Schedule for ARL Membership Meeting Fall 2014

The committee will be provided status updates on all ARL diversity and leadership development programs and will be briefed on two assessment projects that will be led by the newly appointed visiting program officer. The committee will discuss policies concerning the selection processes for diversity recruitment and scholarship programs, as well as strategies for ensuring that diversity and inclusion are embedded in ARL programs within the new strategic framework.

The working group will be joined by guests from the Digital Library Federation (DLF). Participants will discuss a cohort of peer networking and mentoring among a group of ARL institutions that participated in the E-Science Institute and that worked with a CLIR/DLF data curation postdoctoral fellow to refine the strategic agendas created during the E-Science Institute. Other agenda items include discussion of e-research within the ARL Strategic Framework 2015+ and research data management programs.

The committee will be provided status updates on all ARL statistics and assessment initiatives and will be briefed on the new facilities inventory, the supplementary budget survey, and the special collections impact stories. As part of the Strategic Thinking and Design process the committee will engage in imagining what assessment needs to look like for ARL in future years. A review of member-funded activities as well as the StatsQUAL suite of market-driven services will be conducted. The committee will engage the questions that the Strategic Thinking and Design transition team will present to the committee chairs.

For the first hour of the Fair Use and Related Exemptions Working Group session, Jonathan Band, PLLC, Technology Law and Policy, will explore and engage with the working group and guests to identify “bright lines” where research libraries can undertake mass digitization as a result of the HathiTrust decision.

The Regional Federal Depository Library Working Group will discuss the status of the HathiTrust Digital Library project that seeks to build a comprehensive collection of US government documents. In addition, the working group will discuss the possibility of several regional collections in remote storage serving as long-term preservation access collections for the FDLP.

The working group will review its current partnership with the Society of American Archivists (SAA) to provide Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) courses to ARL libraries, and then spend time talking about new kinds of job descriptions and domains for digital archivists within ARL libraries. As the working group reviews the ARL Strategic Framework 2015+ the discussion will focus on the collective collection, particularly in light of new directions for the CLIR/Mellon Hidden Collections program. CLIR program staff Christa Williford and Amy Lucko will join the meeting as guests.

The committee will review the status of ongoing program activities as well as consider how to address scholarly communication issues in ARL’s new strategic framework.

The committee will discuss several policy issues, including the growing concerns of many in the higher education community with the TEACH Act, a bill that seeks to ensure that students with disabilities have equal access to instructional technology used by a postsecondary institution. The committee will also discuss and consider a new initiative to promote institutional digital rights management in response to funder mandates on public access to research resources. Related to that initiative, the committee will discuss the federal agency public access policies and ARL’s engagement with agencies. Finally, there will be a discussion of Canadian policy issues, network neutrality and copyright reform activities prior to a joint session with the Transforming Research Libraries Steering Committee on accessibility and the introduction of Katya Pereyaslavska, Scholars Portal, and new ARL visiting program officer for accessibility and universal design.

The committee will review its current activities supporting library workforce transformation, including its new monthly column Workforce Transformation Stories on the ARL website as well as expansion and uptake of the ARL Position Description Bank. The committee will hear a report from a small group meeting on October 6 about research library liaisons, in which the group will explore the creation of collective tools for external engagement. The meeting will conclude with a joint session with the Influencing Public Policies Steering Committee on activities to support library collaboration for accessible content and technology.

• Strategic Thinking & Design

  Wendy Pradt Lougee, ARL Past President; University Librarian and McKnight Presidential Professor, University of Minnesota; and Chair of the ARL Strategic Thinking & Design Work Group

  Brian E. C. Schottlaender, Audrey Geisel University Librarian, University of California (UC), San Diego

• SHARE Initiative

  Tyler Walters, Dean of Libraries, Virginia Tech and Co-Chair, SHARE Steering Committee

• Fearless Future—Rebranding of ARL

  Mary Evangliste, Co-Owner, Fearless Future

  Jonathan Silberman, Co-Owner, Fearless Future

• 10th Anniversary of the ARL Leadership Fellows Program
  
  Martha Bedard, Vice Provost for University Libraries, University of Connecticut

While providing access to scholarly literature is a core mission, research libraries have historically played another key role: ensuring the survival of critical primary evidence and documentation produced outside of academia. This role has been particularly important in preserving government information. In 1998, for example, Yale, Cornell, and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) were able to preserve the files of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, documentation that figured prominently in the subsequent prosecution of the surviving Khmer Rouge leadership for genocide.

The advent of big data and digital technologies is fundamentally altering the life cycle of such documentation, and calls for a “new system of action” to ensure the long-term integrity of this kind of societal evidence. Ironically, while digital media offer the potential for unprecedented government transparency, they also pose real threats to the survival and accessibility of government records, even in the United States and Canada.

This program will explore these threats in the realm of US government information, in light of the recent controversial losses—and unauthorized disclosures—of US government records. Speakers will bring three different perspectives to bear on access to “born digital” government information.

What are innovative approaches to using scholarly resources and library expertise to support campus initiatives? How is a culture of innovation created in an organization? What is the long-term impact for the library, for the institution? M.J. D’Elia will talk about turning innovation from a core value to a core practice and share a blueprint for engendering creativity in the library. Mary Ann Mavrinac will talk about the creation of the iZone, a space within the library that will specialize in cultivating and supporting students’ creative and innovative ambitions.

This one-hour program is a brief look into three components of development: administrative placement of the library’s development efforts; importance of collaboration between communication and development officers; and the opportunities and challenges of annual giving, campaigns, and gift planning. The panelists will also share their reflections on the role of the library director in development.

Building on the strategies developed by the ARL Accessibility and Universal Design Working Group, including the launch of the Web Accessibility Toolkit, this program will address three new and ongoing efforts to help libraries fulfill their mission to enhance information access to all of their users. Presentations will cover the opportunities for services in the wake of the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust decision, the benefits and advantages of institutional self-assessment and accessibility plans, and the use of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) Scholars Portal repository for digitized texts to serve patrons with print disabilities in Ontario. Paul Jaeger will moderate, setting the stage for how libraries can engage in greater collaborative accessibility work by understanding their changing user populations.

Resource for session: http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/article-hathitrust-analysis-7jul2014.pdf

Libraries, in concert with their institutions, are in different stages in the development of data-management programs. This session will explore the opportunities and challenges in the planning and implementation of programs.