Today’s academic library manages a complex set of online information resources, delivered by a combination of locally managed and externally provided services. It is vital to academic libraries that the digital library services we provide — whatever their source — carry clear university brand identity. This strengthens the library’s position in the university and enables it to secure the budget and political capital necessary to do its work. Both libraries and their vendors have much to gain from this approach to brand. Here is how Columbia University developed a more formal approach for Library branding and achieved success with some of our largest vendors

Cartolano, Robert T.

Columbia University Academic Commons

4/2/2019 Guest Post - The Library is the Brand - The Scholarly Kitchenhttps://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/20/guest-post-the-library-is-the-brand/ 1/11ByEditor’s Note: The Scholarly Kitchen has been exploring issues of publisher brand throughout its history. We haveaddressed why publisher brand matters (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/11/01/revisiting-why-publishers-brands-matter/), the burden of a prestigious brand (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/01/05/the-terrible-burden-of-a-prestigious-brand/), whether megajournals might disrupt the major brands(https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/01/18/countering-uber-brands-case-megajournal/). In recent months, wehave been tracking a number of issues around how content distribution and brand are being affected by the potentialof syndication (https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/what-is-content-syndication/), including through the Springer Nature pilotwith ResearchGate (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/01/springer-nature-syndicates-content-to-researchgate/), to impact publisher platforms (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/02/27/will-publishers-have-platforms/). In addition, we have noted that that libraries are taking a much stronger stance against subscriptioncontent (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/07/value-big-deal-leakage/). All of this is inﬂuencing the primacyof publisher brand and is the background against which today’s important post should be understood.Today’s post is by Robert Cartolano (http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ertc/), the Columbia University Libraries AssociateVice President for Technology and Preservation. Rob is a graduate of Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School ofEngineering and Applied Science, and has been a member of Columbia’s staff since 1986, where he held the roles ofManager of Academic Technologies and Senior Director of Client Technology Services for Columbia UniversityInformation Technology.Today’s academic library manages a complex set of online information resources, delivered by a combination oflocally managed and externally provided services. It is vital to academic libraries that the digital library services weprovide — whatever their source — carry clear university brand identity. This strengthens the library’s position in theuniversity and enables it to secure the budget and political capital necessary to do its work. Both libraries and theirvendors have much to gain from this approach to brand. Here is how Columbia University developed a more formalapproach for Library branding and achieved success with some of our largest vendors.4/2/2019 Guest Post - The Library is the Brand - The Scholarly Kitchenhttps://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/20/guest-post-the-library-is-the-brand/ 2/11In 2017 Columbia Libraries took a closer look at ten of our largest external services, most of them delivered by for-proﬁt vendors, to review the quality of these external web-based services. Web trafﬁc to these services exceeds 7million page views per year.I spent the better part of two decades in campus IT, where it was typical to brand services with prominent, top-levelUniversity branding, write into contracts that vendor branding was to be removed from top-level pages, and changethe design to more closely match Columbia web design guidelines.  It was quite a surprise when I discovered thatevery one of the ten Library services that we reviewed lacked adequate University or Library branding.When I worked in IT, we used the name “CourseWorks” to brand Columbia’s course management system.  Weremoved the company and product name so that users associated the service as CourseWorks and not the technologyor vendor name.  While the users are aware of the underlying technology, the CourseWorks service name has enduredacross three different technology platforms (Prometheus, Sakai, and now Canvas).  Similarly, campus email isbranded as LionMail, and there is no corporate branding for Google in Gmail.4/2/2019 Guest Post - The Library is the Brand - The Scholarly Kitchenhttps://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/20/guest-post-the-library-is-the-brand/ 3/11Several years ago our University administration also began to emphasize consistent use of our campus web designguidelines on all Columbia web sites, including for external services that are made available to students, faculty andthe broader community.And yet, when we looked at vendor web services paid for by Columbia Libraries, our branding was small or non-existent.  