Category Archives: Projects

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Collection Strategy & Development (CSD) announces new collection diversity analysis practicum

Headshot of Melina Flores, a woman wearing a dark blue sleeveless top, with long dark hair.

The Collection Strategy & Development (CSD) department of the Collection Services division is pleased to introduce a new collection diversity analysis practicum project and our first practicum student on this project.

Melina Flores joins us from UNC SILS where she is in her final year of the 4+1 Dual Degree program. Flores has earned a Bachelor of Science in Information Science and will graduate with a Master of Science in Information Science in the Data Science and Data Analytics Concentration in August. Flores has an impressive resume that showcases her database work at the UNC University Development Office, and policy, leadership, and outreach experience through fellowships with the Parr Center for Ethics at UNC, and the Líder Fellowship with Carolina Leadership Institute and appointments to the UNC Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG), and the UNC SILS chapter of the Special Libraries Association (SLA).

A generative AI picture with a circle of graph bars and other representations of data.
(Copilot, 2025)

The Collection Diversity Analysis Practicum Project is an exploration of the diversity of materials in the academic library collection through data analysis. Students working on the project will select a scoped subset of the collection to analyze in depth to see how our collection compares to the universe of available and relevant resources in that subject area.

One of our goals in CSD is to build a library collection of diverse resources that contains a multitude of perspectives. This is not a new concept in academic library collection development. Academic libraries in the United States began collecting comprehensively in the 1870’s when priorities in higher education shifted from delivery of a classical education to the production of research. Under the classical education model, students were expected to read only assigned texts, and libraries provided those texts. The change in the academic model required that students and faculty have access to a wide range of resources in order to engage in independent research and study. Libraries shifted to purposefully build comprehensive collections to satisfy these priorities. (Jones Jr., 1989; Weiner, 2005) Practices and perspectives about how to define this wide range of resources continue to evolve.

Shelves of orange-brown book spines with white library spine labels.Assessment of diversity in library collections has a history dating to around the mid 1990’s when diversity was thought of as multiculturalism and coalesced around race, ethnicity, and gender. Definitions of diversity in the library collection continued to expand to include other markers like sexuality, socioeconomic status, and ability status. (Ciszek & Young, 2010) Diversity in the library collection is a complicated moving target to quantify across the broad range of library types, subjects, and formats.

We aim for diversity in authorship, subject matter, perspective, source, and format. We consider all markers above and also the intersection of identities, perspectives, and formats (and keep our minds open to other markers we may discover as we work through the collection). Our working definition of diversity will change based on the scope, subject area, and institutional focus, including which markers to assess for, and how they are expressed in a work. Markers of diversity in a children’s picture book collection are different than those for an academic library mathematics collection.

Even across peer research libraries we can’t evaluate diversity on the same rubric because we all collect according to the research and teaching interests of our respective universities. We create a diverse network of collections by collecting deeply in our priority areas and then sharing those collections with other libraries through inter-library loan (ILL). In addition to these institutional foci, we each broadly collect works that tell many sides of the story, include many voices, and present many perspectives to students, faculty, and researchers.

A photo looking down the aisle between two long library shelves full of books. We want to measure what matters, and this project explores ways to measure diversity in the library catalog given the above limitations and other complications like time, budget, publishing context, and metadata. A large-scale diversity audit of the whole collection is challenging because each subject area will have different metrics, context, and metadata. This project seeks to conduct smaller, deeper audits of tightly scoped parts of the collection.

There are three components to the project:

  • Research: Extensive review of the literature and past work on library collection diversity in general and on diversity in the context of the scoped section, including how peer libraries collect and the publishing context.
  • Assessment: Conduct an in-depth assessment of that section and compare that to the research of what a diverse collection in that section could look like.
  • Recommendations: Make recommendations of what needs to be done to get there, and share the results of the project in some way – a report, presentation, poster, video, blog post, etc.

