The week opened with the Director, Clara providing us with historical background of the Mortenson Centre that was established by the family of C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson Distinguished Professorship (1986) and Mortenson Centre for International Library Programs (!991), with the aim to strengthen international ties among librarians to promote education, understanding and piece. As the only Centre of its kind in world, it believes that librarians sharing information is one of the shortest and surest roads to world peace. As gift, with the goal of connecting with local communities globally for library development in the past 25 years, the Centre prides itself in four cardinal programs which include: Associate Program, Partnership Program, Visitors Program and Lecture Series, across the world. The centre each year sets a theme around current global educational issues which are addressed through workshops, seminars, lectures, short courses for individuals, groups and library organizations. Also, from communication, mini talks, come ideas that can spark up conversations to active improvements, including a wide range of engagement with professors from different faculties to speak on ideas of research by librarians.
Speaking on the theme of this year, ‘Smarter, Strategic and Sustainable Libraries” on the use of information and communication technologies for sustainable libraries, we were introduced to one of the eminent personalities to interact with us. I had heard awe inspiring words about the Dean of Libraries, and University Librarian, John Wilkins, University of Illinois and was curious to meet him. ‘He wields so much influence and power’ I was told. So when I saw him it was a big privilege. During conversation/interaction he mentioned that the position of the Dean of libraries is both academic and professional. He threw light on the library system and the consistent effort being made to transform the library’s landscape as an institution of research and, as the Dean, he is in charge of all academic research activities in the University of Illinois. As such, the library receives research grants/generates funds used for building and developing on individual research efforts. He also said that a day is set aside for research work for every librarian and making effort to remain relevant in time of change particularly in the era of smart technology which is interesting.
The library is into a lot of collaboration work with Illinois faculty members and other outreach programs such as data curation to support research activities, historical data curation and data management. This is a requirement for the National Institute of Science Foundation (NISF). Discovery strategic to build discovery for other researchers. He talked on the Illinois massive digitisation project that started in the mid 1990s. Today, a total of 60,000 volume of books is digitized per year. In the year 2000, Google an alliance with the University to do a comprehensive digitisation of the library collection for improved user experience. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet this high profile personality as one that exudes great leadership/management qualities, being able to take effective charge of all the libraries on campus is no mean feat. He also shed some light on the budgetary system and what is allocated annually for research and digitisation program both staff and others expenditure.
The opportunity made lasting impression on me as it was one of my goals to interface with such leaders with vast experience and knowledge on leadership and management. I look forward to meeting him at another scheduled time before the end of this program.
Then we had a presentation by Jim Hahn, Orientation and Services and Environment Librarian, on ‘Internet of things,’ a smart technology designed for user browsing experience. He talked about his observations and findings of case studies he carried out on location based services in libraries. The idea behind this application is, seeing the library context as all about data, data as a commodity…and, browsing is all about trails of information resources in the library. This is another smart technology, using the mobile device for sharing research data and publishing at the university of Illinois.
At 11.30.am., we went on a tour of the Oak Street Library, one of the amazing sites on Illinois campus. A high tech storage facility I have never seen anywhere else before, with over 4 million items in of different formats. It was perplexing to see how much information and knowledge is preserved here, in this part of the world- truly, value for knowledge preservation. The massive investment and the technology, the dedicated and committed staff are great inspiration worthy of emulation by every academic institution. I saw technicality and hands- on skills, and varieties of maintenance principles applied to ensure that no matter the age of a document that convey information, everything possible is done to maintained for future generation (researchers), as part of their heritage. I was thrilled …what a world of information and knowledge sharing! It is only a librarian that can be opportune to have this experience. This is a very rich culture of learning in all ramification and, I am, indeed, happy to be part of it all!
Our next session was given by Merinda Hensley, Associate Professor/Digital Scholarship Liaison Instruction Librarian. She shed light on the digitization effort at Illinois which commenced with the initial collection of 1000 volume, when the University was established in 1867. With 15million volume today, at 150 years, there is a strategic plan by the University for the next 150 years and the library has equally keyed into this project and has set up a committee to draft its strategic plan. Here at scholarly commons the library is engaged in helping undergraduates/researchers on how to utilize digital resources in doing their research. They are into field data management for undergraduate at the Savvy Research lab, where undergraduates have the experience of learning how to apply research skills in power point preparation/presentation. Workshops are organized for students on how to conduct research using surveys, data collection and analysis which is as part of sharing with the community what librarians. They also invite and interact with researchers/scholars on campus, where the Image and Visual Resource librarian do data presentations. Here students are taught how to do good scanning with iScanner professionally. They work closely Geography Department on management and use of data for research.
On the morning of Wednesday, May 29, 2019, we had an exciting trip to Springfield at 7:00 am., to Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, where we got a chance to see and feel the legacy of one of American Foremost President. We were received by Meghan Harmon an able Reference librarian and her team who greeted us at the reception area and gave us a detailed guided tour of the library with a presentation on historical moments of the life of Lincoln’s humble beginnings who made it the topmost offices in the world by dint of hard work and persistent. We also took a tour of the President Lincoln house which has become a tourist attraction. It was reminiscent of the life of a man, well lived, in spite of trials of losing his three sons and his sudden death through assassination.
The tour was full of thrilling activities as we also visited Illinois State Library, where Joe Natale, Department Chief Director gave an overview of the programs and activities of the state library such as after school program, adult-basic education program, pumpkin festival, reading initiatives, civic engagement, and digitization effort, which is centralized into the Digital Public Library of America, a hub of all digitized materials in the U.S. Our indefatigable Director, Clara M. Chu, insisted that we must see the State House where live parliamentary proceedings were going on. This was the most exciting part for me because I had the rare privilege of witnessing parliamentary proceedings in the lower house. I even signed the Register which is a document …to be archived, someday!
Jen Chien Yu, Library Assessment Coordinator, also gave us presentation on Library Assessment on ‘Project outcome’, a survey tool initiated by the Public Libraries Association (PLA) This is also now used in academic library environment. It is a free simple survey that is available online used to generate feedbacks from library users; which helps to know the impact of services we provide that enable a library take decisions for further improvement of services. It was revealing to know from the case studies that constant evaluation of resources and services is not only important but, mandatory as part of evaluation, it enables libraries improve and communicate what we do as librarians to management and faculty members. Here the user is the focus as the reason we are in our jobs. The survey, thus, is about the user.
Finally, series of Preservation presentations were shown on how the different media are conserved and preserved for future use. We took tours to some of the well-equipped labs and facilities with the different technologies, hardwares and softwares that are used in preservation work. It was, indeed, fascinating to watch how it matters so much that items such as old record players, cds, VHS cassettes and tape cassettes can still be redeemed and become invaluable resource for research, was amazing. It was a very serious lesson for me to learn from. Joshua Harris, Media Preservation Coordinator, was very much up to his job as he gave all the detail explanations on the processes involved in the treatment of the different media…quite versatile.
The last days of week were later devoted to digitization of collections, facilitated by Alyce Scott, Lecturer, San Jose University. She showcased series of the ongoing digitization programs in the library and the University of Illinois.