United States

In the wake of a series of events, including the death of George Floyd last summer, the entire country yet again, started to discuss the challenges of racial justice in our communities. In response to this ongoing conversation was the decision by the UC Berkeley Library leadership to formally create a taskforce to look into the issue of racial justice in our Library environment, services and practices. The Task Force on Racial Justice is composed of 13 members of the UC Berkeley Library community, representing a wide range of departments, and inclusive of staff, librarians and a faculty member. 

The task force convenes this panel as an opportunity to share insights into the process, challenges and opportunities inherent in doing this sort of work in a Library organizational structure. We will provide staff and librarians to discuss the issues we identified in our work; the challenges we faced and the strategies we used in narrowing our focus with such a large and complicated topic. Given the novelty of returning to campus in-person and rebooting Library services, we will also discuss the impacts of general overcommitment to projects and the additional emotional labor of working on this sort of reform work amidst other competing obligations. We hope sharing our experiences can be educational to our fellow UC colleagues, and recommendations will inspire others to adopt similar approaches and continue the advance of racial justice work in their own communities; and/or partner with parallel efforts across campuses, and throughout the UC System.


UC Libraries Forum: Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration

Addressing Systemic Racism in the UC Berkeley Libraries: The formation and experiences of the Racial Justice Task Force

reccommendations

racial justice

systemic racism

collaboration

This  conference will explore the intersection of technology and service, the lessons learned through the past extraordinary year, and the value of change management. In light of the challenging times, we are coming together virtually to share our work under the theme 'Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration'.

The UC Libraries Forum will serve as an opportunity for UC library colleagues to meet virtually, share, learn and find opportunities for new collaborations and projects across the UC system. Presentations and conversation will note existing collaborations and spark ideas for new ones. This forum builds on and extends the scope of UC DLFx 2018 and 2019 beyond digital initiatives to all library employees to include themes such as research data, scholarly communications, the current-COVID academic library and others.




This event requires a registration to attend. To register, please click [here](https://ucl2021registration.paperform.co/) if you have not aleady done so.

Please register for UCLF 2021 to be able to enter the conference on Underline.io. Attendance is free, but registration is required.  We will contact you when the complete information about the conference and schedule becomes available. You would then need to login to Underline.io to be able to see the full content and build out your schedule. In case you do not have an Underline account, please create one. Thank you. 


This  conference will explore the intersection of technology and service, the lessons learned through the past extraordinary year, and the value of change management. In light of the challenging times, we are coming together virtually to share our work under the theme 'Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration'.

The UC Libraries Forum will serve as an opportunity for UC library colleagues to meet virtually, share, learn and find opportunities for new collaborations and projects across the UC system. Presentations and conversation will note existing collaborations and spark ideas for new ones. This forum builds on and extends the scope of UC DLFx 2018 and 2019 beyond digital initiatives to all library employees to include themes such as research data, scholarly communications, the current-COVID academic library and others.

panel

This panel presents the work of UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center (OHC) of The Bancroft Library in building up multimedia materials and assignments for Grades 11 and 12, and for lower-division college courses in California classrooms. Berkeley’s OHC has been collaborating with the UC’s California History-Social Science Project to further develop and refine the online content we already have. Following a brief description of collaborations and our development efforts in this area, we hope to generate interest in new partnerships across the UC libraries. The questions we'll explore include: How can we use digital oral histories and other UC Library materials to create multimedia curriculum content and assignments for California high school classrooms and lower-division college courses? What has already been done? And how can we collaborate further with other partners across the UC Library system and beyond?

Collaborating on Digital Oral History Curriculum Content and Building K-16 Student Engagement through UC Library Resources

In response to the need for real-world implementations of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data for Open Science, the FAIR Island Project offers an established, working field station as a controlled environment to experiment implementing FAIR data policies and workflows. Through a UC-focused, community-oriented, open approach, the FAIR Island Project explores, develops, and showcases generalized place-based tools and methods for FAIR data management. All researchers working on the Tetiaroa field station are required to create data management plans (DMPs) for their proposed projects to study the island, and said DMPs are updated as data collection advances. 

The FAIR Island Project builds interoperability between pieces of critical research infrastructure -- Data Management Plans (DMPs), research practice, DOIs, and publications contributing to the advancement and adoption of Open Science. The California Digital Library (CDL)’s leading work on transforming static data management plans into continuously updated, networked DMPs transforms the DMP into a living document that can guide the course of research by integrating data management activities and plans with related systems and workflows in the research lifecycle. 

As part of the FAIR Island Project, CDL is partnering with the University of California Natural Reserve System (UCNRS) to integrate their respective technologies for reservation management and the generation of data management plans to create an integrated system to manage research conducted at any UC field station. Moving forward, the project will advance social and technological infrastructure for place-based open science by rolling out project data policies and technologies to other UC-managed field stations. 

The Reserve Application Management System (RAMS) of the UCNRS is already in use by 56 field stations, primarily in California. By connecting the RAMS system with the DMPTool, the FAIR Island Project will create a unified workflow wherein researchers are required to submit a DMP that is then reviewed by the field station director/staff and a research data management specialist on the FAIR Island Project team. Upon approval of the DMP, a DOI is minted and can be connected with the DOI(s) assigned for each associated output. 