As with any data analysis project, actually analyzing data is only part of the work. Understanding the context and figuring out what questions to ask and how involves substantial background research and asking a lot of people a lot of questions. Flores will take a deep dive into current work in her chosen section, to include interviewing faculty and library staff, reviewing syllabi and publications, and researching collections of other libraries. Flores will also learn some basic project management skills, conduct data description and analysis, make actionable recommendations, and share the work with the library community. We hope that this project is the first of many.

Ciszek, M. P., & Young, C. L. (2010). Diversity collection assessment in large academic libraries. Collection Building, 29(4), 154-161. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1108/01604951011088899

Copilot. (2025). Data and academic libraries [Image]. Generated by Microsoft Copilot.

Jones Jr., P. A. (1989). The history and development of libraries in American higher education. 1989(7), 4. https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.50.7.561

Weiner, S. G. (2005). The history of academic libraries in the United States: a review of the literature. Library Philosophy and Practice, 7(2), NA-NA.

 

Introducing the E-Resources Access & Troubleshooting FAQs

Earlier this year, Amelia Rodarte and Zhaneille Green began a project to create an E-Resources Troubleshooting FAQ knowledge bank. They decided to make a resource for Duke University Libraries (DUL) front-facing library staff who troubleshoot e-resource access issues of varying complexities.

E-Resources Access and Troubleshooting FAQ Homepage

 

How did we start?

We conducted research to see what DUL troubleshooting resources existed, what type of tools other academic institutions used, what existing literature stated, and what the previous findings of DUL access and discovery working groups were. We also wanted to hear from our colleagues, so we sent out surveys and conducted interviews, which helped us decide on the type of questions and issues that affected our patrons and library staff. After synthesizing our research, qualitative, and quantitative results, we selected the best available tool for our project.

Our tool of choice was the previously untouched Springshare LibAnswers FAQ tool. It allowed us to create an internal staff knowledge bank  of questions and answers to solve common and uncommon e-resource questions and issues. We’ve also assigned topics and keywords to each FAQ so users can search for what they need.

IR Troubleshooting Meme

Why make it?

In the world of e-resources, our access can be affected by who owns what, how long we’ve licensed a resource, whether we keep any access to a resource if we stop renewing the license, etc. We created this resource because while Duke University is affected by the usual suspects, it also has its own e-resource access nuances.

 

Currently, the FAQs with the most views are:

You will notice that all four cover general access information and specific access nuances. Our entire list of FAQs is a mix of e-resource information and Duke-specific access issues. We wanted to demystify some aspects of e-resources for our colleagues. For example, some librarians might not be aware that DKU patrons lost access to specific resources after licensing negotiations.

Use Cases

Here are some different ways DUL library staff can use our FAQ resource for:

  • Troubleshooting e-resource access issues
  • Adding it to new staff orientation packets
  • Referring to it for current information on access changes

Where do we go from here?

We have a maintenance plan to update our FAQs. Amelia and I plan to review our FAQ list every six months. We will also keep adding new FAQs and updating the current ones when needed throughout the year.

Where can you find it?

You can find the E-Resource Access FAQs at Electronic Resources & Serials Acquisitions – Collections Services.

A Day in the Life: Alaina Economus

A person with short brown hair and glasses, wearing headphones, smiling while holding a cat
Alaina and Simon

Hello! My name is Alaina Economus, and I am the Slavic Language Resource  Description Intern in the Resource Description Department.

I came to Duke University Libraries in August of 2022, three months after graduating from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and simultaneous to beginning my MSLS at UNC-Chapel Hill. I majored in History and Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies as an undergraduate, and thought this position would be the perfect combination of my Russian language skills and my passion for library and information science. I interviewed for the internship in my dorm room at Smith (College) and thought how serendipitous it would be to begin a new chapter of my life also at Smith (Warehouse)!

When I first arrived at Duke, we had a significant backlog of Slavic language monographs that had been sent to us for original cataloging. Most of the items had not been looked over following their referral. With direction from my supervisors, Jessica Janecki and Natalie Sommerville, I spent the first couple of months looking up every item in OCLC Connexion and sorting them into different categories based on the language of the text and their “problem”; some had no record in OCLC, others had no call number assigned, and others had records with poor copy. Throughout this process, I was able to send many items to circulation, which cleared up a lot of much-needed space.

