Reference Services in the Commons Environment

This review describes the services offered in an information commons that primarily serves undergraduate students at a large research university. This paper provides background information on the implementation of a learning or information commons and describes the effect of the commons environment on reference services and environment and highlights the importance of a strong relationship between libraries and information technology providers in developing successful public services in an information commons

Function Before Form: Designing the Ideal Library Classroom

At Indiana University-Bloomington, the libraries house many rooms that are used for instructional purposes, but none represents the characteristics of an ideal learning environment. In order to address the growing instructional needs of the IUB libraries and the lack of appropriate space in which to provide IL instruction, the libraries created a committee that was charged with making recommendations for new library classrooms. The group started this task by conducting a literature review on the concepts of classroom design and best practices. Finding surprisingly little research or practical information published about classroom design with which to guide them, the committee devised their own approach for assessing needs, reviewing current practices, and developing a plan for implementation. During this presentation, we will share our experiences and the knowledge we gained in designing our ideal classrooms in order to assist others who are faced with a similar task. In addition, we hope this presentation will fill what we believe to be a gap in the professional literature by providing a forum for discussion and innovation which we will document and share broadly. To achieve this, our presentation will include an interactive breakout session during which groups of attendees will work together to design space for various types of teaching models. We will give participants “kits” to build the space using graph paper and pre-cut shapes. We will use the results of this session to launch a best practices website that includes the designs created by attendees, a blog, photo sharing, in addition to other relevant resources. Interactive Sessio

Working with Consultants to Test Usability: The Indiana University Bloomington Experience

This chapter describes the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries' experience of contracting with two consultants to help review goals for the Libraries' Web site, to lead usability tests with various user groups, and to provide a plan for the architecture of the site

Working Group Recommendations for an Indiana University Research Data Commons

Starting on April 28, 2022, our Working Group set out to make recommendations for an Indiana University Research Data Commons (IU-RDCom), a strategy to identify and meet the growing needs associated with research data at our university. Developing a way to find, access, use and share research data is an iterative process that many peer universities are also currently pursuing. The process requires a university to identify researchers’ needs, catalog services that currently exist, understand how they can be leveraged along with new investments to meet these needs, and to establish a sustainable governance structure for developing and evolving the IU-RDCom. A competitive research data infrastructure will pay for itself in many ways through new external funding while it increases our scholarly, educational and service missions. The present report outlines our recommendations to VPR for practical steps IU should pursue in the near-, medium-, and long-term. In brief, these recommendations are to: 1) Establish a governing body to coordinate a research data commons. 2) Task the governing body with implementing and building on our recommendations. 3) Encourage IU leadership to communicate and promote IU’s strengths in research data. 4) Provide short-to-medium run financial support for building a foundation for the data commons. As stated in the charge to the Working Group (WG), the broad mission of the IU-RDCom is multifaceted: to serve as a university-wide resource for discovering, sharing, and accessing data resources across the IU community; to build on our world-class strengths in centralized cyberinfrastructure and other areas to present researchers with easier and more integrated pathways to our data resources; to enable richer training opportunities for students; and to empower IU to better serve local organizations, our state, and other partners. With exponential recent growth in the role of data in society and in scholarship, the need for universities to engage in strategic planning to strengthen research data infrastructure has been emphasized in new reports from the American Association of Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). NASEM committees are also presently guiding the vision for federal research data infrastructure for the 21st century for similar reasons as for academia. From communications with research data leadership at peer institutions over the course of our work, it is amply clear that other universities are also prioritizing central-level strategies to meet these growing research data needs in academia