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Author: search.filters.author.Bradley, Benjamin

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    Belonging in the Urban Information Specialist Program
    (Journal of New Librarianship, 2024-02-05) Bradley, Benjamin
    The 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).
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    Linked, Controlled Folksonomy as Reparative Taxonomy
    (2022-05-05) Bradley, Benjamin
    This 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.
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    Reevaluating the University of Maryland's Urban Information Specialist Program
    (2022-05-06) Bradley, Benjamin
    This 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.
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    Automating E-Resource Workflows with Computer Scripts
    (Information Today, 2020-04-01) Bradley, Benjamin
    This 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.
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    Segregation in UMD Libraries and UMD Library Education in the Early 1970's
    (2021-06-03) Bradley, Benjamin
    This presentation is an introduction to some research-in-progress, rooted in the Diamondback and the Black Explosion, that I would like to share on racial (in)justice issues affecting the University of Maryland and libraries that happened in the early 1970’s. The first story focuses on accusations from McKeldin Library staff and the library Equal Education and Employment Officer about discrimination library employees faced. The second focuses on the story of the Urban Information Specialist program in the School of Library and Information Services. The program, pioneered by James Welbourne, was a radical program that focused on developing black library leaders to serve in inner cities. The Master’s degree program didn’t even technically require an undergraduate degree and focused on site education rather than classroom and textbook focused programs. The program was controversial and only supported by the federal government, not the library school or the university. When the program stopped receiving federal funding, the school decided to discontinue with program which garnered student protests.
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    Are we there yet? Electronic Resources Discovery in WorldCat
    (2020-06-26) Bradley, Benjamin; Guay, Beth; Hemsley, Erica; Wilson, Aaron; Reiss, Robin
    In 2012 the UMD Libraries began implementing WorldShare Collection Manager to manage the Libraries’ electronic collections and to make them accessible in the Libraries’ discovery system, WorldCat UMD. The panel will discuss how our understanding of WorldCat Discovery (WCD) informs our work to make the Libraries' resources available to students, faculty, staff, and others who rely on OCLC catalog records for library resource discovery. Our discussion will: provide background information on WCD; discuss its advantages and disadvantages; highlight cross-departmental collaboration and workflows; and finally, discuss new work in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic, in particular, work to implement the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service, and to make undiscoverable and important electronic resources, such as the Adam Matthew Digital American Indian Histories and Cultures collection discoverable and accessible.
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    Outsourcing Cataloging at the University of Maryland, College Park: Problems and Opportunities
    (Against the Grain, 2020-01) Bradley, Benjamin; Guay, Beth
    For 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.
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    Managing Metadata Overload: Automating E-Resource Workflows with Computer Scripts
    (2019-06-22) Bradley, Benjamin
    This poster illustrates how I have incorporated three different computer scripts into e-resource workflows to manage the large sets of metadata used to provide access and discovery of the library’s electronic resources and increase the volume of the work. The poster will illustrate the three different workflows and provide screenshots of the computer code and the scripts in action. The first script I will present 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 cancelation, 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 is 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 to provide access to e-resources which we couldn’t previously. The poster will help facilitate discussions about these kinds of innovative practices and facilitate collaboration on related projects.
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    KBQuery's Got Your Coverage!
    (2019-06-11) Bradley, Benjamin
    KBQuery is a Python script I created that uses the WorldCat Knowledge Base API to automate batch searches of our holdings in the WorldCat knowledge base. The script outputs coverage information which can then be used to support collection management. For example, the script can be used on a list of titles under consideration for cancelation to understand what other avenues the libraries have to access the title (such as an aggregator database or from an open access source). The script can also search on list of entitlements to see if a titles are missing from the KB, so we can identify those missing titles and add them, providing access to those titles. My lightning talk will give an overview of the script, present some real-world applications for the script, and close by discussion some opportunities to further develop the script.