So we asked the question:Electronic resources have evolved over time from well-known database products with strong brand names, such asDow Jones & LexisNexis, sometimes on dedicated library terminals and workstations, to include web-based servicesthat provide a wide variety of resources through consolidated vendor platforms.  Discovery has transitioned to includeuniﬁed library discovery and general search engines, enabling users to directly connect to individual articles, ebooks,etc., typically located on web-based vendor platforms. These vendor platforms, unlike other services provided by theUniversity, often include prominent placement of company and service names.  Unlike prior database services witheasily recognized names, due to mergers and acquisitions some of these company names are less recognizable to ourpatrons. The net result is that while we pay signiﬁcant sums of money for these services, we’ve shifted from clearlylabelled library services to vendor-branded web-based services with diminished or invisible Library and Universitybranding.Columbia IT maintains an on-campus network with over 100,000 devices.  The Libraries have worked with IT toreduce “transactional friction” to connect users to information resources, and provide on-campus users with a directconnection to these resources, thanks to EZProxy and IP-restricted services.  While access is convenient and fast,without proper University and Library branding, faculty and students typically have no idea that these services arepaid for, at great expense, by the Libraries. We have become “invisible” partly as a result of our own success inproviding such convenient access.  Both faculty and students have told us again and again that they use the “Internet”to gain access to licensed electronic resources, not realizing that Libraries paid for this access. After hearing a facultymember make such a statement at a Provost-led faculty advisory committee meeting, we decided that we had to takesteps to address this issue. Coupled with the University’s direction to deliver a more consistently branded webpresence, we also decided that this needed immediate attention by our external service providers.In an internal meeting, I stated in exasperation, “the Library is the brand” and our staff decided that was to be thename of our initiative to improve library branding. We made the assertion that, like the main entrance and studyrooms of the library, our entire web presence, whether provided locally or outsourced to vendors, is a representationof the libraries, an extension of the Libraries’ web presence. All of them, internal or external, represent the library.4/2/2019 Guest Post - The Library is the Brand - The Scholarly Kitchenhttps://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/20/guest-post-the-library-is-the-brand/ 4/11A small team of librarians, web design, and electronic resource experts worked methodically with our externalvendors to have them place prominent, top-level branding, consistent with University guidelines, on the top of all ofour web properties. The banner needs to say “Columbia University Libraries” using the standard University “Trajan”font, alongside the Columbia crown. We also requested that each site include a link to “Ask a Columbia Librarian” toenable users to request assistance from a Columbia library staff member at their point of need using any of ourresources.I would like to tell you that every vendor, upon hearing our request to place a prominent, top-level banner and stafflink, immediately responded and did this in a matter of days. After all, in some cases we spend hundreds of thousandsof dollars annually, right? Actually, to be fair, some of them did just that, and one did it in 3 days. It’s just a web page,and adding a top banner is relatively simple for most well-constructed web sites. A shout-out to Gale CengageLearning for making this change in a matter of days.4/2/2019 Guest Post - The Library is the Brand - The Scholarly Kitchenhttps://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/20/guest-post-the-library-is-the-brand/ 5/11For many of them, we engaged in a constructive dialogue over a period of weeks and months. The reality is that manypublishers and other library vendors needed some time to overcome various challenges. Some vendors were reluctantto give up the “top spot” on the web page; in these cases I reminded senior leadership that we required prominent,top-level branding, and that the Library and University brands were most important. Other vendors required sometime to adjust their interfaces and provide conﬁguration controls for library staff to insert a top-level banner. Onevendor surveyed other libraries and reported back a strong need for branding by these institutions. The conversationwas fruitful, with some vendors customizing their dashboard to make it very easy to add a prominent, top-levelbanner, and some vendors even taking the extra step to improve their user interface. As of March 2019, Gale CengageLearning, JSTOR, EBSCO, Proquest, Elsevier, Clarivate Web of Science, and Adam Matthew have all customizedtheir web sites and have placed prominent, top-level branding that meets most or all of our requirements.4/2/2019 Guest Post - The Library is the Brand - The Scholarly