Social media use is enabling special collections libraries to interact with their user and fan bases in ways that have not been possible in the past. By being connected to the internet, they can offer immediate information, updates, or answers to questions almost instantly that curious browsers can get in their living rooms. But which libraries have the biggest internet footprint? This project scraped Twitter data from accounts that are Special Collections Libraries in the United States and created a weighted visualization based on the top twenty-eight libraries that allows us to understand which libraries have the biggest impact on both the internet and other libraries. By analyzing the library Twitter data, statistics about who the power users were began to show themselves, and a visualization was made that shows how the most active libraries are connected, and who has the biggest digital footprint based on tweets, followers, follows, and other variables.

This study has provided a solid foundation for further investigation of the larger special collections libraries network in the United States. Visualizing a limited network of twenty-eight of the major special collections libraries in the United States and weighting the nodes in the network by total number of followers provides insights into the potential shape of a larger network. The assessment of centrality measures suggests that while numbers of followers is important to demonstrate high public awareness or popularity, the influence of individual libraries might best be demonstrated by a careful examination of centrality  and betweeness measures. Going forward, this study will be expanded to include as many as eighty-five special collections libraries and map all followers and friends of these libraries. Call limits and time constraints with the Twitter API made it necessary to restrict the scope of this study and instead pursue a project that would test whether a larger study was warranted and feasible. Such a study is in process. As part of that larger study, it will be useful to examine the relationships betweeni numbers of followers and tweets. The sheer volume of tweets posted by many of the most followed libraries suggests that additional investigation is warranted to determine the effectiveness of special collections libraries in their Twitter use.

For questions about this work, please contact me at: tswood@bsu.edu

My last day on the job found me grasping the reality that I might have to come back to finish up my last project–because I just cannot leave anything undone! I managed to get arrangements made to launch the Special Collections Blog. Andrew Welp, the scholarly communications assistant, provided the space and support to create the blog. However, we ran out of time getting the first post up.

I did get items digitized and a blog post written. I have decided (and it’s been approved) that I will return before classes start in August to put together the blog post, including the digitized items highlighted in the post. Still to do: annotations for the digitized items, metadata, and making sure the home page for both the Irwin Library and Special Collections highlight the blog. We will also make sure that the blog is launched with appropriate advertisement from the marketing department.

This last week has been pretty hectic! As might be expected when working with a wide range of people and departments, not everything is complete and I am racing to get as much done as possible before wrapping up my internship. The box order decisions have all been made and one last confirmation means that the order can be submitted and paid for. The last detail is to coordinate getting the department credit card information to process the order.

This whole process has taught me about balancing the needs of conservation with the realities of budgets. Fortunately, money that was initially earmarked for another collection in special collections could legitimately be re-directed to this purpose. As my mentor said, the donor of the original money would no doubt be happy to secure the safety of some of the most fragile items in the collections without sacrificing the stability of the items they donated. It seems an excellent compromise.

This week has been eye-opening. As often happens, items show up on the doorstep (figuratively) of the archives and special collections because a university department is cleaning house and/or they have no where else to go. In this case, Special Collections received four boxes containing a large number of color photographs and negatives from the Facilities Management office.

The photos document building and landscaping projects dating back to the late 1980s at Butler University. The photos, mostly still in their envelopes from the local drugstore that developed them, came to us completely disorganized. Fortunately, many of the envelopes contained two or three-word descriptions of the project depicted and a basic date (August 1989 or occasionally specific dates). Still, there were stacks of unidentified photos (some with dates, most not) and many envelopes that contained no photos, but had the negatives–that needed to be matched up (hopefully!) with the photos.

To acquire some experience and to get the boxes off the floor of the reading room, I decided to take on the task of creating an initial intake list while also imposing some sort of basic order on the mess.

