My 3rd Reflection: 6-10 June 2022

Monday (6th June 2022)

1) We went for a tour at the Oak Street library – a high-density storage facility for the University of Urbana-Champaign Library, which primarily houses items with low circulation history. The Oak Street Library serves as a full-service library circulation point and a research space for patrons, especially those using Library materials housed in Oak Street High Density Storage. It was interesting to observe that the storage facility also includes a circulation desk. It was, however, pointed out that it is not necessary to have circulation services paired with high-density storage if the facility in question is housed far away from its parent library. We were provided with a description of how collection management works at the library. As part of the tour we were granted access to the high-density storage area which houses a collection of 4 million items. The book stacks are around 40 feet high – this requires the use of cranes to retrieve items that are out of reach for humans working at the facility.

2) We had a follow-up session about e-Text. In this session, we explored the possibilities of establishing collaborations between CITL and other organisations – particularly insofar as this relates to e-Text@Illinois.

3) Next up was a session on Open Education Resources, publishing and copyrights. What was interesting to note is that in addition to the e-Text initiative researchers can also access open resources. One of the main difference between the two initiatives is that e-Text is focused on textbooks written by the University’s own researchers the OER are written by authors who are not necessarily staff members of the University. It was interesting to note that some the OERs include embedded multimedia somewhat similar to the e-Text@Illinois.

 4) Technical Services

The presenter provided us with an interesting personal account of her journey to becoming a technical services librarian. She highlighted a number of impressive statistics relating to UIUC’s collection. It was interesting to note that there is scope to apply machine learning to library cataloguing and metadata management. Unfortunately, this is still a development at the bleeding edge of technology and thus it appears that initiatives in this area are still conceptual at the moment.

Travelling Out of Town

This week brought a change to weather in Illinois. Unlike the previous weeks which had relatively warm days, this week had cloudy and rainy days. The contrast between the two was quite noticeable. We could only hope that this would not ruin our trip to Chicago.

Tuesday (7th June 2022)

The trip to Chicago was quite fun. It represented a change of scenery.

We had to wake up very early in the morning for the trip. The group took a bus for the trip and the journey lasted nearly 4 hours. The benefit of taking the bus was that we were able see Chicago from a distance as we approached the city center. Our eyes were greeted by the city’s sprawling array of skyscrapers. We stayed in Chicago for two days and visited three libraries. The first library was the Harold Washington Branch Chicago Public Library. Before commencing with a tour of the library we attended a session during which the Vice President Market Intelligence of Upshot Marketing delivered a presentation. The presentation focused on describing marketing at an advertising agency. Unfortunately, the manner in which these principles could be applied by librarians was not made abundantly clear. The tour of the library covered about 8 floors. The 9th floor was off limits as it houses the offices for the library’s top management. But it is the 8th floor which was really worth seeing. The tour itself was interesting enough but there are not many things which I think could be transplanted from the setting to my own home library. The main exception to this would be the library’s makerspace. There were several service offerings which I had first observed at the Urbana Free library. It was interesting to see that these service offerings are more commonplace than I had initially thought. The city of Chicago has taken a proactive approach in ensuring that its inhabitants have a public library near to their homes. Apparently, there are more than 84 public libraries in Chicago alone. I thought this was astonishing.

Wednesday (8th June 2022)

This day was dedicated to visiting the University of Chicago’s library as well as the Pritzker Military Museum and Library.

Our visit to the University of Chicago commenced with a tour of the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. The magnificent building for this library is truly an engineering marvel. It features an elliptical glass dome supported by a light steel grid shell. The library also features an underground high-density automated storage and retrieval system that makes use of robotic cranes. The reliance on robotic cranes speeds up scholarly productivity by allowing for the retrieval of materials within an average time of 3 minutes. In addition to the pristine study spaces the library had a state of the art preservation laboratories which address conservation and digitization.

