News from the Field

David Free

Robert (Jay) Malone named ACRL executive director

Robert (Jay) Malone has been named the new ACRL executive director. Malone’s first day in his new role was September 7. An experienced association executive with more than three decades of success in academia and learned societies, Malone will lead the largest of ALA’s eight divisions, home to more than 9,000 individual and institutional members.

ALA Executive Director Tracie Hall said of Malone’s hire, “The search committee was impressed by the experience in association management, higher education, and partnership development that Jay brought to the table and by his deep respect for the role that academic libraries and their staffs play in adding value to the higher education experience and bolstering student success. We look forward to the contributions he will make to ACRL and to ALA at large.”

Hall also took the opportunity to acknowledge Kara Malenfant’s interim leadership of ACRL prior to Malone’s appointment. “We deeply appreciate Kara’s able guidance of ACRL while we searched for its next ED and commend her for the steadying role her leadership played.”

Malone comes to ALA from the History of Science Society (HSS), where he served for 23 years. As the HSS’s first executive director, he furthered the organization’s advocacy agenda; promoted equity, diversity, and inclusion; oversaw and implemented strategic planning; created a fundraising infrastructure; served on a 22-member board; and worked with hundreds of volunteers.

“We are excited to have Jay Malone joining ACRL as the next executive director,” added ACRL President Julie Garrison of Western Michigan University. “His long tenure in association leadership, fundraising experience, extensive knowledge of the higher education landscape, and enthusiasm for immersing himself in the critical academic library issues of our field make him the ideal candidate to lead ACRL into the future.”

Malone earned a B.A. in History and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Science, all from the University of Florida.

UNC University Libraries releases 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge syllabus

The University Libraries at the University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill has released the syllabus of its recent 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge focused on libraries and archives. The syllabus is the work of the University Libraries’ IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility) Council. It is part of the Library’s Reckoning Initiative, which commits to using equity, inclusion, and social justice as a lens for its work.

In spring 2021, library employees were invited to follow the daily syllabus in a shared experience of discovery and reflection. Participants in the voluntary program also had opportunities to come together for discussions and caucus meetings.

The syllabus is available as an accessible PDF under a Creative Commons license at https://indd.adobe.com/view/bdf6ae66-fcb3-40af-badb-6dd57b28525e.

Survey results for COVID-19 protocols for academic libraries

The ACRL Value of Academic Libraries Committee recently sponsored a free ACRL Online Discussion Forum to share findings from a survey asking what protocols academic libraries used during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure safe library operations (services, resources, spaces, personnel interactions).

While the survey findings are specific to academic libraries, they are relevant to public and other libraries and other academic entities. The forum highlights survey findings followed by questions from participants.

The recorded webcast is now available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvI53B-HWy0. Access to the full report and the de-identified data set are provided at www.ala.org/acrl/issues/value.

LYRASIS 2021 Open Source Software Survey

LYRASIS has released its 2021 “Open Source Software Survey: Understanding the Landscape of Open Source Software Support in American Libraries,” authored by Hannah Rosen, strategist for research and scholarly communication, and Jill Grogg, strategist for content and scholarly communication initiatives.

Included in this report are the results of the 2021 LYRASIS Open Source Software (OSS) survey along with an executive summary outlining the key findings from survey respondents. These findings paint a broad picture of the OSS landscape for libraries, archives, museums, and research institutions (particularly American academic institutions), and contextualize the current environment for OSS. The goal of the report is to provide the field with a better understanding of overarching attitudes within their community and to see where they fit within the spectrum.

The report can be accessed on the new LYRASIS Research Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12669/97.

ProQuest adds new Gannett newspapers

ProQuest has announced that an additional 34 newspaper titles from Gannett are now exclusively available to academic and public libraries for research, teaching, and learning on the ProQuest platform.

The additional Gannett titles include the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Evansville Courier & Press, El Paso Times, The Record (Bergen County, New Jersey), Corpus Christi Caller Times, and many more. Some of these titles have never before been digitally available to libraries.

ProQuest plans to offer these titles from their first date of publication to the present, along with the other 124 Gannett newspapers the company distributes. All of these Gannett titles will be offered in ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers collection in full digital format.

In addition, contemporary news content from these titles, including unique web-only content, will be added to ProQuest’s U.S. and Global Newsstream product lines for users to access the most current news from each title.

Digital Science launches Dimensions Life Sciences & Chemistry

Digital Science recently announce the launch of a new version of its popular Dimensions platform, Dimensions Life Sciences & Chemistry (Dimensions L&C), focused on life sciences and chemistry research activities. Dimensions L&C analyzes more than 120 million scientific publications and millions of patents, grants, and clinical trial documents. It is both larger than other databases, and unlike traditional manually curated tools, applies up-to-the-minute semantic text analysis tools and ontologies, providing powerful up-to-date discovery functionality previously unavailable at such scale.

Users can search for small molecules, chemical reactions and gene sequences, validate biomarkers, understand disease mechanisms, and identify drug targets. They can also quickly discover relevant chemical information in broader life sciences and chemistry research areas working with a chemistry structure editor and a biosequence search for nucleotides and proteins.

Learn more at www.digital-science.com/product/dimensions.