UC Libraries Forum 2021: Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration

This presentation will share how members of the UC San Diego Library Special Collections & Archives staff responded to California’s sudden work from home order due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including remote project development, management tools, and collaborator involvement. Presenters will provide a brief timeline of events leading up to the work from home order, the development of a list of remote projects, and the assignment of priorities and responsibilities. They will describe examples of these projects and discuss how they progressed from ideation to execution, including workflow development and management tools. They will also examine the opportunities and obstacles of rapid project development, as well as training and managing the work of staff and student employees from other library units who volunteered to assist in archives-related tasks.

Presenters will further discuss reopening, highlighting the need for flexibility and acknowledging seemingly competing priorities as they balanced remote and onsite projects. Presenters will celebrate accomplishments, and address the challenges they faced while transitioning between remote and onsite priorities.

This presentation will distill a book length study on this topic by the presenter that was published in 2020. The topic deals with library services for those with ID, a population whose case has large implications for the profession as a whole. ID is defined as a condition of intelligence quotient (IQ) of 70 or below together with significant difficulties in learning, communication, and self-care. Insofar as diversity, equity, and inclusion involve redressing disadvantages, no population is more deserving of attention than those with ID. However, they also represent almost insuperable challenges to serve. Notwithstanding technological change, the mission of libraries remains to provide textual information: reading. So how does one serve individuals who not only have limited or nonexistent reading skills but face large obstacles to acquiring those skills? Coupled with a lack of training in special education together with a pervasive strain imposed by reduced budgets, the difficulties facing the library are considerable. On the other hand, ignoring this population implies that diversity has a limit and that certain groups fall outside the library’s area of responsibility. This dilemma promises to define the profession’s capabilities and values. After reviewing both the history of library services and the social and educational plight of those with ID, the presentation will summarize a case study of the first book club for those with ID at an academic library. This club has modeled itself on a grass-roots initiative in special education called The Next Chapter Book Club. Its rationale will appear familiar to librarians as a version of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a prominent topic of library conferences and literature, which promotes different learning styles. The talk will provide a detailed history, methodology, assessment methods, data, and best practices derived from the experience. These practices, spanning issues of collection, pedagogy, and research practice will appear surprisingly familiar to librarians. They underscore the conclusion that despite a history of underperformance in this area, librarians are well-equipped to serve this historically marginalized population and, in doing so, validate their core principles of service and their expanded commitment to instruction.

The UC Common Knowledge Groups (CKGs) provide an inclusive environment for sharing knowledge and information across the campuses that enrich communication among library staffs, expand resources and benefit library users in equitable ways. Reinforced by the structure of the California Digital Library (CDL), and in the spirit of all things related to equity, diversity and inclusivity (EDI), the intention is to foster innovation and continuous improvement by providing an open venue to exchange ideas and collaborate on systemwide initiatives.

The UC system currently has about 20 subject-based CKGs; these are the focus of this presentation. Subject-based CKGs contribute to UC acquisitions, licensing, processing, staff training, utilization of new and emerging technologies and implementation of new services that benefit and advance the University of California in fundamental ways. Subject CKGs also advise and give feedback on UC initiatives (e.g. shared print, the eScholarship repository, shared cataloging and data management), leveraging the collective knowledge and thoughtful consideration of librarians who bring a direct knowledge of their discipline-based constituencies.

This panel presentation will: 1) provide an overview of subject CKGs; 2) share results of survey of CKG members conducted in Summer 2021; and 3) suggest impactful ways that the CKGs can contribute so libraries and their staffs are more resilient and empowered and collections meet patrons needs. We will conclude with an interactive discussion to elaborate and expand on the ideas presented. Our goal is to contribute to a shared understanding of CKG activities and spark discussion on ways that CKGs can continue to innovate and evolve.

As COVID-19 upended our activities as librarians in unprecedented and unexpected ways, the LAUC-B conference committee was faced with the prospect of organizing a successful bi-annual virtual conference. The use of virtual technologies in conference planning during public health-mandated work from off-campus remains minimally documented. Several studies, such as Romano (2020); and Peters and Dickinson (2020), focus on in-person conference planning workflow, but none address the processes of organizing a virtual scenario. The organizing committee, led by Corliss Lee and Shannon Kealey, formed a distinct subcommittee, composed of Kristina Bush, Natalie Marquez, and Liladhar Pendse, to investigate virtual platforms. In this presentation, Natalie and Liladhar will narrate the story of the subcommittee’s work in choosing a virtual platform that would simulate and embody normal and important in-person conference activities and experiences. To establish a baseline, the subcommittee scanned LIS literature for clues regarding conference attendees and planning committee priorities in order to draft a list of salient features needed for a virtual conference. The committee used this list of features to select platforms to review fully and then presented these platforms to the larger committee for collective decision-making. This presentation will highlight the values of proactive collaboration and professional “thinking out loud” among the subcommittee members as well as reporting out to our committee peers.

