Hello CCC librarians,

The CCL Board commends you for finding so many creative solutions, and being unwavering in your persistence, to connect students with the resources they need as they’ve faced a myriad of crises over the past six months. These very challenging times have highlighted, and exacerbated, many of the pervasive inequities faced by our students of color stemming from long standing systemic racism and social injustice. The Board is aware that our libraries are fully committed to equity, access and student-centered programs and services and know that we can do more.  As such, we do encourage you to have conversations about race and racism, and the role the library plays in ensuring diversity and inclusion at your college.  We want to support you in intentionally assessing, reflecting, and strategizing about your library’s contribution to breaking down systemic barriers, eradicating institutional racism, and promoting social justice.  

At the July 23, 2020 Board Meeting, CCL revised the organization's strategic goals to affirm its commitment to “Collaborate with libraries, districts and other entities in the work needed to support social justice and dismantle structural racism and promote anti-racism in California’s Community Colleges”.  It was unanimously approved that CCL will:

1. Support the development of strategies, policy and procedure at the local and statewide level to improve access and success for all historically marginalized library users
2. Promote the acquisition of collections and resources that support inclusive and anti-racist programs and curriculum, that are reflective of the community at large
3. Support libraries in providing inclusive and welcoming learning environments that are safe and accessible, to ensure that all library users have equitable access to library materials and services
4. Encourage the recruitment, hiring and retention of librarians and library staff from diverse backgrounds

If you have suggestions about specific actions CCL can take to support equity and diversity efforts at CCC libraries, please do share them with us via this form. You are also welcome to e-mail any board member directly. We look forward to hearing from you and collaborating to make real and lasting change for our students and communities.

This academic year is starting out like no other in my long career in the California Community College system. Most of our libraries are providing services solely online right now, and as a result, the electronic information resources we offer students have never been more critical. The value of having had a team already in place to ease the sudden changes we all faced in March -- including a committee of peers that vets resources we all use, and a consortium director who negotiates the best prices and contract terms possible -- is “cclear” (pun intended).

As the new CCL-EAR Committee Chair, I have been reminded many times over the past several months of the meaningful ways this group supports the immediate and long-term needs of our library community in normal times and during periods of crisis. A few of the things EAR accomplished last year are representative of how we do this:

• EAR Committee reviewed and assessed results of its third annual electronic access and resources survey of California community college librarians (from May 2019, SurveyMonkey or PDF). The findings help inform decisions we make and actions we take.
• The Committee worked with CCL Executive Board members on the new CCL Statement on Library User Privacy (many thanks to CCL-EAR member and CCSF Librarian Megan Kinney for her role).
• We worked with the CCL Communications Manager to develop a new review format that will make our product reviews more accessible (see Oxford Research Encyclopedias for a sample). We’ll continue work in the coming year to put all future and past reviews into this new format.

As for the year ahead, just a few of our goals include undertaking new product reviews and comparisons, looking at open access resources in Primo, and re-examining the old NetLibrary/EBSCO Shared ebook collection for another weeding project.

Want to be a part of this? Consider joining CCL-EAR as a Regional Representative or attending our meetings – all Consortium members are invited. When I look back on my career, I count serving on the EAR Committee as one of my most meaningful professional contributions. Learn more about what’s involved and who we are, and contact me if you have questions or would like to become a Committee member.

Finally, I want to thank Past/current Vice Chair Steve Hunt, for his many years of service on the EAR Committee, both as a member representative and leader. Under his leadership, Steve ensured the Committee always maintained its charge “to explore ways in which the resources of the community college libraries could be maximized through cooperative ventures for electronic resources, databases and information.” I pledge to continue his good work moving forward.

By Amy Beadle, Library Consortium Director

Hello! I would like to take a moment to re-introduce myself. I had the good fortune to work with so many of you in my previous role as the project lead for the LSP implementation project. As of July 7th, I have transitioned to serving as the Library Consortium Director at the Community College League of California. I know that you are all likely very familiar with the partnership and database purchasing program that has been operated by the League for nearly 20 years. Having spent the last three years immersed in library systems platform operations, that familiarity has been incredibly helpful in making this transition an easier one. 

