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CCL Outlook

Letter from the President

By Leslie Tirapelle, Pasadena City College & CCL President

It is unbelievable that we are almost at the one-year mark of being remote due to covid-19 -- where did the time go! It certainly has been an extremely interesting learning experience for us all, and will continue to be as we start working towards normal operations again (or at least our “new normal”). These last eleven months have definitely been a struggle in many ways, but extremely rewarding to see how our libraries have stepped up to ensure continued library services for our students – with access, equity and safety at the forefront.

Many of us are now in the throes of planning how we will start re-opening spaces and expanding in-person services.  Noting the number of e-mails/questions on the CCL listserv about pandemic reopening and service plans, and to have one centralized space where we can share these plans, the CCL Board's Current Interests Committee created a shared space in Google Drive for us. These don’t have to be full-fledged plans, they can be works on progress and/or focus on one specific aspect of reopening. As re-opening and service plans evolve, you can update your submission. If you have a plan, please do upload it to the shared drive. There’s also a link to this folder on the Resources page of the CCL website.  Feel free to download and view any of the files in the shared space, but please do not delete any.

The Electronic Access & Resources Committee (CCL-EAR) continues to engage librarians throughout the state about current and possible shared/consortia electronic resources, and welcomes CCC librarians to join their meetings. You do not need to be a member of the CCL-EAR committee to attend. The next meeting is on Friday, Feb. 19 from 9 am-12 noon via Zoom. If you’re interested in attending, please contact Tamara Weintraub (committee chair) by Wed. Feb. 17 to receive secure login information. There are also two vacancies on the committee -- and we encourage you to volunteer! The work is meaningful and interesting, and the committee is a great group to work with.

For CCL’s Fall Workshop in December 2020, we were pleased to host ALA President Julius Jefferson as our speaker, who focused on his experiences and thoughts on Anti-Racism & Libraries. We had a resounding number of attendees at the event, and received lots of positive feedback as well as some excellent recommendations. Your feedback is essential for the CCL Board’s Leadership & Professional Development (LPD) Committee in planning future events. Currently the committee is planning the annual Deans & Directors Meeting, which is typically held in-person each March. This year, the event will be fully remote. As specific event dates and topics are finalized, these will be shared with the field. 

The CCL Board’s Advocacy Committee continues to work closely with the LSP Task Force, LSP Governance Committee, CC League, CCC Chancellor’s Office and all 110 participating libraries to help build a solid foundation for our shared library platform. Again, where has the time gone! … it’s hard to believe we’ve been on the new system for just over a year now. While we’re still experiencing some growing pains, things are falling in to place thanks to the hard work of a myriad of library staff and librarians from across the state -- all of whom have put in countless hours to help ensure the success of the project. We should all be proud of the where we are now, how we achieved the vision, and how the new library system is benefitting millions of students across the state. CCL thanks you all for your time, effort and commitment.

I hope you all have a great Spring term… and Happy Lunar New Year!

Reports

CCL-EAR Committee Chair's Report

By Tamara Weintraub, CCL-EAR Committee Chair

As California community colleges near the one-year anniversary of the temporary move to full- or partial remote learning and services, the CCL-EAR Committee will also mark its first year conducting all business remotely. In fact, the Committee was last scheduled to meet in-person the same week my own institution ceased on-campus instruction last March. The rest is history.

Some days -- as my mind teeters on technology overload -- I long for a literal “water-cooler” conversation to commiserate about work stuff with someone other than a cat (to be clear: I value the cat’s opinions on many things, just not this). Then I remind myself that so many of our students’ education and information needs are only be met right now because of some amazing technological marvels, including digitized information resources and the tools to access them. Delivering knowledge to our students this way during a global pandemic makes everything else seem surmountable.

And, so, I am grateful for this technology that lets us keep “doing what we do” in real-time to ensure students may succeed in their educational goals. I am also appreciative that our libraries have the CCL-EAR Committee to help facilitate access to one type of technology, electronic information resources. Here are a few of the things we are working on right now to do this:

