Public Group active 1 year, 1 month ago

Library Technology Subcommittee of the CUNY Committee on Academic Technology

A standing committee reporting to the CUNY Committee on Academic Technology about the interplay of academic technology and libraries.

Admins:

Notes from 4 October 2016 meeting of the Library Technology Subcommittee

  • Posted by Stephen Francoeur (he/him) on October 5, 2016 at 3:46 pm

    Notes from 4 October 2016 meeting of the Library Technology Subcommittee

    Location
    Baruch College

    Attendees
    Alex Berrio Matamoros (CUNY Law)
    Mark Eaton (Kingsborough)
    Stephen Francoeur (Baruch)
    Stefanie Havelka (Lehman)
    Ann Matsuuchi (LaGuardia)
    Sean O’Heir (Lehman)
    Derek Stadler (LaGuardia)
    Allie Verbovetskaya (CUNY OLS)
    Dave Williams (Queens)

    Adoption of the Agenda
    It was agreed to that we’d follow Allie Verbetskaya’s suggestion to make sure the agenda item about the survey of logins also included a discussion of the work CUNY CIS is doing to work on a central authentication system.

    Approval of the Minutes
    The minutes from the 14 April 2016 meeting were accepted as distributed.

    Survey of Logins
    We discussed where we were with the survey of logins that was sent to each library. Only two colleges failed to respond to the survey, Medgar Evers and Queensborough. We had been holding off with closing out survey so that we might get a 100% response rate. We agreed that at this point we probably had a complete enough portrait of the ecosystem of logins that library users have to navigate and could begin the analysis. Stephen Francoeur and Alex Berrio Matamoros volunteered to take the raw survey data that Allie had and work on a preliminary analysis that would be shared by the next subcommittee meeting. One idea we had for the report: try to understand why are certain campuses using certain systems, esp. those that are not commonly used at other campuses?i

    We also talked about the efforts of CUNY CIS to create a centralized login system that uses CUNYfirst credentials. So far, this system is in place for the CUNY Virtual Desktop Initiative and the service that lets faculty and staff download Microsoft Office. Allie reported that CUNY OLS is working with CUNY CIS to test out using this new login system for OneSearch and the EZproxy instances that are maintained by CUNY OLS (a little more than half the schools). Shibboleth will be used for the authentication system. The hope is that users will be able to use their EMPLID to log into OneSearch and EZproxy instead of their library barcode. Because of limitations with Aleph system, we won’t be able to use this new login system there and will have to keep using barcodes.

    For those libraries that run their own EZproxy servers, there may be a way to set them up to also hook into this new login scheme being tested.

    Library Technology Survey
    We revisited the idea raised last spring of having an annual survey of library technology, much like ERAC’s survey of database subscriptions across CUNY libraries. The survey would allow libraries to share what kinds of hardware and devices they make available to their users, for on-site use and for checkout. The hope is that we would get only one response from each library, thereby eliminating the headache of looking at multiple submissions from a given library and trying to figure out any discrepancies in the responses. After discussing who at each library should be the person to complete the survey, we agreed that it would be best to recommend that a team of people (if necessary) at each library work to complete a single survey response (we envisioned, for example, a systems librarian and a head of access services sitting down together at a computer to work through the survey questions).

    We also discussed whether those schools that multiple libraries (such as Hunter) should submit a single survey or one for each library at the school. We agreed that it would be more than adequate to have just a single survey response representing all the school’s libraries.

    Stephen presented a draft of the survey that he did in Qualtrics and got lots of suggestions of items to add (e.g., graphing calculators, 3D printers, assistive technologies) and questions to ask (e.g., “if you do loan this item, what is the loan period?”). By the next meeting of the Tech Sharecase, Stephen will have a new draft of the survey for approval.

    News from CUNY Libraries
    To help Stephen and Alex with their monthly subcommittee report to the CUNY Committee on Academic Technology, we came up with ideas for news items about CUNY libraries to share:

    – Call for papers by 1 January 2017 for Urban Library Journal

    – LACUNY Privacy Roundtable meeting on October 28 featuring Melissa Morrone from the Brooklyn Public Library

    – CUNY OLS is sponsoring an event on “Digital Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning” on Friday, October 21, from 1 pm – 4 pm at Baruch College.

    – OLS Copyright Committee and LACUNY Scholarly Communications Roundtable event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act: Friday, 11/4 at the Graduate Center (Skylight Room) from 10 AM to noon. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/back-to-the-future-the-1976-copyright-act-and-the-internet-tickets-28292608955

    Next Meeting
    Dave Williams from Queens College volunteered to host the next meeting, which will likely be in the first few weeks of December. We’ll make sure that the Doodle poll that goes out to look at best dates takes into account the date of the CUNY IT Conference, the ACRL/NY Conference, and Hanukkah.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.