Urbana-Champaign Library Research Articles

Changes in Digital Collections and Their Metadata: A Longitudinal Study of UIUC Digital Library

Discussions surrounding digital libraries and their metadata have become less robust than before, given that creating and hosting digital collections have become the norm for most cultural heritage institutions over the last 20 years. Consequently, there are fewer discussions of how the characteristics of digital collections and their metadata have changed over time. This article showcases the evolution of digital collections and their metadata at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library in the last 20 years. It discusses the growth of its collections and their characteristics, examines historical changes in the use of metadata elements, and explores responses to the changing nature of digitized and born-digital materials. Based on a large-scale data analysis of the digital collections and their metadata housed in UIUC Digital Library, the paper also examines the challenges and opportunities of the curation and management of digital collections and digital libraries in the future.

Ensuring Good Enough is Actually Good Enough: Utilizing Metadata Maker to Enhance Discovery and Access of a Hidden Collection of Spanish Plays

A collection of approximately 12,000 late eighteenth- to mid-twentieth-century Spanish plays were purchased by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library in the 1960s and bound into 669 volumes. These items have been technically accessible and browsable but practically undiscoverable. A project was undertaken to improve access and discoverability of this hidden collection. The volumes were disbound, stabilized, cataloged, digitized, and placed in storage with ideal preservation conditions. Metadata Maker, an open source cataloging tool, was a critical resource in making the project feasible and ensuring good enough records were actually good enough.

Magnifying Gwendolyn Brooks: Creating a digital collection at the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library is describing and digitising the Gwendolyn Brooks collection as part of the Saving America’s Treasures grant. This project began in the autumn of 2021, with the goal of making Brooks’s work visible and accessible. This paper discusses the first two stages of the project — the Red Album and the Black Scrapbook — objects that are full of mementos from Brooks’s personal and professional life. The paper focuses on the workflow and digitisation practices that the project team employed to create the first digital representations. It also reviews the team’s decisions, which would set the procedural policies and standards for all the remaining materials in the collection. The Red Album and the Black Scrapbook contain a variety of physical formats and materials, resulting in display issues for the digital collection. Collaboration between stakeholders from disparate units allowed for a streamlined approach from the initial description of the material through the hosting of digitised materials on the institution’s Digital Collections platform. This paper discusses challenges, the curatorial process, metadata, the process of description, digitisation, technical aspects and lessons learned from this project. Due to delays from the COVID-19 pandemic, the project’s expected completion date is summer 2023. This paper reflects on the processes and lessons learned throughout the project. It also discusses the most valuable lesson from this project, which is that the digitisation of large and complex collections must be adaptable in order to successfully meet the challenges that such materials offer.

COVID-19 vaccine and booster hesitation around the world: A literature review.

The development of COVID-19 vaccines has helped limit the extent of the pandemic, which over the past 2 years has claimed the lived of millions of people. The Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines were the first to be manufactured using mRNA technology. Since then, other manufacturers have built their own vaccines which utilize adenovirus vector, whole inactivated coronavirus, and protein subunit methods. Given the continued mutation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a booster of the COVID-19 vaccine offers additional protection for citizens, especially those with comorbid conditions. However, uptake of the vaccine and booster has faced hurdles. This literature review aims to analyze the acceptance of the COVID-19 booster among different populations throughout the world. Keywords searched include "COVID-19 vaccine rates OR COVID-19 booster rates," "COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy," "COVID-19 booster hesitancy," "reasons against COVID-19 vaccine," "reasons for COVID-19 vaccine," and "COVID-19 vaccine acceptance" (for each country). Research articles indexed in PubMed, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library, and Google Scholar were included. Despite the proven effectiveness of the COVID-19 booster, vaccine hesitancy is still causing suboptimal compliance to the primary vaccine and booster, thus slowing down control of the pandemic. Reasons for vaccine hesitancy differ by country and acceptance is affected by misinformation, political circumstances, and cultural values. Among the most common reasons found are distrust in the government, a lack of safety information, and fear of side effects. Uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine has also been delayed in low and middle income countries due to resource allocation and as a result, these countries have fallen behind vaccination benchmarks. The future of COVID-19 vaccination is unknown, but vaccine mandates and additional booster doses are a possibility. Determining the ethical impact that these policies could have will allow for the best implementation.

