Volume 21, Number 1 | May 2023

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Funding for Arca Safeguards Digital Treasures

Arca Digital Repository will receive $500,000 from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills (PSFS) to migrate its technical infrastructure – which is reaching end-of-life – to Islandora 2. This critical funding ensures that Arca’s current digital collections will continue to be safely preserved and openly accessible. Once migrated, the new infrastructure will also improve the Arca experience for both member sites and visitors searching through collections.

Read the full Arca Funding announcement

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New WriteAway Coordinator Excited to Broaden Writing Support Access

BC ELN is delighted to welcome Ellen Flournoy as the new WriteAway Writing Services Coordinator. Ellen brings a wealth of experience in coordinating writing centres and writing programs at multiple post-secondary institutions. Her background in Rhetoric and Composition and many adventures in online teaching and academic support have prepared her to hit the ground running with WriteAway.

Close up of Ellen Flournoy. She smiles directly into the camera.

Virtual Orientation Launch: Join us!

The BC ELN Office is pleased to launch a new online BC ELN orientation series! Geared toward new partner library staff, but also great for folks who would like a refresher, this self-paced and engaging orientation explains BC ELN, its service areas, and how to participate effectively as a member. The orientation series is designed to support BC ELN’s strategic direction to empower and engage our community.

Join us on Wed. May 24th from 10-11 am (PT) for the virtual launch of the orientation series. Register here.

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BC ELN Welcomes Coquitlam College

After a year of provisional status, Coquitlam College officially became a BC ELN Associate Member in December 2022. Established in 1982, Coquitlam College offers a 2-year Associate of Arts Degree program for new or transferring students. We recently visited the College and spoke with librarian Billy Augustine to learn more about the school, why there was a desire to join BC ELN, and the difference it is making for students.

Read about our recent visit to Coquitlam College

A view of study carrels in the library of Coquitlam College. Students sit at the study carrels doing work.

Collaboration Makes an Impact in 2022

Did you know that BC ELN’s collaborative services save the BC and Yukon post-secondary sectors a combined $10.5 million? Financial impact is just one of many ways BC ELN makes a difference. By taking a collaborative approach, partner libraries can offer students more, get support from an experienced team, and join innovative services. Read the Innovation & Success report to learn more about our collective impact in 2022.

An accessible version of the report and past Innovation & Success reports are also available

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BC ELN Executive Director Receives BCLA Honourary Life Membership

Anita Cocchia received an honourary life membership at the 2023 BC Library Conference, recognizing her 33 years of service to libraries. For the last 23 of those years, Anita has led BC ELN as Executive Director. As we approach Anita’s retirement this summer, we invite folks to share their best wishes, appreciations, photos, memories, and/or brief stories with her through a collective memory book.

Share your memories - text or image - with Anita

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BC ELN Service Updates

Arca Digital Repository

BC ELN has received funding from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills to support Arca’s migration to Islandora 2. Starting this year, this critical migration will result in a robust and sustainable infrastructure with capacity to grow with the evolving needs of participating organizations.

Arca membership continues to expand! Several new sites have joined the service, including BC ELN institutions University Canada West and Nicola Valley Institute of Technology.

BC ELN has launched Loupe, a shared repository for partner libraries that have limited resources and smaller collections. This advances Arca’s vision of putting a digital repository within reach for all institutions.

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Arca Partnerships

Did you know BC ELN has a special relationship with the BC History Digitization Program to help prospective grant applicants? Through the BC ELN-BCHDP Support Service, BC ELN staff provides a range of support, including referrals to best practice resources, help with sample workflows and metadata templates for planning digitization projects, and constructive feedback on application drafts.

In the 2023/24 application cycle, the BC ELN-BCHDP Support Service assisted 14 GLAM organizations with their applications for the BCHDP grants this past year, four of which were BC ELN partner institutions. Of the six assisted organizations that submitted final applications, five were successfully awarded grant funding.

Two of the five grant recipients that received BC ELN assistance will be making use of the BCHDP-Arca Hosting Service and ingesting their collections into the BCHDP child site at no cost. Any BC ELN partner institutions that are interested in applying to the 2024/25 cycle of BCHDP funding are encouraged to reach out to us for assistance as soon as possible!

AskAway Chat Research Help

AskAway saw a healthy 13% increase in chat sessions in January-April 2023 over the same time period in 2022. This bump in usage is in line with expectations as more institutions join proactive chat.

AskAway is getting ready for upcoming action planning! Participating libraries have been invited to share feedback on their AskAway experiences through surveys, and a collaborative survey of Canadian chat reference services is also on the go. Collected data will be shared and used to inform two virtual action planning sessions slated for mid-May and early June.

AskAway Admin Centre staff attended the recent North American Virtual Reference Conference (NAVROC), which had a theme of “Wholehearted Libraries: Meeting the Needs of Community”. Check out student librarian Sydney Brogden’s reflections on some of the interesting tensions affecting virtual services like AskAway.

“Great help today! They gave me the information I needed to complete my reference properly without just giving me the answer. We worked on it together which gave me the ability to learn what I was doing. Thank you!”

Camosun College undergraduate student, first-time using AskAway

Illume Resource Sharing

BC ELN has successfully negotiated a new five-year contract for SHAREit, Illume’s software platform. The contract is highly favourable with modest yearly increases, and certain fees have also been waived. Cost savings will allow the Illume network to explore software enhancements requested by libraries.

It was a long journey, but Illume’s BC ELN libraries can now celebrate the elimination of ILL fees for non-returnables! While eliminating these fees was the project end-goal, the work has resulted in multiple benefits: load-levelling has been optimized, requesting has been streamlined, best practices have been implemented, and ultimately: libraries will save time and money.

The Illume Support Centre recently completed an analysis of turn-around statistics (how quickly a patron receives their item) over the past five years, to help evaluate the "health" of the Illume system. Public libraries have held steady with over 50% of books received in under 2 weeks, and post-secondary libraries have seen the percentage of copy requests received in under 4 days increase from 72% in 2019 to nearly 82% in 2022.

Licensing

BC ELN has made excellent strides towards securing a new Undergraduate Resource Bundle (URB). Driven by partner library feedback, the Office has pursued a multi-year license that bundles Academic Search and Business Source for interested libraries, while also securing opt-in pricing for institutions that prefer annual, single-product license agreements. The aim is to confirm pricing and participation by mid-2023, well in advance of the URB start date (June 2024).

The BC ELN Model License is currently being updated. Working with a contract specialist, the Office is reviewing terms and conditions across license agreements to ensure they are up-to-date and consistent across resources. More news will be shared as this project evolves.

WriteAway Online Writing Support

This spring WriteAway welcomed a new coordinator for the service, Ellen Flournoy. The entire WriteAway community is very appreciative of Tanya Burnstad’s excellent work the past year keeping the system humming along smoothly during a long transition period leading up to Ellen’s arrival. Tanya will be missed, and we wish her the best.

WriteAway traffic through the 2023 spring session (2,329 tutor responses) has remained steady compared with the previous year (2,424 tutor responses). WriteAway continues to be an important component of student support as writing centres find equilibrium between face-to-face and online learning assistance.

WriteAway has seen an increase in the number of second and third draft submissions, indicating a growing understanding of WriteAway’s process-based pedagogy. Knowing that revising beyond the first draft is important for student development, it is encouraging to see students take advantage of the opportunity to get progressive feedback.

“This is my second paper I have sent to WriteAway. The coaching and frank feedback is incredibly helpful. I have learned a lot that I can apply to future papers…. Also, it was great to get three different people’s feedback - they each focused on different aspects and I learned a lot from all three of them.”

North Island College WriteAway User

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