Now that the backlog has been sorted, I spend much of my time cataloging books from each specific category. This past spring, I decided to focus on Ukrainian-language materials with poor copy or no call number . It felt like something small I could do to support the promotion and accessibility of Ukrainian language and culture. I really value working with these materials, and hope that I am doing them justice.

This experience inspired me to conduct a collections analysis of the Ukrainian-language collection at Duke with Dr. Ernest (Erik) Zitser, Librarian for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. While it was originally just for a field experience course for my degree, I’ve been able to present the analysis at the TRLN Annual Meeting this past summer, and I’ll be presenting the full analysis at the Ukrainian Studies Conference this month. It has been such an enriching experience to work with these materials both for this project and for my work at Smith Warehouse.

Growing my cataloging skills has been one of the best parts of my experience in Resource Description. A year ago, I knew almost nothing about call numbers, subject analysis, or authority records. Now, I spend most of my time determining if the monographs I work with have accurate description that will make them accessible to patrons. It’s a big responsibility, but I love it! I am hoping to pursue a career in cataloging once I have completed my MSLS degree.

When not at work or in class, I enjoy reading, cross-stitching, traveling, and spending time with my friends, my partner Abbie, and my cat Simon (pictured).

Making the Most of HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS)

At the end of March, HathiTrust announced that one of the ways they are responding to the widespread closures of libraries is to launch their Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) to allow the circulation of millions of digital copies of books now locked up in library stacks. Even those digital books that are still in copyright which under normal circumstances are not available. This is very exciting to those of us whose regular job duties include getting resources into the hands of patrons. Most of us in Technical Services have that mission at the core of our jobs, even though we do not work directly with patrons providing reference or instruction.

After HathiTrust outlined parameters of the ETAS with representatives from member institutions on April 2nd, 2020, an announcement went out to the Duke Community letting everyone know to look for the “Temporary Access” button on HathiTrust’s site, which gives us access to view one page at a time for in- copyright materials of which DUL holds a print copy.

Cory Lown and I quickly started communicating on how we could improve access for our patrons. Because the Hathi BibAPI is already in use for the Books & Media catalog for open access materials, we considered that avenue. Initially, there was not enough metadata available to us to reliably determine which digital books are available through ETAS. So, I started to strategize on how to add records to our Aleph ILS and communicated with our colleagues at UNC-Chapel Hill to determine if their method would work for us. The number of records that would need to be created, though, was high at 1.3 million. That much new access for our patrons is great, but developing the process to get records in, and plan for getting them back out later when ETAS ended, meant that loading records into Aleph was going to be very time consuming.

On April 8th, HathiTrust published an article on their website, “How to Add ETAS Records to Your Catalog” which discusses three ways to provide direct links to the digital surrogate of an institution’s holdings. After reading this article, investigating what our peers were doing, and searching for the information needed to succeed, I realized all of the methods described meant that we had to have access to the HathiFiles database, the Overlap Report for Duke, and authentication credentials so that patrons would be prompted to login with Shibboleth to prove they are Duke people.

I reached back out to Cory to discuss which of the three methods we should use; ultimately, we decided that a combination of two was best for Duke. So, Cory updated how we use the BibAPI to harvest data from a local store of the HathiFiles and Overlap Report to generate URLs that are embedded in records as they are displayed in the Books & Media Catalog.

So, as of April 17th, in addition to being able to search for materials directly in HathiTrust, as they had since April 2nd, patrons now see “View Online” links to the ETAS items directly in our catalog. This temporary access means that approximately 38% of our print holdings now have links to HathiTrust materials (this percentage includes the open access links that were available before making this change).

Here is an example record that shows a “View Online” link: https://find.library.duke.edu/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_field=all_fields&q=D02036262L

With teaching, learning, and research activities now having to be done remotely I expect we will continue to look for ways to help our users gain the most effective access we can manage under the circumstances.