I’ve presented at a fair share of library staff development days. I enjoy them; staff come together, usually with the library closed, for updates from the director, a speaker or two, a chance to learn something new. These sessions might be focused on LIS—I usually talk about evolving library services and ­socio-technological change—or centered on personal improvement and include such content as yoga demonstrations, stress reduction techniques, or healthy cooking. These are all good things, especially if used as a starting point for “healthy library” initiatives or a future-focused strategic planning year. Sometimes, though, I worry that there’s great excitement about learning during staff day that doesn’t last. Many staff days get folks energized, but then the excitement dies down the following week.

Learning momentum

How might staff development days evolve? I was impressed with the activities at Highland Park Public Library, IL, when I spoke at the library’s staff day a couple of years ago. Staff participated in a live, hands-on “passport to technology” program. Stations around the building offered staff members the chance to try out new devices and new web services offered by the library. The Best Buy Geek Squad was in attendance as well, offering encounters with popular and best-selling consumer tech. At each station, employees received a stamp in a passport. Filling all the blanks entered each person into a number of drawing for ereaders. It was Learning 2.0 with a hands-on twist. (For more about “on your feet” learning, see my report from the illuminating R-Squared conference)

I’d argue for continuing staff development days, but I’d also urge administrators to promote a culture of learning all year long. At a workshop recently in Alberta, Canada, an administrator asked me how to incorporate all the new ideas and services we were talking about into practice. “How do we balance it all out?” she asked.

I suggested two strategies, one for management and one for staff. For administrators: mandate weekly time for each staff member to explore something new related to their jobs. It might be a social tool, a web service, or simply distraction-free time to read a few articles or a book. Reports on learning progress should figure into performance evaluations and monthly meetings.

Staff should then make good use of of the time they’re given. Start an exploration blog to chart progress and post each week as part of the activity. Formalize reading an important work, such as David Weinberger’s Everything Is Miscellaneous or Chris Anderson’s new book Makers, with others on staff or online. Investigate the great things the Nebraska Library Commission has done with the Learning 2.0 model: offering supplemental technologies to explore and posts on important written works that participants can receive continuing education credits for reading (nlcblogs.nebraska.gov/­nelearns).

Another strategy might involve participating in a new, no-cost online learning opportunity like the “23 Mobile Things” created by Jan Holmquist in Denmark, along with Mylee Joseph and Kathryn Barwick from Australia. The online program extends a new twist on the Learning 2.0 model: 23 mobile applications for library staff to explore as a means to understand how people are using apps. Participants can reflect and consider the tools for use within the library. Take a look at a group of more than 600 Australian and New Zealander self-organized library staff who have already adapted the program for more inspiration.

Learning meets the road

I’ve researched Learning 2.0–style programs and the impact of such staff education since 2008; see “Lessons from Learning 2.0” for details on what types of strategies to use after Learning 2.0. A recent study with a group of Chicago-area libraries further illuminates exemplary practice for creating a culture of learning in your organization, including the notion that all staff should participate in educational opportunities, not just librarians or managers; program creators should focus learning programs on practical implementations of new tools and services; and “learning champion” staff members should be designated as support throughout the program in each department or service area.

A mantra I use in my talks and in my classes is “Learn Always.” I’m impressed with some of the grassroots learning activities I’ve witnessed of late that give library staff low-cost, active learning opportunities. If libraries call themselves learning organizations, setting time aside for staff to explore and reflect is mandatory.

According to the Congressional Record, Reed said that the amendment “recognizes the longstanding role that libraries have played in helping new Americans learn English, American

civics, and integrate into our local communities. It ensures that they continue to have a voice in these critical efforts… This amendment expands on the recent partnership between U.S.  Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and IMLS.” He also cited IMLS statistics which say that more than 55 percent of new Americans use a public library at least once a week.

The bill itself, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, seeks to strike a balance between creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and addressing concerns about border protection. It does so in part by tying the authority to confer new, more protected statuses on undocumented immigrants to the creation and implementation of stringent border controls. These include registered provisional immigrant (RPI) status, and the subsequent conversion of such registered provisional immigrants to lawful permanent resident status.

Among the criteria for RPI status are English language skills, which makes Reed’s amendment particularly relevant.

