Catherine Staley

LIS 636
December 12, 2015
Library IT Plan
Overview:
Academic libraries are often the technological hubs of campus. Students go there to use
word processing software, borrow tablets for note-taking in class, develop virtual presentations
with groups, research in databases and browse Facebook between classes. Students also use the
librarys website to perform catalog and database research remotely, use Ask-A-Librarian chat
services, and find photos from Special Collections digital exhibits for a class project. Faculty and
staff also rely on these services and resources. Because they are often the first point of contact
for these groups, librarians need to be skilled in navigating the different technologies their
patrons require. Librarians also need to be attentive to the technological needs of their patrons
and stay informed of developing technologies.
The mission of an academic library is to support the information needs of students,
faculty, and staff so that they can make scholarly contributions to their disciplines and
communities. Their goals include developing patrons into information literate individuals who
feel empowered to seek out and retrieve information resources to meet their academic, political,
social, and personal needs. They also aim to provide access to those resources for all patrons by
maintaining and supplying the tools and training they need to retrieve information and use it.
Academic libraries spend a great deal of time teaching information literacy skills to oncampus and online classes or individuals via workshops or one-on-one assistance. They develop
and maintain collections of physical and online resources, from books to DVDs to databases and
scholarly publications, for patron use. If a patron requires a resource the library does not own,
librarians use interlibrary loan and other collaborative borrowing systems to find it and deliver it
to the patron. Librarians provide technology, in the building or to be borrowed, that assists
patrons in completing projects or assignments; they also offer training in those tools. In Special
Collections departments, university archivists preserve and maintain collections relevant to the
institutions community and academic programs.
Challenges and Opportunities
Budgeting consistently presents a challenge to providing the most useful IT in libraries.
Initially, libraries have to find the funding for purchasing new hardware and services; then, those
new resources require maintenance and upgrades in order to continue functioning properly. For
example, copiers and scanners need to be cleaned, calibrated, and kept stocked with paper and
ink in order to work for patrons. Libraries need to have the staff and materials to handle those
tasks. Furthermore, subscription services to databases or other researching tools, which are often
required by accreditation agencies, have annual user fees that can increase each year. Alire and
Evans (2010) argue that libraries need to have long-term technology plans that account for
purchasing new tech and maintaining what the library already has. Despite their inability to
predict the quickly changing technological landscape, a library that has planned for that change
will be better prepared to handle it.
Libraries also face the challenge of balancing their users privacy with security concerns
and assessment. On the one hand, librarians, as a profession, are dedicated to protecting the
intellectual freedom of patrons who should be able to research and access resources regardless of
content. On the other hand, libraries do have to consider the risk that users can put campus

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networks in because of spam or phishing schemes, or illegal downloads. Additionally, librarians
need to know how users are interacting with technological resources and services in order to
better serve them. To overcome this challenge, librarians should work closely with the IT
department to communicate openly with their users about how their safety and privacy are being
protected.
Librarians have the opportunity to position themselves as technology support on campus.
Inevitably, students will need technology assistance, whether to recover a crashed hard drive or
remotely access a database. While campus IT professionals will most likely handle the more
complex problems, librarians can offer assistance with tools like databases, e-books, mobile
catalogs, and Photoshop. Students could approach the reference desk needing help with a
statistics program, and a librarian can use that as an opportunity to promote the data management
workshops available that week, while also troubleshooting the students original problem;
however, according to the 2014 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information
Technology, many students are turning to their family and friends for help with devices and
programs, rather than support offered on campus. Those who have used campus help desks left
with a positive impression of the service, so librarians can capitalize on that opportunity to
change their image.
Furthermore, technology offers librarians the opportunity to help patrons manage their
research and time in a variety of ways, beyond the traditional reference desk. Technology can
minimize or manage an individuals information anxiety, but it can also add to feelings of
information overload if not used carefully and correctly (Green & Bowser, 2002; Jiao &
Onwuegbuzie, 1998; Katopol, 2012). When researching, students encounter multiple databases,
keywords, and abstracts. In order to adequately help students, librarians need to constantly
educate themselves about new technologies. They should also offer multiple and diverse
opportunities for patrons to seek assistance from the reference desk, to online chat, to
automated services.
Open Access and institutional repositories offer both opportunities and challenges. Alire
and Evans (2010) observe that for technology to realize its scholarly communication potential
there must be open, online, free repositories of high quality material that are stable in the long
term (p. 179). Librarians, who help their users navigate this issue, can advocate for this
development to faculty, students, and those in the publishing business. They can also lead the
establishment of institutional repositories.
Assumptions
For the purposes of this Information Technology Plan, this academic library is located at
a 4-year public institution with ~10,000 undergraduate and graduate students combined. The
library system is composed of three buildings: a main campus building constructed in the mid1990s, a Special Collections department and University Archives in a separate, older building on
campus, and a graduate school library at a satellite campus within 50 miles of the main campus.
In total, the libraries employ twenty librarians, fifteen paraprofessionals, ten other staff, and three
graduate students across all departments. The main buildings first floor is designed like a
Learning Commons with individual study room and computer stations throughout the building.
The library offers a variety of resources, from physical books and periodicals to e-book and
database subscriptions. Students can borrow a variety of technology, including laptops and

