PALNI

PALNI Librarians Recognized as OCLC Community Center Top Contributors

In a recent post by the OCLC Next blog article about OCLC’s community center, three PALNI librarians are mentioned as top contributors: Heather Loehr from Hanover College, Laura Vogler from Wabash College, and Lisa Gonzalez from PALNI.

Laura Vogler’s article quote summarized the value of the community:

“Each reply to a discussion post essentially becomes the basis for a global database of knowledge, thus a more detailed response not only helps the individual who created the post but anyone who might search the discussions in the future. â€¦ The saying ‘knowledge is power’ describes the value of OCLC’s Community Center. The more we share and help each other, the more we learn, and that in turn helps to improve the services we provide to our individual institutions and adds value to the work we do. By helping each other, we are also helping OCLC to improve the products we use, and I personally appreciate the fact that OCLC encourages and welcomes each library’s contribution to the conversation.”

Congratulations to the three of them for their contributions and the power of PALNI in making up such a strong representation in the OCLC community top 16 contributor list!

Read the full article: http://www.oclc.org/blog/main/the-oclc-community-center-at-five-years-your-extra-colleague/ 7

Shared: Nationwide Alliance Launches New Video to Highlight The Value of Library Print Collections During the Time of Pandemic

June 25, 2020 – Written by Rosemont Shared Print Alliance and the Partnership for Shared Book Collections (of which PALNI is part of)

The Rosemont Shared Print Alliance and the Partnership for Shared Book Collections today launched a two-minute video highlighting the importance of shared print collections in libraries as a key component to ensuring ongoing and future access to the scholarly record and to the future of research, teaching, and learning. The video can be viewed at https://youtu.be/Ie8qm_idkDU (or below).


“Most people access scholarly information online these days, and even more so since much of the world has been in some form of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” commented Judy Russell, Dean of Libraries at the University of Florida and Chair of the Rosemont Alliance Executive Committee. “But you can only digitize something if the original print copy has been safely retained.” Libraries have been collaborating to determine the proper level of redundancy of their print collections, ensuring that collections are protected and maintained while offering individual libraries flexibility in what to keep on their shelves. According to the Center for Research Libraries, there are currently 49 Shared Print Programs registered with the Print Archive and Preservation (“PAPR”) Registry.

Read the rest of the article…

Heather Loehr appointed to COUNTER Board of Directors – May 28, 2020

COUNTER has appointed Heather Loehr to the Board of Directors, May 28, 2020. Ms. Loehr is the Electronic Resources Librarian and Coordinator of Library Instruction at Hanover College as well as the Coordinator of the Analytics Administration Team for the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana Inc. (PALNI). 

Her PALNI work providing support for analytics, data gathering, and reporting for a consortium of 24 small private college, university, and seminary libraries has been valued by the PALNI supported institutions and the OCLC community. Ms. Loehr is a strong supporter of usage standards and contributes actively to the OCLC member community in the areas of Reports and Analytics. Her leadership in the successful creation of a common set of ACRL and IPEDS reporting instructions and guides for all OCLC users has been recognized and appreciated by many. 

In announcing the nomination, COUNTER Project Director Lorraine Estelle stated, “The Board were very pleased to nominate you, not only because of your work as a member of PALNI, but also because it is important to have representation from a smaller university.”

The appointment was made at COUNTER’s Annual General Meeting, held virtually, on May 28, 2020. Ms. Loehr will serve a 3-year term ending in 2023.

About COUNTER
COUNTER is a non-profit organization supported by a global community of library, publisher and vendor members, who contribute to the development of the Code of Practice through working groups and outreach. The COUNTER Code of Practice helps librarians demonstrate the value of electronic resources by facilitating the recording and reporting of online resource usage stats in a consistent and credible way. For more information about COUNTER please visit https://www.projectcounter.org/about/

PALNI Releases Freely Available Library Impact Assessment Tool

The Private Academic Library Network Inc (PALNI) recently worked with The IDEA Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving student learning in higher education, to create a freely available assessment survey focused on the educational role and institutional effectiveness of the library. The results of the Assessment of Library Impact and Value survey provide insights on how best to implement improvements, allocate resources, and communicate with campus stakeholders at PALNI institutions. PALNI created the survey with the intention of making it open access, available for use, and remixing by other institutions.