Originally introduced by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), the bill has seven co-sponsors—four Republicans, three Democrats—including two from the border state of Arizona. (That co-sponsors number may soon fall to six; Senator Marco Rubio [R-FL]  said he would withdraw his support for the bill if an amendment which would give equal protection to opposite-sex spouses were added.) In spite of its bipartisan support, GovTrack gives the bill as a whole only a 27 percent chance of being enacted.

Reed Backs Workforce Investment in Libraries Too

Senator Reed speaks about workforce investment at a Rhode Island library

Reed is a staunch supporter of libraries’ role in achieving civic goals. He also recently introduced, with Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), the Workforce Investments through Local Libraries Act (WILL) Act, which would recognize public libraries as allowable “One-Stop” partners, add library representation on workforce investment boards, and authorize new demonstration and pilot projects to establish employment resources in public libraries.

Reed spoke about the need for WILL at an event at the Cranston Public Library’s Central branch on June 14, along with Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training (DLT) Director Charles J. Fogarty, Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services (OLIS) Chief Library Officer Howard Boksenbaum, and Cranston Public Library Director Edward Garcia.

“The WILL Act strengthens the connection between our public libraries and the ‘One-Stop’ system to better serve job seekers with more targeted services,” said Reed. “The WILL Act would give library users better access to workforce activities and information related to training and employment opportunities, including resume development and job bank searches,” said Reed. “We need to maximize our resources and draw upon the strength of community assets like public libraries to ensure our workforce development efforts are effective and efficient.” According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 30 million Americans used a library computer to address their career and employment needs in 2009. Sadly, GovTrack gives WILL a zero percent chance of being enacted.

From an ALA Announcement:

The report highlights the key initiatives of former ALA President Molly Raphael, which centered on “Empowering Voices.” The report also underscores how ALA supports the efforts of libraries in providing essential technological resources, protecting patron privacy and promoting early childhood literacy.

Libraries continue to lead the way in the transformation of libraries and library services in an increasingly global digital information environment. The Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reported that more than 62 percent of libraries report offering the only free Internet access in their community. More than 90 percent of public libraries now offer formal or informal technology training. In addition, more than three-quarters of libraries offer access to e-books, a 9 percent increase from the previous year, while e-book readers are available for check-out at 39 percent of public libraries.

Direct to Full Text of ALA Annual Report

From an ALA Announcement:

The report highlights the key initiatives of former ALA President Molly Raphael, which centered on “Empowering Voices.” The report also underscores how ALA supports the efforts of libraries in providing essential technological resources, protecting patron privacy and promoting early childhood literacy.

Libraries continue to lead the way in the transformation of libraries and library services in an increasingly global digital information environment. The Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reported that more than 62 percent of libraries report offering the only free Internet access in their community. More than 90 percent of public libraries now offer formal or informal technology training. In addition, more than three-quarters of libraries offer access to e-books, a 9 percent increase from the previous year, while e-book readers are available for check-out at 39 percent of public libraries.

Direct to Full Text of ALA Annual Report

Visitors to the new Digital Commons Network (DCN) portal recently launched by bepress are greeted with a clean layout featuring one prominent, ornate graphic—a large, three-layered, color-coded wheel encircling a simple invitation: “Explore 691,431 works from 275 institutions.”

As the new portal to content produced and stored using bepress’s widely used Digital Commons publishing and institutional repository platform, those numbers will continue to grow, but two key qualities of this resource are expected to remain constant. These works will all be full text, and they will all be open access.

“From the reader’s perspective, we wanted no dead ends,” explains bepress president and CEO Jean-Gabriel Bankier. “We wanted their experience to be that when they browse, they would always find a PDF. So if you’re in the network, you will never find only metadata. And you’ll also never find any restricted content. So every reader experience will end at a PDF. And when they’re in the PDF, they can click a link to take them back to the network. The whole thing is integrated.”

Founded in 1999 by University of California, Berkeley professors Robert Cooter, Aaron Edlin, and Ben Hermalin, bepress began as a suite of online editorial management tools for producing peer-reviewed journals. In addition to the Digital Commons, the for-profit company has also produced the research announcement tool SelectedWorks.