Book Stories: 20 Years of Library Book Plate Celebrations

Using storytelling as a framework, this study analyzes a faculty promotion book plating ritual through the lens of a twenty-year corpus of faculty-created and library-gathered data. The sources for this analysis are faculty reasons for book selection, or “book stories,” which are part of an annual book plating ritual at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign library to celebrate promotion and tenure. Findings include increased personal information sharing over time. Libraries in the midst of pandemic reinventions should consider sustaining, reviving, and innovating new forms of storytelling to extend the impact of the library as the bedrock of academic community.

Enhanced Discovery with Linked Open Data for Library Digital Collections

ABSTRACT Libraries have been digitizing their collections for years in order to provide users with enhanced access and improve preservation of library materials. This article studies how the linked data can be used to describe objects in the digital collections. Researchers selected a digital collection of the nineteenth-century British novels from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, and converted the metadata for 7,829 British novels from MARCXML to BIBFRAME 2.0. Their project demonstrates that the BIBFRAME 2.0 model is a feasible way to enhance the discoverability of digital collections within and beyond library communities.

Moving a Unique Collection to Storage: Improving Access Now and Later

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library collected college and university publications (the C-Collection) for several decades without allocating the resources to catalog them. A project to make these items discoverable by patrons was initiated, and tens of thousands of items were added to the online catalog. These items were physically stabilized and transferred to the library’s high-density storage facility. A portion of the collection was also digitized, providing electronic access. Although circulation trended downward, there was no clear indication that materials were less accessible in high-density storage, and new items were discovered that had not previously circulated. Digital surrogates of library material clearly allowed the library to reach a much larger audience, and ideal storage conditions to preserve physical materials long-term combined with electronically available copies appear to be an ideal means for providing greater access while preserving content.

Preservation and Access for Born-digital Electronic Records: The Case for an Institutional Digital Content Format Registry

ABSTRACT Since 2014, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library has taken custody of a growing number of collections of “born-digital” records, largely through the University Archives. These collections comprise a panoply of digital content formats, ranging from those in common use to obscure varieties from the early days of personal computing. As such, they pose a challenge to digital preservation and access. Knowing what software to use to open files in formats that have fallen out of use is often difficult, let alone installing obsolete software on contemporary operating systems. At the same time, the sheer bulk of collections, as well as an accelerating rate of born-digital accessions from faculty and campus offices, makes it difficult to assess these files at the time of acquisition. These challenges suggest the need for preservation policies on digital formats in collections of electronic records, as well as for firsthand knowledge of the software required to facilitate curator control over and patron access to these collections. This article presents an overview of an evolving approach taken by archivists and librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to build the policies, technical knowledge, and systems for an effective preservation and access program for electronic records. Their implementation of a local digital content format registry, while young, suggests that archivists and digital preservationists would benefit from further development of tools and practices focused on born-digital formats, and the thoughtful integration of institutional knowledge with international format registries.

Tagore’s “rooted-cosmopolitanism” and international mindedness against institutional sustainability

ABSTRACT Cosmopolitanism is often seen as a western concept associated with liberal individualistic values. It is also associated mostly with the urban educated middle-class. However, cosmopolitan thinking has been also prevalent in the East. Scholars in the twenty-first century are increasingly arguing that, there are multiple ways of thinking about cosmopolitanism originating from different regions of the world. Among Eastern thinkers, Rabindranath Tagore from colonial British India has been considered by many as one of the most cosmopolitan thinkers. The uniqueness about Tagore’s cosmopolitanism is that, it did not uproot him from his rural Bengali roots and sense of ethnic identity. He was very much a “rooted-cosmopolitan”. In his book, ‘Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers’, Kwame Anthony Appaiah had agued that, a “rooted cosmopolitan” is someone who was rooted in his own cultural context while having an open-mind to feel literally at home in the world. This article draws on archival research at Rabindra Bhawan in Shantiniketan and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library archives to further this argument and demonstrates how Tagore’s school and university were built drawing on his “rooted cosmopolitan” ideals and international mindedness. In conclusion, this article highlights some of the challenges of sustaining the reformist educational institutions led by Tagore’s unique personality traits, social and pedagogic reform movements in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century colonial British India.