  • Product reviews of Leganto, and Libguides vs Libguides CMS (comparison) are now available, and others are underway. Keep your eyes open for announcements in the cclibrarians-all listserv.
  • CCL-EAR is undertaking a second CCLC NetLibrary/EBSCO eBooks shared collection deselection project. The first project in 2014-15 resulted in weeding approximately 12% of titles in the collection. Five years later, additional titles are out of date and/or no longer applicable to curricula. This new project is happening in two stages:
    • Stage 1: Initial selection of out-of-date titles by the CCL-EAR Committee, applying the subject/imprint criteria used in the first deselection project. This stage is currently underway, with a target completion of March. Before anything is weeded from the collection, CCL librarians will have an opportunity to view the list of titles recommended or removal and offer input. Keep your eyes open for this notification in the cclibrarians-all listserv.
    • Stage 2: Upon completion of Stage 1, we will begin an in-depth review of the remaining collection. All CCL librarians are invited to participate in this stage. Interested in volunteering as a reviewer for this stage? Keep your eyes open for more details in the cclibrarians-all listserv.
  • CCL-EAR’s fourth annual Electronic Access and Resources Survey of California Community College Libraries closed in January. An impressive 56% of CCL libraries responded. Over the next several months CCL-EAR will share and examine results closely to better understand, and take action to address, the interests and concerns of our membership.

Do you purchase any library e-resources directly from a vendor because you did not know they are available through CCLC? Be sure to talk with Library Consortium Director Amy Beadle about CCLC product availability or cost before placing an order with someone else – you may be pleasantly surprised!

Consider joining CCL-EAR as a Regional Representative or attending our meetings – all Consortium members are invited. Learn more about what’s involved and who we are, and, as always, contact me if you have questions or would like to become a Committee member.

Library Consortium Director’s Report

By Amy Beadle, Library Consortium Director
 

Happy 2021! I know it doesn’t feel all that much different than 2020, but I am feeling a bit more hopeful as we look towards the spring and summer months.

We’ve been busy at the Library Consortium. We finalized negotiations with Ex Libris and have circulated the Institution Participation Agreements. Please keep in mind that those are due back no later than March 24th and let me know if you need anything to help move it through the process. Exhibit C was distributed last week to all of those that have completed the updated LSP contact form here: https://forms.gle/aEEdEtK7fefF6DX96 We’ll continue to send that out as updated contacts are received. Also, just a note, but each college sent in their letter of intent to participate earlier in the fall – the signed Institution Participation Agreement is also required from each college, as it includes the contract with Ex Libris.

We’re also growing the team at the Library Consortium. I was hoping to announce some additions to the team in this report, but will have to wait just a bit longer. Keep your eyes out for an announcement hopefully coming to the listserv soon.

Taking a look at the CCL-EAR survey results, it looks like many of you are purchasing products directly from the vendor that we offer via the League. There are certainly reasons to do so – such as if you have grandfathered-in historical pricing – but know that we can sometimes work with the vendor to make arrangements to continue those arrangements via the League. As we continue to build out the content within Consortia Manager in preparation for Fiscal Year orders, we’ll soon do a webinar/demo showing how you can browse available products/pricing.

Speaking of webinars, we’re continuing our Wednesday Webinar series throughout the spring. On dates that we do not have LSP or general Consortium content, we may utilize that time to highlight different vendors/introduce new product offers. As such, on Wednesday, February 24th, we’re turning that timeslot over to ProQuest to demo their Academic Video Online (AVON) subscription.

With over 70,000 videos, an Academic Video Online subscription addresses the goals of academic institutions while engaging students. It provides unlimited access to multidisciplinary videos in the form of TV and news programs, feature films, performances, documentaries, training, demonstrations and more, all available at one low annual subscription price.

In addition, Academic Video Online includes features like the below to support your library’s goals.
  • Build by Choice Perpetual Rights
  • Free Media Hosting Service
  • On Demand Audio Described Video

Additional vendor demos will be advertised via the listserv as they are scheduled in the coming weeks. New products and renewal pricing will be posted to Consortia Manager by March 19th with orders due April 30th. We’ll schedule a webinar during the week of March 29th to go over the catalog and review the ordering process. Look for more information to come via the listserv in the coming weeks.

Library Technology

Making OER Discoverable in OneSearch

By Ryan Edwards, West Los Angeles College

Introduction

As West Los Angeles College’s Systems Librarian and new Open Educational Resources (OER) liaison, I want to increase the visibility and use of OER in both our library systems as well as the Canvas online learning management system. Our library systems, Ex Libris’s Alma, a cloud-based library services platform and Primo, ExLibris’s discovery solution are used by more than 2,000 libraries across the United States and around the world. To increase the visibility and use of OER resources, I saw the opportunities to activate OER resources in Alma and exploit them Primo’s Resource Recommender service, which allows one to recommend resources based on searchable tags that are configured in Alma to expose databases, websites, people, library information, and library guides in Primo.