I’ve been busy learning Consortia Manager, virtually meeting our many vendors and learning more about our vast array of product offerings. I'm currently collecting offers for calendar year purchases. Those offers should be posted to the website later this week. As I continue to grow into this role throughout the coming months, it would be very helpful for me to better understand the decisions that influence your purchasing decisions. If you would, please send me a quick email (abeadle@ccleague.org) and tell me what key factors drive your purchasing decisions. I assume quality and pricing, but you know that they say about assumptions! I would also like to know if there are additional types of content or collections that you might be looking for that you haven’t found in our recent offerings.  Lastly, please tell me one thing that we could improve upon – just one, because, well, there are hundreds of you!

And now onto the “other duties as assigned” part of my new job … Despite herculean efforts by the Council of Chief Librarians (CCL), the LSP Task Force, the LSP Governance Committee and many of you; ongoing funding for the LSP program was not included in that 2020-21 state budget. To say that this is disappointing is a drastic understatement. In order to preserve the many benefits of the LSP project, program leadership had to act quickly in order to make decisions in the best interest of successful continuance. Given our long-standing historic relationship, the Community College League of California in conjunction with the Council of Chief Librarians, has agreed to expand our historic consortium agreement to now include ongoing support for the Library Services Platform program.

As such, we’ve been busy! We are beginning negotiations with Ex Libris for a contract that will become effective January 1, 2021. We are drafting job descriptions to hire a Network Zone Manager/Systems Specialist as well as a Program Manager. We will be sending out letters this week to confirm ongoing participation which will then be followed by participation agreements and invoicing. In an effort to keep stakeholders informed and work towards the next phase of improved operations on Alma/Primo VE, we will be hosting weekly webinars on a variety of topics. Please put our Wednesday Webinar series on your calendars – every Wednesday at 11:00 am (Pacific). A list of upcoming topics will be distributed very soon.

With that, thank you all for your warm welcomes and for your patience as I learn the varied aspects of this new role while balancing the transition of my former role as well!

In case you didn’t see the email …

It’s that time of year when CCL sends out the annual membership invoices (same cost as last year, $150).  And usually these are mailed... but not this year.

For the first time (and with fingers crossed), invoices were emailed. They get sent out to the person who is listed as the chief contact for your library in the CCL Directory on the CCL website.  (Note: Some libraries sent info which helped me direct the invoices directly to the correct contact, or to library’s business clerk or the dept./division administrative assistant.) 

Please (!) check to be sure that the information in the CCL Directory is current and correct!  If it needs updating and no one at your library remembers the log-in info, contact Brian Greene, CCL’s Communications Manager.

Thanks, everyone, for your help in making this work!  

Your perseverance despite amazing obstacles to good library is amazing.  I sing your praises.  Regards -- Gregg

Gregg T. Atkins, Executive Director, CCL
gregg.atkins@wavecable.com

1. Brian Lym, Napa Valley College
   CCL Northeast Regional Representative
2. Elnora Kelly Tayag, College of San Mateo
   CCL Southwest Bay Regional Representative
3. Carina Love, Cuesta College
   CCL West Central Regional Representative
4. Alison Steinberg Gurganus, Mesa College
   CCL San Diego/Imperial Regional Representative

We also welcomed three new Ex-Officio members to the Board:

1. Tamara Weintraub, Palomar College
   Chair, Electronic Access and Resources Committee (CCL-EAR)
2. Jeff Karlsen, Sacramento City College
   Chair, LSP Governance Committee
3. Amy Beadle, Consortium Director 
   Community College League LIaison

Many thanks to outgoing board members Steve Hunt (Santa Monica College ) and Van Rider (Antelope Valley College) for their years of dedicated service to the CCL organization. Steve was the Chair of CCL-EAR Committee which, among other things, reviews products for possible inclusion in our consortium purchasing program. Van served as a CCL regional representative and was a key contributor to the recent update of the ASCCC Paper: The Role of the Library Faculty in the CA Community Colleges.

Last, but not least, congratulations to Eric Hanson (Glendale Community College) on his appointment as CCL’s President Elect!  I look forward to working with Eric in this capacity throughout the academic year. He will assume the role of CCL President in July 2021.

I hope everyone is having a good fall term!