Next the group toured the Joseph Regenstein library. Unlike the Mansueto library, the Regenstien library had certain sections that had furniture that could be rearranged easily. Some of these areas were flexible study areas with several whiteboards lining their walls. The thing that really caught my attention was a library space known as the Research Computing Center (RCC) – a full-service high-performance computing (HPC) center. Seeing such a center housed within the library was actually intriguing. The RCC was created to provide a centrally managed access point for supporting research computing. The vision of RCC is to enable research and scholarship by providing access to certain services such as: storage, data visualisation, training and education, high performance computing, data management and data sharing.

After completing the tour of the Regenstein we attended a talk on digital scholarship at the University of Chicago. This talk covered the activities of the University’s Center for Digital Scholarship. The most significant thing I learnt during this presentation relates to the treatment of sensitive research data. At the University of Chicago, sensitive research data are not managed on the institutional research data repository. Instead, such data are managed on the University’s Secure Data Enclave – a secure, centralized service for faculty and researchers that work with sensitive research data.

After leaving the University of Chicago, we went for relatively short tour of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library.

The group left Chicago in the evening and returned to Urbana-Champaign by train.

Thursday (9th June 2022)

1) We woke up very early in the morning in order to take a bus to Columbus, Ohio. The journey itself was roughly five hours long. During this journey I noticed once again that the landscape was quite flat – there was not a single mountain or hill that I saw.

2) After arriving in Columbus, we visited the Online Computer Library Center. This was one of the highlights of the trip. In a way, the OCLC’s headquarters seemed like a Google complex for librarians. The designs throughout the building were aesthetically pleasing to the eye. These designs were probably only rivalled by the lovely views outside the building. Furthermore, the headquarters building has a good cafeteria to match the rest of atmosphere. One of the OCLC staff members assured me that this was not just for show and that things are like this every day.

3) We attended a presentation about the OCLC’s products and services. Afterwards we went for a tour of the building.

There were certain observations that I made which are noteworthy:

  • Soft background was generally playing throughout the building. I was assured that the background music does not play in the staff offices.
  • Staff working in the building do not have to remain confined to their offices. Should they desire to do so staff can go and work in other work spaces within the building – so long as they inform their colleagues of their whereabouts out of common courtesy. I think such flexibility is a good idea.
  • We toured the OCLC’s data center and were able to see the servers that host the OCLC’s content. Being able to visit the data center felt like a privilege as it is a restricted area. As such access to the area is controlled strictly.
  • Before ending the tour, we visited the OCLC’s in-house library and museum.

Friday (10th June 2022)

In the morning we visited the Ohio State Library. We started off by visiting the library’s Research Commons before touring the main library (i.e the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library).

The Research Commons is located in a branch library. I observed that the library made use of the flexible learning space concept just like at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Several white boards were also available for use on many of the walls in the venue. The Research Commons serves as a front-end client-facing space for several services such as data visualisation, research data management, GIS, digital humanities and research impact. What I thought was quite interesting was the fact that the libraries who provide these services are able to make use of office space in the Research Commons. This increases their visibility and also enables them to provide consultations in the Research Commons. In essence, the Research Commons helps to bring the client services associated with these librarians closer to the end users at a single hub.

After visiting the Research Commons we toured the Thompson Library. The building that houses this library is a gem to behold. The architects and/or interior designers who worked on the building’s interior really went to work in order to ensure that library could be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Most notable were the glass staircases and glass walls which are visible throughout the building. I could imagine people visiting this library for no reason other than to just simply look at the place and marvel at its beauty.

We then proceeded to visit the Westerville Public Library where we had lunch. After lunch, we toured the library before returning the returned home in the evening. Although this library tour was really interesting in its own right there were not many concepts or activities which could be directly transplanted to my library’s setting. It was noticeable that the library has taken several steps to adapt to the needs of its clients. Although the context is different for public and academic libraries the concept itself is still the same. Another observation that I made had do with the library’s makerspace. What stood out for me was in this particular case the makerspace made use of certain 3-d printers that can print two-tone colours on a single object. The library proudly displays the outputs in certain places in the building – that is a good marketing tactic. The final noteworthy observation which I made was that the library made use of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. This has helped to imporove the effeciency of the library’s circulation and collection management services.

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