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tablets; students and faculty can also use PC and Apple computers in the main building, which
offer programs for creating multimedia projects. Some other services offered include: embedded
librarian services for in-person and online classes, copyright information sessions for faculty, and
one-on-one reference consultations via The Writing Center.
Libraries should adopt the following technologies and services:
1. Participatory Technologies
To engage twenty-first century students in the physical and online classroom, libraries
should make available and utilize participatory technologies. Farkas (2012) explains that
participatory technologies can enhance reective and dialogical learning, increase student
autonomy and help create learning communities in the classroom (p. 82); in other words, these
Web 2.0 technologies enable users to be creators, rather than just consumers, of information.
Examples of participatory technologies include social media platforms, blog, Wikis, and other
technologies that allow users to create and engage in discourse with others. Librarians can use
these technologies when embedded into an online class, during a one-shot information literacy
course for freshmen, or for a graduate student literature review workshop; furthermore, librarians
can be a resource for tools and training so that other faculty can implement participatory
technology into their own classes. With more students moving to online classes, these
technologies are especially important for helping them grasp new content; they are more likely to
retain information if they have to interact with it (Wexler, 2015).
2. Discovery Tools
Libraries provide access to hundreds of databases with journal articles and book chapters,
thousands of physical books, periodicals, and e-books, and just as many online reference
resources. To thoroughly research across these platforms requires time and patience; however,
new discovery tools are making it simpler and more efficient for users to complete a
comprehensive search. Popular discovery tools include OCLCs WorldCat Local, EBSCOs
Discovery Service, and ProQuests Summon (Hanrath & Kottman, 2015). These tools are meant
to look and function like web search engines, like Google and Bing, where a user can type in a
few keywords and retrieve a variety of sources from multiple places. Discovery tools are
especially useful for teaching freshmen or other novice researchers about the sheer amount of
resources available through their library; however, Hanrath and Kottman (2015) call for
librarians to constantly monitor and assess how their users are adapting to discovery tools and
make changes as necessary.
3. Bibliographic Management Software
As the plethora of physical and electronic resources that users can access grows,
librarians will need to provide bibliographic management software that will help users,
especially graduate students and faculty, stay organized. Popular software, like EndNote, Zotero,
RefWorks, and ProCite, make the research process more efficient. Duong (2010) describes
success with marketing Zotero to science students. Unlike some bibliographic management
systems, Zotero is web-based and free to use, and it can pull the metadata from a variety of
sources, including videos and journal articles. Librarians can embrace bibliographic management
software as a way to maintain their relevance to students; these organizational systems add value

