The Secret Lives of Pets: Trends from the 2020-2021 Year in Review Reports of the Academic Business Library Directors

A summary of Year in Review reports of members of the Academic Business Library Directors group (ABLD). Themes include new and ongoing initiatives in libraries, library collections, organizational change in libraries and member business schools and changes in library spaces.

Research Support through Programming: Developing an Automation-Assisted Literature Search

This case study describes the work of librarians at the Lippincott Library of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in developing a novel approach to supporting research through programming. Approached by researchers for assistance with a large-scale literature search that also involved text extraction, we utilized both traditional bibliographic indexes (Web of Science) and citation management tools (EndNote) and less-traditional tools like the programming language Python and a PDF extraction program (LA-PDFText) to approach different sections of the project. This article outlines that process and briefly discusses the potential for developing new services in business libraries around programmatic research support.

Business Librarians Exchanging Instructional Materials (BLExIM)

This article provides a brief overview of BLExIM, which is both a process and finding aid for business librarians to share the instructional materials (IM) that they have created, and receive IM created by other business librarians. We discuss the background of BLExIM’s development and functionality, we summarize our promotions to date, and we address concerns that business librarians may have about using BLExIM.

Language Matters: How Baker Library is Working Towards Conscious and Inclusive Description

Inclusive and conscious archival description can support consistency in researching and describing marginalized groups and can serve to provide context and a counter-narrative reflecting the perspective of the documented community. It can also help to address the power imbalances between creators and subjects of records. In this article, the authors describe efforts to prepare best practice guidelines for inclusive description and for revising descriptions to remediate outdated, problematic, or offensive language and meet modern standards. They also share how the project team is working together to create meaningful and enduring changes that both provide a better experience for staff and users and support Harvard Business School’s Action Plan for Racial Equality.

Free Lunch? Vendor Offers during COVID-19

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.