Prompted by the COVID-19 Pandemic, the MSU Libraries completely revamped the lending process for Reserved Reading Materials, including material in the Affordable Textbook Project. To give MSU students, faculty and staff quick access to Reserve material, the MSU Libraries now offers Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) for our high-use Reserve items. We are scanning Reserve items and uploading them to Sharepoint, which allows patrons to request these items via the ‘Get it!’ button in the catalog.  A form is then sent to a Patron Services staff member who emails the patron a link to a digital copy of the requested item. These links expire after a specified time so the MSU Libraries are not violating copyright laws. Low-use Reserve material is still available for check out at Patron Services. Returned items must be quarantined for five days before they can circulate again. It has required the collaboration and hard work of several departments in order to make CDL a viable resource for our MSU patrons.

For more information: https://lib.msu.edu/things-to-know/

MSUL through the University Archives and Historical Collections is the caretaker of MSU's rich history including its born and digitized content. Currently, very little of this digital content is available to students, faculty, staff and the public. This project was proposed as one method of preserving and providing access to these resources. The project is executed with the MSUL's Digital Preservation Working Group as an opportunity to experiment with this tool for use among MSUL units. It also provides an opportunity to collaborate outside MSUL and MSU through our membership in this consortium for hosting Preservica. Ideas and documents are shared using the BaseCamp tool.

Timeline

• Original start was summer 2019 but was put aside due to other priorities after some initial successful testing with basic functionality and training courses.
• Resumed late summer 2020 after merging of the UAHC and SPC collection management tool, ArchivesSpace. Basic functionality rechecked.
• Integration with ArchivesSpace was setup and verified in fall 2020.
• Ingesting of content from previous Archivematica system begun fall 2020. Continue into 2021.
• Other test cases from evaluation plan execution began late 2020. Continue into 2021.
• Preservica user procedures drafting Nov 2020 - Jan 2021.
• Evaluation report draft started December 2020.
• Ingesting content for user experience evaluation Dec 2020 - Jan 2021.
• Public Interface support from MSUL Web Services, Jan - Feb 2021.
• Selected User Experience Evaluation Jan - Mar 2021.
• Complete Evaluation Report Spring 2021. Make recommendations.

Most finding tools, including library tools, are based on searching by name - names of titles, authors, subjects and keywords. Complex map sets are not described or found using these elements, rather they are identified and found based first on their location. Our interactive digital finding aids make the task of pinpointing a single map out of thousands of pieces a relatively simple matter. The finding aids work for both our paper and digital map collections, which levels the playing field between formats and makes them equally findable. The old method is to have a single record in the catalog stating that we own a map set, sometimes indicating that we own a certain number of sheets or even that we own sheets x, y & z. By creating precise rectangles on a world map indicating exact Earth areas covered by each individual sheet, the scholar can zoom in to their area of interest and easily see which sheet number is of interest to them and whether or not MSU Libraries owns it. For digital sets, the scholar may then click on the rectangle and download the file. In addition, preparing the necessary extremely detailed metadata for this project makes possible participation in other collaborative projects in the scholarly community (such as the Geojson Open Indexmaps project at Stanford and the BTAA Geoportal Project). We are unaware of any other library creating such powerful and useful finding aids across wide-ranging map collections.

This project improves discovery of collections, not just a little but by a lot. Scholars needing detailed maps of a specific place are separated from discovering and accessing appropriate items by traditional library finding aids that are not suited to the task. A bibliographic catalog record is incapable of telling patrons the exact land area covered by each sheet in a large map set. Scholars are able to pinpoint their area of interest easily using our interactive graphical indexes which improves discovery.

The following LibGuides have been created providing a collection of information focused on the central theme of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). The collaborators are continuously looking to expand and update these guides with more information and resources to increase DEI awareness across the Libraries, MSU Campus, and the general public.

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in the U.S., colleagues from the Library's Diversity Advisory Committee created a LibGuide compiling MSU Libraries’ and broader online resources to facilitate learning about the long path to voting equality. The guide outlines strategies for research, highlights sources specific to suffrage in Michigan, and explores how black women shaped the U.S. suffrage movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a critical force for change. https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/19thAmendment

A LibGuide was created through collaboration between MSU Surplus Store and Recycling Center and the Libraries that is related to waste management, zero waste principles, and the connections to environmental racism/justice. This guide includes information and resources on waste management, consumerism, and the environmental justice impacts of disposing the products we buy. Promotion of the guide to other campus units has generated interest in additional collaboration with the library. https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/environmentaljustice

A LibGuide was created to provide MSU Libraries' staff with information on DEI and related topics. The information presented in this guide can act as an introduction or users can familiarize themselves more intimately with DEI education. Resources and tools will be periodically reviewed and continuously added to the guide in hopes of increasing awareness, improving intercultural understanding, and providing staff with the tools they need and desire to advance their DEI education. https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/staffdevelopment_dei

The COVID-19 video resources were created to assist the MSU community navigate library services that continue to be available after the MSU Library shut down during spring 2020. These videos have been shared widely, and have provided patrons with reassurance and direction for using the library during an uncertain time. A video was also created with information about navigating COVID-19 news to help our community stay informed and avoid misinformation. This video has been adopted by Lansing Community College as well.

Per their website, the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) is a gateway to graduate education at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities. The goal of the program is to increase the number of underrepresented students who pursue graduate study and research careers. SROP helps prepare undergraduates for graduate study through intensive research experiences with faculty mentors and enrichment activities. SROP has been happening at MSU for more than 10 years, but not until 2019 did Erik Ponder get involved to promote the library as a resource for SROP interns while on campus. After his brief talk to the 2019 cohort, Erik realized the library could be much more involved in the program, and he set out to convince program director Steven Thomas to give MSU Libraries a larger role. Steven agreed to bring the interns to the library for an afternoon at the beginning of the 10-week program, and Erik created a committee tasked to plan a tailored library introduction. When campus closed, SROP was reimagined as a virtual 4-week program with 28 interns rather than 80, and the MSUL session went virtual as well.

https://grad.msu.edu/srop

The MSU Libraries recently implemented a new program of travel fellowships to support the needs of visiting scholars whose research would benefit from on-site access to materials housed in Special Collections. Any researcher (including undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, activists, or independent researchers) residing more than 100 miles from East Lansing is eligible to apply. All recipients give a talk about their research at the MSU Libraries during the fellowship period, and these talks are free and open to the public. The fellowships are supported by generous donors.

Web crawls of 2020 local election websites and Facebook. These websites are very transitory and usually disappear shortly after an election. No one was collecting this information. Metadata was added to the collection and website URLs (seeds). This is a follow-on to a 2019 micro-grant. This effort helped add specialized content for future students and researchers in political science, history and other social sciences. Content also included candidate website from under represented communities in the Greater Lansing area - these are not regularly collected in the historical record.