Last year was extremely productive for the library staff as we managed to complete many of the goals we set for ourselves. We accomplished our 2014 goals while still delivering on research and information requests in a timely manner, ensuring our clients had a positive experience, that they wanted to repeat (and did).
Synapse was enhanced to include Altmetrics scores or attention metrics for each record, if available – providing a way to measure the online presence of an author’s work in the digital environment. We also managed to ingest another two years of retrospective published literature (2003 and 2004) further expanding this important resource whose content supports the Cancer Center Support Grant (Core Grant).
BrowZine, a mobile app for tablets and smart phones, was implemented. BrowZine allows users to access and browse the MSK Library’s ejournals/open access titles via one simple interface, from different publishers. A LibGuide was developed to provide additional information on how to take advantage of this great new resource.
Illiad Document Delivery Services was upgraded with new features so that our user community can continue to obtain content that is not available from our collections.
We took the time to produce a library progress report highlighting our achievements for 2012 and 2013 and carried out a library usage study which confirmed that the physical space available to our users was just as important as our virtual presence. Many of them see the physical space as a destination – a place where they can come to get work done!
Moving forward, some of our key projects will focus on enhancing the user experience and supporting our user community’s research and work activities. Our 2015 goals include:
- Further enhancing Synapse, based on user feedback and adding retrospective content.
- Improving the Library Website, with a focus on enriching the user’s search and discovery process.
- Launching an ORCID support service for all our authors. Researchers’ names aren’t enough to reliably identify them as the correct author or contributor to a publication or dataset. Having a unique identifier, as provided by ORCID, should help resolve the author name ambiguity problem that currently exists in scholarly communication.
- Implementing a new layout for the shared online catalog (Tri-Cat) and exploring Blacklight as an alternative and more flexible discovery interface.
- Moving to LibGuides version 2.0.
- Initiating an ILLiad upgrade that will improve our Document Delivery Services.
- Continuing to explore the possibility of launching a data management service focused on the re-use and re-purposing of data sets. Several publishers are starting to require that raw data supporting the research manuscript be made accessible, so it is important for us to explore how we might support our authors in linking their data sets to their research papers. Soliciting feedback to better understand the needs of our users with regards to data is the first step which we plan to do via a targeted survey, focus group sessions, and one-on-one interviews. Specifically, we would like to confirm the need for us to develop and curate “data” bibliographic records that could be re-purposed and used by others. This service idea is not novel, however, the concept would be new to users. Visit Databib to browse some existing research data repositories. We are also working with The Rockefeller University librarians to compare notes in terms of universal researchers’ needs, as well as, unique needs that will surface from our conversations with researchers.
We are certainly excited regarding our upcoming goals, activities, and personal assignments. Happy New Year to our User Community, as well as, our Library Blog readers! We are delighted that you continue to make us a part of your research process, work activities, and decision-making.
Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services