This short talk will review the FAIR Island Project’s work to promote Open Science practices at UC-managed field stations through technical integrations and optimal data policies. 


The FAIR Island Project: Advancing Optimal Open Data Policies and Practices;

Between the Fall of 2018, and the winter of 2020, the Direction and Oversight Committee (DOC) charged the Digital Preservation Strategy Working Group (DPS WG), consisting of representatives from a majority of the UC campuses, with tasks outlined across multiple phases representing approximately 12 months of work. The initial charge for Phase 1 was to develop a practical, shared vision of digital preservation for library content and outline a roadmap to guide the UC Libraries in advancing that shared vision. The first DPS WG report observed that: 

For the majority of UC libraries, there is no dedicated digital preservation unit or staff 
There is a lack of resources for digital preservation at most campuses
There is a need for defined digital preservation policies, workflows, guidance, training, and collaboration.

In 2019, the Digital Preservation Strategy Working Group (DPS WG) focused Phase Two activities on identifying the steps needed to build a community of practice around digital preservation in the UC Library system with the primary goal of preparing a path for collective action in the stewardship of the content types held in common by the ten campuses and CDL. 
During Phase Two, the DPS WG was charged with answering the questions “how much?” and “what kind?” of digital materials are stewarded by the UC libraries, and with identifying where it may be helpful to collaboratively steward particular content types. To answer the above questions, the initial tasks that the group tackled included developing a taxonomy of content types and a survey instrument, which was used to conduct 34 interviews with 44 data stewards across all ten campus libraries and CDL. 

Based on the outcome of the recommendations made during phase 2, the DPS WG focused their final round of activities in Phase 2.5 on outlining the specifics regarding the creation of a standing Digital Preservation Leadership group that would represent a more permanent and sustainable approach toward operationalizing the main recommendations of Phase 2. 

This presentation will discuss the results of the Phase 2 survey and the recommendations that were derived from those results. This includes presenting: (1) a summary of the digital assets held by the UC libraries, broken down by content type across all campus libraries; (2) the most significant practical, organizational and economic challenges of stewarding digital content; and (3) the specific areas where this digital preservation can be made easier through collective action, collaboration and shared expertise. A summary of Phase 2.5 will also be discussed, including the formation and creation of the inaugural standing Digital Preservation Leadership Group and a brief summary of its priorities and work plan.


Advancing Digital Preservation across the UC: Reports from the Digital Preservation Strategy Working Group;

Aggie Experts is a joint partnership between the Office of the Provost and the UC Davis Library. whose purpose is to create a central registry of UC Davis faculty, researchers, experts and creators and showcase the scholarship created at the university. The use cases for the project include expertise discovery for collaborations and reducing administrative workload by replacing manual data entry.

The project has brought us in contact with multiple offices on campus, jump-starting partnerships with programs that want to showcase the work of their affiliates, and has the potential to continue expanding as we build out functionalities for data reuse. We are applying the principles of FAIR to public institutional data.
Using the VIVO platform as inspiration, and a source for a schema of scholarly outputs, we have developed an innovative digital platform to showcase and navigate an aggregation of existing authoritative sources of information, including UCPath for names, titles and affiliations; CDL’s Open Access Publication Management System; and UC Davis grants information. In this talk we describe the project, our collaborations and technical implementation. Our work is designed for reuse, with the common UC sources making it easy to deploy at other campuses.


Aggie Experts - UC Davis researcher profiles;

In the spring of 2021, the UCSF Library organized an online 7-part workshop series on reproducibility for biomedical researchers. The series, offered in partnership with the UCSF Graduate Division, was the second iteration, having originally been taught in-person in the fall of 2019. The workshops were designed to translate reproducibility principles and best practices from societies, publishers, and funders into actionable steps and training that could be immediately implemented into research practice. Graduate students could also meet NIH Responsible Conduct of Research training requirements by participating in all seven workshops. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to move our teaching online, it presented an opportunity to rethink our approach to the series to emphasize collaboration at all levels. We formed a planning team of two UCSF librarians and one visiting (virtual) fellow from the UNMC McGoogan Health Sciences Library and met regularly to sketch out the workshop topics, learning goals, and online engagement strategies. We optimized the online classroom by designing and co-instructing our workshops with librarians from other campuses, including UCLA and UC Riverside. We fully embraced the virtual classroom and re-designed the content to use breakout room discussions, small group activities, and collaborative online notes. This shared, team-based approach to teaching the series was essential for planning the content and managing the zoom sessions. In the end, this new online iteration of the series allowed us to practice new team-teaching approaches, develop new teaching partnerships, and increase participant engagement.

Virtual Collaborations to Transition Reproducibility Training Online

The UC Common Knowledge Groups (CKGs) provide an inclusive environment for sharing knowledge and information across the campuses that enrich communication among library staffs, expand resources and benefit library users in equitable ways. Reinforced by the structure of the California Digital Library (CDL), and in the spirit of all things related to equity, diversity and inclusivity (EDI), the intention is to foster innovation and continuous improvement by providing an open venue to exchange ideas and collaborate on systemwide initiatives. 