Collections and Resource Recommender

Upon performing a search on Google for "OER and Primo", I discovered via the SUNY Libraries Consortium Alma Discovery/Primo VE website an open access training video and PowerPoint presentation, "Making OER Discoverable in Primo." The presentation described what Open Educational Resources are, how to identify and evaluate OER in Alma and Primo VE, and how to increase the discoverability of OER in Primo. I learned that I could activate some OER collections in the ExLibris CDI (Central Discovery Index), including the Open Textbook Catalog, OpenStax College, and Open SUNY Textbooks collections. I also discovered that I could use Primo's built-in Resource Recommender to highlight OER collections and content not included in Alma or CDI, boost OER content, promote my library's OER libguide with a custom search box to search just open-access content, as well as promote myself as West's new OER librarian. I could also tag content with keywords to make finding OER in OneSearch easier. Ultimately, as a district, we decided not to activate Unpaywall as Unpaywall's linking was a bit spotty.

Resource Recommender Tutorial by Ryan Edwards

OER Webinar

I was asked by Eric Ichon, WLAC Dean of Distance Learning, to co-lead an OER webinar for the LACCD Distance Education Committee. Cyrus Helf, Multimedia Specialist and I developed and co-delivered an Open Educational Resources (OER) Zoom webinar on December 4, 2020.

OER-Webinar by Ryan Edwards

As you know, many of our students struggle to afford required textbooks for their classes. In the future West hopes to be able to offer some degrees and certificates without any required textbook costs. The webinar covered what OER is, the benefits of using OER, and how to search for OER resources via OneSearch as well as West's OER Resources page. In addition, the webinar covered finding OER course sites in the Canvas Commons, previewing OER course sites before import and importing as well as what to do after importing, including adjusting dates, choosing/creating assignments, editing content, scanning and fixing links, deleting content, and structuring content in the modules.

LibreTexts

Recently one of West's Mathematics professors, Henri Feiner, shared his digital textbook Beginning/Intermediate Algebra that he authored with a Creative Commons license. West's Multimedia Specialist helped him upload his book to the Canvas Commons. In addition, Professor Feiner shared his "Beginning/Intermediate Algebra" book with LibreTexts.

History of LibreTexts by Delmar Larsen

I discovered that LibreTexts, home to the largest collection of open educational resources online, was not indexed in the CDI nor listed in the Alma Community Zone (CZ) as a collection to activate.  So, I decided to submit a new idea to ExLibris's Content Idea Exchange to add LibreTexts vast collection to Ex Libris's CDI.

Jeffrey Karlsen, from Sacramento City College suggested that it might be more useful to have LibreTexts added to the Alma CZ as bibliographic records.  That way libraries could add LibreTexts ebooks and course materials to course reserve lists in Alma and Primo.  So, I submitted this other new idea to the ExLibris Content Idea Exchange.

Since I'm on both the CCC Discovery and UX Work Group and the ELUNA Primo Product Working Group, I decided to promote the two ideas to add LibreTexts to the CDI and Alma CZ. I emailed both the Alma-L and Primo-L listservs to promote the ideas to ExLibris's Alma and Primo customer base. After Lauren Saslow, Los Angeles Community College District’s ILS Administrator, helped me email all the 56 librarians across the District, I also decided to email the California Community College's LSP-ALL listserv to promote the ideas to all of the community colleges in California's Community College system. My strategies worked! My idea to add LibreTexts to the CDI received 186 votes and the other idea to add LibreTexts to the Alma CZ received 89 votes. Ex Libris is now investigating adding the LibreTexts content alongside the inquiry to ingest the content in their Discovery products. In addition, to make sure that Ex Libris reviews adding LibreTexts to their products, I submitted a new content request to the New Enhancement Request System (NERS).

Conclusion

Hopefully, my efforts activating certain Alma open-access collections, implementing Resource Recommender, and delivering and co-delivering Resource Recommender and OER webinars should help promote OER visibility and usage in Primo (OneSearch) and Canvas. I discovered that collaborating with other librarians across the LACCD district and the California Community College system along with emailing both the Alma-L and Primo-L listservs helped to get Ex Libris to review LibreTexts OER content for possible ingestion into both the CDI and across Ex Libris’s discovery products. These collaborative efforts could be particularly useful in the future for introducing and promoting new ideas for Ex Libris’s review.

Statewide Initiatives

OER and the College Bookstore: A Librarian’s Observations

By Elizabeth Horan, Coastline College

I took on the role of Open Educational Resources (OER) Coordinator for Fall 2020 through Spring 2022. I am the second person to take on this role at Coastline College. The first coordinator, an English Professor, did a great job of getting faculty to adopt OERs for their courses at Coastline. This foundation was invaluable because when I stepped into the role there were a lot of things changing at Coastline far beyond the disruptions created by the pandemic.

