March 13, 2023

The WRLC is pleased to announce that Kimberly Armstrong has been selected as Executive Director, beginning May 1, 2023.

Ms. Armstrong joins WRLC from the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a library consortium serving over 30 academic libraries in the Pacific Northwest, where she is currently the Executive Director. She has previously served as Director of Library Initiatives at the Big Ten Academic Alliance.

Please join us in welcoming Ms. Armstrong as Executive Director. Her experience and commitment to excellence will serve WRLC well in maintaining high-level services while building for the future.

Tuesday, May 23rd - 24th, 2023

Location Update

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the 2023 WRLC Annual Meeting will be a virtual event this year. The WRLC is grateful to Gallaudet University for graciously willing to host and their understanding in the delay of meeting in-person.

Concurrent Sessions Call for Proposals

Share your ideas and your expertise with your colleagues in the WRLC community! The Annual Meeting concurrent sessions are designed to provide you or a group of your Consortium colleagues an opportunity to share what you know with others in the Consortium. Each concurrent session lasts 45 minutes. Proposals that incorporate interaction, discussion, and creativity are encouraged.

Submit your Annual Meeting concurrent session proposal by Friday,Apr 21, 2023

The big Library of Congress Subject Heading change this month is that all subject headings with “Maori” have been changed to “Māori”. Many headings, including “Māori (New Zealand people)” and “Art, Māori” have been updated with this spelling.

A few other updates worth noting:

• “Populism and the arts” and “Populism in mass media” have been added as new headings

• “Maternity in art” has been canceled because the heading is covered by “Motherhood in art”

When the Reparative Cataloging Subgroup met in February, the following examples of work being done around the profession were shared and may be of interest:

• PCC published the Guiding Principles for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Metadata Creation

• OCLC’s locally preferred subjects for display and search

• UNC’s Homosaurus macro for OCLC Connexion

The monthly Reparative Cataloging Subgroup meetings are open to all who are interested. Be on the lookout for invitations to upcoming meetings on WRLC Basecamp groups, or contact the chair, Jen Froetschel , for more information.

Preservation Week will be April 30-May 6, 2023 this year. Preservation Week inspires action to preserve personal, family, and community collections in addition to library, museum, and archive collections. It also raises awareness of the role libraries and other cultural institutions play in providing ongoing preservation education and information. WRLC’s Preservation Advisory Committee will be highlighting work that is being done in this area throughout our consortium both in this space and elsewhere. Preservation work takes many forms - from the physical repair and preservation of a historic photograph like this one at Georgetown University, to the ongoing migration of digital materials to PAW, the Preservation Archive for WRLC.

APAC's Idea of the Month

Ignore call number prefix (subfield K) when indexing for Call Number Browse

The Alma/Primo Advisory Committee's (APAC) March Idea of the Month recommendation seeks to improve the functionality of the call number browse.

Currently, when a user browses by call number, items that have a call number prefix are sorted according to the prefix rather than the subject-related classification. This hides titles from patrons seeking to explore a library's holdings by call number. So, for example, if a library places the DSM-5 in a reference collection with the call number *REF RC455.2.C4 D54 2013* and older editions of the DSM in the circulating collection, browsing the *RC455.2.C4* call number will only find the older editions--to find the DSM-5, you'd have to browse *REF RC455.2.C4*.

Or the library has a curriculum materials collection where call numbers begin with *CMC*. If a set of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia books are shelved in the CMC, browsing *PR6023.E926* for Lewis's works will not find those books. This Idea Exchange post asks that the browse search arrange call numbers together regardless of prefix to enhance the functionality of this online browse.

Ex Libris hosts the Idea Exchange to enable customers to influence the development of new features and solutions. Anyone with an Idea Exchange login can use their 25 votes to support their favorite ideas. Each month, the WRLC Alma/Primo Advisory Committee (APAC) will highlight an idea and encourages you to vote for it to raise its visibility. If you don't have an Idea Exchange account, just find the "New here? Create an account" link on the idea page. Then enter your email address to start the account creation process.

APAC welcomes nominations for future Ideas of the Month. Anyone can highlight an idea on the WRLC Idea Exchange Basecamp or you can submit ideas to your APAC representative.

- Cindy Bowen (GT)
On behalf of the Alma/Primo Advisory Committee

ASERL Sponsored Professional Development Activities

ASERL offers a wide variety of webinars at no cost for members and other interested professionals. Follow the linked program title for full details and to register for an event.

NOTE: ASERL’s Code of Conduct is in effect for all webinar participants. See http://www.aserl.org/aserl_code_of_conduct/. ASERL webinars are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Using OpenRefine for Cleaning Data

Monday, March 13 2023 at 12:00 PM

When working with a dataset, have you wondered how to remove 'null' or 'N/A' from fields, handle different spellings of words, or determining whether a field name is ambiguous? For this workshop, we will use the open access software, OpenRefine, to clean, manipulate, and refine a dataset before analysis (https://openrefine.org/). Part of the CU Libraries Digital Scholarship Workshop series.

Basic Text Analysis using AntConc

Friday, March 31 2023 at 12:00 PM

Computational analysis of textual data can aid in reading and interpreting large corpora. Exploring many texts can uncover linguistic patterns for future exploratory analysis. Participants will gain hands-on experience analyzing textual data with AntConc(http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/). AntConc has several features including uploading and searching Word and PDF documents, exporting table rows, a corpus manager tool, and much more. No coding experience necessary. Instructor: Kevin Gunn, Coordinator of Digital Scholarship. Part of the CU Libraries Digital Scholarship workshop series.

Registration Now Open for Computers in Libraries 2023

Computers in Libraries is finally back in person this coming March. Registration is now open and WRLC members have a 2023 discount code.

As in the past, CIL is offering library groups the opportunity to participate in their Group Discount Program. Our code is: WRLC23

• Link to register: https://secure.infotoday.com/RegForms/ComputersinLibraries/

• Embedded code link (if you prefer): https://secure.infotoday.com/RegForms/ComputersinLibraries/?Priority=WRLC23

• Program (Going live soon): https://computersinlibraries.infotoday.com/2023/Program.aspx

PASSES

This year, the Gold Pass will be available for the group rate of $649 (regular rate is $899). The Full 3-Day Pass will be $379 (regular rate is $599). (No discount rates are available for the pre-conference workshops unless purchased as part of a Gold Pass.) In addition, a discounted price of $619 (regularly $749) on the Library Leaders Summit (includes all three days of CIL), is also available.

• Access and Education Librarian, Department Head - Marymount University

• Program Associate, Center for Undergraduate Fellowships & Research - The George Washington University

• China Studies Librarian - The George Washington University

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