Kitchenhttps://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/20/guest-post-the-library-is-the-brand/ 6/11We have added branding requirements into our collection development policy, which has been endorsed by ourProvost-appointed faculty advisory group. It states that Library branding is more important than the vendor’s orpublisher’s corporate brands. It also states that our users’ experiences indicate a lack of awareness that they are usinglibrary-supported, library-acquired resources. Finally, it states that continued funding for electronic resources and ourability for continued business with vendors and publishers hinges on meeting our branding characteristics, practices,and principles.We continue to work with other vendors to effect this change. There have been instances where our electronicresource librarians were not provided with the appropriate level of responsiveness and customer service. On morethan a few occasions we needed to reach out to senior leadership at companies to emphasize the importance ofLibrary and University branding, and to ensure the appropriate level of customer service and responsiveness. Ourelectronic resources librarians direct vendors to our “Library is the Brand” web page(https://library.columbia.edu/bts/cerm/e-resource-branding.html).While working with these vendor web sites, we also noticed an alarming issue; vendors have inserted advertisingacross the top and sides of their services. In some cases, these ads leverage consumer web site advertising networks,placing consumer ads for cars, insurance, and even amusement parks in front of our patrons. Some vendors place adsfor other services, “upselling” additional services to our faculty and students without our awareness or permission.One vendor actually placed an advertisement for a competing university in front of our patrons!I am happy to say that all ten of our vendors agreed to remove the most egregious of these advertisements, includingthose of competing universities and consumer-based ad networks. We are in continuing discussions with vendors thatcontinue to display vendor-speciﬁc ads, as well as ads that are placed to support scholarly journals.We believe that vendor-based web services are part of our overall “Libraries web presence” that consists of locallymanaged and external web platforms, services and applications. We are systematically reviewing and revising all ofour patron-facing web presence to include prominent, top-level library branding that meets Library and Universityrequirements. In doing so, we are ensuring that our patrons understand and value the Libraries as the service providerfor a vast and ever-expanding set of services delivered to desktops and mobile devices. We will continue to emphasizeto vendors that they are providing services to our patrons on our behalf, and work to revise our licensing agreementsto include branding requirements and eliminate advertising on our licensed services.If you are considering a similar effort at your institution, here are some steps you can take to increase the visibility ofyour library to your patrons through improved library branding:1. Review current institution branding and web design guidelines.2. Develop and/or revise existing library branding to align with institutional branding.4/2/2019 Guest Post - The Library is the Brand - The Scholarly Kitchenhttps://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/20/guest-post-the-library-is-the-brand/ 7/113. Document and share your requirements for both internal web sites and external vendors, including links tobranding assets as appropriate.4. Contact your vendors and request “prominent, top-level branding” consistent with your library and universityweb design guidelines.5. Support your electronic resource librarians; schedule high-level meetings with vendors as appropriate to makesure that they understand your documented requirements.6. Add branding requirements into your collections development policy.7. Consider adding branding requirements into your licensing agreements.To our publishers and platform vendors, I suggest the following:1. Recognize that the Library is the Brand, and that prominent Library and University branding help to providecredibility to your services for our faculty and students. Strengthening the Library brand among faculty andstudents highlights that the Library is an essential service, and that it requires appropriate levels of fundingand campus support in order to continue subscribing to your services.2. Work with your library customers to modify your conﬁguration options to include prominent, top-levelbranding along with top-level links to obtain librarian assistance. Library branding should be consistentlyplaced on all pages, including item level pages.3. Eliminate the use of all consumer-based ad networks along the top and sides of licensed library services.Consumer-based ads give end users the appearance that these sites are “free off the Internet” as opposed tolicensed Library services.4. Relocate or eliminate redundant or unnecessary corporate branding from the top of services.5. Provide excellent customer service for electronic resource librarians, who work very hard to integrate yourservices into our institutions.

The Library is the Brand

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The Library is the Brand

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