Stay healthy… Stay safe…
Leslie

Dr. Leslie Tirapelle
President, Council of Chief Librarians
Dean, Library & Distance Education
Pasadena City College
latirapelle@pasadena.edu

Last October a beloved retired welding instructor at Columbia College named Mack Frost passed away. One of the remembrances that was shared included a partial clipping from a decades-old student newspaper profile of him, along with a request for the complete article, if anyone happened to have it. The archive in our library includes scores of old student newspapers and I started poking around to try and find the original piece. Alas I didn’t find it, but looking through the fascinating stories from throughout the college’s history did make me think we should try and digitize the collection. Not only would that facilitate searching, but it would also make the collection available to a much broader audience and serve as a way of preserving and safeguarding the collection in case of a disaster.

Digitization

Our budget is modest in general and we have very little ongoing funding for preservation projects. That meant an expensive third-party digitization effort and hosted solutions were non-starters. Instead, I brainstormed with one of our savvy student workers about doing everything in-house.¹ She was game and we decided to test out our plan, which was exceedingly basic: 1) scan the papers by hand on our lone public-access scanner; 2) OCR the files to make them searchable; 3) upload everything to our website; and 4) add some sort of search functionality. We got started right away and had a couple of test documents uploaded later the same day.

Over the next two months the student worker assigned to the project spent several hours of their time each week scanning student newspapers. Because we were using a public access scanner there were numerous interruptions to work around, but that time was used to check the quality of the scans and OCR the files. By early January all of the papers in our archive were scanned and uploaded to the webpage we created for the project. This included more than 100 issues from eight publications covering a period from 1971 to 2016.

Search

For search functionality we implemented a Google Programmable Search Engine (formerly Google Custom Search Engine). To get an ad-free experience we took advantage of the Google for Education integration that provides ad-free search to non-profits for free. This was easily the most maddening part of the project as the seemingly straightforward registration process included several verification hoops to jump through that were challenging because of our specific organizational structure and who has access to our website. Eventually I got it working and the ads disappeared, which makes for a much more professional looking search results list.

Next Steps

Another concern arose over the summer when a former student contacted the college to request that an issue he was quoted in be taken down. I’m sympathetic to his request and suspect waivers were never acquired from any students over the years. Still, all of the publications were created to be published (albeit not necessarily online) and contributors would not have had an expectation of privacy at the time. In the short term we’ve removed the issue in question until we can determine a policy on how to proceed going forward. If you’ve dealt with this challenge and have suggestions I would appreciate hearing from you.

On a positive note, the introduction to the project on our website encourages people to send us copies of any issues they may have in their possession that we don’t already have in our collection. In response, we have already received missing issues from three different people, one on campus, another in the Bay Area and a third out of state.

Conclusion

While we still have work to do in order to make the collection more accessible and to improve search functionality, all in all this has been a successful project and the feedback from our community has been encouraging. Most importantly, access to the collection has been greatly expanded, with people able to search the titles and read the content from anywhere in the world. Project costs have been close to zero, with literally the only expense being the wages for the student worker involved. And with this collection now preserved alongside previous digitization projects, a sizable portion of our archive has at least rudimentary digital versions backed up in the cloud, an initial safeguard in case of a disaster.

1. Note: Another inexpensive digitization and hosting option worth exploring is the California Digital Newspaper Collection.

By Karen Tercho, Sacramento City College

In spring of 2017, the Los Rios Libraries Information Literacy Tutorials were launched at the four colleges in the Los Rios Community College District. The Canvas-based, self-paced tutorials were designed for community college students and incorporate the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. A workgroup of Los Rios Librarians representing each of the four colleges dedicated much time and effort in designing and developing the tutorials as an alternative to generic, corporate, and expensive options. The tutorials are composed of seven Canvas modules, including a quiz for each module:

1. What is Research
2. Getting Started with Research
3. OneSearch Basics
4. Evaluating & Selecting Sources
5. Avoiding Plagiarism & Citing Sources
6. MLA Style for Community College Researchers
7. APA Style for Community College Researchers

Instructional Design

In designing the content, the workgroup relied on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines as well as best practices for writing critical thinking-focused, multiple choice questions in higher education. For digital collaboration, Google Apps (Drive, Docs, Sheets) was and remains heavily used. Maximum effort was made to incorporate engaging images and equity-minded content into the Canvas pages. For its many strengths, the Canvas learning management system is quite flat in terms of interactivity. To help boost interactivity, a LibWizard (Springshare) activity was designed and incorporated for each module. The finished product is consistent with the California Community Colleges CVC-OEI Online Course Design Standards.