Many libraries are facing reductions in areas such as staffing, budget, and resources. While there are several assessment tools already available to assess library value, they are often cost prohibitive for smaller institutions. In response to this cost issue, PALNI convened a group to create a low-cost tool to assess user needs and behaviors to help libraries develop a strategy to improve and demonstrate effectiveness, relevance, and value of libraries to home institutions. 

Utilizing the “ACRL Standards for Libraries in Higher Education” principles as a starting point, the committee limited the focus of the survey to those principles of most interest to both library directors and administrative stakeholders. The committee crafted questions from the top principles identified, “Institutional Effectiveness” and “Educational Role.” PALNI contracted with IDEA to craft appropriate questions, use the correct academic language, and create the survey and reporting structure. 

Administrative stakeholders were interested in assessing much of the same principles that the library directors were with the exception of “Institutional Effectiveness” which was ranked lower by the administrators. One administrator commented that they had no idea that libraries could be effective in ways other than the Educational Role. This comment encouraged the committee to include that principle to help our stakeholders become better acquainted with what libraries can and will do for their institutions.

Ten of the twenty-four PALNI libraries used the survey during the spring semester, 2019. The remaining libraries will be given the opportunity to administer the survey in the fall after which the committee will gather suggestions for improvement. IDEA will continue to report out the findings to the individual (PALNI) libraries and aggregate the responses to inform how best to use consortial resources to support the PALNI institutions.

“After administering the survey at each of our schools and seeing the results from the other PALNI participants, as well as the aggregated data for PALNI, we believe that we are on track to address our purpose of measuring our effectiveness and informing our faculty and administrators,” says task force member and Grace College Library Director Tonya Fawcett.

Under the Creative Commons license, any library, group, or interested user may adopt, adapt, and administer the survey instrument on the platform of their choice.The survey can be administered by other groups, consortia or individually through IDEA. Those libraries interested in implementing a similar project on their campus, individual or consortially, can find more information on the toolkit libguide: https://libguides.palni.edu/libraryvalue/.

The current aggregated PALNI report can be found here: https://libguides.palni.edu/ld.php?content_id=49385397

More about The IDEA Center can be found on its website – www.IDEAedu.org

PALNI Awards 2019 Innovation Grant to Butler University Library Photogrammetry Project

The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana Inc. (PALNI) has awarded the 2019 PALNI Innovation Grant to Butler University for their proposal, Making Cultural Heritage Artifacts into 3D Digital Objects using Photogrammetry.  The grant aids initiatives that optimize library resources and services in ways that significantly expand the ability of supported organizations to support teaching and learning at PALNI institutions.  Funded programs, projects, and initiatives must align with PALNI strategic priorities and promote PALNI deep collaboration.

Butler’s interest in using photogrammetry to teach, preserve and give access to 3D special collection materials was cross-departmental between the Library, Center for Academic Technology, and the Butler Art Committee. The photogrammetric process provides a non-contact approach to digitize materials by creating a 3D digital surrogate of an analog object via photography and special software. The project will allow increased access and allow for potential hands-on use of items found in Butler University’s art collection without risking damage to priceless items. 

These two images showcase the setup for data acquisition on smaller object, which the team modeled after the setups created by both IUPUI and IUB. The Butler team has had a lot of success in taking photos using a lightbox, diffused lighting, and a turntable. (Photo provided by Butler University Library)
Butler University student worker, Tatum Turner, completely data acquisition on two costumes from the Ballet Russe costume collection. (Photo provided by Butler University Library)

“The Innovation grant has been essential to this project. The salary for our student employee, Tatum Turner, was funded through the grant, and Tatum has been instrumental in experimentation with the photogrammetry process and in researching best practices,” shares grant recipients Scholarly Communication Associate Olivia MacIsaac and Academic Technology Specialist Kristen Allen. “Furthermore, through the Innovation grant, we have experimented with various lighting sources to find the best to recommend to other institutions.”

