Library Faculty/Staff Scholarship and Research
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/11
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Item Belonging in the Urban Information Specialist Program(Journal of New Librarianship, 2024-02-05) Bradley, BenjaminThe Urban Information Specialist Program lasted only one year, from 1970-1971, at the University of Maryland School of Library and Information Service (SLIS). While short lived, the program raised big questions that resonate still today about who could become a librarian and what role a librarian plays. The program sought to diversify librarianship by recruiting students with experience working and serving diverse communities and eliminating barriers such as the requirement of a Bachelor’s degree. The program’s end was met with protest and debate about racism within the university and in the SLIS. This article looks at contemporary student publications to better understand how library science programs can improve to promote diversity within a primarily white profession and in Primarily White Institutions (PWI).Item University of Maryland Libraries Open Discovery Initiative Checklist, 2022(2022-05-20) Bradley, BenjaminItem Linked, Controlled Folksonomy as Reparative Taxonomy(2022-05-05) Bradley, BenjaminThis presentation provides an overview of some criticism of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and then proposes a Linked, Local Folksonomy as a reparative taxonomy to address help make cataloging in libraries more inclusive.Item Reevaluating the University of Maryland's Urban Information Specialist Program(2022-05-06) Bradley, BenjaminThis presentation is an overview of archival research I have performed focusing on the student experience and response to the closure of the Urban Information Specialist Program (UISP) at the University of Maryland's School of Library and Information Service (SLIS). The UISP was developed by Mary Lee Bundy and lead by James Welbourne, and was designed to recruit lower income students, especially African Americans, to serve as librarians in lower-income communities. The UISP was an experimental program that remove barriers to access a Masters in Library Science, but the end of the program was controversial and resulted in at least one campus protest and Bundy & Welbourne published a book arguing that the university cut the program purely out of racist hatred. This presentation provides an overview of the program and discusses some of my findings in the Bibliophile (the SLIS's student newspaper) and the Diamondback.Item Automating E-Resource Workflows with Computer Scripts(Information Today, 2020-04-01) Bradley, BenjaminThis article illustrates how I have incorporated three different computer scripts into e-resource workflows to manage the large sets of metadata used to provide access to and discovery of the library’s electronic resources. The poster will illustrate the three different workflows and provide screenshots of the computer code and the scripts in action. The first script is the E-Resource Access Checker, developed by Kristinia Sprugin, which I have edited to meet my library’s needs and use to ensure our patrons are presented with functioning URLs to access an e-resource, cutting down on dead or incorrect links in our discovery system. The second script is one I developed in collaboration with collection development librarians to assist with making decisions about e-resources. The script enables a librarian to input a list of titles being considered for cancellation, and the script then uses the WorldCat Knowledge Base (WCKB) API to find the different means of access and their associated coverage dates, thus making it easier to get the information needed for their decisions. The last script automates batch searches of WorldCat using the WorldCat Search API. I use the script to harvest metadata to enrich publisher-provided metadata in the WCKB and to create new collections in the WCKB, providing access to previously inaccessible resources in our discovery layer. This poster is an opportunity to share these workflows and scripts with other librarians and to collaborate on projects to create and manage e-resource metadata.Item Outsourcing Cataloging at the University of Maryland, College Park: Problems and Opportunities(Against the Grain, 2020-01) Bradley, Benjamin; Guay, BethFor the University of Maryland Libraries, a major outsourcing initiative began in late 2011 following an earlier implementation of WorldCat Local as a discovery tool: the transitioning from MARC record set loads of electronic resources collections into the local catalog to e-resource collection activations in the WorldCat knowledge base ending with the adoption of WorldCat Discovery and link resolver in July 2015, resulting in a highly automated and outsourced environment. During this time, e-resource cataloging processes shifted as the responsible units underwent a hand-full of reorganizations resulting in, as of April 2017, the formation of four units within Collections Services (formerly known as Technical Services): Acquisitions and Data Services, Continuing Resources and Database Management, Discovery and Metadata Services, and Original and Special Collections Cataloging. This latter reorganization brought relief with the creation of a new Discovery Librarian position. During these transitions, e-resource maintenance remained a constant challenge for personnel across unit lines. We have found, however, that with new skills brought by the Discovery Librarian such as programming and data-manipulation added to old-fashioned competencies, such as communication skills, institutional memory, and a good sense of humor, the challenges have become manageable, and may even offer new opportunities.Item E-Resource Info Sharing: Open Access(2019-05-20) Bradley, Benjamin; Burt, Claralyn; Goldfinger, RebeccaThis presentation was part of an E-Resource Information Sharing series presented by Collection Services staff at UMD University Libraries. This presentation focused on defining Open Access, exploring different funding models of Open Access, and discussing UMD's initiatives to promote Open Access.Item Digital Stacks Maintenance: Using Computer Scripts to Provide and Ensure Access to E-Resources(2018-05-03) Bradley, BenjaminAs electronic resource collections continue to grow, librarians often struggle with maintaining these growing collections. Librarians need web-scale tools to manage e-resources in a web-scale discovery environment. This poster presents two tools I use to help manage e-resources. The first is a Ruby script originally developed by Kristina Spurgin, the E-Resource Access Checker. In the poster, I discuss how I use this tool and have developed the code further to meet my needs. The second tool is a Python script I have been developing which uses the OCLC WorldCat Search API to harvest metadata to supplement publisher provided metadata in our e-resource management tool, OCLC Collection Manager.Item Collaborating for Access: Implementing Aeon’s OpenURL in our Discovery System(2018-05-07) Bradley, BenjaminThis presentation documents the collaborative project between Discovery and Metadata Services, Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA), and Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) to implement a feature to enable users to request special collections materials directly from the University of Maryland University Libraries discovery layer, WorldCat UMD. The presentation introduces vendor products involved in the project like Aeon and WorldCat Discovery as well as the tools used to implement the request feature, OpenURL and Z39.50.