Together with my mentor, we decided that a simple list assigning a Box number, envelope number, with the brief description and count of the envelope contents and date (if available)  would suffice for this initial intake. We also decided that we would have our colleague in special collections (who has been at the university for decades) identify and organize as many of the loose photos and negatives as possible for later inclusion in the initial inventory.

With this basic approach in place, I began the process of organizing and listing. Having lots of extra magazine-style boxes available provided me with boxes that could hold a manageable number of envelopes and which could then be efficiently stored in the stacks. I managed to organize all of the photo envelopes in just about 8 hours of work this week. I made sure to create one master list, but also individual box lists to include in each box. I penciled an item number on each envelope and then labeled the box with its own number.

My colleague will continue to identify the loose photos, but now, at least, there is some order to the mess–and the real possibility that the photos will  become accessible and usable. My mentor is pleased with the work since we have been able to identify photos that are not currently in the archives. The next steps will no doubt happen after I have finished my internship, but will include culling out duplicates and any photos that are deemed unnecessary. The sorting and organizing also allowed us to find personal photos that belonged to a former facilities employee (and return them to him at his current employer!), as well as sort out software and software manuals that had mistakenly been tossed in with the photos–also returned!

While the archives and special collections might end up with many items that others just want to “dump”, it seems that it is always worthwhile for us to give them time and attention to make sure that nothing is lost that might one day have value as part of the institutional record.

Though it might sound tedious and even boring, I have been tremendously intrigued by the work involved with measuring all of the books held by Special Collections at Irwin Library that date prior to 1700. In order to purchase protective storage, each book had to be precisely measured in an exact manner as set forth by the storage manufacturer.

Learning this procedure and measuring each book allowed me to handle almost 100 books dated from the 1470s to 1700. Many of the books are in original or early bindings. The chance to examine each book and learn about how the book was printed and constructed provided a great learning experience.

Now that the measuring is all complete, I notified my mentor to discuss the ordering of these enclosures. Initially, we assumed that phaseboxes would be the most affordable and would be possible within our budget constraints. Of course, we wanted clamshell boxes, but it seemed unlikely that clamshell boxes would work with our budget.

The sales representative for the manufacturer provided an estimate that indicated we could afford the clamshell boxes and that we could purchase heavier-weight boxes for the largest folio and oversized items, as well! This turned out to be an unexpected and happy result. Still, it was useful to have a detailed discussion about balancing protection with budgeting when considering what to order. We had considered several options including ordering the sturdier clamshell boxes only for the oldest and most fragile items, while obtaining phaseboxes for everything else. We also considered limiting the order by books printed before 1600, leaving the others to be ordered as funds allowed at a later date.

Fortunately, we are able to order everything at once. Still, the conversations about conservation needs vs. budget demands proved very useful.

I was welcomed to attend this month’s library faculty meeting as I did last month. These meetings are, in some ways, among the most valuable experiences of my internship. The variety of concerns and issues dealt with in the meetings opens my eyes to what my work-life will be when I take up a position as an academic librarian.

The meetings topics ranged from significant changes in how Human Resources will be organized to issues about storage, collections management, library furniture, personnel evaluations, and budget matters.

I was particularly drawn to the discussion about evaluations and the concerns that each librarian’s contract be evaluated to make sure it reflected the actual percentages of service, scholarship, and teaching that each librarian performs–and that these percentages are adjusted regularly as duties and functions change.

We learned about new efforts to better track expenses incurred by faculty for conferences, travel, etc. that will be implemented in part to control those expenses, but also to ensure sustainability of those funds: better documentation will both control the expenses, but also provide clear evidence of the needs of library faculty so that support will continue.

Many of the items that will be used for the online exhibition have never been scanned before. In addition, several items are written letters and documents that have never been transcribed–or whose transcriptions have been done in a fairly informal manner.

Early on, I checked with both my mentor and Andrew, the scholarly communication assistant to ascertain the scanning protocols/standards for the library. These standards follow best practices for digital collections and we have made sure to adhere to these standards for the items digitized for the exhibition. The challenge this week is learning that a few items that we have digitized images for have only been scanned as JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) files, rather than TIFF (Tag Image File Format) files.

