It includes collection development policies, guidelines for arranging materials, and examples of how art and artifact collections are described.

It includes position descriptions for library leaders of scholarly communication efforts, charges for SC committees, organization charts, descriptions of SC services, assessment tools, open access policies, and SC resolutions

The management of born-digital materials is still relatively new for ARL libraries, and the survey results show that good practices and workflows are still evolving. New tools are emerging rapidly, and the once solid line between digitized content and born-digital content is beginning to blur. Survey responses indicated that the library and archives profession lacks a common definition of what born-digital content is and a common understanding of who within the organization should manage this content.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describe digital specialists’ job responsibilities, collection policies, gift/purchase agreements, format policies, and workflows.

This SPEC Kit includes examples of programmatic and regional accrediting agency reports from respondents and descriptions of the accreditation process.

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Results and documentation from this survey demonstrate that a variety of collaborative equipment, devices, or systems are available or soon will be available to research library users. Respondents report that offering these tools enhances the users’ learning experiences in and out of the library and also provides improved patron services.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describe available equipment and services, loan policies, instructions for using equipment, and materials promoting the services.

The survey results indicate that all staff who work on a public services desk are responsible for assisting users with disabilities, or at least making a proper referral. Services range from retrieving library materials from the stacks, to assistance searching online resources, to assistance with adaptive technology. Workstations with adaptive technology are common, either in public spaces or special rooms. The most commonly available special software is for text magnification. Scanners are the most commonly available hardware.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describe the services offered, the assistive technology that is available, service policies, user needs assessment, staff training materials, and job requirements for service coordinators.

The survey used a case study approach to reveal developing patterns, unique applications, and anticipated changes in the physical or organizational arrangement of service delivery that may be widely adaptable in other libraries so that they can continue to be the primary information providers for their constituents.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describes the service philosophy, services offered, planning process, and communications about service changes. Also included are floorplans and images of redesigned spaces.

For this study social software was broadly defined as software that enables people to connect with one another online. The survey asked about ten types of applications: 1) social networking sites; 2) media sharing sites; 3) social bookmarking or tagging sites; 4) Wikis; 5) blogs; 6) sites that use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to syndicate and broadcast content; 7) chat or instant messaging (IM) services; 8) VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services; 9) virtual worlds; and 10) widgets.

This survey was distributed to the 123 ARL member libraries in February 2008. Sixty-four libraries completed the survey by the March 14 deadline for a response rate of 52%. All but three of the responding libraries report that their library staff uses social software (95%) and one of those three plans to begin using social software in the future.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents of examples of Web sites that show how each of the ten types of social software is used.

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This survey revealed that library-based support for the digital humanities is offered predominantly on an ad hoc basis. However, as demand for services supporting the digital humanities has grown, libraries have begun to re-evaluate their provisional service and staffing models. Many respondents expressed a desire to implement practices, policies, and procedures that would allow them to cope with increases in demand for services.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describes the mission or purpose of digital humanities centers, the services offered, policies and procedures, examples of digital projects, fellowship and grant opportunities, promotional materials, and repositories for digital projects.

This survey revealed, as the digital preservation field is maturing, that most ARL libraries are rising to the challenge of establishing policies, workflows, and infrastructures to systematically preserve their rapidly expanding bodies of digital content. The survey also revealed that most ARL libraries are actively engaging in in-house digital preservation rather than outsourcing it to external parties, thus maintaining their control and ownership over the digital content that they curate.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describes policies, procedures, and guidelines for digital preservation, cooperative agreements, job descriptions, and data management services.

The survey results clearly demonstrate that socialization activities are widespread and growing in research libraries and archives. The volume of response and detailed sample documents provided are indicative of the prevalence of existing activities and institutional commitment to these programs. There is a perception of the critical importance and value of these activities to the enhancement of organizational success. The plethora of comments on the benefits of socialization programs indicates that ARL members highly value these efforts.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describes orientation, mentoring, and peer socialization programs, and provides examples of orientation websites, orientation/socialization checklists, program evaluation methods, and staff development resources.

The survey results revealed that nearly all of the responding ARL member institutions are employing a form of user engagement, whether or not they refer to it as user experience. While there appears to be a lack of common vocabulary or program standardization, there is a growing awareness of the need to assess libraries from the user perspective—with new positions and even departments created to accomplish this goal. Overall, respondents feel that efforts made in assessing the user experience are well spent. They articulated numerous projects that resulted in major program updates and facility revisions and that were well received by library administration, governing/funding boards, and most importantly, by library users.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describe user experience planning and organization, specific projects, how volunteers are recruited, the role of advisory boards, and job requirements for user experience coordinators, among others.

By the May deadline, responses had been submitted by 75 of the 123 ARL member libraries for a response rate of 61%. Of the responding libraries, 73 (97%) reported including e-books in their collections. According to survey responses, most institutions entered the e-book arena as part of a consortium which purchased an e-book package. The earliest forays occurred in the 1990s but the majority of libraries started e-book collections between 1999 and 2004. Purchasing at the collection level allowed libraries to acquire a mass of titles with a common interface, reducing some of the transition pains to the new format. The downside of collections is that libraries find they are often saddled with titles they would not have selected in print; also, each collection might have a different interface, adding to user frustration.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents in the form of collection development policies, e-book collection Web pages, e-book promotional materials, training materials for staff and users, and e-book reader loan policies.

The survey was distributed to the 123 ARL member libraries in February 2008. Seventy-two libraries completed the survey by the March 31 deadline for a response rate of 59%. The survey responses indicated that the respondents are all managing to get at least some information about their manuscript collections onto the Web. Most of the comments indicated that they want to get more there, but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons, primarily staff and time constraints. Almost all respondents are creating MARC records for their collections; fewer are creating EAD finding aids. A select few have all their manuscript collections represented on the Web in some way, either as a MARC record, a brief blurb in HTML, or an EAD finding aid.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents in the form of manuscript collection Web sites, finding aid Web sites, arrangement and description guidelines, and Web processing procedures.

By the May deadline, responses had been submitted by 76 of the 123 ARL member libraries for a response rate of 62%. Half of the responding institutions have a combined special collections/archives department and all but a few of these process all types of rare books, rare serials, manuscripts, and archival materials. Twenty-seven respondents (36%) indicated that the cataloging of rare books and rare serials was done in another department or unit within the library, usually cataloging or technical services.   Only five respondents indicated that manuscripts and archival materials were processed outside of special collections/archives.

The survey responses speak to the classic issues of the management of processing: how to process collections efficiently but yet adequately so that collections are usable with minimal meditation; how to balance demands for more description and item-level cataloging (digitization) with initiatives to make more collections available (“more product, less processing”); and how to manage staff effectively and to assess processing progress.   From the survey results it is clear that the respondents agree on core principles for processing (such as what is fully processed collection, what makes a good processor, and the challenges facing processors), but in practice the application of these principles are tempered by institutional practices, traditions, and resources.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents in the form of processing policies and procedures, processing worksheets, statistics, and job descriptions.

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