The collaborative effort between the UC San Diego Library and the UC Santa Barbara Library (called Project Surfliner, after the train that connects the two cities) to share development teams that work on common strategic products is still going strong after almost three years. In this panel, we will chat with the two campus project leads, as well as some of the product owners to discuss working within this model. Find out what’s changed after sharing resources and product development goals over the last year. What needs more work, where are we finding our strengths, and how haven’t we run out of train puns yet? If you’re looking to learn how to collaborate with another UC, this is the session for you. Panelists: Matt Critchlow, UC San Diego Alexandra Dunn, UC Santa Barbara Jessica Hilt, UC San Diego Tim Marconi, UC San Diego Chrissy Rissmeyer, UC Santa Barbara Amy Work, UC San Diego

Academic librarians have increasingly gone public with their experiences of low morale and burnout, yet less attention has been paid to the workplace experiences of library staff. As Kaetrena Davis Kendrick notes in her work on the persistent harm of low morale among librarians, “the cost of silence can be high.”

We decided to examine that gap in the research. In exploring the landscape of library staff morale, we hypothesized that the nature of the academic library’s hierarchies, and staff roles within them, would be major factors in levels of morale. We also sought to investigate questions of organizational culture, opportunities for professional development, and management style.

Our research team, including library staff, former library staff, a recent MLS grad and MLIS student, and librarians, conducted 34 structured interviews with academic library staff nationwide (purposefully excluding UC staff). The interviews took place during a three-week period in May-June 2020, and provide perhaps the final snapshot of library staff life in the pre-COVID era. Interviews were transcribed by a student who was trained by a member of our team, and de-identified transcripts were analyzed using the qualitative data analysis software MAXDQA.

In this talk, we present our findings, some of which surprised us. Among other things, the findings establish that efforts to address equity in compensation, provide professional growth opportunities, and create more collegial work environments, in particular addressing the librarian-staff divide and the need for manager advocacy, can all improve staff morale. In addition, we suggest concrete ways to make changes in libraries in order to assess and improve morale across staff hierarchies, and we offer resources for workplace development and support for staff.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees do not have to be another box to check for diversity’s sake. In this presentation we will be looking at a case study of the UC Riverside Library’s Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In this presentation, we will look at how the committee’s own best practices evolved from its inception in 2017 and how collaboration became valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through the COVID-19 Community Response Oral History Project, UC Berkeley's Oral History Center (OHC) is documenting the regional response to the global pandemic, and evaluating its effectiveness as it relates to public health, health equity, community, and politics. OHC interviewers Shanna Farrell and Amanda Tewes will discuss the importance of establishing partnerships on and off UC campuses, cultural competency when approaching narrators in BIPOC and immigrant communities, documenting the effectiveness of the regional response to COVID-19, and increasing community engagement with the OHC's collections.

In 2019 The ALA Racial Equity Task Force was formed and charged with developing a framework for libraries to implement. As part of this goal, a wide-reaching survey was designed and analyzed by a small research team in 2020. The goal of the study was to assess public and academic libraries racial equity efforts, employees’ perception of those efforts as well as their experiences with racial equity and inequity within their library. Utilizing an online survey, the data was used to identify areas of improvement in regard to racial equity efforts in public and academic libraries and seeks to answer the question: How are libraries moving towards transformation and justice in regard to racial equity? While the overwhelming majority of the 717 participants believe their institutions have a responsibility to address racial equity, the data also reveals that our practices are not aligned with our values. In this session, Caragher and Bryant will discuss the disaggregated results of the survey by racial identity, specific to job security, promotion, and retention. We invite the audience to discuss the blind spots in racial equity work in academic and public libraries.

Blockeley University is the collaborative effort of hundreds of students who in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained their community by building the UC Berkeley campus in Minecraft, a sandbox video game. Their extraordinary effort is being preserved by The Bancroft Library. This presentation will discuss the selection of the collection and the challenges and opportunities in preserving this unique project.

The Blockeley effort was recognized by the Chancellor’s Office and a virtual commencement ceremony was conducted in the Blockeley University Minecraft server. Other universities have built their campuses in Minecraft before but what was extraordinary about this build was that it was an innovative effort to specifically keep the UC Berkeley community together during the shelter-in-place period. The Bancroft Library felt this was an effort worth preserving.

In this presentation, Kathryn M. Neal, The Bancroft Library’s Associate University Archivist, will discuss how she identified components of this project that should be preserved as historical evidence and Christina Velazquez Fidler, The Bancroft Library’s Digital Archivist will address the technical challenges in preserving the Blockeley server and all of its modifications, and lastly, the solution of a single player world file bundled with the texture packs that enabled the many modifications made. This solution resolved many questions including concerns surrounding the maintenance of the Blockeley server.

Together the world file, the promotional videos, the website, planning documents among other materials collectively make up the Blockeley University collection. The Blockeley University collection is a forward thinking collection, recording the work of hundreds of students and their efforts to maintain community during the Covid-19 pandemic.