Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut
Digital Projects Librarian, Trinity College library
Trinity’s subscription to LinkedIn Learning offers a great way to learn new skills on your own time, at your own pace. There are now four new curated collections of entry-level short courses in high-demand areas, including:
Pick and choose from among these courses, or chart your own path through the wide range of offerings from Linkedin Learning.
While OA journals have been widely adopted by the academic publishing system, OA monographs are less common and have only recently found substantial support through initiatives such as Knowledge Unlatched, Lever Press, MIT Press Open, and TOME. Book authors Jack Dougherty, Stefanie Chambers, and Alyson Spurgas have each experienced the publication of an Open Access book in different ways. They will discuss how they arrived at Open Access publishing, and how it has been different than print. Katie Bauer, Director of Collections, Discovery, & Access Services, will then lead a discussion around how Library collections budgets can potentially support Open Access monograph publishing.
October 28: 12:15 – 1:15pm Zoom
Open Access Books to be discussed:
This fall, LITS is hosting a series of Common Hour conversations for faculty on building scholarly identity on the Web. As a faculty author, how do you balance making your work widely available with protecting it? How do you want to present yourself through profiles or social media? What is the best way to feature your publications?
Please join us for any or all of the following sessions, all virtual:
November 2, 12:15 – 1:15 Managing Your Online Presence: Shaping Your Scholarly Identity Through Formal and Social Networks
We will discuss building scholarly profiles, managing different types of author identifiers, and choosing where to build your presence. We will also facilitate a conversation around engaging with social media as an academic. Would social media participation boost your visibility, and if so, which platforms might be relevant for your discipline? What are the downsides? At the end of this hour, you will have learned to better define your identity as a scholar on the Web.
November 9, 12:15 – 1:15 Knowing Your Rights and Options as an Author
What choices do you make as an author and a consumer? In this hour, we will discuss copyright and Intellectual Property, using an author addendum for contracts, Open Access, and repository options for your work.
December 7, 12:15 – 1:15 Collaborating with the Public
How do you want the public to engage your work? In this session, we’ll talk about different strategies for sharing your work with the public and requesting meaningful feedback or interactions. This may include the creation and use of digital community archives on a project site, citizen science projects, social media posts that invite public response on your research, hosting “live” conversations on facebook or instagram, etc.
Questions? Contact facilitators Amy Harrell or Mary Mahoney.
A limited number of study carrels (with lockers) on Level 3 can be reserved for one academic year by senior thesis writers. Thesis Carrels are given out on a first-come, first-served basis to current Senior Thesis writers in the beginning of each fall term.
Study carrels without attached lockers may not be reserved, officially or unofficially, by any student.
LITS welcomes Kristen Eshleman as Trinity’s new Vice President for Library and Information Technology Services (LITS). Kristen will provide leadership of our merged LITS organization, and collaborate with fellow cabinet members and the President, as well as with faculty, staff, and students, to advance our strategic goals.
Kristen joins us from Davidson College in North Carolina, where she has worked for 20 years in roles related to academic technology and digital learning. Most recently she has spent the last two years as Director of Innovation Initiatives, in which she was responsible for operational leadership of innovation strategy, process, and projects for the college.
See the official campus announcement for additional information about Kristen. She can be reached at kristen.eshleman@trincoll.edu.
Students: Library and Information Technology Services (LITS) needs your help in fine-tuning our new website (check out our new site at https://www.trincoll.edu/lits/). Your feedback will help us make sure it is user-friendly and easy to navigate for students at Trinity.
Providing feedback is easy. Just go through this brief online questionnaire, which asks you a series of questions about where you would click in order to find something on the new website.
At the end of the questionnaire you can also indicate if you are interested in answering some additional questions in a one-on-one Zoom meeting with an LITS staffperson. Participation in one of these sessions earns a $5 Peter B’s Gift Card.
Everyone who completes a questionnaire is entered into a randomized drawing for an iPad Mini!
For questions, please contact Amy Harrell, amy.harrell@trincoll.edu. The questionnaire closes on April 9.
On December 14 Library & Information Technology Services will begin using a new website at https://www.trincoll.edu/lits/. A “frozen” version of the old site will still be available at https://www.trincoll.edu/LITC/ through January 14, 2021.
The new site offers the following benefits:
Note that there are no longer separate pages for the library and IT. Most content that existed on the current website has been moved and merged into the new site.
Please use our feedback form to submit comments and suggestions on the new website. We will continue to improve the site after it launches, utilizing your feedback and usability testing studies. We appreciate any input you’d like to give.
Library & Information Technology Services (LITS) invites you to preview a new website design. We are releasing this “beta” version of the new site to the campus community to gather feedback before we launch it officially in mid-December 2020.
The new site offers the following benefits:
Note that there are no longer separate pages for the library and IT. Most content that existed on the current website has been moved and merged into the new site.
Please use our feedback form to submit comments and suggestions on the new website. We need your help reviewing and fine-tuning the new site before it goes live. We appreciate any input you’d like to give.
by Lorraine Huddy, CTW Librarian for Collaborative Projects
The libraries at Trinity College and its CTW partners, Connecticut College and Wesleyan University, are now using Evidence-Based Acquisitions (a.k.a. EBA). We implemented this model with well-known content providers including JSTOR, Project Muse, and most recently, Oxford University Press.
How does EBA work? The publisher/vendor grants access to a very large pool of ebook titles for one year. At the end of the year, usage reports show how many times a specific title was viewed or downloaded. Using this evidence, the libraries select which titles to purchase. With purchase, the library is given perpetual access to the title.
What a crazy idea, right? Buy books after they’re actually used instead of forecasting which books might be used, and buying those. Publishers and vendors literally provide access to thousands of titles and the libraries only buy the ones used the most by our faculty and students? Sounds like a win-win proposition for the libraries!
What’s the catch? What do publishers and vendors get out of this plan? In the EBA model, providers know ahead of time what the financial spend will be. As part of the contract, the libraries and provider negotiate the financial commitment: how much the library will commit to the EBA program, using these funds to purchase perpetual access to specific titles. The amount varies by provider but they typically use a spend ratio based on the value of the pool of titles the libraries have access to (i.e. $1 spent for every $15 of value.) On their end, libraries typically consider how much they’ve spent on a publisher’s titles in past years to calculate what they’re willing to commit to the EBA program.
How’s it working out? For the most part, so far, so good. JSTOR ebooks are getting very high use. On the other hand, Project Muse ebooks are not used as much as expected and due to overlap with JSTOR titles, Trinity will withdraw from this program in January. The Oxford EBA program was set up in July 2019 so it’s too early to tell, but the list of titles in this package is very promising.
We are watching these programs closely in case of diminishing returns over time. The number of new titles added each year is small compared to the entire pool of titles – will there be enough new content that is of interest and value to our students and faculty? Should we commit less to these programs each year as a result of this new vs. old content imbalance? As with other library resources, the proof to retain is overall usage. As long as we’re able to identify enough unique title purchases that spend down the annual financial commitment, there’s good reason to maintain these programs.
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