Copyright and Digital Collections: A Data-Driven Roadmap for Rights Statement Success

An earlier version of this manuscript was presented by the authors at the biennial conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, April 13, 2019. The authors wish to acknowledge the Research and Publication Committee of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, which provided support for the completion of this research. We would also like to thank Janet Swatscheno, the Digital Publishing Librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago, for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. This article summarizes the results of interviews with Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) service hub participants to determine whether and how standardized rights metadata is included in their digital collections. Providing accurate standardized rights metadata is crucial to communicating with patrons regarding how they can use objects in digital collections. Results from the interviews reveal key findings on effective rights statement implementation techniques as well as common tools used by librarians when applying rights statements to digital collections.

A system for generating research impact visualizations over medical research groups

Universities routinely employ research impact assessment mechanisms and tools for grant proposals, resource allocation decisions, and funding budget requests. These impact metrics are often displayed in interactive visualizations and dashboard displays. There is a growing trend for libraries to be cooperatively involved in the gathering and provision of research intelligence and impact data. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library has developed a system for generating research impact visualizations for research groups within the newly established Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Using the Elsevier Scopus database Applications Programming Interface, we have created a series of scripts to extract article, conference paper, and book chapter metadata and build supporting database tables. From the database, a dashboard visualization of scaled and clickable display bubbles and publication number labels is generated for each individual researcher. The interactive visualization can retrieve articles and papers published over the last five years, citation information (as cited by number) for each researcher, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health grant matches, and a visualization of the coauthored papers for each author within the cohort. These activities enhance the role of the library in supporting knowledge management and scholarly communication and in fostering campus partnerships and collaborations.

Making Metadata Maker: A Web Application for Metadata Production

Cataloging and metadata operations in academic libraries are focusing on original cataloging of their unique and hidden collections that have not been available to users because of a lack of metadata. However, creating MARC format metadata is an expensive process; libraries need professional catalogers with appropriate experience and knowledge or must train staff to do the work. To improve the cataloging and metadata creation workflow, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library developed a web application, Metadata Maker, which allows anyone to create metadata in four different formats, including MARC21 for an online public access catalog, regardless of their familiarity with metadata standards or systems that utilize the metadata. Released as an open source application, Metadata Maker supports diacritics and Unicode non-Roman language encoding, and creates metadata records that ensure discovery and access of unique library collections.

Implementing RDA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library

In this article the authors present a case study implemented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library that trained catalogers in Resource Description and Access (RDA), a new cataloging code. The authors provide detailed descriptions of the library's in-house training sessions and the strategies behind these sessions. They also discusses the creation of digital tools used to facilitate the creation of quality RDA bibliographic records. The authors close by contextualizing RDA training within the library linked data initiative.

Analyzing Archival Intelligence: A Collaboration Between Library Instruction and Archives

Although recent archival scholarship promotes the use of primary sources for developing students' analytical research skills, few studies focus on standards or protocols for teaching or assessing archival instruction. Librarians have designed and tested standards and learning assessment strategies for library instruction and archivists would do well to collaborate with and learn from their experience. This study examines lessons learned from one such collaboration between an instructional services librarian and archivist to evaluate and enhance archival instruction in the University Archives' Student Life and Culture Archival Program (SLC Archives) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. Based on evaluative data from a student survey and in-depth interviews, the authors offer strategies for meeting and exceeding learning outcomes for archival intelligence more successfully.

