Library Initiatives Update

Library Initiatives Update

Library Initiatives Update

Nov 2, 2016, 10:57 AM

Under the leadership of the university librarians, new Director of Library Initiatives, Kim Armstrong, and new Assistant Director, Rob Van Rennes, are working with the libraries to build on their strong collaborative success.

Under the leadership of the university librarians, the Big Ten Academic Alliance libraries have a strong and successful history of significant collaborations such as the founding of the HathiTrust Digital Library, Google scanning partnership, and Uborrow resource sharing. 

The new Director of Library Initiatives, Kim Armstrong, is working with the member libraries to sustain and expand library programs that directly impact teaching, research, and learning. Armstrong has most recently led the launch of the cooperative cataloging program, the coordinated accessibility testing project, and the BTAA Geoportal, which have collectively accelerated each library’s ability to deliver the services and content critical to research universities.

Rob Van Rennes, the new Assistant Director of Library Initiatives, has joined the Big Ten Academic Alliance from the University of Iowa Libraries. Drawing on his years of experience with library acquisitions, Rob plays a key role in licensing group purchases, contributing to collection development decisions, establishing and maintaining vendor relationships, and providing general support to the member libraries. Rob is also actively involved with the vetting of library resources and the subsequent negotiations for the Large Scale Acquisitions program that collectively saves member institutions millions of dollars per year.

Shared Print Repository Reaches 5.3 Miles of Shelf Space
 
The Big Ten Academic Alliance’s effort to collectively house older print volumes of academic journals has committed some 168,000 volumes to long-term retention at Indiana University. Entering the final year of the collection phase for this site, participating libraries have collected enough volumes to fill 27,895 feet of library shelves—the length of 77 football fields.  
 
Securing these volumes ensures that a print copy will be available to all Big Ten Academic Alliance library patrons, while allowing campuses to use more space on their campuses for newer reading material or study and collaboration spaces.

Geospatial Data Project

The Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Data Project has launched the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geoportal. Collectively managed by a task force of librarians and geospatial specialists at ten member institutions, thousands of metadata records have been aggregated and edited to connect scholars across the Big Ten to geospatial data resources, including GIS datasets, web services, and digitized historical maps from multiple data clearinghouses and library catalogs. The interface offers both text and place-based search options, and item pages display descriptive metadata records along with external links to download, view, or read more about the resources.