Building the Future: Rejuvenating Librarianship

There is often a gap between what new library school graduates know and what is needed to navigate the first professional job. Additionally, the field of librarianship in general is growing and changing rapidly, requiring a diverse set of complex skills in new roles. It is essential to rethink how we train the next generation of librarians, while accepting and incorporating the unique insights new graduates may have. How can institutions help shape the next generation, while building skills that will be beneficial to all? These challenges are being faced and addressed by an innovative library fellows program at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. This program is designed to foster the next generation of medical librarians by providing a 2-year experience for newly graduated library science students, emphasizing hands-on learning and research into topics of information management and the various complex roles within librarianship. An original curriculum has been developed incorporating training, professional development, mentorship, and research with the library as the learning laboratory. Curriculum components focus on librarianship foundations as well as rotations within core library functional areas. Creating a culture of research within the library as a whole has also become a priority. Library fellows will conduct research designed to provide a self-directed course of study and investigation, ultimately with the goal of publishing the results. The research experience will expose the fellows to the research process and interpretation of results for decision-making in a library environment, as well as encouraging continued contribution to the field. This is facilitated by a research project database to which all staff can contribute and from which all can draw for ongoing academic discussion. This presentation will provide a description and evaluation of the project to date, with successes, challenges, suggestions, and lessons learned discussed. It will look at the organizational changes that necessitated and facilitated the structural changes surrounding this program and the resulting effect on staff and operations. Administrators and creators of the program, as well as the first cohort of fellows, will present their perspectives. Dramatic changes in how we structure libraries and librarianship are necessary to sustain and grow. These changes require rejecting old service models, rethinking our roles, redoing our professional identity and rejuvenating ourselves and our libraries. By changing the way we develop the knowledge and skills of new professionals, those who will be driving librarianship in the future, we strengthen all members of the profession and create a better, stronger foundation for librarianship

Choosing the International Standards Organization\u27s Interlibrary Loan Protocol (ISO) or Preserving the Status Quo?

This paper chronicles an analysis of (1) interlibrary loan workflow and data and (2) how management used this information to make a decision on the ISO question. The National Library of Medicine adopted portions of the ISO Protocol for DOCLINE 2004 as a response to the medical interlibrary loan community. ILLiad, which is already ISO com¬pliant, has responded by announcing an upcoming release of an ISO compatible version of their management system in 2005. If libraries choose to convert to ISO, one DOCLINE function, Loansome Doc, will no longer be available. The question: Is the enhanced functionality with seamless DOCLINE and ILLiad interaction worth the effort that it will take to create and run a new Loansome Doc workflow

Virtual volatility

We introduce the concept of virtual volatility. This simple but new measure shows how to quantify the uncertainty in the forecast of the drift component of a random walk. The virtual volatility also is a useful tool in understanding the stochastic process for a given portfolio. In particular, and as an example, we were able to identify mean reversion effect in our portfolio. Finally, we briefly discuss the potential practical effect of the virtual volatility on an investor asset allocation strategy.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, elsart.cls, Accepted to Physica A. Added few comments that clarify data used for empirical wor

Statistical Arbitrage Mining for Display Advertising

We study and formulate arbitrage in display advertising. Real-Time Bidding (RTB) mimics stock spot exchanges and utilises computers to algorithmically buy display ads per impression via a real-time auction. Despite the new automation, the ad markets are still informationally inefficient due to the heavily fragmented marketplaces. Two display impressions with similar or identical effectiveness (e.g., measured by conversion or click-through rates for a targeted audience) may sell for quite different prices at different market segments or pricing schemes. In this paper, we propose a novel data mining paradigm called Statistical Arbitrage Mining (SAM) focusing on mining and exploiting price discrepancies between two pricing schemes. In essence, our SAMer is a meta-bidder that hedges advertisers' risk between CPA (cost per action)-based campaigns and CPM (cost per mille impressions)-based ad inventories; it statistically assesses the potential profit and cost for an incoming CPM bid request against a portfolio of CPA campaigns based on the estimated conversion rate, bid landscape and other statistics learned from historical data. In SAM, (i) functional optimisation is utilised to seek for optimal bidding to maximise the expected arbitrage net profit, and (ii) a portfolio-based risk management solution is leveraged to reallocate bid volume and budget across the set of campaigns to make a risk and return trade-off. We propose to jointly optimise both components in an EM fashion with high efficiency to help the meta-bidder successfully catch the transient statistical arbitrage opportunities in RTB. Both the offline experiments on a real-world large-scale dataset and online A/B tests on a commercial platform demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed solution in exploiting arbitrage in various model settings and market environments.Comment: In the proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (KDD 2015

