This was the second Core Forum ever to be held since Core is a new division of the American Library Association. “Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures is the national association that advances the profession of librarians and information providers in central roles of buildings & operations, leadership & management, metadata & collections, and technology.” Lauren is currently a board member of Core and this was the first time that she and Carolyn attended Forum. The Board was excited to have just over 400 registered attendees this year. The event took place in a single large conference hotel in New Orleans, which was far less overwhelming than the ALA Annual Conference that can draw over 10,000 attendees.

Awards were announced at an opening reception, which was a first, and the board debriefed on how well that and other aspects of the conference worked over dinner on the last night of the conference. Adjustments are already being made for 2024, including changing to November dates due to conflict with many state library association conferences in October.

The opening session was a treat. Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy, the outgoing Louisiana Poet Laureate, shared her poetry, which was fully flavored with New Orleans lifestyle and language. Her name, Mona Lisa, comes from the Nat King Cole song and she had a snippet in a poem, so she sang it. It was more of a poetry performance than a simple reading. It energized us and prompted some DEI-oriented conversations.

Lauren attended a session and saw a poster that related to our interest in creating a data dashboard for ZSR. The poster was titled User-friendly content management for collaborative web projects and looked at Google Sheets and AirTable along with a couple of other tools. The session, Beyond Big Ideas: Translating Your Mission, Vision, and Values into Practical Metrics was probably the most talked-about session. Dallin Witt has been Salt Lake City Public Library’s Data Coordinator for a year and a half and is not a librarian; he’s a data analyst. Early on, he said: “The big question is: What would success look like and what objective measures would reflect this success?” Later he emphasized that metrics should “fit to mission, vision, and values statements to keep you focused on outcomes not outputs.” Measure outcomes like the number of participants, not outputs like promotions, for programs. Sometimes you cannot use the ideal method. A concrete example was an objective of caring for staff with competitive pay and needing to use employee retention as a proxy because a compensation survey was not within budget. He recommended Joseph R. Matthews’ Measuring Results: The Dimensions of Public Library Effectiveness for the concepts, in spite of outdated technology, but ZSR owns the ebook of that author’s more recent title for all library types, The Evaluation and Measurement of Library Services. Lauren took a lot of notes, and Steve also plans to cover this in his Forum post. Ask if you want more details!

Another poster session matching ZSR interests was titled Fostering student success through niche collections. “This poster depicts an on-going project to develop and promote a niche collection that targets a wide range of student needs including personal health and well-being, financial literacy, LGBTQ+ advocacy, diversity education, student belonging, and more.” Apparently they centered on print resources and looked at circulation statistics as a measurement of success. The FYE librarian made adjustments “to focus more specifically on resources to support” first-year students, transfers, and new graduate students, but it is not clear if the statistics were from before or after the change. Lauren recommends including e-resources when promoting collection components that support wellbeing. For example, ZSR is expanding our NYT subscription to All Access (News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic) so that everyone can access more of the fun features starting in 2024.

An additional poster session that caught Carolyn’s eye was one presented by a librarian from the University of Arizona on the evolution of their library’s board game collection. The library began purchasing board games in 2018, and since then more games have been purchased and added to the collection based on patron feedback via a Talk Back board. Two donations of board games, one from a community member and the other from the Veterinary School with the purpose of supporting class learning, enabled the library to further expand their collection by the addition of 100+ board games. Games are shelved on bookcases for patron browsing and are available for check out. The board game collection is discoverable via the library’s online catalog and a LibGuide created specifically for this collection.

As the cataloger for WFU’s electronic theses and dissertations, Carolyn attended the session From Stacks to Screens: Streamlining the Digitization Process of University Theses and Dissertations through Collaboration and Automation. Librarians from the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa discussed digitization and records management workflows of an on-going library project to digitize their university’s print theses and dissertations (~14,000 in archival facility and ~9,000 in stacks). This project aids in the preservation of institutional knowledge, unique student research, and the historical record of the development of multiple disciplines at the university. In the beginning, print theses and dissertations (TD) were digitized one by one due to ILL requests. Less than 100 were digitized annually. The library purchased multiple and relatively inexpensive scanners and employs three student workers to do all of the scanning. To protect the privacy of TD committee members, signatures appearing on title pages are redacted. Student workers involved in this project each put in 15-20 hours per week. The librarians estimated the project will take about eight years to complete. Permissions of print TD authors are not sought. The research value of having these publications digitized outweighs the risk of asking permission and having individuals say no. The librarians did say they have and would embargo a digitized copy of a print TD if requested by an author. Two cataloging records (one for print, one for electronic) for an individual thesis or dissertation is made discoverable in OCLC’s WorldCat. So far, 886 volumes have been scanned (~121,382 pages). Over 3,000 views from individuals in the United States and foreign countries have taken place, and these views have been steadily increasing since the first month (9/22) the project began.