An Analysis of Data Management Plans in University of Illinois National Science Foundation Grant Proposals

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library conducted an analysis of 1,260 Data Management Plans (DMPs) submitted in National Science Foundation (NSF) proposals from July 2011 through November 2013. Each DMP was assigned controlled vocabulary and keyword terms which summarized the proposed data management mechanisms for storing and sharing data. A database composed of the proposal’s title, PI (Principal Investigator), PI’s department and college, NSF grant number, funded status, assigned DMP vocabulary, and keyword terms was constructed. As of May 2014, a total of 298 of these UIUC proposals had been funded by the NSF. Our analysis of this sample revealed no significant statistical differences in proposed data storage and reuse venues between funded and unfunded proposals. However, there was a statistically higher frequency of use of the campus institutional repository and disciplinary repositories in proposals submitted after October 2012.

Library Marc Records Into Linked Open Data: Challenges and Opportunities

Today researchers search for books in various ways. Once discovered, a variety of Web technologies can be used to link to related resources and/or associate context with a book. This environment creates an opportunity for libraries. The linked open data (LOD) model of the Web offers a potential foundation for innovative user services and the wider dissemination of bibliographic metadata. However, best practices for transforming library catalog records into LOD are still evolving. The practical utility on the Semantic Web of library metadata transformed from MARC remains unclear. Using a test set of MARC21 records describing 30,000 retrospectively digitized books, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library explored options for adding links, transforming into non-library specific LOD-friendly semantics, and deploying as RDF to maximize the utility of these records. This paper highlights lessons learned during this process, discusses findings to date, and suggests possible avenues for further work and experimentation.

A Great Library on the Prairie: The History, Design, and Growth of the University of Illinois Library

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Library stands today as one of the largest publicly funded libraries in the United States, providing information access for research and discovery to over 50,000 students, faculty, and staff as well as to members of the community at large. The library developed and grew as the university itself grew, becoming an architectural manifestation of those it serves. Originally designed by a team of University leaders, librarians, and architects for the pedagogies and information needs of the early twentieth century, the main library building, a neo-Georgian structure dating from 1926, supplemented by an imaginatively designed adjacent underground library for undergraduates in the late 1960s, has adapted to emerging information technologies and patron use through additions and changes in service models over the decades, ensuring its continuing relevancy to its patrons and its place as the heart of the university.

Planning for Preservation During Mass Digitization Projects

In anticipation of current and future mass digitization projects in which the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Library will participate, the Library's Conservation Unit began to gather data on the "scannability" of our general book collections to anticipate potential effects on conservation and preservation work flows. The findings from this project will be valuable to other libraries involved, or contemplating participation, in a mass digitization project by outlining the steps necessary to evaluate materials for digitization based on condition, as well as offering some selection guidelines used by the University of Illinois that could be applied in other institutions.

Listening from a Distance: A Survey of University of Illinois Distance Learners and Its Implications for Meaningful Instruction

ABSTRACT In spring 2009, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library conducted a significant new survey of distance learners enrolled in off-campus or online graduate programs. Exploring distance learners’ perceptions about and use of library services, the survey of 146 students reveals opportunities to better meet the research needs of distance learners whose graduate work may demand extensive use of library resources. The survey affords insights into distance learners’ communication preferences, and their particular research needs. Findings from this survey have informed one academic library's strategy to begin addressing important questions in library instruction for distance learners.

SFX Statistical Reports: A Primer for Collection Assessment Librarians

SFX, an OpenURL link resolver, was implemented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library in late 2005. Data from the SFX statistical reporting package are providing yet another look at how library users navigate and utilize electronic resources. However, unlike other statistical reports, such as electronic use statistics provided by vendors, SFX data cover both successful and unsuccessful links, meaning that libraries can identify items patrons wanted, but which were not (for some reason) available. And while SFX cannot totally replicate use data from publishers (since it cannot track bookmarked links resulting from use outside the library's links), it can provide statistical use data in place of publishers who simply do not offer this service, which often includes smaller or more specialized publishers. SFX data also cover multiple databases and vendors, combining use and nonuse data in one statistical package. This paper provides an overview of the 20 established statistical reports available through the SFX statistics module. Suggestions are offered for how the data from these reports can be used to answer questions about how academic journal collections and their indexes are being used and what users need but are not finding.