One of the thornier problems to solve was what tools and processes would work best for automatically issuing certificates to students who passed the quizzes. After exploring many imperfect options and relying heavily on our librarians’ technical expertise and persistence, it was decided that that the least-bad option was a combination of Canvas Mastery Paths, which in 2017 was still in beta form, and Google Form Publisher (for which we bought a subscription). After students complete a module with a grade of 85% or better, a certificate of completion is unlocked along with a form to input an email address. Students can email the certificate to themselves in PDF format, and then download and save the file from their email.

Rollout and Usage

In marketing the tutorials to faculty, we recommend keeping it simple. Rather than requiring faculty to import the Canvas course or individual modules, librarians usually advise faculty to assign one or more of the modules and create one or more assignments where students are asked to upload the certificate(s) of completion to their course. Students self-enroll in the standalone course which then appears on the student’s Canvas Dashboard. Each college’s library website points to the college version of the tutorials, along with a link that students use to self-enroll. Sacramento City College’s library website shows one example of this.

The tutorials are heavily used by classroom faculty across the district, and usage has increased in the aftermath of the COVID-19-induced pivot to online instruction. Improvements to the tutorials are continuously handled by a workgroup composed of one librarian per college; from that group, the workgroup lead rotates each year. The workgroup created the tutorials within a Canvas course shell named the Sandbox, and from there, each college has its own version of the course, imported from the Sandbox and managed by the same librarian who serves on the workgroup. The workgroup makes needed edits to the tutorials within the Sandbox, then we import the updated content into our college versions.

Keeping it fresh

During the last academic year, elements of the tutorials were revised to account for new editions of MLA and APA guidelines, and of course, Primo VE Discovery. Bringing new librarians into the workgroup is beneficial, because new energy and fresh eyes lead to improvement. We occasionally receive feedback and suggestions from classroom faculty, almost always allies of the library and its librarians, which we incorporate into regular improvements.

Plans for the future include the creation of a new module on information evaluation that will include content on media literacy, new interactive elements such as video quizzes, and new “Listen to this Page” recordings, which need to be re-recorded every time the tutorials undergo revisions. An improved certificate process that involves fewer steps for students is on our wish list, and we await and assess new technologies that will help make this wish a reality.

Creating the tutorials from scratch was a heavy lift that required a lot of cooperation, mutual support and encouragement, and energetic dedication to the cause. Without these intangible factors, it wouldn’t have happened. This project has required intensive collaboration across our district with regard to information literacy instruction, the likes of which we had not seen before in our district. Now we can all agree that it was worth it. In a spirit of fun in this fairly serious academic context during seriously troubling times, the following proverb with unclear origins is relevant (for which happily, a citation is not possible): “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together."

With that, credit for the creation and maintenance of the tutorials goes to Emily Bond and Andi Adkins Pogue of Cosumnes River College; Marianne Harris, Sarah Lehmann, and Kate Williamson of American River College; Amy Brinkley, Rebecca Mendell, and Megan Ozeran of Folsom Lake College; and Jeff Karlsen and Karen Tercho of Sacramento City College.

The Los Rios Libraries Information Literacy Tutorials are available in Canvas Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license. We welcome all librarians, especially our esteemed California Community College librarian colleagues, to adapt these tutorials to their own institutions as they deem useful.

Much of the discussion of the LSP over recent weeks and months has been about funding, and rightly so. Needless to say, when the pandemic devastated California’s economy, our hopes for ongoing funding were disappointed. We will continue to advocate for statewide funding, but for now, we move on nonetheless, continuing to develop our shared bibliographic repository, implement policies and best practices, and collaborate on ways to make our shared system work as well as it can for our students and other users.

Below is a brief summary of where our project stands currently.

The CCC Technology Center remains a signatory on the current contract, which expires at the end of December, but otherwise is no longer involved in managing the project. Note that this change does not affect the SSO Gateway, which many institutions have implemented to help with authentication.