What is “Cataloging”? is another conference session Carolyn attended and found relevant and informative to her work as a cataloger. Leah Gentry, Electronic and Resources Cataloging Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reviewed and analyzed 635 job postings from 1992, 2002, 2012, and 2022 utilizing the AUTOCAT listserv, “a private listserv for cataloging and metadata professionals…throughout the world.” She limited her research to focus on cataloging positions advertised for United States libraries and institutions, and she looked at demand for cataloging skills and whether job titles represented the work behind them. Some of her findings as represented in charts and graphs in her presentation included:

• Words being used interchangeably in postings (e.g., electronic, virtual, digital)
• Changes in job titles (e.g., catalog* and its derivatives -er, -ing; metadata; catalog* and metadata; electronic; discovery; digital)
• Changes in department names (e.g., technical services; catalog*; metadata; collections; data; digital; resource*; discovery; information; electronic resources)
• Changes in the top five job duties for each year analyzed
  • 1992 – catalog, leadership, policies & procedures, authority work, OCLC
  • 2002 – catalog, leadership, policies & procedures, serials, metadata
  • 2012 – catalog, leadership, metadata, policies & procedures, training
  • 2022 – catalog, metadata, leadership, policies & procedures, collaborate
• Changes in top three desired language skills beyond English for each year analyzed
  • 1992 – German, Portuguese, Spanish
  • 2002 – Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic
  • 2012 – Spanish, Cyrillic
  • 2022 – Chinese, Slavic, Arabic
• Changes in job duties in regard to cataloging formats – Cataloging of monographs and serials only has been decreasing, while cataloging of special collections, electronic resources, and “all” formats is increasing.
• Changes in non-cataloging duties (e.g., acquisitions, collection development, reference, etc.), including undefined time tasks (e.g., collaborate, problem solving, professional development, projects, committees) were also investigated.
• Changes in qualifications (e.g., required vs. preferred education, years of cataloging experience)
• Changes in computer related skills, programming languages, and software tools in postings
  • 1992 – computer skills, microcomputers
  • 2002 – HTML, internet, email, file transfers, keyboarding, Microsoft, programming, scripting languages, UNIX
  • 2012 – XML, VRA Core
  • 2022 – Confluence, Google Drive, InDesign, JSON, Omeka, OpenRefine, Photoshop, Prelude, Premiere, SharePoint, Slack, SPARQL, TRELLO, web-scraping, Zoom
• Changes in desired soft skills (e.g., work well with others, communication, adaptability, work independently, service oriented, detail oriented)

In closing Ms. Gentry stated that based on her research of analyzing job postings, cataloging skills remain in demand today, and artificial intelligence (AI) will be prevalent in current and future discussions regarding cataloging.

Burnout is being covered in lots of library webinars and conferences lately, including Forum. In a panel discussion format led by a moderator, two librarians reflected on their experiences with library worker burnout. Below are insights gleaned from both Carolyn and Lauren during this session:

• Exhaustion leads to disengagement and can contribute to negative morale in the workplace.
• One’s agency and role in decision making as applicable to one’s work greatly impacts one’s feeling of control on the job. A reduction in job control impacts worker burnout. One librarian gave the example of open offices/floor plans leading to feelings of less job control.
• Less enthusiasm and fulfillment at work means others will try to pick up slack and it will affect everyone.
• Person centered solutions to management could help: Show people that they matter. Help people find the work that they enjoy.

There are solutions that do and do not cost money, some of which we already have here in varying degrees such as: allowing agency in one’s work; taking time off for mental health; allowing schedules that work for individuals; tuition remission; work from home and online meetings. Some suggestions that cost money and require leadership support at varying levels of the organization include: more labor – ideally permanent; more leave; better health insurance; student loan forgiveness beyond federal workplaces to make the MLS less expensive; more individual offices with doors.