scholarly journals Free Lunch? Vendor Offers during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihoko Hosoi
Keyword(s):  
Business Models ◽  
State University ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Customer Information ◽  
Library Community ◽  
Library Consortia ◽  
Penn State ◽  
Benefits And Costs ◽  
Potential Customers ◽  
Usage Data

Academic libraries received numerous free offers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing business literature suggests that there are benefits and costs associated with free offers for both the businesses that provide them and their customers. This study analyzes the free offers received during a three-month period at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. The author monitored direct offers from vendors, [email protected], information obtained from peers, and publicly available data from the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC). The offers that would normally require paid institutional subscriptions were included in the study. Databases were the largest offer category (41%), followed-by e-books (20%). Most (76%) required registration by library representatives, allowing vendors to track usage data. Only a small portion (8%) of these free offers was already held at the study site, Penn State University Libraries (PSUL). The implication might be that most of the offers were either new, not high-priority or not affordable for PSUL. The findings of this study suggest free offers provide intangible value for both libraries and vendors that cannot be measured through cost-per-use data analysis. For example, libraries gained opportunities to trial new products without any risk, temporarily expand their collections, and help users during the crisis when access to the library buildings was disrupted. Vendors increased product visibility, gained customer information and usage data, identified potential customers, and created goodwill with the library community. This study is relevant to business librarianship not only because these free offers included business and related disciplines but also because some business librarians engage with vendor relations and need to understand different business models including free offers.

scholarly journals Lessons Learned in Leaving the Library and Coming Back Again

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-102
Author(s):  
Meg E. Massey
Keyword(s):  
Lessons Learned ◽  
State University ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Interlibrary Loan ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Penn State ◽  
Remote Services

In early March 2020, libraries across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began to close in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. On March 19, staff members in the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Department at Penn State University Libraries pivoted to providing remote services to Penn State users and library partners from around the world. In addition to describing the difficulties of transitioning to and the realities of working from home, this piece describes the challenges experienced in returning to the library. Considerations for the future are also discussed.

scholarly journals Strategic Reinvestments of Journal Packages at the Pennsylvania State University

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihoko Hosoi
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Organizational Strategy ◽  
Institutional Repository ◽  
State University ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Pennsylvania State University ◽  
Penn State ◽  
The Face ◽  
Strategy Changes ◽  
Near Future

In the face of budget challenges, organizational strategy changes, and the new open access (OA) policy, the Pennsylvania State University Libraries (PSUL) are reevaluating negotiations and collections of ‘big deal’ journal packages. While a growing number of libraries are considering cancelling subscriptions to ‘big deals’, PSUL has been taking a careful approach in containing cost and making sure that faculty and students have access to resources that they need. Current efforts include: renegotiating ‘big deals’; cancelling low value titles in title-by-title agreements; obtaining single agreements for the entire Penn State; promoting green OA for future subscription negotiation purposes; and renegotiating OA related licensing terms. To achieve greater efficiency of acquisitions workflows and increase university-wide purchasing power, reallocation of the collection budget will be discussed in the near future. Auto deposit of accepted manuscripts from any Penn State author into ScholarSphere, Penn State’s institutional repository, as well as exploration of other OA models are also under consideration.

Digital Badging at Scale at Penn State University

2022 ◽  
pp. 375-395
Author(s):  
Victoria Raish ◽  
Andrea Gregg ◽  
Cathy Holsing
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
State University ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Central Pennsylvania ◽  
Visual Identity ◽  
Penn State ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
College Of Engineering ◽  
The University ◽  
Digital Badging

In this chapter, the authors discuss two examples of digital credential implementations at Penn State University. Penn State University is a large R1 with a main campus located in Central Pennsylvania. The purpose of this chapter is to situate the broader digital credential movement within one example of how it has played out in higher education. Within this one example, the implementations between the University Libraries and College of Engineering have similarities and differences. This chapter demonstrates that the purpose and goals of a digital credentialing program heavily influence decisions made from the beginning of the effort through maturation. Outside forces that impact what a digital credentialing effort looks like will be discussed such as administrative requirements and concerns over visual identity. Finally, this chapter provides thoughts on where digital credentials are headed within higher education.

scholarly journals Redistributing work during COVID-19: Penn State University Libraries’ job bank

2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (8) ◽  
pp. 394
Author(s):  
Leo S. Lo ◽  
Binky Lush ◽  
Dace Freivaids
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
State University ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Penn State ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Financial Losses

March 2020 became a pivoting moment for higher education in the United States, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced colleges and universities to switch to remote delivery of instruction within weeks. The impact of this event is deep and far-reaching. There is already a deluge of articles about how most faculty and students have had to adjust to a new way of teaching and learning--or how administrators have had to brace for financial losses. However, little has been written about the situations librarians and library staff are facing.

scholarly journals Pennsylvania Perspectives of the 2016 Election: A Project to Collect Web and Social Media Content Around Significant Societal Events

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-106
Author(s):  
Anthony T Pinter ◽  
Ben Goldman ◽  
Eric Novotny
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Media Content ◽  
State University ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
The People ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Penn State

During the 2016 election, Pennsylvania was viewed as a crucial state not only for the presidential race, but also for a Senate seat, seats in the House of Representatives, and for state-specific positions. In response to the attention placed on Pennsylvania during the election, Penn State University Libraries undertook a project to document the discourse that occurred online. The resulting project, “Pennsylvania Perspectives on the 2016 U.S. Election,” collected websites and Twitter data in order to document the people, voices, moments, and prominent issues in Pennsylvania. In this practice paper, we describe the project background, scope, collection methodology, lessons learned, and best practices that we discovered, in the hopes that it will inspire others to undertake similar projects to document important societal events at local, state, national, and international levels.

scholarly journals Frog and Toad’s ongoing journey: Cooperative acquisition of award-winning children’s and young adult titles at a multicampus university

2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Karla M. Schmit ◽  
Bernadette A. Lear
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Instructional Materials ◽  
Collection Development ◽  
State University ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Juvenile Literature ◽  
Pennsylvania State University ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Penn State ◽  
Cooperative Purchasing

Two years ago, we reported the beginnings of a collaboration between Education librarians at two locations within Pennsylvania State University Libraries (PSUL): the Education Library at University Park and the Penn State Harrisburg Library. We described our methods of cooperative purchasing of PreK–12 textbooks and instructional materials, which represented substantial costs and challenges to both locations.2 Since then, we have explored additional ways of sharing collection development tasks, while retaining much of the autonomy that librarians within PSUL prize. This article focuses on our efforts with our juvenile literature collections.

scholarly journals Academic Library Video Services: Charting a Post-COVID Course

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Tara Murray Grove
Keyword(s):  
Academic Libraries ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
Streaming Video ◽  
State University ◽  
Video Content ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
Penn State ◽  
Video Services

The vast majority of academic libraries offer streaming video services to support teaching and research, and demand for this already popular format from faculty and students increased when libraries closed their physical locations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its popularity, many users are unfamiliar with copyright and terms of use for video content. Use of streaming video is further complicated by its availability on a variety of platforms using different licensing models. This case study shows how the Penn State University Libraries (PSUL) helped librarians, faculty, and students navigate access to video content for remote instruction during the pandemic. The examples of training library staff, educating faculty and students, and streamlining internal processes can be adapted by all academic libraries to provide greater access to video content. Demand for streaming video will continue even when libraries return to full in-person operations, so these approaches will continue to be relevant.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document