Given libraries’ institutional mission to provide broad access to works across a wide variety of disciplines, an online portal promising perpetual, free access to hundreds of thousands of full-text, peer-reviewed articles, Ph.D. dissertations, master’s theses, conference proceedings, research data, and other content sounds like a logical next step in terms of cross-institutional collaboration. Indeed, bepress views DCN as a natural extension of the mission behind its Digital Commons software service, which enables institutions to publish their own professional quality, peer-reviewed journals, create landing pages for their faculty to highlight research published elsewhere, and build institutional repositories in a way that consolidates a university’s intellectual output. In each case, the primary goal of the Digital Commons platform is raising the visibility of an institution and its research. DCN helps achieve that goal by making it easy for users to search all Digital Commons repositories at once.

And while institutional repositories are typically indexed by search engines, the portal makes it very easy to access a large collection of open access (OA) materials that are specific to a discipline, notes David Scherer, scholarly repository specialist for the Purdue University e-Pubs Repository, IN.

“With a lot of open access materials, depending where you place them—whether it’s a public website or a private faculty web page—they can be hard to find,” he says. “If I’m trying to find items on civil engineering, am I going to know to look [in the repositories] of institutions x, y, and z? This is a database that I can use as a resource, just like any other library-based resource or tool, to find these kinds of materials.”

Color wheel

The starburst wheel graphic on the portal’s network.bepress.com homepage helps illustrate this concept to newcomers. The wheel features ten color-coded disciplines: law, social and behavioral sciences, arts and humanities, life sciences, physical sciences and mathematics, education, engineering, medicine and health sciences, business, and architecture. The size of each color-coded area reflects the size of each discipline’s collection relative to the rest of DCN.

Two additional layers radiate out from this central “discipline wheel.” The first narrows down the discipline into a selection of subdisciplines, while the second allows users to pick from subjects within that subdiscipline. For example, hover a mouse pointer over the innermost, purple segment of the discipline wheel, and a visitor is encouraged to “Explore Medicine and Health Sciences.” Move the mouse to the second purple layer and the wheel will advise users to “Explore Medical Specialties” or “Explore Public Health.” Or users can mouse out one additional layer beyond the “Medical Specialties” subdiscipline to browse a selection of subjects including neurology, pediatrics, or radiology.

At any point, users can click on any segment of any layer of the wheel, and the wheel will begin a brief animation, with the selected discipline, subdiscipline, or subject swallowing up the rest of the wheel and navigating users to their chosen commons area where they can then proceed to a list of full-text PDFs.

To be clear, typing a couple of keywords into the “Search Entire Network” box, also located on the homepage, might be a more efficient method than mousing around on this graphical browsing element. But from a design perspective, this colorful wheel plays an important role in communicating the vision and purpose of DCN and the institutional repositories served by Digital Commons.

“We wanted for each repository to be able to show visitors who came there, visually, what’s in it,” Bankier says. “It’s a way for them to describe, graphically, what are their areas of strength? What are their areas of expertise? Each of the repositories in Digital Commons has its own graph, its own discipline wheel.”

For individual faculty members and researchers, DCN also helps illustrate that a contribution to an institutional repository is a contribution to its discipline, Bankier adds.

“One of our goals, from the perspective of the authors, was to address the ‘island problem,’ ” he says. “They saw their own institutional repository as an island, and they didn’t see how it connected with their discipline. And authors care first about themselves, then they care about their discipline, and only then care about their institution. We wanted [to illustrate] that a contribution to their repository was a meaningful contribution to their discipline as well.”

Isaac Gilman, an assistant professor and scholarly communications and research services librarian for Pacific University, OR, agrees with Bankier’s assessment.

“Having all of the repository content from a variety of institutions accessible through one portal and one place makes it a lot easier to have the conversation with students and faculty about how, when they’re contributing to our institutional repository, they’re contributing their work to a broader disciplinary conversation,” Gilman says. “Within the [DCN] portal or platform, they can see their work right next to work from people within their discipline…. That’s really valuable in helping to emphasize that what you put in our repository doesn’t just stay at Pacific and isn’t just going to be related to other work at ­Pacific, but it’s going to be related to other work across the country and across the world.”

Friendly competition

Each commons area page also features lots of top-level, at-a-glance statistics, including the number of articles, authors, and downloads, and a short list of institutions and authors who have contributed the most downloaded papers. Users can also click on a link to a pie chart that illustrates which institutions have contributed the most content to a specific commons.