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to the content that many users are able to access online, with no cost or even access to the library.
Graduate students writing literature reviews for dissertations and faculty managing their research
for a book could both benefit from these services, and librarians can offer workshops or online
tutorials to demonstrate how to use the programs.
4. Institutional Repositories
Libraries can join the move toward open access by establishing and growing digital
institutional repositories. These repositories have multiple benefits for students and faculty. First,
graduate student theses and dissertations can be uploaded into repositories for preservation and
as an exhibit of the scholarship the universitys students are producing. Secondly, faculty can
protect their intellectual property by depositing conference papers, articles, and book reviews;
while they often find external homes for their scholarship due to tenure requirements,
institutional repositories provide an alternative platform for making their work available to
students and others in their discipline. These repositories are especially useful for storing raw
research material and data sets produced by campus projects, which presents the additional
challenge of storing a variety of formats beyond text, including video and audio (Johnson,
Adams Becker, Estrada, & Freeman, 2014). Finally, institutional repositories offer an alternative
host for university archivists to digitally preserve and make available campus records and
collections.
5. Mobile technologies
It is imperative that libraries continue to develop mobile services that make internal
resources and services available to students and faculty. Students are already using their mobile
devices, like smartphones, tablets, and e-readers, for academic purposes (Dahlstrom & Bichsel,
2014). Librarians can take advantage of that phenomena by adapting more of their services to
mobile platforms; users want to search the catalog and databases, access abstracts, save searches,
and read resources from their mobile technologies (Johnson et al., 2014). Furthermore, librarians
can offer mobile reference services that users can access from their dorm rooms or from across
the country. Many libraries already offer Ask-a-Librarian services online, so the next step is Texta-Librarian, which is an alternative for users with limited data plans. The students phone or
tablet is transformed into a Reference Desk, which is increasingly important as classes and
programs move online. Because many are available 24/7, mobile technologies provide more
flexibility for users. Bomhold (2014) warns that this innovation could come at a cost to user
needs, and that libraries seemingly have lost sight of the user, both in what is offered and how
effectively it is deployed (343); therefore, librarians should rigorously assess these, and all
other, new technologies.
Libraries should consider adopting the following technologies and services:
1. 3-D Printers
Many libraries are creating Learning Commons, dynamic and multi-functional spaces
where students can collaborate with groups, receive tutoring, meet with reference librarians,
write a paper, or get a cup of coffee and watch Netflix. Learning Commons are meant to be
interdisciplinary spaces available to students and faculty as a space that meets a variety of
learning needs. A useful addition to these spaces would be a 3-D printer, which is a participatory

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technology that enables users to create objects. Nowlan (2015) describes success with purchasing
and implementing a plastic filament fuel disposition model (FDM) printer. The author asserts
that adding this technology aligns with the academic librarys mission to provide space for user
collaboration and engagement. With a 3-D printer, science students can create models of the
human femur; education students can print a solar system model for a 3rd grade classroom; a
history faculty member can show students the shape of an 18th century plow. If made available in
the library, than no discipline could monopolize use of this technology.
2. The Internet of Things
The Internet of Things consists of interconnected items in which the line between the
physical object and digital information about it is blurred (Johnson et al., 2014, p. 42). It
connects objects via the internet, and allows a user to control an object without necessarily being
in close proximity to it. Johnson et al. (2014) foresees this technology as granting library users
more control over their space; one can imagine that would have profound implications for users
with disabilities because sources could be customized to fit their needs. The authors also posit
that libraries could install smart shelves (p. 43) that are responsive to patrons preferences,
previous Internet searches, and circulation history in order to promote relevant content to them in
real-time (p. 43); additionally, a sensor could connect a library users previous Internet search of
the catalog to his/her location in the physical building, guiding them to the materials he/she
needs.
3. ST Imaging ViewScan II
University archivists are increasingly making their collections available digitally; users
can increasingly access primary sources from their mobile devices or computer. Some sources,
like newspapers, are preserved on microfilm, which could be considered an outdated technology;
however, microfilm is a stable and affordable preservation format that many libraries invested in
decades ago (Scardilli, 2014). Therefore, university archives or Special Collections departments
should consider adopting microfilm readers that make that technology more useful for todays
users. New readers have touchscreens that allow the viewer to zoom in or out on a page with just
their fingers; they also enable users to e-mail pages to themselves, which is more economic and
green than printing. For example, the compact ST Imaging ViewScan II allows users to crop,
edit, and highlight on a computer screen. If a user is unsure of how a function works, the system
can play video tutorials. Once the user has selected materials, he/she can upload those to a thumb
drive, rather than print them (Scardilli, 2014). Rather than discarding technologies that have
stood the test of time, like microfilm, libraries can introduce new technologies that make the
original more useful and convenient.
4. Conversational agents
Certain technologies, like conversational agents, can alleviate the anxiety students
experience around the research process. Some students lack confidence in their mechanical skills
to use laptops or printers; others hesitate to ask a reference librarian for help with narrowing
down a topic; and other students have to overcome linguistic or cultural barriers to receive
library assistance(Green & Bowser, 2002; Jiao & Onwuegbuzie, 1998; Katopol, 2012).
Therefore, librarians should consider adopting a range of technologies that offer students a

