital curation curriculum framework as part of the DigCCurr (Digital Curation Curriculum) project funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), development and administration of continuing professional education institutes as part of the DigCCurr II project (also funded by the IMLS), establishment of a hands-on educational offering as part of the Digital Acquisition Learning Laboratory (DALL) project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and curation and dissemination of a set of realistic data sets to support digital forensics education through a grant funded by the National Science Foundation. In comparing Yakel’s paper with my own experiences, I have identified several points of convergence and one main area of difference. I conclude with some comments based on Yakel’s claim that “the digital preservation process is nebulous.”

Convergence and synergy: Social Q&A meets virtual reference services

AbstractThis paper presents a preliminary analysis of online information services that examines the intersection of two areas of research: Virtual Reference Services (VRS) and Social Q&A (SQA). This project embraces the idea of a synergic collaboration within and between VRS and SQA to provide higher quality content to information seekers and a higher level of sustainability. Preliminary findings are described that emanate from a grant‐funded project: Cyber Synergy: Seeking Sustainability through Collaboration between Virtual Reference and Social Q&A Sites, which is being supported by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Early stages of the grant project activities include VRS transcript analysis and interviews with online Q&A end users (students) and experts (university librarians). Analysis reveals that VRS questions address a broad range of subjects, predominantly social sciences and technology. Largest numbers of question types are Procedural and Ready Reference. An analysis of accuracy for the subset of Ready Reference questions was found to be high, 90 percent correct, although only 75 percent were found to be correct with citation cited. Interviews with information seekers and providers in both VRS and SQA environments revealed important differences in how experts and end‐users perceive online Q&A services, leaving clues as to how it may be possible to start bridging these systems.

Connecting to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the Conservation and Preservation of Our Cultural Heritage

Sixty cultural heritage leaders from 32 countries, including representatives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, Australia, Europe, and North America, gathered in October 2009 in Salzburg, Austria, to develop a series of practical recommendations to ensure optimal collections conservation worldwide. Convened at Schloss Leopoldskron, the gathering was conducted in partnership by the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The participants were conservation specialists from libraries and museums, as well as leaders of major conservation centers and cultural heritage programs from around the world. As cochair Vinod Daniel noted, no previous meeting of conservation professionals has been “as diverse as this, with people from as many parts of the world, as cross-disciplinary as this.” The group addressed central issues in the care and preservation of the world's cultural heritage, including moveable objects (library materials, books, archives, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographic collections, art on paper, and archaeological and ethnographic objects) and immoveable heritage (buildings and archaeological sites).

From Federated Search to the Universal Search Solution

This presentation detailed an investigation by law librarians at Franklin Pierce Law Center Library of the viability of federated search and enterprise search to meet the needs of law library patrons. The results of the investigation revealed that federated search products could not answer the needs of law libraries to provide a single search box with a single, integrated result set because it has a fundamental flaw—it searches in real time. Neither could enterprise search solutions like the Google Search Appliance. With the backing of the New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO) and a two-year leadership grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a committee composed of law librarians from law schools throughout New England, a vendor representative, and a development partner, IndexData, created the Universal Search Solution (USS). The USS is an open-source, standards-based, single search box solution for law libraries that may ultimately guide all libraries in similar pursuits.

A Nation-Wide Planning Framework for Large-Scale Collaboration on Legacy Print Monograph Collections

Libraries are working toward collaborative management and preservation of print journals, newspapers, legal materials, and government documents; they must also establish a similar concerted effort focused on print monographs. Monographs present complex challenges at a time when libraries want to ensure the preservation of the print record but have increasing incentives to divest of older, less used print materials and take advantage of the affordances of electronic text. With LYRASIS as lead organization, planning partners California Digital Library (CDL), Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), and Center for Research Libraries (CRL)were awarded a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to conduct a workshop titled “Developing a North-American Strategy to Preserve & Manage Print Collections of Monographs.” Workshop participants discussed the challenges and issues involved in collaborative monograph preservation and formulated an agenda of research and demonstration projects to test elements of a strategy.

Preparing school librarians in rural areas through distance education and communities of practice

As distance education and online learning continue to redefine higher education, graduate programs in library and information science remain a popular course of study for this type of instructional delivery method. Programs that target the unique needs of adult students, focused on constructivist learning, can provide increased levels of access to higher education for students in rural communities. As a recipient of an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant, one institution is providing distributed, community-based instruction to rural areas and encouraging a community of practice to support pre-service school library candidates.