The Community College League of California will assume responsibility for centralized project management, coordination and billing. For more on this emerging structure, please see Amy Beadle’s piece elsewhere in this issue.

All LSP work groups have been joined by new members, and some have new leads. Work groups propose system-wide policies, establish best practices, post information to their pages on the LSP wiki, and sometimes hold presentations for the benefit of our system. Note that two work groups, Systems and Professional Development, are no longer active. Faculty appointments to these groups are made by the Academic Senate for one year, and can be renewed by mutual agreement. Classified staff and administrators may also serve.

The LSP Governance Committee meets monthly. This is a voting body with broad representation across our colleges. It considers policies proposed by the work groups, reviews progress, shapes communication and provides recommendations to various other organizations. You can view the committee charter, membership and meeting minutes at the LSP wiki. 

The CCL LSP task force continues to meet weekly to monitor emerging issues.

The Council of Chief Librarians has hired an LSP consultant, Israel Yáñez, on a temporary part-time basis. Israel is assisting libraries who are completing their OCLC reclamation, implementing our WorldCat integration, and helping us set up processes for ongoing Network Zone (NZ) management. Jessica Hartwigsen, who served as our NZ manager in Spring 2020, is no longer with the project.

An NZ task force has been formed to carry out NZ maintenance and cleanup tasks. So far this group consists of our LSP consultant Israel Yáñez, Mary Wahl (Pasadena), Jeff Sabol (Long Beach), Stephanie Roach (San Mateo) and Ward Smith (Orange Coast).

The Governance Committee co-chairs and Library Consortium Director meet monthly with Ex Libris customer support to review outstanding issues in our system.

Ex Libris is staging a series of 90-minute “Knowledge Acceleration” webinars specifically for our consortium. With implementation now behind us, these webinars are intended to help us understand how to optimize Alma and Primo VE configuration and workflows.

The CCL LSP Task Force is coordinating a weekly webinar series to help with communication within our consortium about Alma and Primo VE and other topics of interest state-wide. Look for future announcements of topics and ways to provide input.

The LSP-All listserv is available to CCC library personnel for discussion of anything and everything related to the LSP.

With all the change and adversity facing our system and state, it’s important to remember how far we have come in this project. We have implemented a shared LSP across a large and diverse set of institutions. Our libraries are implementing Alma/Primo VE differently in light of differing student populations, IT environments, staffing situations, and library preferences. As we move forward, the experimentation and exploration various libraries have engaged in will help us develop and refine effective strategies and practices.

Let’s do more in the coming months to share our successes with the LSP, build collaborative efforts state-wide, and help each other achieve our end goal of making our collections and services accessible and helpful to our students.

“Difficult” does not adequately describe the summer challenges handed to CCL this year.  And I’m not even referring to Covid-19 issues or fire-related problems.

Consider these things:

• On June 29th, the CCC TechCenter informed us that (contrary to earlier promises) all support for the LSP activity was ending on June 30.  No Amy B., no Amy C. and no ongoing support for necessary and critical Network Zone set-up and operation by Jessica H.
  • CCL voted to use CCL $ to hire a Network Zone consultant (Israel Yaňez – see his report elsewhere in this issue) and set up a NZ Task Force to work with him to continue set-up configurations and operations.
  • The co-chairs of the LSP Governance Committee volunteered to take on various areas of responsibility (vendor relations, work groups oversight, participation on CCL’s LSP Task Force) – big thanks to Jeff Karlsen and Michelle Ohnstad for great leadership!

• As CCL and the Community College League of CA made preparations to launch the “Plan B” rescue effort for the LSP program, the CCCCO suddenly intervened and demanded that the effort be run through the CCC Foundation (never mind that the Foundation was not in any way familiar with the LSP effort). At one point as much as $1.25 million was offered provided that the Foundation run things. Not one to dismiss such a large financial offset to the libraries’ costs, CCL asked to meet with the Foundation to learn more. That meeting never occurred, and the CCCCO declared that “legal constraints” stood in the way of involvement, and … the $1.25 million suddenly evaporated (or was never real in the first place, or?).
• CCL and the League agreed to continue to move forward with “Plan B.” In order to do so, both entities decided to use the existing Library Consortium as the vehicle to handle the LSP component. Given that the database purchasing program is covered by an MOU signed in 2003, a lot of time and energy was spent writing a new MOU to meet the realities of two distinct sub-programs and the need for new staff in the LSP area.  It was critical to CCL that the agreement continue to be one between two organizations to jointly establish and operate programs for libraries and librarians. We also wanted to ensure that librarians continue to make the decisions about the workings, policies and directions of the LSP. We’re happy to say that (as always) the League is a great partner and we achieved all of these objectives. The MOU will be posted on the CCL website.

