Information Technology and Libraries

Letter from the Editor

Ken Varnum — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 05:46:14 -0700

In the Middle of Difficulty Lies Opportunity

Evviva Weinraub Lajoie — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

Message from the last LITA President.

What More Can We Do to Address Broadband Inequity and Digital Poverty?

Lori Bowen Ayre — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

While libraries have always worked to help breach the digital divide by providing free Internet access, public access computers and teaching media literacy, the current pandemic has made it abundantly clear that much more needs to be done. This article proposes ways that libraries might work with community, state, national and even global partners to help promote universal broadband.

Harnessing the Power of OrCam

Mary Howard — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

The OrCam reader is an AI enabled device that helps sight challenged readers to access print materials. This article is a first person account of a public library's experience in employing the OrCam technology.

A Collaborative Approach to Newspaper Preservation

Ana Krahmer, Laura Douglas — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

This column explores a collaborative undertaking between the Denton Public Library in Denton, Texas, and the University of North Texas Libraries (UNT) to build digital access to the city of Denton’s newspaper of record, the Denton Record-Chronicle (DRC). The process included coordination with the newspaper publisher, solidifying agreements between the libraries, obtaining grant funding for the project, and ensuring scheduled uploads to build digital access to the DRC via The Portal to Texas History’s Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP). TDNP builds open access to Texas newspapers, and the partnership between the Denton Public Library and UNT exemplifies the value of collaboration to preserving history and building digital access to research materials

Applying Gamification to the Library Orientation

Karen Reed, A Miller — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

By providing an overview of library services as well as the building layout, the library orientation can help newcomers make optimal use of the library. The benefits of this outreach can be curtailed, however, by the significant staffing required to offer in-person tours. One academic library overcame this issue by turning to user experience research and gamification to provide an individualized online library orientation for four specific user groups: undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and community members. The library surveyed 167 users to investigate preferences regarding orientation format, as well as likelihood of future library use as a result of the gamified orientation format. Results demonstrated a preference for the gamified experience among undergraduate students as compared to other surveyed groups.

Evaluating the Impact of the Long-S upon 18th-Century Encyclopedia Britannica Automatic Subject Metadata Generation Results

Sam Grabus — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

This research compares automatic subject metadata generation when the pre-1800s Long-S character is corrected to a standard < s >. The test environment includes entries from the third edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the HIVE automatic subject indexing tool. A comparative study of metadata generated before and after correction of the Long-S demonstrated an average of 26.51 percent potentially relevant terms per entry omitted from results if the Long-S is not corrected. Results confirm that correcting the Long-S increases the availability of terms that can be used for creating quality metadata records. A relationship is also demonstrated between shorter entries and an increase in omitted terms when the Long-S is not corrected.

Making Disciplinary Research Audible

Drew Smith, Meghan L. Cook, Matt Torrence — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

Academic libraries have long consulted with faculty and graduate students on ways to measure the impact of their published research, which now include altmetrics. Podcasting is becoming a more viable method of publicizing academic research to a broad audience. Because individual academic departments may lack the ability to produce podcasts, the library can serve as the most appropriate academic unit to undertake podcast production on behalf of researchers. The article identifies what library staff and equipment are required, describes the process needed to produce and market the published episodes, and offers preliminary assessments of the podcast impact.

Likes, Comments, Views

Jylisa Doney, Olivia Wikle, Jessica Martinez — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

This article presents a content analysis of academic library Instagram accounts at eleven land-grant universities. Previous research has examined personal, corporate, and university use of Instagram, but fewer studies have used this methodology to examine how academic libraries share content on this platform and the engagement generated by different categories of posts. Findings indicate that showcasing posts (highlighting library or campus resources) accounted for more than 50 percent of posts shared, while a much smaller percentage of posts reflected humanizing content (emphasizing warmth or humor) or crowdsourcing content (encouraging user feedback). Crowdsourcing posts generated the most likes on average, followed closely by orienting posts (situating the library within the campus community), while a larger proportion of crowdsourcing posts, compared to other post categories, included comments. The results of this study indicate that libraries should seek to create Instagram posts that include various types of content while also ensuring that the content shared reflects their unique campus contexts. By sharing a framework for analyzing library Instagram content, this article will provide libraries with the tools they need to more effectively identify the types of content their users respond to and enjoy as well as make their social media marketing on Instagram more impactful.

Analytics and Privacy

Denise Quintel, Robert Wilson — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

When selecting a web analytics tool, academic libraries have traditionally turned to Google Analytics for data collection to gain insights into the usage of their web properties. As the valuable field of data analytics continues to grow, concerns about user privacy rise as well, especially when discussing a technology giant like Google. In this article, the authors explore the feasibility of using Matomo, a free and open-source software application, for web analytics in their library’s discovery layer. Matomo is a web analytics platform designed around user-privacy assurances. This article details the installation process, makes comparisons between Matomo and Google Analytics, and describes how an open-source analytics platform works within a library-specific application, EBSCO’s Discovery Service.

Integrated Technologies of Blockchain and Biometrics Based on Wireless Sensor Network for Library Management

Meng-Hsuan Fu — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

The Internet of Things (IoT) is built on a strong internet infrastructure and many wireless sensor devices. Presently, Radio Frequency Identification embedded (RFID-embedded) smart cards are ubiquitous, used for many things including student ID cards, transportation cards, bank cards, prepaid cards, and citizenship cards. One example of places that require smart cards is libraries. Each library, such as a university library, city library, local library, or community library, has its own card and the user must bring the appropriate card to enter a library and borrow material. However, it is inconvenient to bring various cards to access different libraries. Wireless infrastructure has been well developed and IoT devices are connected through this infrastructure. Moreover, the development of biometric identification technologies has continued to advance. Blockchain methodologies have been successfully adopted in various fields. This paper proposes the BlockMetrics library based on integrated technologies using blockchain and finger-vein biometrics, which are adopted into a library collection management and access control system. The library collection is managed by image recognition, RFID, and wireless sensor technologies. In addition, a biometric system is connected to a library collection control system, enabling the borrowing procedure to consist of only two steps. First, the user adopts a biometric recognition device for user authentication and then performs a collection scan with the RFID devices. All the records are recorded in a personal borrowing blockchain, which is a peer-to-peer transfer system and permanent data storage. In addition, the user can check the status of his collection across various libraries in his personal borrowing blockchain. The BlockMetrics library is based on an integration of technologies that include blockchain, biometrics, and wireless sensor technologies to improve the smart library.

Using the Harvesting Method to Submit ETDs into ProQuest

Marielle Veve — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0700

The following case study describes an academic library’s recent experience implementing the harvesting method to submit electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) into the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database (PQDT). In this lesser-known approach, ETDs are deposited first in the institutional repository (IR), where they get processed, to be later harvested for free by ProQuest through the IR’s Open Archives Initiative (OAI) feed. The method provides a series of advantages over some of the alternative methods, including students’ choice to opt-in or out from ProQuest, better control over the embargo restrictions, and more customization power without having to rely on overly complicated workflows. Institutions interested in adopting a simple, automated, post-IR method to submit ETDs into ProQuest, while keeping the local workflow, should benefit from this method.