The UC system currently has about 20 subject-based CKGs; these are the focus of this presentation. Subject-based CKGs contribute to UC acquisitions, licensing, processing, staff training, utilization of new and emerging technologies and implementation of new services that benefit and advance the University of California in fundamental ways. Subject CKGs also advise and give feedback on UC initiatives (e.g. shared print, the eScholarship repository, shared cataloging and data management), leveraging the collective knowledge and thoughtful consideration of librarians who bring a direct knowledge of their discipline-based constituencies. 

This panel presentation will: 1) provide an overview of subject CKGs; 2) share results of survey of CKG members conducted in Summer 2021; and 3) suggest impactful ways that the CKGs can contribute so libraries and their staffs are more resilient and empowered and collections meet patrons needs. We will conclude with an interactive discussion to elaborate and expand on the ideas presented. Our goal is to contribute to a shared understanding of CKG activities and spark discussion on ways that CKGs can continue to innovate and evolve.

CKGs: Enhancing Library Collections & Services & Evolving for the Future;

As COVID-19 upended our activities as librarians in unprecedented and unexpected ways, the LAUC-B conference committee was faced with the prospect of organizing a successful bi-annual virtual conference. The use of virtual technologies in conference planning during public health-mandated work from off-campus remains minimally documented. Several studies, such as Romano (2020); and Peters and Dickinson (2020), focus on in-person conference planning workflow, but none address the processes of organizing a virtual scenario. The organizing committee, led by Corliss Lee and Shannon Kealey, formed a distinct subcommittee, composed of Kristina Bush, Natalie Marquez, and Liladhar Pendse, to investigate virtual platforms. In this presentation, Natalie and Liladhar will narrate the story of the subcommittee’s work in choosing a virtual platform that would simulate and embody normal and important in-person conference activities and experiences. To establish a baseline, the subcommittee scanned LIS literature for clues regarding conference attendees and planning committee priorities in order to draft a list of salient features needed for a virtual conference. The committee used this list of features to select platforms to review fully and then presented these platforms to the larger committee for collective decision-making. This presentation will highlight the values of proactive collaboration and professional “thinking out loud” among the subcommittee members as well as reporting out to our committee peers.

Empowering the Virtual Conference: Ideas, Strategies and Choices in the Times of Corona;

This presentation provides an overview of the work done by a cross-unit team at UC Merced to document and preserve the campus's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the campus was forced to abruptly shift its operational activities, a working group composed of librarians and records managers developed strategies to track, archive, and provide access to the scores of materials that illustrate the collective decision making activities of the various working groups that were created to confront the effects of the pandemic. Jordan Thaw, Records Analyst in the Office of Legal Affairs, and Jerrold Shiroma, University Archivist and Librarian for Special Collections will discuss the inception and goals of this project, and the across-campus collaborations that the project initiated. 


Responding to a Crisis: Archiving a Campus' Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic;

Blockeley University is the collaborative effort of hundreds of students who in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained their community by building the UC Berkeley campus in Minecraft, a sandbox video game. Their extraordinary effort is being preserved by The Bancroft Library. This presentation will discuss the selection of the collection and the challenges and opportunities in preserving this unique project.

The Blockeley effort was recognized by the Chancellor’s Office and a virtual commencement ceremony was conducted in the Blockeley University Minecraft server. Other universities have built their campuses in Minecraft before but what was extraordinary about this build was that it was an innovative effort to specifically keep the UC Berkeley community together during the shelter-in-place period. The Bancroft Library felt this was an effort worth preserving.

In this presentation, Kathryn M. Neal, The Bancroft Library’s Associate University Archivist, will discuss how she identified components of this project that should be preserved as historical evidence and Christina Velazquez Fidler, The Bancroft Library’s Digital Archivist will address the technical challenges in preserving the Blockeley server and all of its modifications, and lastly, the solution of a single player world file bundled with the texture packs that enabled the many modifications made. This solution resolved many questions including concerns surrounding the maintenance of the Blockeley server.

Together the world file, the promotional videos, the website, planning documents among other materials collectively make up the Blockeley University collection. The Blockeley University collection is a forward thinking collection, recording the work of hundreds of students and their efforts to maintain community during the Covid-19 pandemic.


One block at a time: selecting and preserving Blockeley University, a sandbox video game and community response to the COVID-19 pandemic;

This presentation will share how members of the UC San Diego Library Special Collections & Archives staff responded to California’s sudden work from home order due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including remote project development, management tools, and collaborator involvement. Presenters will provide a brief timeline of events leading up to the work from home order, the development of a list of remote projects, and the assignment of priorities and responsibilities. They will describe examples of these projects and discuss how they progressed from ideation to execution, including workflow development and management tools. They will also examine the opportunities and obstacles of rapid project development, as well as training and managing the work of staff and student employees from other library units who volunteered to assist in archives-related tasks.

Presenters will further discuss reopening, highlighting the need for flexibility and acknowledging seemingly competing priorities as they balanced remote and onsite projects. Presenters will celebrate accomplishments, and address the challenges they faced while transitioning between remote and onsite priorities.

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