In 2019 Coastline had made the choice to move to an online-only bookstore. As a college that consistently offered at least 80% of its courses “at a distance” even before the pandemic, this move made sense. When the bookstore was still on-site, Coastline had a partnership with Barnes & Noble. To transition to an online-only bookstore, the college expanded its partnership with MBSdirect, which was the bookstore the college had used for military programs and students for many years.  Early on in the transition, I was asked to attend meetings with MBSdirect after sharing my concerns with the Vice President of Instruction that bookstore information was confusing to students when the required textbook for a course was an OER. For example, if faculty who assigned OER textbooks did not put any information in the bookstore website, an error message would appear when a student searched for a class textbook. Or faculty would choose the option “No textbook required” when in fact there was a textbook required, but it was an OER text that they planned to link to from their Canvas shell. A final example is when the faculty member made the OER textbook “required,” but it looked like the student needed to purchase the print textbook for the class even though they were going to be able to use the OER online for free. Working with the Vice President of Instruction, his office, and MBSdirect staff, I led the effort to enable faculty to put messages on the bookstore website that were tailored to their courses, directing students to the URL for their free textbook before class started. Now faculty have the option to include different messages to students when they enter information for the bookstore. As the OER Coordinator these are the ones I recommend to faculty:

OPTION A: Materials provided by school

  • This course will use a FREE textbook available online: [Enter textbook name and URL]

OPTION B: Material available in Canvas

  • All course reading material is FREE and embedded in the Canvas course.
  • All course material is FREE and provided in the form of online videos/articles in Canvas.
  • Students will be utilizing a free, online textbook. Instructions on how to download the textbook will be provided during the first day of class.

Faculty can select Option A or B when communicating their textbook adoption information to the bookstore and the bullet points are some suggestions for additional text to provide to their students. This increased clarity represents a big win for students. It lets them see their textbooks before the first day of class and lets faculty explain about resources being used in the class directly on the bookstore website where students normally get their textbook information. Spring 2021 was the first rollout of these options, and about 70% of faculty who assign OER used one of the options provided. I think some faculty did not use the options this semester because they were not shared widely with faculty until well after the textbook adoption deadline. Moving forward we expect to have almost 100% adoption of the tailored, course-specific OER messages./p>

As a Librarian / OER Coordinator I wanted to share this win with my colleagues around the state. In speaking with some of you I have learned the bookstores you work with are not always open to providing links to outside sources. Because Coastline was working with a new bookstore and a new bookstore contract, we were able to emphasize the importance of improving the functionality of OER access on the bookstore website. The staff at MBSdirect were open to helping us find a way to make this work. Gaining the support of the Vice President of Instruction by showing him the impact on students and being asked to sit at the table during discussions with MBSdirect were the first steps in creating a bookstore experience that is much more user-friendly to students and faculty.

Staffing

Elizabeth Horan earns tenure at Coastline College

Congratulations to Elizabeth Horan for earning tenure at Coastline College.

ExLibris Blog Features Laney Library Staff

By Evelyn Lord, Laney College

A recent ExLibris pictorial blog celebrating the company’s milestone of 2,000 Alma customers featured the smiling, masked faces of Laney Library staff. Library staff collaboratively created the entry, including the quote attributed to the Head Librarian, over the course of several daily staff meetings on Zoom. The pictures illustrate how library staff have rallied together to serve students during the pandemic.

View the full blog here: https://exlibrisgroup.com/blog/celebrating-2000-alma-customers/

 

Laney Library Staff process and checkout chromebooks for students
Pictured (clockwise from left): Laney Library Technicians Lily Leung, Dominique Dozier, Leung, Dozier, Douglas Banks, Leung and Andrew Skinner-Demps (center)

Mt. SAC Library Associate Dean Has Key Role at ALA Midwinter

Dr. Romelia Salinas (Associate Dean of Library & Learning Resources, Mount San Antonio College) introduced First Lady Dr. Jill Biden at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Conference in January. Dr. Biden joined ALA President Julius C. Jefferson, Jr. in conversation for a live streaming event. As a lifelong educator, Dr. Biden discussed why literacy -- and the librarians who support it -- are critical to the success of our students, our communities, and our democracy.
Dr. Romelia Salinas introducing Dr. Jill Biden at ALA Midwinter
Dr. Romelia Salinas delivering online introduction
of Dr. Jill Biden at ALA Midwinter Conference

Events

Conferences and Events