MacIsaac, Allen and Turner have been documenting the process and best practices throughout the project and plan to build an open Canvas course for other PALNI libraries to use as training by the end of Fall 2019 (tentative). In keeping this project as affordable and accessible as possible, they are also looking into different models of collaboration between PALNI libraries ranging from virtual access to the special software, centrally processing photosets, and/or implementing regional trainers to assist in the process. The goal is to have the collaboration model in place by Spring 2020 where the other PALNI institutions will be able to learn about this exciting opportunity at the tentatively planned PALNI bi-annual staff meeting. 

By the end of Summer 2019, Butler will have at least 10 objects digitized and in the online collection. They are excited to scan more of the Butler Art collection and potentially the Eliza Baker collection. All 3D scans can be found in Butler’s SketchFab portal (https://sketchfab.com/libcat) and eventually fully integrated into CONTENTdm to be included in the library’s digital collections: https://palni.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ButlerArt.

Terracotta Seated Male Figure by an Nayarit artist going through the photogrammetric processing using the open source photogrammetry software, Meshroom. (Photo provided by Butler University Library)

About Butler University: Located in the heart of the Indianapolis Butler-Tarkington neighborhood, Butler University seeks to provide the highest quality of liberal and professional education and to integrate the liberal arts with professional education, by creating and fostering a stimulating intellectual community built upon interactive dialogue and inquiry among students, faculty, and staff. In 1855  attorney and abolitionist Ovid Butler founded the school on the principle that everyone deserves an excellent education, regardless of race or gender—a bold idea in pre-Civil-War America. Today, we’ve built on Butler’s vision to create a community of students and faculty that learn by doing—a community that values hard work as an essential building block for success, whether in the classroom, on the field, or out in the world. Butler University is the only Midwest Regional University to earn the U.S. News designation as Most Innovative School, according to the magazine’s 2018 rankings. For the eighth consecutive year, Butler ranks No. 2 overall among 171 Midwest Regional Universities. Butler is also recognized among the best in the nation for four co-curricular programs that enhance the educational experience for students. For more information, visit www.butler.edu.

PALCI and PALNI Receive IMLS Grant to Develop the Hyku Open Source Institutional Repository

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded $172,172 to the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI) in partnership with the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) for Scaling Up a Collaborative Consortial Institutional Repository as part of the National Leadership Grants for Libraries Program. IMLS received 138 preliminary proposals requesting more than $33 million in funding, and selected 36 applicants to receive awards during this grant cycle. With this award, the partners will develop and pilot an affordable, open-source, and collaborative institutional repository solution based on the Hyku software.  

An institutional repository (IR) provides the academic community a place to capture, preserve, and make accessible the important research, special collections, and other types of information they create. Libraries and campuses benefit from having the infrastructure and tools provided in an IR solution to manage assets and disseminate them to the larger public. However, many libraries do not have an institutional repository. PALNI has long examined the institutional repository environment, beginning with a needs analysis led by Brooke Cox of DePauw University. Findings showed 70% of the PALNI libraries did not have an IR solution due to cost, inefficiency, or overly-rigid solutions.  PALNI Executive Director Kirsten Leonard notes, “Hyku development steered by PALNI’s partnership with PALCI is our best opportunity to meet the needs of our institutions and allow us to collaborate to reduce costs.”

This grant project will develop a model for ultra low-cost hosting, discovery, and access to digital material for member libraries. The consortial IR service developed in Hyku will allow individual libraries to customize and brand the IR as their own, while sharing the underlying infrastructure, hosting, and administration costs across institutions. The project partners will work to scale Hyku software to create the functionality and configuration options needed to create a centralized collaborative repository infrastructure with multiple, library-based portals. This will reduce administration costs for libraries, increasing the likelihood of adoption and long-term sustainability. Initial development efforts will focus on support for Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETDs).

