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FINALIST 1:
Integrating Resources into Research Design
Dr. Olga Koz and Dr. Jorrin-Abellan
Kennesaw State University
As a research librarian, I curate resources to add value to their content and make them discoverable by researchers. Sometimes, librarians acquire, manage, and promote e-resources without taking one more step, integrating these resources into the research workflow. Since 2016, I have been fortunate to collaborate with researchers and technologists on the Hopscotch web tool (HWT) and, since 2018, on the Interactive Research Methods lab (IRML) to help novice researchers develop well-informed and rigorous research designs. The HWT and IRML are widely recognized as examples of a learning, research, and design space that assist not only researchers from Kennesaw State University but are open and available to anybody.
I recommend resources and integrate the databases and e-collections into each research design step to complement and enrich the content developed by the leading author of the Hopscotch model and the lab, Dr. Jorrin- Abellan, and the IRML team. Adding each resource to the web tool or the IRML virtual library guarantees increased usage. Linking to resources at the point of need when students design research or work through guided instruction within the Hopscotch web tool promotes e-books, e-journals, or databases such as Sage Research Methods and helps me to acquire resources that are recommended by faculty.
I want to submit for award consideration the latest innovation of the Hopscotch and IRML team, the literature review design interactive tool. Since 2020, when we designed and launched the Hopscotch Literature Review Design tool, it has been accessed by 1253 users, viewed more than 4000 times, and used to create 138 literature review protocols or designs. In addition, the version of this interactive design tool has been embedded into several courses for Ed.D. students and adopted by 24 doctoral students working on their dissertations and research proposals. With assistance from the Library Systems librarian, researchers, and students from the College of Computer Science, we are currently working on an AI-based dynamic and contextual recommendation system and search box. It will assist users of the Literature Review Design Tool or other HWT versions with customized content retrieval from the library databases, open access repositories, and Hopscotch knowledge base.
FINALIST 2:
Amazon Alexa Skill as an Artificial Intelligent (AI) Tool for Academic Library Services
Dr. Santosh Kharat and Dr. Shubhada Nagarkar
Savitribai Phule Pune University
Introduction: AI is changing the world and the lives of people and enhancing economies and organizations. Voice recognition is one of its advanced applications that have been used in Google search, Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and ChatBot. These products help to retrieve information easily and even to order products to receive it to doorstep. Libraries are ahead where AI is being used for various purposes viz. Library of Congress, Ohio-based Worthington libraries, and Pellucent Technology Company use Amazon Alexa Skill cloud-based voice service for their users. In the current project, we have used Amazon Alexa as AI tool for users at the Library of PUMBA (Department of Management Sciences founded in the year 1971 in the Savitribai Phule Pune University and it is known as PUMBA.) to locate the book and the shelf/cupboard number. This voice-based service is useful for voice-based information retrieval in which users will be less dependent on library catalogs and staff. Voice-based library resources locator will save the time of the users.
To achieve this PUMBA Library has purchased Alexa, and related services to build the question-and-answer skill to provide information about the cupboard number of physical books. To build the customized questions and answers the blueprint services https://blueprints.amazon.com) were used. Special arrangements have been made for Alexa with the instructions for usage. At this initial period students found it an amazing service in which they can talk with Alexa in the library to find out the direct cupboard number. As the PUMBA library has approx 1000 students and less number of staff, this voice-based book locator service would be used heavily in near future. Apart from the book locator service, information for the selection of relevant books with other applications of AI will be introduced. The library has already implemented the QR code technology (Publication: Kharat, S. A., Panage, B. M., & Nagarkar, S. (2017). Use of QR code and Layar app for academic library services. Library Hi Tech News, 34(3), 21–28. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-12-2016-0060.) And will use more AI based applications in near future.
Conclusion: - Amazon Alexa & their skill is one the artificial intelligent tools. But smartness is more users’ friendly than intelligent and smartness is nothing but the development of smart services using new tools and to satisfy smart users of the library. In short, provide smart service to smart users using smart equipment. It is up to individual librarians how they incorporate new technology into practice. The library can deliver voice experiences service to the users. Anyone can build skills into Alexa easily and without coding. Academic libraries will be more popular in the future by their voice service using Amazon Alexa.
FINALIST 3:
Modernizing the Monograph Purchase: Moving from Paper Slips to the "Purchase Request Platform"
Daniel Huang, Maccabee Levine, and Boaz Nadav Manes
Lehigh University
The Lehigh University Libraries realized that while we were receiving a significant number of paper tickets of lost, missing, and often requested/used monographs, there was no central receiving or decision-making point for those paper tickets. When the Libraries tried to purchase replacement or supplemental print copies, we discovered that managing the decision process was far from systematized and relied on email, in-person conversations, or other methods that delayed our response time. Nor was there oversight and service standards assessment.
Having learned from our previous use of the Jira ticketing system regarding the power of collaboration, we applied that knowledge to create a new type of middleware that did similar collaboration but added the transformative toolkit of hooks from external systems into one decision process: the Purchase Request Platform (PRP). We also wanted to make this freely available for any library to implement, versus a custom Jira setup.
Past requests at the library can be entered via barcode wand at the circulation desk or other identifier in the back office into Jira. The resulting Jira tickets are populated with information from external sources:
-Vendors (currently Amazon Prime, but we are working on including Ingram, GOBI, Oasis, and others)
-Usage data from our internal circulations
-Consortial holdings
-ILL usage (coming soon)
-And more!
Subject and outreach librarians are able to collaborate not only with Circulation staff but also Acquisitions personnel to quickly make decisions without doing repetitive lookups of information sources. All stakeholders can instead focus on collaborating to make a great purchase decision even faster! And if there is no time, the Purchase Request Platform will eventually help automate those decisions on top of Jira’s accountability and oversight features.
The Purchase Request Platform is built with flexibility in mind. Any publisher, broker, etc. can provide an API to automatically embed information on availability, format types, price, etc. We are committed to developing the PRP further to include direct patron requests, quarterly review of ILL statistics as a form of DDA, and strea
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