One librarian has already found this pie chart to be a great motivational tool. In theory, most faculty will quickly understand the benefits of a repository and the ways it can help them raise the profile of their work and their institution. But encouraging faculty to contribute articles and data regularly can still pose a challenge. Figuring out which of their articles can be legally contributed to an OA repository and then uploading their work take time. If there’s no momentum behind the repository concept in their department or in their field, contributing can get pushed far down an individual researcher’s list of priorities.

So, at Iowa State University, digital repository coordinator Harrison Inefuku used DCN’s institution pie chart to stoke a spirit of competition. Iowa State launched its Digital Commons repository in April 2012, and when Inefuku began efforts to engage faculty, the university’s agricultural and biosystems engineering department was the first to buy in to the concept as a group.

“After bepress launched the Digital Commons Network, I was looking at it, trying to see if it could help me try to reach these faculty and try to get them to participate,” Inefuku says. Opening the institution pie chart in the Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons area, he discovered that Iowa State had already become the second-largest contributor in this subject. It illustrated how much the repository had already grown, while giving the agriculture and biosystems engineering department faculty another goal to shoot for—the number of repository items contributed by their peers at the University of Nebraska.

“[Nebraska] has had its repository for a long time…the number of items in every subject are a lot higher than ours just starting out,” Inefuku said. “I thought it would be a great opportunity to show them ‘this is where we are, this is where Nebraska is, and I would really like us to pass Nebraska.’ ”

It worked. He presented his challenge to the department in December 2012, and by March 2013, Iowa State was responsible for over half of the content contributed to the Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons.

Open for access

Aside from showcasing a university’s research capital or encouraging faculty to contribute to their institutional repository, DCN has its own merits as a full-text database that any library can encourage patrons to try.

Pacific University has already taken direct links to the different disciplinary commons areas and included them in the list of online databases to which the university offers access. A student searching biology-related databases, for example, will find a link to the Life Sciences Commons on the same page as resources from Gale, ProQuest, EBSCO, and Springer.

“I really do see it as a resource that is just as valuable as a [commercial] database aggregator’s product,” Gilman says. “And we want to try to make students aware of the wide variety of scholarly content that’s out there, because repositories do have a wide variety of really useful content, ranging from formal publications all the way to gray literature. And we’re encouraging students and faculty to recognize the value in this variety of scholarly products.”

“It drives users to our repositories,” says Purdue’s Scherer. “We’re always trying to increase the visibility of our open access repositories and our content, and we’re doing this in a mechanism that users are most familiar with—having a database. Compare it to how journals and the indexing databases work: you have a journal, and it has a web presence, but then, it’s enhanced tremendously by [inclusion in] a database.”

Inefuku agreed, noting that while the open access movement has created new opportunities in academic publishing, there have also been unfortunate side effects, including the rise of predatory journals. As a network of repositories that have been vetted by their respective institutions, DCN offers a reliable starting point for students and researchers seeking open access content.

“When it comes to searching for information online, especially [at] an academic institution, we still have to do our part with information literacy, telling our researchers and students how to find quality websites, how to find quality information,” Inefuku says. “With the open access movement, it’s creating a lot of opportunities to get scholarship out there. But…there’s a flip side to that as well.”

In its first year, DCN already appears to be having a significant impact on downloads from Digital Commons repositories. Six months after launching in November 2012, total full-text downloads from the approximately 300 repositories that Digital Commons serves had reached 130 million—up 85 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to Bankier. And well-used institutional repositories could give university administrators additional motivation to support open access, he says.

“Open access is kind of like preservation. It doesn’t have funding behind it,” Bankier says. “I would argue that this is a sustainable model, because the work that the library is doing directly connects to the mission and goals of the institution. Demonstrating value and strengthening reputation are things that all universities care about and are willing to fund…. This is a win, win, win. The university wins because it gets more visibility by sharing its research, the library wins because it gets to save [database subscription fees], and the public wins because they get free access to scholarship that they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise.”

Matt Enis (menis@mediasourceinc.com is Associate Editor, Technology, LJ

For years, international negotiations have been moving forward on what many have come to call the “Treaty for the Blind.” The goal of the treaty is to make it possible for people who are blind, or have other print disabilities like dyslexia, to get access to the books they need for education, employment, and inclusion in society, no matter where they live. The treaty would accomplish this through a copyright exception for the print disabled modeled after the one we have here in the United States.

