Wednesday, April 18, 2018

This double session looks at tools and practices for opening access and expanding customer experience. Heise discusses Shared Shelf, a web-based application for cataloging and managing digital collections. She shares how this tool enabled an institutional repository and image management initiative, coordinated through the library, to include student art projects, university PR photographs, art history faculty photos, digitized photos from library collections, realia collection images, and, soon, audio recordings and more. Lafleur discusses facilitating and collaborating on digital humanities projects for the past 3 years by providing digital tools, publishing platforms, know-how, and specialized training. Shared Shelf (ARTstor’s asset management system) is provided to catalog artifacts and other primary sources when a custom schema and controlled vocabularies are required. Lafleur focuses on three projects, sharing their merits and challenges: embedding library expertise in academic settings; becoming integral to the pedagogical approach of instructors; and being key partners to creating a rich learning environment. The last presentation discusses how creating a profile for your library with a distinct personality can be a challenge, especially in the current digital age, where social media and mobile platforms are patrons’ main sources of interaction and information-gathering. Hear how one university library used Adobe Spark to upgrade its social media to engage with patrons at their level through the platforms they frequent the most, such as Instagram. By having a unique profile with a strong voice that attracts patrons, the library ups their digital marketing and engagement.