The University of Florida (UF) George A. Smothers Libraries have been involved in a wide range of partnered digital collection projects throughout the years with a focus on collaborating with ...institutions across the Caribbean region. One of the countries that we have a number of digitization projects within is Cuba. One of these partnerships is with the library of the Temple Beth Shalom (Gran Sinagoga Bet Shalom) in Havana, Cuba. As part of this partnership, we have sent personnel over to Cuba to do onsite scanning and digitization of selected materials found within the institution. The digitized content from this project was brought back to UF and loaded into our University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) system. Because internet availability and low bandwidth are issues in Cuba, the Synagogue's ability to access the full-text digitized content residing on UFDC was an issue. The Synagogue also did not have a local digital library system to load the newly digitized content. To respond to this need we focused on providing a minimalist technology solution that was highly portable to meet their desire to conduct full-text searches within their library on their digitized content. This article will explore the solution that was developed using a USB flash drive loaded with a PortableApps version of Zotero loaded with multilingual OCR's documents.
Founded in 1934, the Vatican School of Librarianship, in its early days, aimed at forming both secular and religious librarians following the North American library tradition. Later on, teaching has ...been largely based on international standards. A brief outline of the initial setting of the School is provided. Presently, the School includes eight courses, ranging from those having a more historical approach to ones which focus on specific more technical skills, such as cataloguing, metadata and data management, reference services, document delivery and information literacy, library services, networking and digital libraries, preservation of printed material, and digital archives. In order to maintain the native hands-on approach, theoretical teaching is backed by lectures and laboratory lessons with practical exercises and teaching on the field. Moreover, internships have been agreed with libraries and educational institutions.
To keep up pace with job-market requirements, a series of workshops aiming at providing students with soft skills is organized each year. By taking active part in these workshops, they are confronted with the need to rely upon common sense, the ability to deal with peers, and the need to develop a positive and flexible attitude. In order to assess their satisfaction and to get some useful feedback for further enhancing the quality of teaching, a survey was carried out among current and previous students.
Professional literature about the assessment of digital libraries reflects a growing interest in both improving the user experience and in justifying the creation of digital collections to multiple ...stakeholders. This article explores some of the key themes in digital library assessment literature through a review of current literature (2004-14) gathered from both scholarly and popular resources online. The majority of scholarship about digital library assessment utilizes usability testing and Web statistics for data collection, while studies about altmetrics, the reuse of digital library materials, cost benefit analysis, and the holistic evaluation of digital libraries are also present in the literature. Exploring the literature about digital library assessment allows libraries to create effective and sustainable evaluation models based on the successes and shortcomings of previously completed projects.
Purpose
Biennially, the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association, publishes a report on the top trends and issues affecting academic ...libraries in higher education. Harris (2016) used the trends and issues reported by the ACRL to inform a document and thematic analysis of publications written on Jamaican academic librarianship 2010-2016, to investigate the trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship. Harris’ (2016) paper however noted that a survey of the chief librarian in each library, regarding their perceptions of the trends and issues would be a useful follow-up to her study, and cited this as a limitation/implication of her paper. The purpose of this paper is to address the above limitation and is therefore the follow-up to Harris’ (2016) paper.
Design/methodology/approach
The chief librarians in five of the six local university libraries were surveyed to provide insights into the trends and issues in Jamaican academic libraries at the university level.
Findings
Acquisitions, budget, staffing, communicating value, digital preservation and curation, mobile environment, collaboration, scholarly communication, information technology, space, higher education, user behaviour and expectations and information literacy are the top trends and issues in Jamaican academic libraries at the university level.
Research limitations/implications
This survey seeks to complement rather than contest Harris’ (2016) research. Perhaps a useful follow-up to both papers would be biennial updates. Additionally, a survey of the trends and issues in all types of academic libraries throughout the English-speaking Caribbean would be a useful follow-up.
Originality/value
This paper is of value, as it is the first survey of trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship. It enriches the existing document and thematic analytical research on trends and issues in Jamaican academic libraries by adding an empirical component. It also increases the number of publications, on trends and issues in Jamaican academic librarianship, from one to two, and allows voices from the English-speaking Caribbean (Jamaica) to be incorporated into the literature dedicated to trends and issues in academic libraries.
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