At first, private interests, like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), were supportive of the treaty. Who wouldn’t want to help one of the most economically disadvantaged groups of people in the world, right? Then, they realized they could squeeze something out of this treaty that would greatly benefit them—stricter international copyright law. Now, these private interests are trying to alter the treaty in such a way that it would become great for them and useless—even harmful—for the print disabled.

But it’s bigger than that. The language they’re pushing for—including the “if you can buy a book, you can’t borrow it” concept—could mean an end to libraries as we know them. If adopted more broadly, this concept would severely undercut the traditional role libraries play in serving those who simply cannot afford to purchase books. And imagine a person using the library to do research or a school project—someone who needs to look at ten or twenty books, but doesn’t want to buy them—they’d be out of luck. If the United States adopted the treaty with language like this, publishers could insist that that we’d need to change our laws to start keeping commercially available books out of our libraries serving people with disabilities.  And, if we start requiring people with disabilities to buy books rather than borrowing them from libraries, who’s next?

As the CEO of Benetech, a nonprofit that provides the world’s largest online collection of accessible books for the print disabled through our Bookshare library, this is of grave concern for me. As an organization that puts the United States’ disability-specific copyright exception into practice, I can say with confidence that our exception model works. We go to great lengths to ensure the digital works we provide are restricted to bona fide print disabled patrons. And while the publishing industry was skittish about Bookshare’s library at first, they’re now partners, directly providing 80 percent of the 3,000 books we add to our collection each month.  Our quarter-million American patrons now download more than a million accessible books and periodicals each year!

I don’t need to say what an immensely positive impact access to these books has had on the lives of people with print disabilities, students in particular. If you’re interested is seeing for yourself, check out some of our member stories. What I will say is that ripping books out of the hands of those who need them most—whether it’s from our Bookshare library or from your local library—is simply unconscionable.

The Diplomatic Conference that will determine the Treaty for the Blind’s fate begins this week. To stand up to the private interests behind this assault on the treaty, Benetech is working with a coalition of groups, including the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind, as well as the American Library Association (ALA) and the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) We’re using multiple channels to fight back against the proposed changes, including a We the People White House petition aimed at getting the Obama Administration to take action.

If you’re as concerned as I am and want to help, please sign the  petition and help spread the word. This treaty was supposed to be a meaningful step forward for the blind and print disabled community worldwide. Now, it could have a drastically negative impact on us all. If we can get to 100,000 signatures, the White House is required to respond to the petition and will, hopefully, take positive action.

Our coalition will do everything it can to secure a treaty that both protects the access we have now (and with it the important role libraries play) and will benefit people with print disabilities around the world. I hope you’ll join us. We can’t let private interests win out over social good.

At this time each year, the media produces the “job outlook” story for mass consumption. The past several years the forecast was much the same—dismal. This year, the national economy is showing signs of recovery, and employment rates are creeping up. Still, I’m uncertain what to make of this year’s crop of stories. These folks think it looks promising, while this outlook is less optimistic.

No matter what the state of the job market is, the better prepared a student is for job interviews, the more he or she knows about the potential employer and the industry, the better equipped that student is to compete for the opening. The types of information required for such preparation are numerous, and may include everything from knowing how to give a firm handshake to knowing latest market trends. Given the mix, it suggests that career services and academic libraries both have something valuable to offer students heading into the crowded job market. Another thing we have in common is the need to adapt to those external societal shifts that will enable us to better position our services to give students every advantage they’ll need.

Success Stories

Past experience in a business library convinced me that academic librarians can make a difference for job-hunting students. Although they had more jobs to apply for than liberal arts majors, business students, particularly MBAs, faced tough competition. They were bright, had the experience, and many had diplomas from the top programs.

So how does a student get an edge over the other applicants? Simple: Information. But more is less if the information is the same as what everyone else can access, such as free web news or annual reports. To excel, students must gain an advantage via the competitive intelligence and industry analysis found in the library’s marketing and financial databases. For many students, just knowing whether their potential employer is a public or private firm can make a difference, and many—even business students—are sometimes unaware. Connecting with a librarian who is able to help the student develop a research strategy—much more than a haphazard gathering of web material—allows the student to go into his or her interview with confidence and the ability to know as much, if not more, about their preferred potential employer as anyone else does. Sometimes, even more than the interviewer.