Journals, Journals Everywhere and Not a Shelf to Spare

Objective: Identify storage and shelving options for the growing print journal collection. Options could include additional shelving in the library, offsite storage, and improvements to the current library remote storage location. Cost, space, and potential impact on patrons and library staff should all be identified. One option will be chosen, and an implementation plan developed and executed. Methods:A project team worked to identify the extent of the shelving crisis. Inventorying, estimating, and extrapolating were the primary tools used to determine that the library would run out of space in the main journal collection in early 2004. An offsite storage facility was identified for library use and all costs associated with transforming the space into a viable storage solution were identified. The team also evaluated the current shelving layout in the library and developed a plan to add additional shelving in stages. Finally, the costs associated with improving and maximizing the library’s current remote storage location were calculated. This included improved safety, cleaning, painting, and compact shelving. The costs and service ramifications of each solution were compared, along with logistics of moving and merging a portion of the collection. Results:After careful evaluation, library management determined that improving the current remote storage was cost effective and provided the best option for access and service. Working from our data, we calculated the number of volumes that the storage facility would hold. The project was divided into three phases. The first phase included physically preparing the storage space, installing a third of the compact shelving, writing, and testing move/merge procedures, as well as hiring temporary employees to complete the actual merge. Phases two and three called for additional compact shelving to be installed. Conclusion:Moving and merging of a collection requires careful plan¬ning, detailed data analysis, and hard physical work. Ideally, you will only do this once. In our case, we knew this option would only be a temporary solution to our space crisis that will take us through the year 2012, at which time we hope to have a new library building with com¬pact shelving throughout. Presented at the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, May 17, 2005

Building the Future: Rejecting, Rethinking, Redoing, Rejuvenating

Objectives: Traditional library work is spiraling downward. Health sciences librarians are taking on new roles such as embedded librarians or research data informationists. Simultaneously, institutionally mandated budget cuts force the question, How do we maintain mission-critical work within our budget? Survival means rejecting old service models, rethinking our roles, redoing our professional identity, and rejuvenating ourselves and our libraries. Methods: The Library Fellows Program at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Medical School is one response to the challenges we are facing. The fellows program, designed to foster the next generation of medical librarians, provides a two-year experience for newly graduated library science students, emphasizing hands-on learning and research into topics of information management and medical librarianship. This innovative curriculum incorporates training, professional development, mentorship, and research with the library as the learning laboratory. Curriculum components focus on medical librarianship foundations as well as rotations within core library functional areas. This paper serves as a project description and evaluation. It discusses organizational changes that necessitated and facilitated the structural changes surrounding this program and the resulting effect on staff and operations. The midpoint success of the program is determined and reported, with recommendations and future considerations. Results/Conclusions: In early 2013, management at Lamar Soutter Library (LSL) planned organizational changes necessary to meet strategic initiatives and continue supporting the medical school\u27s mission in the face of severe budget constraints. The final plan resulted in discontinuation of many traditional library activities, elimination of staff that supported those activities, and, ultimately, the development of the FELLOWS PROGRAM. In September 2013, three task forces were created to develop an implementation plan. A search committee was formed to begin the process of hiring three fellows. The Curriculum Task Force was charged with structuring the two-year fellowship program. The curriculum developed includes rotations through library departments, in-depth reference experience, expert searching training, structured projects, and performing research. The Reference Services Task Force was charged with developing a new reference model to replace the current triage and pager model. The Research Task Force was charged with laying the groundwork for creating a research environment in the library. With outside consultation, LSL developed a detailed evaluation plan. The program is in its eighth month. Modifications and refinements are being made as the first cohort experiences the program. The program has led to a redefinition of librarianship and a new professional identity based on a culture of achievement, research, and reflection