Pachyderm: From multimedia to visual stories

THIS PAPER provides a history of thePachyderm 2.0 Project, a partnership led by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMONA), and funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The project brings software development teams and digital library experts from six NMC universities together with counterparts from six major museums to create a new, open-source authoring environment for creators of Web-based and multimedia learning experiences. The new tool is based onPachyderm, the authoring and publishing tool used by SFMOMA to author its successful series, Making Sense of Modern Art (www.sfmoma.org/msoma).

The pipeline problem: where do we go from here?

The pipeline problem: where do we go from here?

Collaborative Cataloging

Publishing images online is challenging enough for any one institution. When the University of Washington Libraries and the Museum of History & Industry, Seattle decided to do so and include ten small local heritage organizations in the process, Dublin Core provided the glue that made it work. The goal of providing integrated Web access to the combined materials from all the museums, while maintaining individualized databases for each organization was achieved through the use of standards, hard-work, cooperation, and an IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) grant.

The New Jersey Digital Highway: A Next-generation Approach to Statewide Digital Library Development

The New Jersey Digital Highway (NJDH) is a statewide collaborative being built by public information providers in New Jersey including libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, public broadcasting, and schools. Its broad mission is to develop and sustain an immersive, user-centered information portal to support the New Jersey learner, providing seamless access to cultural heritage materials. To that end, NJDH integrates concepts and technologies of mature digital library initiatives. Equal attention is being given to the competing needs of standardization and customization. It has a user-centered focus that emphasizes the active engagement of the education community and end users. The project stresses iterative training and assessment to inform the entire development and presentation process. But the NJDH initiative extends beyond that of earlier statewide digitization projects in its core mission: to build a robust preservation platform that will ensure perpetual access to the State's digitized collections. NJDH development is one of the first statewide digitization initiatives to have as its core mission the development of a solid digital preservation platform. The integration of core digital preservation extends the capabilities of existing consortial digital library initiatives. NJDH will demonstrate a digital preservation strategy for a statewide digitization initiative that is extensible to other states or institutions. The initial development of NJDH was funded through a National Leadership Grant for Museums and Libraries awarded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in 2003.

Digital Diamond: Temple University Libraries’ IMLS grant

With the financial support of a donor gift and a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Temple University Libraries embarked on a major digital imaging enterprise. The first year’s pilot projects, their costs, and lessons learned are discussed. Plans are outlined for continued expansion of their image database and related programs, which will be funded by a second IMLS grant and other sources.

Bridging the digital divide: State government as content provider, the Illinois experience

Three National Leadership Grants (NLG) (http://www.imls.gov/grants/library/lib_nlgl.asp) from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provide the foundation for the Program (http://finditillinois.org) at the State Library (ISL): Grant One: Exporting Washington State's (October 1998-September 1999) Grant Two: Find-It! Illinois (October 1999-September 2001) Grant Three: Metadata Tools for State Collaboration (October 1999-September 2001) Based on the successful Government Information Locator Service (GILS) program at the Washington State Library (WSL) (http://find-it.state.wa.us/compass), the ISL began a GILS program of its own in the fall of 1999. State-level GILS projects around the country, based at state libraries and some state archives, are distilled from the federal GILS model (http://www.gils.net/). State GILS programs provide a resource discovery methodology for electronic state government information. Each program includes components for access, organization, design, standard metadata creation, state agency Webmaster education and training, and interface development. Essentially, the state libraries and archives involved in these projects act as clearinghouses for and gateways to electronic state government information. Grant One, awarded to the WSL, provided the ISL and three other state libraries, (Oregon, New Hampshire, and Arizona), with the model framework for starting a GILS program. Grant Two, awarded to the ISL, provided development dollars for the fledgling ISL program Illinois. Grant Three, awarded to the WSL and contracted in part to the ISL, provides funding for the enhancement of metadata interoperability and the application of a consortial subject tree. In Illinois, providing access to electronic state government content is manifest not only in the establishment of the ISL GILS program, but also in the creation of the other databases that comprise the portal. Interoperability among these virtual libraries will be enhanced by the application of a single controlled vocabulary for subject searching, called the Tree. Additionally, work is underway to establish the Jessica Tree as the standard list for state GILS programs with the goal of promoting interstate interoperable subject searching.