Connecting With Career Services

While they have something great to offer students as they prepare for interviews, academic librarians may be less effective in actually getting students to ask for help. Students are often oblivious to both the resources and services available at the library. That’s where a relationship with colleagues at career services can make a difference. When career counselors know their library colleagues, are aware of what the library has to offer, and can personally refer students to librarians, the students are more likely to get the help they need. It’s a true win-win, because the career counselors are advancing their mission of getting students into jobs, the academic librarians get connected with students, and the students are better prepared to compete. The one barrier we face is failure to communicate. Collaboration fails if we are unable to get together to help each other to help our students. The good news is that career services, just like our academic libraries, needs to reinvent itself for a changing higher education and employment landscape—and the academic library may fit well into a new vision.

Transforming Career Services

Right now there’s a great opportunity for academic librarians to engage with career services, because a new report titled “A Roadmap for Transforming the College-to-Career Experience” is calling for career services offices to radically change the nature of their work and to move from a more isolated model to one in which career services is integrated into all phases of the student’s college experience—right from the start. What the report authors are suggesting, to put it into better perspective, is an idea no less radical than an academic librarian advocating that the library should change its name to “Lifelong Learning Center.” Career services, the report claims, is a misleading name, because the process must help students learn about themselves and the working world, and refuse to settle for merely assisting students to find their post-graduation job. In commenting on the document at a conference, as reported by Inside Higher Ed, Andy Chan, vice president for personal and career development at Wake Forest University and a co-editor of the Report, said that  “career services is not working,” and that the current model must be transformed. Our colleagues in career services are taking a serious look at how to position their services for a new generation of students with radically different needs and expectations.

Parallels With the Library

Consider the following Chan quote from that same article: “There are a lot of issues around trying to manage costs, which I completely understand, but the flip side of that question is, how do we continue to create and justify value that matters to our students?” That sounds like it could come right out of an article about academic libraries. Both career services and academic libraries are challenged to adapt to change in higher education in ways that will help them do more than just stay relevant to students. What is needed is no less than a transformation in ways students receive services—shifting from a “help them once” model to one that establishes more of a lifecycle approach. Given the nature of careers and how they change over time, this might seem a more natural shift for career services than academic libraries. Yet the delivery of lifelong library services that support students’ research needs into the post-graduation workplace is a fertile area for discovery. Given the shared interests and challenges of both academic units—and how past collaborations have benefitted students—this is a good time for career services and academic library professionals to jointly explore how they might work together to improve the value proposition.

Buyout firm BC Partners agreed to buy German publisher SpringerScience+Business Media for about 3.3 billion euros ($4.4 billion) on Wednesday, the largest private-equity acquisition in Germany for seven years.

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Sources told Reuters earlier this week that the owners entered fresh talks with BC Partners after last week rejecting the firm’s 3.1 billion euro ($4.1 billion) bid as too low and announcing they would float the business.

Springer, which competes with Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier and Dutch company Wolters Kluwer, publishes 2,200 English-language journals and more than 8,000 new book titles every year.

Sources said the sellers would keep a stake of about 10 percent in Springer between them. BC Partners confirmed the current owners would retain a minority shareholding.

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British private equity investors Candover and Cinven created Springer Science in 2004 by merging Dutch group Kluwer Academic Publishers with German firm BertelsmannSpringer.

Read the Complete Article

From Springer’s Media Announcement:

Derk Haank, CEO of Springer, said: “BC Partners has made an enhanced, and very attractive offer for our company. For this reason, my colleagues on the Springer Management Board and I consider this outcome in the best interest of the company, its employees, authors, editors and other stakeholders. We are a healthy, innovative and respected STM publisher and our leading position in fields such as open access, eBooks and our growing presence in emerging markets is an excellent basis for our future success.”

From the BC Partners Announcement:

BC Partners plans to support the continued growth of Springer globally by further expanding its core subscription business as well as focusing on traditionally high-growth areas such as open access publishing and emerging markets. Springer aims to be the prime publishing house for researchers in all disciplines. EQT Partners and GICIC will remain invested as minority shareholders in the business, which will support continuity and stability.

