LSC Priorities for 2024 - Summer Update

The Library’s 2024 priorities, as developed by LSC and LAT, focus on several key areas. These areas complement the important day-to-day operational needs that make PUL such a highly regarded library service. The priorities include implementing DEI recommendations from 2023, strategic workforce planning with attention to the working environment and succession planning, and continuing work on mental health support for students and staff. The Library also aims to develop and implement methods for collecting and analyzing key metrics across operations, advance and support interdisciplinary research, engage in space and resource planning, and develop a discovery strategy for comprehensive access to resources. Progress has been made in all of these areas, with some highlights shared in the following report. Thanks to the many colleagues who have helped to make progress on these priorities and submitted updates. 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• We continue to implement strategic recommendations from the themes and recommendations of the large-scale 2023 DEI Listening Tour Sessions with PUL colleagues to advance data-driven DEI decisions for PUL. 

• A DEI web page on the Library’s website and a Confluence page will be developed for early Fall 2024.

• PUL welcomed two new members of the Early Career Fellowship Program, Denzil Phillips and Brionna Johnson, as part of an ongoing strategic partnership with North Carolina Central University.

• The Critical Connections internal symposium took place on June 11 highlighting efforts related to inclusive and reparative description and content mediation at the Library. More than 100 colleagues registered to hear 22 presenters from across the Library.   

• The ARCH program, rebranded as REACH (Research, Equity, Archives, Curation, and History) to reflect the closer collaboration with the Princeton University Art Museum, took place in June. This year the program attracted 15 undergraduate students and 8 mentors from seven HBCUs to campus for a week-long, hands-on look into the work of special collections and archives with a further week concentrated on the Art Museum’s functions. Students participated in sessions that included classroom lectures and discussions, hands-on activities with documents, as well as conversations about potential career paths.

Strategic workforce planning 

• LSC continues to work to balance staffing needs for new areas and initiatives with the need to maintain appropriate levels of staffing to support existing services. It should be noted that unless a role is funded by a specific grant or program, each vacancy is reviewed to ensure that it is the best use of PUL’s resources. 

• The Provost's Office has approved the Library’s request for four new roles to staff the new Commons Library, to be hired at the start of FY2025. 

Library’s role in support of mental health 

• The Library’s Student Mental Health Task Force was formed in the fall 2023 and met with campus groups that focus on this area, including TigerWell, the Carl Fields Center, and the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC). The Task Force also conducted a survey of Library student workers. After gathering data and inputs, this group developed and submitted a set of recommendations to LSC that cover areas such as training for public-facing students and staff, space updates, and augmentations to current programs, including new lending items. 

• The Lewis-Fine Library was awarded a TigerWell Seed Grant to develop a Calm Room open to the University community; this has been launched. 

• Training that will be open to all PUL staff has been organized in collaboration with the GSRC, it will be held in early fall. 

Data and metrics development 

• The Library’s data program continues to expand and enhance access to key metrics, with significant advancements in the first half of 2024. Collaboration with stakeholders has led to the development of a new desk statistic collection process and a new instruction and reference data application. Both will allow for easier data entry, automatic reminders, and custom dashboards. Other ongoing projects include assisting with the Lewis occupancy and space use project and continuing the pilot of SenSource in the Milberg Gallery. 

• In the second half of 2024, focus will shift to improving web statistics, building a key metrics indicator dashboard in Tableau, developing workflows for automatic data exchange, and enhancing monthly reports for Firestone turnstile data to include demographic information such as patron type and department affiliation.

• The annual data reporting season has begun. Preliminary analysis indicates a need for data cleanup, with early calculations showing lower overall consultation and instruction numbers for AY24 while in-person desk stats, virtual reference, and circulation statistics saw increases. 

• One notable datapoint–the Firestone Turnstile data hit a record-breaking 601,638 entrances for AY24. This is the first year to exceed FY19 numbers since the start of the pandemic. 

Advance and support interdisciplinary research 

The Library has addressed this priority in a number of ways within and collaboratively across several divisions. Three major areas are highlighted with some illustrative examples for each. 

1. A number of workshops and other events have facilitated interdisciplinary collaboration and/or advanced data and computational research skills for library staff, Princeton community members, and members of the wider research community. Examples of these activities include:

• Hosting collaborative open workshops on digital scholarship topics, including python and AI, and a Douglass Day event that allowed library visitors to participate in transcribing materials in Special Collections related to the Freedmen's Bureau activities in Louisiana.

• Organizing a new event series entitled “Materials and Art in the Laboratory” to start in the fall that focuses on different materials from multiple disciplinary perspectives, merging art and materials science.

• Hosting a Library staff affinity group on Generative AI.

• Planning an external collaboration with Dumbarton Oaks by bringing speakers of native Mesoamerican languages to campus to better describe our holdings in these rare languages.