Jill Morris, Executive Director of PALCI is excited at the opportunity to increase the value of consortial membership to libraries. “This project pushes the traditional work of consortia to new areas and extends collaboration beyond our normal boundaries. PALCI’s work on this project with PALNI furthers the missions of our member libraries by offering a highly scalable, easily adopted IR service, and, in turn, supports broader IMLS goals to build the capacity of libraries, increase public access to information, and support lifelong learning.”

“As centers of learning and catalysts of community change, libraries and museums connect people with programs, services, collections, information, and new ideas in the arts, sciences, and humanities. They serve as vital spaces where people can connect with each other,” said IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew. “IMLS is proud to support their work through our grant making as they inform and inspire all in their communities.”

The project will build on the efforts of a community-based Hyku Task Force charged with leading and scoping the development effort. “The first phase of the project includes defining requirements, features, workflows, and metadata templates. We are grateful to our engaged community members and excited to have IMLS support in this endeavor,” states Amanda Hurford, Scholarly Communications Director for PALNI.  Updates for the project will be made available at https://www.hykuforconsortia.org/.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services:

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. We advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. Our vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI):

PALCI (legally named the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc.) was formed in 1996 as a grassroots federation of 35 academic libraries in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Today, the PALCI membership consists of 70 academic and research libraries, private and public, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, and New York. PALCI’s mission is to build access to our shared collections through collaboration among academic libraries in Pennsylvania and the neighboring states. PALCI Members serve over 800,000 students, faculty, and staff, through a variety of programs including the highly-regarded E-ZBorrow resource sharing service. PALCI also serves as the home for PA Digital, the Pennsylvania hub of the Digital Public Library of America, and the new Affordable Learning PA program, creating a community of practice for open textbooks and related educational resources. http://palci.org

About the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana, Inc. (PALNI): 

PALNI is a non-profit organization supporting collaboration for library and information services to the libraries of its twenty-four supported institutions. Over time, the library deans and directors who sit on the PALNI board have adjusted the organization’s strategic direction as the internet and information services landscape have changed. PALNI has expanded beyond providing a resource management system to sharing expertise in many areas including strategic planning, reference, information fluency, outreach, data management and configuration, and has identified greater collaboration in acquisitions as a key goal. www.palni.edu

About the Hyku Task Force

The Cross-Consortial Hyku Task Force is a group of interested memberlibrary representatives from the PALCI and PALNI consortia who will meet together in order to inform and guide the development of the Collaborative Consortial IR (CC-IR) Hyku Pilot.

Hyku Project Leadership:

Jill Morris, PALCI Executive Director

Gretchen Gueguen, PALCI Digital Projects and Communications Manager

Kirsten Leonard, PALNI Executive Director

Amanda Hurford, PALNI Scholarly Communications Director

Current Members of the Hyku Project Team (CC-IR Task Force):

Allen Jones, The New School

Edward Mandity, Marian University

Janelle Wertzberger, Gettysburg College

Janice Gustaferro, Butler University

Jerry Nugent, University of Indianapolis  

Jennifer Duplaga, Hanover College

Jennifer Raye, Butler University

Keiko Suzuki, The New School

Linda Poston, Messiah College

R.C. Miessler, Gettysburg College

Robert Smith, Concordia University

Sarah Myers, Messiah College

Private Academic Library Network of Indiana’s Affordable Education Initiative Garners Support from Lilly Endowment

Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. has awarded $520,000 to the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) for PALSave, an affordable education initiative that will combat rising textbook costs and their detrimental effects on student success and retention.

“The PALSave program will provide education and funding support to the faculty of the 24 private Indiana colleges, universities, and seminaries to adopt, adapt, and create affordable learning materials,” said Kirsten Leonard, Executive Director of PALNI. “The five-year funding from Lilly Endowment will enable PALNI to make a real difference to student success and reduce debt by supporting the implementation of course materials that are free to students and customizable by faculty.”