• And a bright note: remember, Amy Beadle was hired away from the CCC TechCenter to be the Library Consortium Director (replacing James Wiser). Under the new MOU, LSP staff (program manager, NZ manager and others will report to Amy B.

What’s ahead? No rest for the weary! Putting Plan B into action is underway but there are a lot of moving parts to manage. The CCCCO will again request full funding ($4 million) in ongoing state funding in the FY2021-22 budget, and CCL will work with the ASCCC, the League and the many other supportive stakeholder groups to get budget funding.

By Florence Espiritu, Diablo Valley College

The Diablo Valley College Library is pleased to announce the "founding librarian" for its San Ramon Campus Library, Amanda Choi.

Amanda Choi has worked in the Contra Costa Community College District for nearly 7 years as an adjunct librarian. She started out at Contra Costa College working at the reference desk and teaching their Library and Information Studies course. She went on to serve as their collection development librarian and OER library liaison for the campus for two years. In the last two years, Amanda has been filling in as CCC's instructional librarian in charge of coordinating all library instruction.

In addition, Amanda teaches in Diablo Valley College’s Library Technology Program. She teaches a Storytelling course. She also works as a reference and instruction librarian at City College of San Francisco. Prior to that, she worked for 4 years at San Jose Public Library where she was known for her fearless use of glitter during craft programs.

Amanda has an MLIS from San Jose State, an MA in English Literature from the University of New Mexico where she also taught English Composition and Rhetoric, and a BA in Psychology from the Johns Hopkins University. Even though she's an excellent librarian with an English Lit background, she has a hard time finishing books so to force herself to read she belongs to 3 different book clubs. She still doesn't always finish the books.

Laney Library Technician Dominque Dozier has taken on a new role at the college: hourly reference librarian. Dominique is finishing her last year in the MLIS program at San José State University. Last spring she was accepted into the Faculty Diversity Internship Program (Peralta Community College District), allowing her to work as a librarian. As a librarian, Dominique is providing online reference assistance to students and assisting with special projects.

It is my pleasure to introduce our new Technical Services Librarian, Melissa Destefano. Melissa joins us from the New York State Library where she served as the head of the Government Documents Unit and coordinator of the Federal Library Depository Program for New York State.

Prior to her work at the New York State Library, Melissa served for twelve years as a Librarian at Albany Public Library in Albany, New York. Her accomplishments there include several awards for innovative technology programs for underserved young adults.

Melissa began her education earning an associate of arts and sciences from Suffolk County Community College. She went on to earn a bachelor of arts in English with a psychology minor from the State University of New York at Albany. Her master of science in information science is from SUNY's School of Information Science and Policy, with a concentration in cataloging and classification.

Welcome Melissa!

Wednesday Webinars
CCLC Library Consortium will be hosting weekly webinars on Wednesdays at 11:00 am. Topics will be varied and presented by a variety of experts within our system, including LSP Workgroup members. Weekly topics and recordings are available on the LSP wiki.

https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/97570435007?pwd=Q2k1Ry9WQzhJdEo1SHIrOVJIZHcvQT09
Meeting Password: 718159

Telephone: Dial: +1 669 900 6833 (US Toll)
Meeting ID: 975 7043 5007

More info: contact: Amy Beadle at abeadle@ccleague.org

ENUG 2020 Virtual Conference
October 6-9, 2020

More info: http://e-nug.org/enug-2020/summary-schedule-2020/ 
Registration (no fee): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enug2020-virtual-conference-tickets-115775869743

Creative Commons Global Summit
October 19-24, 2020

More info: https://summit.creativecommons.org/

Charleston Conference
November 2-6, 2020

More info: https://www.charlestonlibraryconference.com/about/