• Hosting numerous course-related sessions in collaboration with faculty, including those that merge or blend physical and digital resources.

• Collaborating with the Indigenous Studies program by hosting an annual Munsee Language & History Symposium and working with the Delaware Nation and the Delaware Tribe of Indians; supporting multiple campus events and visits from tribal representatives, scholars, and artists; and committing to several digitization initiatives. 

2. New infrastructures and services have been developed and launched to advance open, interdisciplinary, and computational research, including: 

• Launched a new PUL platform for open publishing (with the first publication being the “Handbook of Social Psychology”).

• In collaboration with the Dean for Research and OIT, launched the Princeton Data Commons, the University’s open data repository.

• Established a team to coordinate services in preparation for federal changes to open research requirements.

• Worked with McGraw and Art & Archaeology department on application of IIIF framework to Antioch excavation materials.

• Preparation for the formal launch of a new digital scholarship program this fall.

• Developed a video guide to searching the catalog in non-Roman scripts such as Hebrew and Arabic (which presents many challenges unique to those languages).

• Staff in the Digital Studio and Library IT continue to collaborate with Factum Arte and staff from Oxford University on the Selene system. They have developed a multi-phased approach to advancing this and other forms of specialized photography. In the case of the Selene, they have gone through all current use cases and grouped five main categories (Pedagogy, Research, Experimentation, 3D Printing, x-y specialized photography) for use of the Selene thus far and are moving forward with user stories that will help inform library collaborations and development needs in future phases. Additional information is available on DPUL and Confluence.

3. Working collaboratively across divisions to acquire and facilitate access to resources in our collections that specifically benefit interdisciplinary research:

• Identifying, acquiring, and managing electronic resources that provide a platform for collaboration and encourage partnerships across departments and disciplines at Princeton University. Examples include Code Ocean, Protocols.io, Cove Studio, JoVE, and TDM (Text and Data Mining) tools and platforms such as ProQuest’s TDM Studio and JSTOR’s Constellate. These electronic resources allow researchers to collaborate virtually to advance their fields of research.

• Coordinating with other departments on campus (ORPA, Procurement Services, etc.) to formalize and streamline data purchases in order to foster cost-efficient cross-department and interdisciplinary research collaboration and to avoid duplicate purchases on campus. Centralizing this information and workflow encourages collaboration among departments and researchers and promotes discoverability of data resources.

• Successful negotiations with Integrum WorldWide, a Russian media aggregator and database vendor, to secure a very large dataset – an archive of Russian print media outlets and transcripts of broadcast media outlets spanning the period from 1999 to the 2023 – available in perpetuity to any interested Princeton researchers.

• Coordinating Special Collections purchases and drafting a LibGuide to support interdisciplinary research in Carceral Studies at the request of representatives from Princeton University’s Prison Teaching Initiative. 

• Investing heavily in expanded acquisition, metadata, and digitization projects to make global historical and contemporary ephemera easily discoverable and accessible to support research and teaching across all fields of humanities and social sciences.

• Working closely with our ReCAP partners for an in-depth bibliographic analysis whose resulting data demonstrated that Yale’s collections are largely complementary to the strengths of the existing ReCAP collective collection, across broad interdisciplinary fields. Once completed, the project to integrate Yale in the ReCAP Discovery-to-Delivery system will thereby dramatically expand the interdisciplinary scope of the content we make transparently discoverable and rapidly accessible to our scholars and students. 

Space and resource planning 

• In partnership with University Facilities and the Office of Capital Planning (OCP), progress continues to be made on the new Commons Library and the renovation of Marquand Library. As of now, both projects are on track to be completed in late 2025 or early 2026. 

• The Office of the University Architect (OUA) has hired an outside architect, Studio Modh, to undertake a planning study for 693 Alexander Road. Working with LPPO and library managers, they have surveyed staff on physical needs, workflow, and many other questions to understand PUL’s needs. They have also studied the building and engaged with engineering consultants to review the building systems. When the planning study is complete, which is anticipated for later this summer, Studio Modh will present OUA with their recommendations. 

• A group of staff representing several Library departments and divisions has created a three-year plan to make incremental changes to the space formerly occupied by microforms on the A floor of Firestone. This approach has several benefits: in addition to improving the space, it creates the opportunity to study how PUL can better support patron needs, it allows us to progress with agility, learning as we go; and it facilitates spending funds more efficiently and effectively as we respond to feedback over time.

Discovery 

A working group recently finalized a Discovery Vision for PUL. This vision and the principles it outlines will serve as guidance as the Library’s discovery systems continue to evolve. Library IT continues to work with the Blacklight, ReCAP, and BorrowDirect communities to develop features that will help us to continue to realize our vision. Additionally, the Digital Library Services team in IT has begun working with stakeholders on a new platform that will separate digital collections from exhibitions, with increased emphasis on supporting discovery and research with PUL’s digitized resources.