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variety of methods for receiving help with all aspects of the research process, such as Chatbots.
Chatbots can tap into siloed resources, retrieve information and repackage in much the same
way as a discovery tool, but with the ability to seem more human than a search engine (Allison,
2012, p. 97). These programmable bots use natural language interaction to answer common
questions, such as where are the study rooms? or how do I find books about psychology.
They can be stationed around campus so students have more ways to access research support
(Allison, 2012). While it is arguable that conversational agents are not as useful as a face-to-face
reference interview, the bots could be a first step for students who hesitate to approach librarians
at the desk.
5. Semantic-aware applications
Johnson et al. (2014) explain that semantic-aware applications make the invisible visible
because they infer the meaning, or semantics, of information on the Internet using metadata to
make connections and provide answers that would otherwise be elusive or altogether invisible
(p. 44). Websites are assigned metadata, and these applications can sift through that to discover
relevant connections to a search or disregard unrelated information. Examples of these systems
include Noesis, BIBFRAME, and OpenRefine (Johnson et al., 2014). The BBC has already
implemented this technology to tie their websites together and allow users who have one interest
to find that interest in both their food and news sections (Moore, 2012). These applications
could radically change how students and faculty perform research, but that requires collaboration
among librarians for standardization reasons. Librarians in academic libraries should educate
themselves on how to support efforts to further develop the semantic web.
Implementation
Technologies the library should adopt:
Implementing participatory technologies, discovery tools, bibliographic management
systems, institutional repositories, and mobile technologies requires multiple steps. First, users
needs and how these services and technologies could potentially meet those needs should be
assessed. Because the librarians will have multiple models and price points to choose from, it is
imperative that they understand exactly how the technologies will be used. Patrons should be
surveyed and interviewed to discover how these are technologies will add to their library
experience and enhance their research processes. Then, the librarians might develop a team or
committee to determine how much the library can afford to spend on this new service and
research possible models or products for purchase. Once the specific product or model is chosen,
the library should ask for more feedback from user focus groups and adjust their decision
accordingly. Then, when the service is fully available to all patrons, the library will need to
market it to the appropriate user groups and provide instruction or support for using it. Finally,
once implemented, each technology should be rigorously assessed to ensure that users are
benefiting from it and using it properly.
For example, before designing a mobile library catalog app, librarians should ask students
and faculty how they already use the catalog on their mobile technologies. What functions do
they use most? Are they usually accessing it on laptops or smartphones? Using those results,
librarians can begin to design an app; however, they should continue to assess it by rolling out
test models and asking for patron feedback. Other librarians should test the service to make sure

