Visit to Oak Street Library
Oak Street Library works as an offsite storage facility to hold print collections of University of Illinois Libraries. This facility was opened in the year 2004 to create and manage space in the libraries. It currently houses more than 4 Million items and as a policy only one copy of the book is housed in this facility. The temperature is maintained in the stacks at around 15 degree celsius which is considered good for print materials. The total height of the stack is 40 feet and a lifter is used to store or take out the books from the shelf.
Session on Open Textbooks and OER Licenses
The session on open education resources was conducted by Sara Rachel Benson, copyright librarian who has a degree in law. Higher education in the US is very expensive with college textbook prices increasing rapidly. Openstax is a good resource for open textbooks on various subject areas. There is a search engine to help search OER resources called oasis accessible at the following link https://oasis.geneseo.edu/. OER incentive grants are being given to the faculty members to encourage them to adopt ($500), adapt (upto $2,000) and create (upto $6,000) open education resources at University of Illinois.
Rethinking Technical Services in Academic Libraries
University of Illinois Libraries use Alma/Primo as ILS to manage their collections including cataloging, circulation, acquisitions and OPAC along with other functions. Collections are in multiple formats, growing number of digital collections, linked data and working with multiple systems are among few changes that have been faced by the technical services in the libraries. Metadata workflows were discussed in detail in that session by the Head of Technical Services at University of Illinois Libraries.
Visit to the Chicago Public Library
The visit to Chicago Public Library was very informative where we saw each section of the library. It has a huge building consisting of 10 floors offering a variety of services for the whole community of the Chicago city including adults, teens and children. It has a huge collection of print as well as electronic resources on covering various topics. It also offers a makerspace, teen makerspace, and a well designed space for children.
Visit to the University of Chicago Library
University of Chicago has a total number of around 13,000 students. During our visit to University of Chicago Library we saw various sections including a huge 55 feet high offsite storage facility established and opened in the year 2011. The library has a total number of around 9 million collections in print and about 3 million items are stored in the offsite storage. This offsite storage facility is built below the ground level with controlled temperature, is fully automated and books are stored and collected automatically via machines. The Library building consists of 6 floors offering a variety of services to the students, faculty and staff. It has a separate cafe for the library users, separate prayer rooms for male and female students. The new reading room has a glass roof allowing natural light in the reading room with great views and offers a pleasant environment for study. Please click here to see some of the facilities in this modern university library.
Center for Digital Scholarships at University of Chicago
We were given a detailed session by Center for Digital Scholarships, University of Chicago on their services and projects followed by the question and answer session and one on one discussion on areas of interest. The center manages Institutional Repository, Digital Library Repository, Datasets, Dissertations of students and Interviews.
Visit to the OCLC Headquarters
OCLC the Online Computer Library Center offers a variety of services to libraries around the world. FCC also uses OCLC’s Content DM for digital archives and Respond Program which includes various services for cataloging, resource sharing. Beside that FCC library uploads its MARC records on WorldCat. Therefore, it was a great opportunity to visit the OCLC Headquarters and interact with them and ask questions about the improvement of services specially raising concerns to add support in Asian languages such as Urdu and Punajbi as our major collections are in both these languages. Overall it was a fruitful visit where we had the opportunity to visit their huge Data Center facility as well.
Visit to Ohio State University Library
We also visited the Ohio State University Library and it’s a huge university consisting of a total number of 130,000 people including faculty, staff and students. The library has around a total number of four million print monographs out of which around 2.5 million are housed in an offsite storage facility. The main library has around 1.3 million items and a vault in the basement of the main library holds around half a million books. We visited various reading rooms, stacks area, traditional reading rooms and reference room. Please click here to see various sections and stacks of the library.
Visit to the Research Commons
The research commons at OSU provides research support to students in terms of planning, conducting, increasing the impact of research and publishing the research. It offers consultation services from the faculty members and staff for students in above mentioned areas as well as workshops for the groups and classes as well. It offers the following facilities to the university community.
- Classroom based on debate style
- Computer Lab with heavy software installations capability (with remote access)
- Project Rooms
- Brainstorming Space with removable wall
- Conference Room
- Consultations Rooms and other collaborative discussion space
Visit to the Westerville Public Library
This public library serves the community of the city of Westerville. It has a total collection of over 290,000 books. The library offers book pickup drive through facilities, and they also deliver books to the schools of the children so that they don’t have to necessarily come to the library to issue books. It also has a large multimedia collection including DVDs on films. It has a large art gallery and they allow users to borrow paintings to decorate their homes for specific events as well. They offer services to all ages including adults, children and teens and have collections and areas specially designed for them. It also offers huge collection in foreign language including Urdu and Punajbi along with other languages for its International Community. The library also has a large innovation lab which has colored 3D printers, Laser Cutters, Cricut Machines and large printer along with other services.