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Summary, April 2021 Core e-Forum, “Community of Practice (CoP): Supporting Cross-Sector Work”

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In the April Core E-Forum, participants were asked to discuss Communities of Practice (CoP), consider how a CoP could/should function, and how it might be useful to apply at organizations with distributed personnel. While many participants had little experience with CoPs prior to the e-forum, a wide variety of aspects of CoPs were discussed, including membership, organizational structure, and motivation for forming a CoP. These discussions also identified key areas for continued investigation, including how CoPs differ from other working or interest groups, the decision-making power of CoPs, and the balance between formality and flexibility in creating and sustaining the community. In discussing CoP membership, e-forum participants agreed that enthusiastic support is essential to ensure the long-term success of the community. Some participants observed that engagement suffers when members are inactive or roles are unclear; similarly, respondents also noted that simply providing a shared time, location, and topic of shared…Continue Reading

Learn Service Design In One Week: Design Sprint Basics

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More than ever, library leaders at all levels are asked to design and implement new services and programs on a rapid timeline. How can projects move quickly while engaging equitably with community and staff members? Discover how a design sprint process can lead a group from ideation to implementation in only 5 days. Popularized by Google Ventures, a design sprint is a human centered design process in a condensed timeline. This webinar will explore how a sprint process can set the stage for both innovation and equity when designing a new library service. With lessons from 4 sprints from a combination of different projects and organizations, learn how a sprint could be used to tackle priority projects more effectively in less time. In this session, you’ll learn: build a case for using a sprint design process to move quickly and equitably when creating a new service; identify project types suitable…Continue Reading

Make Your Online Text Memorable

Discover how to format content and create text that is more concise and user-friendly with this practical and interactive webinar on May 5. Beginning with a discussion of how people read online and the way they look for content to answer their questions, Writing for the Web will discuss what the inverted pyramid style is and how it can be used to write effective content. Next, attendees will review some examples of well-formatted content and deconstruct it. Along the way, attendees will do some short exercises where they will rewrite content to make it easier to be read online. In this webinar, you’ll learn: understand how the Inverted Pyramid Style can help you write better content and lead the readers eye write content that can easily be scanned know how to better phrase links, headings, and sentences Live Webinar: Wednesday, May 5, 2021, 1:00 – 2:00pm CTPresenter: Patrick Patterson Reserve your spot…Continue Reading

Margaret Heller Elected 2021-22 Core President-elect

Margaret Heller, Digital Services Librarian at Loyola University Chicago, has been elected as the 2021-22 President-elect of Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures, a division of the American Library Association (ALA). Her term will begin July 1, and she’ll serve in that role until July 1, 2022, when she’ll become President of Core. Heller’s fellow candidate for President-elect was Maurini Strub, Director of Performance & User Engagement at the University of Rochester (NY) River Campus Libraries. In discussing her election, Heller said, “Thanks to the members of Core for giving me this opportunity to serve them as President-elect. Making Core a strong division that is dedicated to the needs of its members and improving the library profession as a whole has been my driving ambition over the past years. As Core has gotten started up during a time of unprecedented challenges, I have been inspired by the Core member leadership and staff…Continue Reading

New Core Jobs: April 14, 2021

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Browse new job openings on the Core Jobs Site

University Library Dean, San José State University, San José, CA Senior Librarian – Electronic Resources, Nicholson Memorial Library System, Garland, TX Medical Librarian – Full Time – Monday-Friday 8a-5pm, Texas Health Resources, Dallas, TX Head of Special Collections and Archives, Auburn University Libraries, Auburn, AL Associate Vice President and University Librarian, Texas State University, San Marcos TX Visit the Core Jobs Site for additional job openings and information on submitting your own job posting.

Save the Date: 2021 Core Forum

Core Forum provides an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and make new connections while celebrating the interconnected library work Core members share. Registration opens in June. Forum features a welcome reception, 2 days of thought-provoking presentations, keynote presentations, tabletop exhibits, dine-arounds, a game night and poster sessions. Additionally, there will be an unconference space where informal discussions can happen throughout the event, including ad hoc, birds of a feather discussions. Sign up to receive announcements via email. Interested in leading or contributing to a session? We’re looking for presentations on hot topics and innovative content in the following areas: Access and equity Assessment Buildings and operations Leadership and management Metadata and collections Technology Watch for a Call for Proposals announcement this month. Become a sponsor: Opportunities include sponsoring the welcome reception, being the hero organization that provides coffee and tea during breaks, and hosting tabletop exhibits. Stay tuned for the…Continue Reading

Celebrate Preservation Week 2021 with free webinars from Core

On Tuesday, April 27 and Wednesday, April 28, join Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures for two free Preservation Week 2021 webinars. With the theme “Preserving Community Archives,” Preservation Week 2021 will be celebrated April 25-May 1, 2021, and libraries, institutions, archives, and museums from across the country are invited to promote this year’s Preservation Week through Preservation Week event tools and the hashtag #preswk, as well as host free Preservation Week webinars to engage with their communities and discuss their preservation programs and services.  “Collecting and Preserving after Tragedy” will be held on Tuesday, April 27. This webinar will explore the Orange County Regional History Center’s rapid response collecting initiative to preserve items collected after the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL. Serving as an introductory to rapid response collecting, the webinar will also examine how the museum collected at memorial sites and inside the club, especially concerning the stabilization and preservation of items that underwent heavy exposure to the…Continue Reading

Examine the key concepts of I.T. with this textbook for librarians and information professionals

In the first textbook from Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures, praised as “thorough, comprehensive, yet highly readable,” Jonathan M. Smith lays a solid foundation of information technology concepts and best practices for aspiring technologists. The Information Technology for Librarians and Information Professionals book provides a broad selection of practical and current topics ranging from information security and web development to technology planning. In this textbook, Smith outlines foundational principles needed to excel in this discipline and serves as the go-to resource for library & information science students, librarians new to systems or information technology responsibilities, and library managers desiring a primer on information technology. Receive 30% off your purchase when using the promo code: RLFANDF30 during checkout. This title is available in both print and PDF format on the Rowman & Littlefield website. Purchase your copy of the book now.

New Core Jobs: March 31, 2021

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Browse new job openings on the Core Jobs Site

Executive Director, British Columbia Library Association, British Columbia, CA Digital Archivist, Smith College, Northampton, MA Associate Librarian for Collections, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME Electronic Resources Librarian, University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville, TN Systems Librarian, Columbia University Libraries, New York, NY Library Technology and Content Strategy Manager, Suffolk Public Library, Suffolk, VA Visit the Core Jobs Site for additional job openings and information on submitting your own job posting.

Creating Crossref DOIs for an IR Collection: Converting a Spreadsheet to XML Using OpenRefine

This article is from our guest blog contributor, Julia A. Lovett, Associate Professor, Digital Initiatives Librarian, University of Rhode Island Libraries This post has two purposes: firstly, to show how you can use Open Refine to easily edit a spreadsheet and transform data from Excel (tab-delimited) format to XML; secondly, and more specifically, to show how I used this method to add Crossref DOIs to an IR (institutional repository) collection. In this case, the IR platform is Digital Commons and the collection is dissertations and theses. For some background, after the University of Rhode Island Libraries joined Crossref, I wanted to create new DOIs for our ETD (electronic theses and dissertations) collections on the IR, DigitalCommons@URI. I was familiar with creating DOI’s one by one using the Crossref web deposit form, where you can enter your new DOI along with its associated metadata and URL. But with thousands of ETD’s,…Continue Reading