Fresno State pioneers collaborative project to digitize aerial photos

Staff at Fresno State’s Madden Library recently partnered with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Kennedy Library for a pilot aerial imagery digitization project to strengthen maps and aerial imagery collections, discoverability, and access across CSU campuses.

“In general, maps and aerial photographs are not easily discoverable by potential users and can require extensive assistance from library personnel to identify and access,” said Fresno’s project members Carol Doyle and David Drexler, and Patrick Newell, who was recently named Dean of CSU Chico’s Meriam Library.

Developing MALT

To address the growing need for accessible aerial images, the group used a wide-format scanner and vacuum wall to photograph delicate images. Project members then digitized thousands of aerial images spanning decades of historic development in the Central Valley. After this initial processing, Fresno State developed the Map and Aerial Locator Tool, or MALT, a map interface able to identify aerial images by year for a given area.

“We had long dreamed of an online, end-user accessible, interactive, map-based locator tool that would facilitate searching for maps and aerial photographs corresponding to a specific user-defined location: one search finding specific location matches across different flights, individual maps or maps series, and collections,” the group added.

Accelerating the process

Cal Poly’s Kennedy Library staff and faculty contributed to MALT’s map-based index by devising novel, time-saving ways to geolocate images in MALT, and the team is currently exploring automated approaches to rapidly geolocate bulk sets of scanned imagery.

Cal Poly’s unique, indexed, and suitable aerial image sets from various years were another reason why the campus was a perfect partner for the project, according to Russ White, Kennedy Library Numeric and Spatial Data Specialist.

“Fresno has the hardware and the expertise to do the scanning, so our role revolved around providing the content and methodology for streamlining this project,” White said.

Expanding the project

By combining digitization capacity, new content, and best practices, Fresno and Cal Poly are motivated to expand this successful pilot to content held in Cal Poly’s Special Collections and Archives, regional local history partners, other CSU libraries, and other organizations with historical images.

“The more collections and collaborators added, the more useful the tools will be.  We have spoken to University of California libraries, public libraries, government agencies, and historical societies about the project and are interested in furthering those conversations,” Fresno State said.

MALT as a model

Ultimately, the team believes this proof-of-concept project can serve as a model for other libraries and agencies to identify, process, and provide access to historical maps and aerial imagery not currently available for web mapping and research.

“Map collections that digitize and share maps online have a large number of overlapping, common needs,” the Fresno State group explained.

Beyond the project

In addition to creating a platform and method for other organizations, this ongoing project aims to develop MALT metadata for eventual inclusion in broader catalogues and searches, such as Open Geoportal.

“I hope to see MALT as something that can eventually be integrated into a larger catalogue or group,” said Jeanine Scaramozzino, Data Services Librarian and a project leader at Cal Poly. “Joining forces and working cooperatively is not always easy to do but I think this is a good example of how CSU campuses can work together.”

Equitable Access, Public Stewardship, and Access to Scholarly Information

The following is a statement of the California State University Council of Library Deans:

The twenty-three libraries serving nearly 500,000 students and scholars at California State University’s diverse campuses are firmly committed to their mission of providing equitable access to academic and professional information resources to every student and scholar.  We are equally committed to the principle of responsible stewardship of the public funds entrusted to us to meet our mission of service to these students and scholars.

It is therefore with deep regret that we share the news with our colleagues and the students and faculty we serve, that on December 19, 2014, we made the decision not to continue, as a system, to provide system-wide access to a collection of over 1300 electronic journals published by a major publisher of scholarly and professional journals, John Wiley and Company.

We were unable to reach an agreement with Wiley and Company that met our fundamental goal of providing equitable access to information across all 23 campuses.  The terms offered to the CSU by Wiley and Company would have cost more than many of our campuses could afford.  This meant that several campuses would be forced to cancel their subscriptions, and that these campuses’ share of the total package costs would be remanded to other campuses. This was not acceptable to us.

As well, we were unable to reach an agreement with Wiley that met our responsibility for careful stewardship of limited public funds.  The terms offered by Wiley and Company would have meant a cost increase of 10-12% across the CSU system: nearly double the average reported 2014 journal inflation rates reported by Library Journal in 2014. While Wiley and Company offered access to additional content as part of their terms, the CSU libraries did not find the value of the additional content compelling.  Our records showed that most of this additional content was unneeded and seldom-consulted.

The CSU libraries offered to maintain their system-wide license with a smaller package of several hundred electronic journals that would have met both these core principles: equitable access, and responsible stewardship.  This offer was rejected by Wiley and Company.

While we were unable to reach an agreement with Wiley and Company to implement this smaller package license at this time, we remain hopeful that we can reach agreement with Wiley and Company by or before January 2016 to license a smaller number of journals that have been determined to be of the most importance to students and scholars in the CSU system, based on data analysis and close consultation with CSU faculty and scholars.

The CSU is not the first university library system that has chosen to reduce the number of low-use journal subscriptions provided to their students and scholars through “big deal” journal packages.

Others have also chosen this path, and in the process retained access to journals where the need is greater, while also retaining the flexibility to add or remove titles based on the scholarly needs of their campuses.

Among the universities that have adopted this strategy are Harvard University; the University of Minnesota; the University of Oregon; Oregon State University; Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; California Institute of Technology; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Purdue University; and University of Kansas (Bergstrom et al. 2014; Nable and Fowler, 2011).

The CSU libraries network will be working closely with one another throughout 2015 to support every campus in its transition.  We remain committed to working together to provide the highest quality information resources to all our students and faculty, at a reasonable price. Each campus library is also developing an interim strategy to best support the needs of their campus in 2015.

