The campus may feel slower during the summer months — with fewer students around and many of our faculty away during intersession — but here at the library, we used that time to wrap up the past academic year and prepare for the next. So we thought we would take a moment to describe some of our summer activities this year, broken down by library department.
Acquisitions and Collection Development
In acquisitions and collection development, our summer is focused on closing out the fiscal year, and this is without a doubt our biggest summer project every year. In collaboration with the Rains Law Library, we transitioned to a new proxy server (under the leadership of Steph Gritz), to update the way we are accessing databases, e-books, streaming videos, and e-journals from off campus. Our e-resources unit enabled the new proxy code in the back end of the catalog and then tested over 1,200 collections, to ensure that the connections were being made accurately. When everything goes well, you shouldn’t notice any change in your access to library resources. We are providing seamless access like always. The team also worked on reviewing the library’s fund structure (our acquisitions budget is divided by discipline) to align with LMU’s curriculum and research. This work ensured that the library is able to support the academic needs of students, faculty, and staff of all schools and colleges at LMU.
Access Services
The access services team is comprised of two units: collection management and circulation. The collection management unit experienced a staffing change when Jonathan Davila, the document delivery supervisor, left for a new job. Fortunately, Joyce Lee, formerly the stacks supervisor, stepped into the role and has been performing admirably. At the library, we add approximately 15,000 new print books annually to our main stacks. To accommodate these additions, the collection management team, after an evaluation by the cataloging team, shifted books on Level 2-3 and moved less-used items to the basement. In the basement, we withdrew duplicate print periodicals to create more space.
The circulation unit had a steady flow of patrons over the summer, serving those involved in summer research, leisure reading, and summer school. We provided reserve items, phone chargers, and study rooms, including for the Center for Talented Youth program. The team also focused on relocating DVDs to create more space for new acquisitions and learned how to use the new catalog’s Alma analytics for tracking annual loan and renewal statistics.
Archives and Special Collections
The archives and special collections team regularly welcomed researchers from both on- and off-campus requesting to work with our collections. We acquired new collections — most notably a donation of the Bill Hannon Foundation’s records — and purchased a few rare books and manuscripts. We received a significant transfer of records from Nā Kölea, and we are processing the Workman Family Papers with the assistance of an intern funded by the donor. Ongoing digital projects, initiated through last year’s DEIA digitization grant from the Bill Hannon Foundation, include making more than 1,200 issues of the Loyolan newspaper searchable online. Additionally, the team installed the “IDEAs Illuminating LMU’s Digital Collections” exhibition, showcasing artifacts and oral histories, with the help of library student assistants.
Cataloging and Systems
The cataloging and systems team is responsible for managing all the library-specific software that we use at both the Westchester and Law school campuses as well as managing the content of the online catalog, OneSearch. In addition to continually processing new print and e-books, we worked to improve the information in OneSearch with a focus on DEIA-related topics, looking for outdated and possibly offensive language in the metadata for older books. We also worked on enhancing the metadata for books and materials related to underrepresented groups in order to make these materials more visible and accessible.
On the systems side, the biggest project was fixing and updating the labels in OneSearch. When we implemented our new library catalog last summer, it was necessary to accept many of the default settings in the software. Since then, we have realized that much of the language is misleading and inconsistent, so we are working to fix that. The systems unit manages about 60 different pieces of library-specific software in addition to OneSearch. Two of the more important systems needed an upgrade: (1) EZProxy, which is what allows students and faculty off-campus to connect to the library’s electronic resources, and (2) ArchivesSpace, which helps people find the specific manuscripts and documents in the library’s archives. These two pieces of software are currently hosted by ITS on local servers, so we are working with vendors this summer to move both to cloud-based and vendor-supported servers. This will improve the experience of all library users as well as making work easier for library staff.
Library Administration
On the library administration team, much of our summer work centered on the celebrating the past year’s success, planning for the last two years of our unit level strategic plan, and thinking about future goals for the next strategic plan cycle. In addition to closing out the fiscal year, we planned out our upcoming resource needs for each department, including capitol funding and IT project requests. The admin team also leads the “packaging” of all the various annual performance reviews, department reports, committee cycles and reports, and annual statistics required for both the library and the university. We collaborated with all the student work study supervisors in revamping our policies and onboarding materials for the approximately 100 student workers we employ each year. We also supported the work of two federal grants led by the library: the OER for Social Justice and Institute for Research Design in Librarianship.
Outreach and Engagement
The library’s outreach and engagement team spends much of the summer preparing for fall events. This includes scheduling and coordinating orientations for new students, building the program for the Library Open House in early September, developing promotional materials for Faculty Pub Night and other annual events, and working with Theatre to plan the Haunting of Hannon. Of particular note, we hosted a number of groups at the library during the summer for specialized programs. For example, for the past few years we have developed a day-long workshop for participants in the Los Angeles Public Library Diversity and Inclusion Apprenticeship program. We also regularly host tours for K-12 groups, summer bridge programs and graduate student cohorts.
Reference and Instruction
The reference and instruction team continued to provide instruction to a variety of summer courses for students, all the while managing online chat reference and research consultations. Behind the scenes, we developed new self-help tutorials for student use, such as “How to: Zotero Desktop,” and updated all the our LibGuides, with a special eye towards accessibility. At the Information Commons on Level 1, we hired and trained students to work at the Information Desk, upgraded the technology in those spaces, and improved out internal documentation for student employees.
Summer is also a time when we can make significant progress on research and professional development. Every member of the reference and instruction team is engaged in writing projects: articles, peer reviewing for library and academic journals, and submitting abstract proposals for potential publication. In addition to our professional writing contributions, we presented at various conferences, from participating in a panel discussion for Los Angeles Public Library’s apprentices program to presenting “Accelerating Academic Research with AI: A Comparative Analysis of Cutting-Edge Tools” at the Generative Artificial Intelligence in Libraries (GAIL) Conference.