MEETING OF MINDS (Clockwise from top l.): (l.–r.) Debbie Winlock, Matej Novak, Nomaza Dingayo, and Geeta Malhotra opened the meeting with a panel on “Learning from Each Other: Participant Voices”; the historic Bo Kaap neighborhood in Cape Town was included in an optional cultural tour for participants; Irakli Garibashvili (l.) and Erlyn Sulistyaningsih collaborated in a convening session; Matthew Vanderwerff (at mic), Gianina Moncea, and Tra Hoang Thi Huong added some spice to The Innovation Kitchen session, in which participants “cooked up” a new library service and presented it to the larger group; Malhotra (l.) and Wendy Knapp relaxed at the District 6 Museum in Cape Town during the cultural tour; participants took in the Masiphumelele Library, where they were warmly welcomed by library director Susan Alexander (c.) and her staff

In April, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries program hosted in Cape Town, South Africa, the aptly named Peer Learning Meeting (PLM). According to the Gates Foundation, the conference is held roughly every 18 months and is described as “a multiday event where Global Libraries (GL) grantees, staff, and partners meet to exchange ideas and experiences, share success stories and challenges, discuss practical solutions, and build relationships with their fellow professionals in the field.” This year, some 120 librarians from 32 countries gathered to share the challenges they face and the solutions they’ve found.

Among the invited delegates were a past winner and finalist in LJ’s Best Small Library in America award, also sponsored by the Gates Foundation: William Harmer, director of the Chelsea District Library, MI, and a 2009 LJ Mover & Shaker, and Debbie Winlock, director of the Page Public Library, AZ. LJ caught up with both, as well as 2010 LJ Mover & Shaker Stephanie Chase, director of library programs and services at the Seattle Public Library, who also attended and presented at the event, to find out what they learned from their peers halfway across the world.

“I thought it was extremely powerful to see the commonalities of our opportunities and our challenges,” Chase says. “The amazing part was that the conversation was really the same. The person working in rural Ghana, bringing mobile computer labs that run on solar power, and doesn’t have a master’s degree—success in that sphere requires the same traits and skills and focus and strategy as me providing service in a highly urban, very diverse, well-connected community. If libraries could start thinking about how we communicate that kind of commonality, we’ll get somewhere. But if we keep thinking it needs to be different in all those different places, it will be difficult.”

Tale of two libraries

Everyone LJ spoke to emphasized that the ability to build relationships with other librarians was the highlight of the event.

Not only was there “a great deal of discussion of libraries as engines of economic development, partnership building, and community involvement,” at the conference proper, Harmer says, but his visit to a South African library took this theme to the next level. Harmer visited two libraries: one in the affluent community of Fish Hoek, which he says, “was very like any library you might see in middle America. He also felt that it seemed really familiar, seemed very institutionalized and formal and staid and somewhat impersonal.”

By contrast, as soon as he entered the library in the immediately adjacent shantytown of Masiphumelele, he was “blown away” by its vibrant atmosphere and sense of purpose, it’s heavy use by local students who were focused on their goals, the “real connection between the kids and the staff members,” and, in particular, the head librarian, who invited all of her staff and volunteers to explain to the visiting delegates why the library was meaningful to them. “Instead of spouting some professional jargon, each one of them told a story,” Harmer says. This to me was clearly a library that was responsive to community needs…. I kept thinking, this is what American librarians need to see.”

Meanwhile, Winlock notes that the global awareness element works both ways: the event also allowed her and her colleagues to counter some (sadly untrue) perceptions among her peers. In conversation with librarians from elsewhere, she said, “They thought American libraries were well set up, with no problems. It was a total surprise to some that libraries were closing and programs were being cut.”

To carry the impact of these eye-opening realizations out beyond the confines of the conference, attendees discussed the potential for ongoing collaborations. For example, Harmer invited the head librarian to dinner after the conference, and together they cooked up a plan for a professional exchange program, where one of the Chelsea District Library’s staff members would spend several months working in Masiphumelele, and vice versa. Professional development was also a major focus, Harmer tells LJ, particularly developing skill sets for librarians in working collaboratively to help solve community problems and building private public sponsorships.

Harmer was also very impressed by the presentations on Maker spaces by his fellow attendees. “I’m not interested in doing arts and crafts, I am looking to…help solve community problems,” Harmer says, “and I met with some library leaders who are doing great work in that area. I walked away feeling pretty awesome about our profession, that we are taking a leadership role in innovation…. [T]here is an opportunity for the democratization of the tools of invention, to provide space for local entrepreneurs to connect with the do-it-yourself generation; we can create the shop class of the 21st century, [and] the library can be the center of that.”

