Zine Librarians UnConference (ZLuC)

Matthew Collins, Reference, Instruction and Zine Librarian, attended the Zine Librarians UnConference, (ZLuC) in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

After starting the Gleeson Zine Library with Anders Lyon in 2017, Matt saw the conference as an opportunity to discover ways to improve the collection and engage with the university community. The zine collection will be primarily focused on social justice issues with plans for open workshops in addition to working with Faculty and their classes to encourage contributions.

Inspired by some of the ideas from the conference, he incorporated them into the next zine event. According to Matt, “Anders and I led two classes of Muscat Scholars in a Zine making project.  Ahead of time the students were asked to think about aspects of their identity and that topics portrayal in the media.  However, once we started making the zines the content restrictions were lifted.  They could zine about anything.  We got everything from very personal zines about the individuals likes and dislikes, to zines about the students culture and negative stereotyping, to zines about interesting facts about random animals.  But having done the reflection everyone could participate in the small group discussions.  We talked about the concept of authority, how it is  constructed and how it might change in different contexts.  We also talked to the about bias in the media and other institutional bias. ”

Due to the unique nature of zines, Matt utilized the “Zine Librarians Code of Ethics Zine” to write the Gleeson Zine Library acceptance form when acquiring zines to add to the library collection. If you have any questions about the zine collection or zines in general, you are welcome to contact him.

 

Post Cancellation Perpetual Access of E-journals

For many libraries, budget concerns can lead to the very difficult decision to cancel subscriptions. Unlike print journals, electronic journals are not saved and stored by the library. Fortunately, the publisher will sometimes include a provision in the license indicating perpetual access to issues paid for by the library.

David Ferguson, Acquisitions Coordinator, attended the 2018 NASIG Annual Conference in Atlanta. One very timely presentation was a library’s attempt to document perpetual access to electronic journals, after they have been cancelled.

Albertsons Library at Boise State University undertook a project to document all the journals that they held post-cancellation access (PCA) rights to.

They started by looking at the most recently purchased titles and worked backwards in time, focusing on one publisher’s journals package.

Some key takeaways from their experience:

  1. Document, document, document. Have procedures in place to document your PCA.
  2. Log progress so there is a record of why you made decisions at the time.
  3. Document even if the resource is open access because open access may go away.
  4. Embed holdings information in bibliographic record so that it doesn’t disappear. Make it easy to find and access by all library staff.

Mobile Access to E-journals

David Ferguson, Acquisitions Coordinator, Gleeson Library, att

NASIG 2016

ended the NASIG (North American Serials Interest Group) Annual Conference in 2016. A particularly interesting and alarming session he attended was, “We went mobile! (or did we?): reviewing and promoting third-party device-neutral library resources.”

The University of San Diego librarians discovered they were unaware how many students used mobile devices to access e-journals via the library website. They also realized they did not know how many successful versus unsuccessful attempts are made, if some providers are better than others, and the fact that vendors offer apps for either iPad or iPhone but often not both.

After a thorough study, they established a workflow when promoting mobile access and implemented a “training the trainers” (especially public service staff) to help address any questions or problems encountered. Check out the results of the study in their published article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0361526X.2017.1297594

Conference description: http://sched.co/52ys

Slideshow: https://www.slideshare.net/AlejandraNann/we-went-mobile-or-did-we

Do you know how your students access electronic resources?

What issues do you encounter?

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