The average cost of textbooks annually is about $1,300. While only a portion of the overall price for college, the cost of textbooks can have a negative effect on student success.  Research from The Student Public Interest Research Groups and U.S. PIRG Education Fund shows that some students have to borrow more to pay for college, are likely not to buy required materials at some point, and might even drop a class because of text prices. PALNI is pleased to offer the PALSave program in response to this need and to help provide a proactive solution to textbook affordability. The grant will enable PALNI to support course transformations using course materials which are free to students, focusing on Open Educational Resources (OER) worldwide. OER are openly licensed and fully customizable course materials.

Amanda Hurford, PALNI’s Scholarly Communications Director and project lead states, “Recent research demonstrates that students provided with open course materials show improved academic outcomes and retention. By providing faculty education about affordable course material options, and offering support and incentives to implement them, we envision a big impact on student success and savings.”

The project will develop expertise, tools, and content to be used in the course redesign process, and also build community around affordable learning within the twenty-four PALNI-supported institutions. This collaborative structure between faculty, instructional technologists, librarians, and institutions will allow for innovation and rapid growth over the five-year program. In addition, Ms. Hurford is sharing PALNI’s work with two regional groups, the Academic Libraries of Indiana and the Midwestern Higher Education Compact. Progress and impact will be provided and updated on the PALSave website: https://palsave.palni.org/

About Lilly Endowment Inc.

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family — J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons J.K. Jr. and Eli — through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company. While those gifts remain the financial bedrock of the Endowment, the Endowment is a separate entity from the company, with a distinct governing board, staff and location. In keeping with the founders’ wishes, the Endowment supports the causes of community development, education and religion and maintains a special commitment to its hometown, Indianapolis, and home state, Indiana. More information can be found at www.lillyendowment.org.

About the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI): www.palni.edu

PALNI is a non-profit organization supporting collaboration for library and information services to the libraries of its twenty-four supported institutions. Over time, the library deans and directors who sit on the PALNI board have adjusted the organization’s strategic direction as the internet and information services landscape have changed. PALNI has expanded beyond providing a resource management system to sharing expertise in many areas including strategic planning, reference, information fluency, outreach, data management and configuration, and has identified greater collaboration in acquisitions as a key goal.

PALNI Supported Institutions:

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary | Ancilla College | Anderson University | Bethel University | Butler University | Concordia Theological Seminary | Christian Theological Seminary | DePauw University | Earlham College | Franklin College | Goshen College | Grace College | Hanover College | Huntington University | Manchester University | Marian University | Oakland City University | University of Saint Francis | Saint Mary’s College | Saint Meinrad’s Seminary and School of Theology | Taylor University | Trine University | University of Indianapolis | Wabash College

Open Textbook Network Trains PALSave Campus Leaders to Implement Local OER Programs

On March 18, 2019, campus leaders of the PALSave: PALNI Affordable Learning program attended a workshop facilitated by the Open Textbook Network (OTN) to learn how to roll out this open educational resource (OER) program on their campus.  Attendees from eight of PALNI’s supported institutions were trained to encourage the faculty adoption of open educational resources (OER) in the classroom, and in doing so maximize student success.

This was the second and final train-the-trainer workshop led by OTN. In the future, PALNI’s PALSave System Leaders and campus ambassadors will continue the outreach and training at locally-hosted PALSave workshops. Though still in the early stages, the PALSave program is proving successful with over a third of the PALNI institutions hosting workshops. Faculty have written thirty-four open textbook reviews and several have indicated their choice to adopt OERs in the classroom.


PALSave workshop facilitated by the Open Textbook Network leaders.  (Photo by Steven Kaufman)

Anderson University Assistant Professor Willis Troy remarked on the PALSave program and OER interest: “I was surprised how much our librarians at institutions are willing to support professors in their endeavor for OER.  That as a whole, there is a much larger lattice of support and resources available for professors than might be expected, and it only seems to be growing.”


PALSave workshop attendees broke out into discussion groups to share and practice what they learned. (Photo by Steven Kaufman)

For more information about PALSave: PALNI Affordable Learning or PALNI’s membership in OTN, contact PALNI Scholarly Communications Director Amanda Hurford (amanda@palni.edu) and/or view the PALSave website https://palsave.palni.org/.