In addition to implementing the PLM’s inspirations at Chelsea, Harmer plans to spread the word via the Michigan Library Association, to whose board he was elected while he was in Cape Town. Harmer tells LJ that only his digital publishing concerns, a mainstay of U.S. domestic library conferences, did not get addressed. (“We didn’t get around to it,” he says.)

CAPE CONNECTIONS (Clockwise from top l.): PLM colleagues took in the sights at the Cape of Good Hope; Jeremy Paley from the Gates Foundation watched a movie with the children at the Nazeema Isaacs Library; the colorful Masiphumelele Library

Design the world over

For Winlock, the trip carried an extra level of excitement, because it would be her first time outside the United States and only her second on an airplane. In addition to attending, she was one of several speakers who delivered a keynote presentation. Beforehand, she told LJ she particularly looked forward to the Gates Foundation’s big tent approach. “It’s not only libraries, which I thought was neat,” she explained. The meeting also included “a bunch of other people: all levels of library stakeholders and partners.”

Winlock was particularly impressed with the design thinking workshop and plans to adapt an example from Denmark into a process of community consultation and brainstorming for her own library. From her own presentation, Winlock says the global audience was particularly struck by Page’s teen after-hours kickoff for its summer reading program, which involves partnering with local business owners who come in and offer services such as nail art and henna tattoos. The advantage, says Winlock, is not only that the services are free and draw in more teens, but the event also exposes the business owners to the library’s offerings, and many who previously did not use the services have begun to as a result.

Winlock said she is looking forward to using an ongoing forum where the attendees can continue the conversation.

Tomorrow’s libraries (and librarians)

Chase helped lead a workshop on Defining Tomorrow’s Library, together with two other Americans (Pam Sandlian Smith, director, Anythink Libraries, CO, and Wendy Knapp, associate director of Statewide Services, Indiana State Library) and two European librarians (Sidsel Bech-Petersen, library transformer, Aarhus Public Libraries, Denmark, and Ramune Petuchovaite, program manager, EIFL-PLIP, Lithuania). Together they led the participants in a brainstorming session in which they looked at images of library spaces and work and gave people a minute to say what is important, then turned the results into a word cloud.

“One audience member noticed that nowhere did librarian or library staff show up, even though there is one in most of the pictures. If we don’t recognize our importance in this work, how can we expect the public to?” Chase asks. Taking advantage of the flexibility of the unconference format, Chase and her copanelists followed up on the insight, doing the same exercise again, except focusing on “Defining Tomorrow’s Librarian.” Traits that stood out very strongly, she says, include learner, connector, flexibility, relationship builder, community builder, customer service.

Chase was also struck by the research presented on how to measure and demonstrate the impact of libraries and especially of technology initiatives. “Here in the United States, we just have to collect that information at the most shallow level, but how do you demonstrate it very deeply?” she says, citing an organization in Eastern Europe that tracked how many job seekers applied for positions, obtained interviews, and were hired by using library computers. The answer was between 8,000 and 9,000.

Chase is no stranger to the domestic library conference circuit, but she tells LJ that the PLM had a deeper impact than most. “I was fortunate enough to be a [Public Library Association] Fellow back in 2010,” she says. “I had a very immersive leadership experience that really changed the way I thought about my work. This was a similar kind of experience, in terms of me really thinking about the challenges ahead for libraries and for me as someone who does leadership work in libraries.”

A public appeal has been launched to save the hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts smuggled out of Timbuktu during the crisis in Mali, which are now facing a more insidious threat: moisture damage.

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Stored in the metal boxes used for their evacuation, the texts are already showing signs of damage and exposure to moisture, and experts have launched an appeal to raise $100,000 to help preserve them. The IndieGoGo campaign from Libraries in Exile is asking the public to donate money to save the manuscripts: $30 would preserve a single manuscript, while $9,000 would protect an entire footlocker. The funds will be used to buy moisture traps, archival boxes and additional storage, as well as to cover the labour required for the project. Over $40,000 has already been raised.

As we post this item (2:30 PM ET on June 18, 2013) the crownfuding campaign has 61 hours left (ends Thursday, Jun 20, 2013 at 11:59PM PT) and has $47,153 in pledges.

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Direct to Images of the Material

Direct to IndieGoGo Funding Page