The CSU libraries understand that all scholars and faculty, as well as students and academic leaders, have crucial roles to play both as producers and consumers of scholarly information.  Their research, advocacy, and initiative are vital in seeking and supporting sustainable paths for scholarly publishing that do not result in a world of scholarly haves and have-nots; and that do not result in their libraries spending scarce public resources on products that do not benefit their students and faculty.

For more information about the costs to libraries of scholarly publications: Library Journal, Periodicals Price Survey, 2014

For more information about “big deal” journal bundling:

Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Karla Streib and Julia Blixrud. The State of Large-Publisher Bundles in 2012.

Bergstrom, Theodore et al. “Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles” (2014), PNAS v. 111, n. 26, pp. 9425-9430.

Nabe, Jonathan and David Fowler, “Leaving the Big Deal:  Consequences and Next Steps” (2011).  Conference Papers and Presentations, Paper 14.

Campus statements:

• Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
• CSU East Bay
• CSU Fullerton
• CSU Long Beach
• CSU Northridge
• CSU San Marcos statement and follow up
• San Diego State University
• San Francisco State University
• Sonoma State University

Expanding and transforming the J. Paul Leonard Library

At San Francisco State University, an expansion and renovation of the library building came with a chance to improve learning spaces.

Completed in 2012, the campus’ new J. Paul Leonard Library expanded its group and individual study spaces, as well as added study rooms with extended hours and new furniture.

The whole idea was to create areas that were flexible for students to use them as they needed, said Darlene Tong, the library’s former head of Information, Research and Instructional Services. Tong was the library’s lead on the project because of her familiarity with the library building and its history.

“We really wanted to have open study spaces,” Tong said. “Our buzz word, our mantra was ‘flexibility.’ ”

But the university didn’t immediately embrace that concept of library space, Tong said.

“I think the campus really didn’t understand the idea of flexibility,” Tong said. “They kept reflecting on other campus buildings that claim a need for flexibility, but in their experience, occupants move in and stay that way for 20 years. We kept telling them, ‘Libraries aren’t like that!’ ”

Instead of focusing primarily on book storage and stewardship, the new plan for the library expansion and renovation focused on creating multi-use spaces and maximizing the space available.

Those spaces include the research commons, a 24-hour study area with group study rooms, desktop computers, laptop loans and a quiet study room; the study commons, another computer-equipped space with extended hours as well as quiet and group study spaces; and the second floor corridor, a popular, casual meeting place for students with whiteboards and moveable furniture.

The need to expand

These spaces, now bustling, were sorely needed before the expansion, said University Librarian Deborah Masters.

“We had six group study rooms and virtually no other place that was suitable or congenial for group study and collaborative group projects,” Masters said.

The old library also had a small 24-hour computer lab with 35 stations, as well as about 120 seats in a study room. That wasn’t nearly enough, Masters said.

Students needed room to collaborate, as well as have access to technology, or study quietly if they preferred, Masters said. So the library worked with architects, planners and groups of faculty, staff and students to devise a new plan for the library layout.

The resulting floor plan expanded study space from a handful of rooms to two learning commons, called the research commons and the study commons, as well as extensive areas for individual and interactive study. In all, the expansion increased the library’s square footage by 28 percent, or 79,042 square feet, for a total of 361,542 gross square feet.

Both the research commons and study commons have group study rooms as well as quiet study spaces, and both boast flexible hours. And the new group study rooms also include media:scape furniture so students can bring their own device and work together on them. Media:scape tables allow students to connect laptops and project images onto a large, shared screen. They also added IdeaPaint to walls in each of the group study rooms, which allows students to use the walls as whiteboards.

Making room

Of course, study space doesn’t just appear out of thin air. The library committee that worked on the building project had to figure out how to maximize the available floor space without sacrificing collections, all while keeping with CSU guidelines, Tong said.

“There’s a mandate from the CSU that a certain amount of your collections needs to be in some sort of compact retrieval system,” Tong said.

The committee wanted to keep collections on-site and readily available, so they brought in an automated storage and retrieval system, allowing the library to store books in a compact but easily accessible space.

“We wanted to keep the library where it was and we didn’t have much space to build out, so we chose the automated retrieval system. And one of the key reasons we chose it, besides being able to keep our collections on-site, was to free up what space we did have available for public use,” Tong said.

That automated storage and retrieval system now stores 75 percent of the library’s collections, with 25 percent of books still stored in traditional stacks. This means there’s more room available in the library for those flexible study spaces, Tong said.

Flexing their floor plan

Part of that flexibility is apparent in an unexpected place: a wide corridor on the second floor. The corridor leads to instruction rooms, so it has a lot of foot traffic, Masters said. Planners had the foresight to fill it with moveable furniture so that students could stop and study there and customize their experience.

“Students use that corridor very actively for interactive collaborative work, and they can just form whatever size group they want by moving the furniture around and moving the whiteboards around, so it is great,” Masters said.

The moveable whiteboards were so popular that students started taking them via elevator to other floors, so the library invested in whiteboards for every floor. And the library’s corridor, as well as research and study commons, was enormously popular.

“In the research commons and the study commons, and along the second floor corridor, I would say in the fall and spring semesters, at least, almost all of the time, every seat is taken. … If you build it, they certainly did come,” Masters said with a laugh.

Expanding the idea of the commons

In the end, the library discovered that the idea of a learning commons as a flexible study space can be applied throughout the library, Masters said.

“You don’t necessarily have to have one single space that is defined this way. You can have some dimensions of a learning commons in various spaces in the building, depending on how your layout works,” Masters said.

For Tong, the library building has become a campus-wide example that shows how effective flexible spaces can be in providing for students’ needs. And the university has embraced the new model, Tong said:

“Now the campus is saying, ‘Oh, the library is an example of how all campus buildings should be designed now, with the idea of flexibility and spaces that can be used in many different ways.’ ”