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it functions for users. Once they have launched the new app, librarians at the reference desk, in
instructional sections, and while meeting with students or faculty should promote the app and
demonstrate its usefulness for users. The library might also develop a plan to market it at new
student orientation or via campus e-mail. Once users are downloading and using the app, the
librarians should design and execute further assessment methods to discover any necessary bugs
or upgrades.
Technologies the library should consider adopting:
Implementing technologies that the library is considering adopting will follow a similar
method as outlined above for technologies the library is adopting; however, there are some key
differences. Technologies like 3-D printers, the Internet of Things, ST Imagine Scan II,
conversational agents, and semantic web applications are challenges that pose unique risks and
opportunities for academic libraries. Before adopting them, their compatibility with current
technology and user needs should be carefully considered. First, the library should develop a
committee or team to research how peer institutions have implemented similar services or
products. Their research should include which products or models the institutions chose and why,
how they funded their purchase and its maintenance, how they marketed it to users, and how
their users responded to the product or model. After completing that exercise, the librarians
might develop a proposal for administrators and their colleagues outlining why they believe this
product or service is right for the library, and how they plan to fund its initial purchase and
maintenance. Once those two steps are complete, and their proposal has been expected, then
librarians will begin the process outlined above for adopting new technologies.
Reflection:
(1) Have developed a conceptual and practical understanding of the computing
fundamentals essential to information technology systems, including how computers
represent, process, store, and retrieve information, present the user interface, run useful
applications, and interact in a networked world.
Academic libraries usually work with an Information Technology department to solve IT issues
for their users; however, academic librarians should have a general understanding of how
computers and networks function to successfully serve their users. Librarians typically encounter
those users first when they have questions or concerns about a technology available in or via the
library. They should be able to help the patron navigate those issues, and if they cannot, then
having a working knowledge of the technology will help the librarian serve as an advocate for
the user to the IT department. Additionally, librarians are charged with assessing and researching
new technologies that will better meet their users needs. That decision making process requires
understanding product information and how new products operate with others in the library
system or on the campus network.
(2) Understand the function and role of operating systems in the management of computer
processes and data.
Academic library users will need to access the two most popular operating systems, Windows
and IOS, in order to develop projects and complete class assignments. Typically, these libraries

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offer machines with both operating systems, although the majority of machines will most likely
run Windows. These systems operate differently and meet unique user needs, so librarians should
be familiar with them in order to help users choose the system that meets their needs.
Furthermore, in their day-to-day work, librarians will use computers to run applications and
software like printing, word processing, sending e-mails, working on spreadsheets, or
searching the librarys catalog -- so they should have a clear understanding of those processes.
(3) Have developed a knowledge base regarding computer hardware and software sufficient
to make informed selection decisions and perform routine troubleshooting.
Like operating systems, librarians will need to help users determine the hardware or software
that meets their information needs. Patrons will need help operating hardware like printers,
scanners, tablets, and laptops, in addition to assessing if their personal hardware is compatible
with that in the library. Librarians might also help them determine which software application is
appropriate for their project or information needs. Students will need to access bibliographic
management systems, data management systems, statistical analysis programs, word processing,
video and audio editing programs, and multiple web apps. Not only will academic librarians need
to help patrons use this hardware and software, but they will also serve on committees that
determine new technologies purchased by the library.
(4) Be familiar with general programming processes and develop basic script programming
skills.
While academic librarians help users navigate operating systems and software, they need to
understand the steps those programs take to launch and run. Understanding those steps is
necessary to troubleshoot issues or discuss with the IT department the issues that users are
experiencing. Furthermore, librarians can use their programming knowledge to create online
tutorials or web-based applications that promote library services or teach users a new skill.
(5) Be familiar with database systems, systems analysis and modeling techniques (ERD and
DFD), and normalization and build a relational database in Microsoft Access.
Academic librarians work with databases every day; they teach users how to input the right
search terms, keywords, and Boolean phrases to retrieve the most useful print and electronic
resources. If the librarian understands how databases are programmed and organized, then he/she
will have a clearer idea of how to navigate those systems. Furthermore, librarians are responsible
for managing an overwhelming amount of data, from patron records to microfilm inventories to
student worker hours and pay rates. Relational databases, like Microsoft Access, are an
accessible tool for managing that information.
(6) Understand markup language concepts and basic web publishing and successfully
upload them to a UNIX based web server.
Librarians need to organize information resources and market those to their patrons in a variety
of ways, including web-based applications, websites, and e-mail. Those tasks could require some
coding knowledge in order to manipulate the information to meet user needs.

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(7) Be familiar with cloud computing applications.
Academic library users are increasingly using cloud computing applications, like Google Docs,
for their information needs. Those applications are appealing to users who use mobile
technologies, like smartphones and tablets, which many libraries provide. Librarians will need to
help users access and navigate those applications while also taking advantage of them for their
own work needs.

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