This is not ideal, but lacking the original item to re-scan, we will have to make do with the JPEGs. Fortunately, this involves perhaps two items. Otherwise, we can be assured that the exhibition items will adhere to industry standards and will be usable in most other applications in future.

This is an important goal for the exhibition: not only do we want to create an engaging, interesting exhibition for the general public and Butler community, but we hope to promote and support scholarly uses of the materials.

This goal demands that the transcriptions of written sources meet basic scholarly standards for transcription, but also meets ADA compliance for access. My mentor and I discussed the level of scholarly apparatus that would be reflected in the transcriptions–we wanted to strike a balance between the demands of scholarship and ease of use for the general viewer. Thus, the transcriptions will scrupulously reflect exact words use, spelling, and format of the original document, but have none of the more complex notations and annotations common in scholarly editions.

The exhibition continues to dominate discussion and activity. This week we have had to deal with the challenge of what the software will let you do when building an exhibition. Omeka, at the moment, is not letting us get the “look” of the old time photo that we want. We have to also figure out a good timeline function within Omeka. Fortunately, I have the benefit of my husband’s expertise: he is a digital historian and he directed us to Timeline JS3 to embed a really usable, attractive timeline into the exhibition that won’t require too much work. This will allow a great deal of flexibility and we will be able to use virtually any type of media (images, video, music, etc.) within the timeline. Omeka’s ease of compatibility will make this timeline a great addition. Andrew was particularly excited to learn about this, he had never seen Timeline JS3.

As for the “look” we initially wanted, oval images that the viewer clicked on to take you to the profile of the individual, we have decided to re-work the splash page by creating a collage image in Photoshop that will be the banner, but provide individual images below that will be the links.

The compromise will give us the look we are after, along with accommodating the limitations imposed by the software. Of course, this could all change again if someone runs across a solution! The theme here seems to be flexibility and compromise in order to get a good, final product.

This week has started off with a discussion about Metadata. The metadata specialist for Irwin Library wandered in to ask about the items for our online exhibition. Many of the items that will be featured in the exhibition have never been digitized, catalogued, and, of course, not been provided with metadata.

The exhibition will feature several items for each individual, but we are digitizing more items that will become part of the exhibition archive (“collection” in Omeka). It has been useful for me to consider the level of metadata detail that will be applied, especially since these items will become part of the larger digital images archive of the university and open to use by scholars and visitors worldwide.

One aspect of this process that took me by surprise is that the decision to begin applying metadata to the exhibition items happened without an overall plan being put in place. This did not really cause any problems–the metadata had to happen no matter what–but since online exhibitions are a fairly new idea for the library, there is no set order of tasks in place for this process. That conversation has now begun.

One of the projects for this internship is the development of a Special Collections Blog for Irwin Library. In my conversations with my mentor, it became clear that Butler’s Special Collections contains numerous fascinating and significant items that very few people on Butler’s campus and the in the larger community know about.

We discussed the current social media program for Irwin Library and the purpose and goals for social media. I have read a great deal lately about the uses and impact of social media for academic libraries in the professional literature, as well as commentary by various academics in blogs such as this one.

The main goal for this blog is to raise awareness of the Special Collections at Butler University. The hope is that the blog will drive interest and use of the collections. The blog will be maintained by special collections staff, but guest posts will be solicited from various Butler faculty and potentially students who use the collections. Those who use the collections will have the opportunity to write posts discussing items in the collection that they have used in their research and teaching.

This approach will ensure that the blog gains a wider audience, is supported within the university, and relieves the special collections librarian and staff from the burden of writing each post–an important consideration in such a small shop that already has so many responsibilities.

One of the better examples of this approach may be found at Trinity College’s Watkinson Library in Hartford, Connecticut. The “Bibliophile’s Lair” combines images, text, and video to engage a wide audience.