SCELCapalooza 2024 Highlights

SCELCapalooza 2024 brought our community together once again on the lovely campus of Loyola Marymount University. There was a focus on the future of the consortia as well as a variety of topics critical to our community.

Deans and Directors Symposium

SCELC Strategic Planning

On the first day of the conference, our consultant, Sarah Faye Cohen of Big Questions Collaborative, led roundtable discussions to generate insights into what SCELC does well, and strategic areas SCELC should explore over the coming years.

See Sarah's presentation on the process.

Collaboration Between SCELC and Member Libraries

After the roundtable discussions, SCELC panelists gave a progress report on programs funded by SCELC. These efforts included supporting the professional development of SCELC librarians, such as the SCELC Project Initiative Fund (SPIF), OER for Social Justice, funding for the POCinLIS conference and the Digital Initiatives Symposium. The panel consisted of Nataly Blas, Kristine Brancolini, Theresa Byrd and Michele Villagran.

Deans and Directors Keynote

The afternoon session began with our keynote speaker, Dr. Antonio R. Flores, President and Chief Executive Officer, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). Dr. Flores presented on how HACU is addressing the lack of Hispanic representation in key professions through grant and internship opportunities.

See Dr. Flores' slide and narrative.

Library Collaboration

Lynn Connaway, Executive Director of OCLC, presented on OCLC’s research on collaboration. Her main takeaways were that collaboration should be strategic and how we collaborate is just as important as why we do so.

See the presentation: Weaving the fabric of library collaboration: Reflections on recent OCLC Research findings

Research Publication and Data Usage

Heather Staines, Director of Community Engagement and Senior Consultant at DeltaThink, presented on best practices for working with research publication data, emphasizing that libraries should understand how data was intended to be used before diving into data projects. She also recommended that libraries understand the resources required to work with data effectively.

See her presentation: Data-Informed Negotiations.

Intellectual Freedom and Community Collaboration

Scott Bernier, VP Library Relations at EBSCO, led a lively presentation on the current state of the culture wars and its impact on libraries. Bernier described how political groups seeking to gain control over content in libraries leverage hot-button issues like pornography to promote agendas that are far wider in scope. Bernier urged libraries to move beyond playing defense and be more assertive in setting the political agenda.

View presentation on Intellectual Freedom and Libraries and spreadsheet.

Trends in Academic Leadership Hiring

Jay Lemons, President of Academic Search, and Shawn Hartman, Senior Vice President and COO, discussed trends in the hiring landscape for top leadership in academic institutions. Competition is fierce and compensation is increasing. In particular, candidates of color and women need more support due to a variety of adversarial factors that can lead to burnout before leadership is attained.

Open Scholarship Policy Issues

Katie Steen of SPARC (which SCELC recently joined as an affiliate member) outlined the policy issues impacting open access and open education, including an overview of the 2022 OSTP Memorandum which has created a timeline for moving research toward open access. SPARC is urging funders and campuses to be clear about non-APC routes for public access to grant funded research and is promoting a multi-platform approach via the US Repository Network . Steen also gave an update on the Open Textbook Pilot Grant Program.

Vendor Day

AI and OA dominated the talks on Vendor Day.

Elsevier gave an overview of their Scopus AI research agent and JSTOR discussed their generative AI tool. Based on what was described it was hard to tell if these GenAI agents can sufficiently overcome ongoing issues with AI hallucinations, although Elsevier did cite a positive review by scholars of Scopus AI.

Maria Lopes, VP of Institutional Sales at Springer Nature, provided an update on how SCELC’s Springer Nature Transformative Agreement did in its first year. Marketing has impacted awareness, but questions from researchers remain, particularly around qualifying and there are indications that some authors who opt not to go with TA do so because they are still unfamiliar with the benefits. The good news was that of the 553 maximum allowances, 523 were approved, well within the allowance corridor. In another talk, JSTOR gave an update on its Path to Open which seeks to test the viability of open access. The results so far: OA titles saw an increase in usage of 5,500%.

Then came bowling…

Colloquium

Our very own Executive Director, Teri Gallaway, gave an update on SCELC pilot projects and provided an overview of our strategic planning process, which emphasizes an inclusive, phased and forward-looking approach.

Keynote

Ayanna Gaines, Student Success Librarian at Woodbury University then delivered her keynote on current issues facing libraries and academia, including staffing, connecting with pandemic-era students, the demotion of print and the growing problem of disinformation. Her recommendations included meeting students where they are, taking a role in topics of interest to students, such as AI, and holding student events in the library.

View her presentation: Navigating the Political and Social Landscapes of Libraryland, Academia and Beyond.

Presentations

A panel of librarians provided a report on the 2023 People of Color in Library and Information Science Summit. Among their recommendations were creating counter spaces to assert authority and encouraging collaboration across job types for LIS people of color. They noted that having administrative support was key to success. Marisa Ramirez and Aisha Conner-Gaten spoke on behalf of the whole planning committee.

See the People of Color in LIS Summit presentation.

AI came back into focus just before lunch with a presentation from Taylor Greene and Doug Dechow of Chapman University who have spent the past year developing AI Literacy for students through their library’s First-Year Foundations course. Greene and Dechow have also developed an introductory LibGuide on the topic of AI.

Watch the AI Literacy at Champman University presentation.

Lightning Talks

This year’s lightning talks included discussion of read and publish agreements at CalTech, a business collection benchmarking study, best practices in integrating librarians into undergraduate research proposal processes, the astonishing resurrection of email among Gen Z and a tale of journal deaccession which had many twists and turns. The talks were given by Joy Painter, Amy Pham, Jennifer Bidwell, Kathleen Makarewicz, Erin Sulla, John Jackson and Maria Savova.

See the combined Lightning Talks presentation and slides.

SCELC Community Roundtables

The day concluded with roundtable discussions of SCELC’s strategic directions, led by Sarah Faye Cohen.

See her overview of the strategic plan process given to the Colloquium.