PALSave Administration Team

Amanda Hurford, PALNI Scholarly Communications Director

Caitlin Balgeman, Marian University

Rebecca Johnson, Manchester University

Olivia MacIsaac, Butler University

Erin Milanese, Goshen College

Heather Myers, Anderson University

Jennifer Raye, Butler University

Dr. Tim Ziebarth, Grace College and Seminary



Charleston Session about Emerging PALNI Collaborations Draws Significant Outside Interest

“Thank you for coming… Our goal is to share our passion for community-owned solutions and motivate you to invest in them as well.”

Librarians nationwide pack the Charleston Conference presentation room so that no seat is left empty and eager attendees fill the side aisles to hear the rest of the presentation, “Cultivating agency through emerging community-owned solutions.” Set up as a presentation followed by a panel discussion facilitated by Jason Price from SCELC, co-presenters PALCI Executive Director Jill Morris, PALNI Executive Director Kirsten Leonard, and Index Data LLC CEO Sebastian Hammer shared their community-owned solutions and why the library world needs to cultivate agency.

The session panelists assert that: “Despite the increasing need for efficiency and widespread availability of technology, there seems to be less choice in the library marketplace, and libraries are finding themselves with much less leverage to secure the options they need. Do we buy it from a vendor with increasingly limited choices, build it ourselves, or something in-between?” The topic hit a chord with many attendees who filled the room to hear what PALNI, PALCI, and Index Data LLC have done to grow this “community-owned” movement in their organization and the widespread impact.

PALNI’s role in the panel was to discuss the partnership with PALCI to develop a community-owned solution that addresses the need for a consortial ultra-low cost, open access, collaborative institutional repository (IR). Commercial IR software and hosting services have failed to provide the ability to control costs, support smaller institutions, and provide workflows to enable institutions to work together effectively to leverage expertise and reduce the duplication of work. To address this need, the PALNI/PALCI project has four levels of community agency, engagement, and ownership:

  1. Sharing open access materials
  2. Using open-source, community-owned and developed tools
  3. Partnering with other consortia and developers to setup and maintain the tools
  4. Developing models for the collaborative use of the developed tools

The attendees were encouraged to not only be aware of these community-owned projects but to take action by transforming the way they work within their own sphere of influence. Rather than working in isolation and duplicating efforts, the presenters urged them to help develop business model analysis and product sustainability skills, efficient communication across libraries, structures/framework to support deep collaboration, and partner with departments and other organizations outside the library with similar needs.

Challenges in higher education not only tighten already strapped library budgets but also the time available to fully understand and reflect on the development needs of systems and tools. These initiatives are work-intensive, but by working together at scale, libraries can regain the driver-seat in developing the tools to meet user needs while controlling costs and decision-making.

The speakers have been invited to contribute an article on the session for the Charleston Voices series to expand on the discussion.

A video recording of the session can be viewed on the Charleston Conference’s Youtube page: https://youtu.be/M6j0np1mUIA

Protecting Scholarly Books: New Federation Aims to Unify Comprehensive Book Retention

PALNI is one of many to develop this partnership to protect and preserve scholarly print books. Read more in the EAST (Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust) press release:

Boston, MA, January 23, 2019 – Academic and research libraries have long collaborated to preserve and protect the print scholarly record.  The newly formed Partnership for Shared Book Collections (https://eastlibraries.org/partnership-shared-book-collections) takes this work to the next level by coordinating collaboration for the protection of print books.

Preservation and storage facilities such as the Research Collections and Preservation Service (ReCAP), large scale digitization and preservation initiatives such as HathiTrust, and programs such as the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) have all focused on long-term retention of books while ensuring they are accessible for scholars, faculty and students.  More recently, collaborations among consortial shared print programs are being formed, such as the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance which is focused on archiving print serials and journals. The Partnership for Shared Book Collections complements the Rosemont initiative with a focus on the print book.

Read More…