Caltech Library News

A Farewell from University Librarian Kara Whatley

This message will be my final greeting as Caltech’s university librarian, and I would like to take a moment to reflect on what the Library has accomplished in the last five years. The Caltech Library staff, including the Caltech Archives & Special Collections, are an amazing team dedicated to supporting the mission of the Institute, and I have been privileged to work with all of them. I am proud of what we have accomplished together, and I know they are, too.

EVENTS

One of the greatest areas of growth since 2019 is in our programming and outreach efforts, especially in our student focused events. In collaboration with the Graduate Studies Office, we’ve produced 3MT and Dissertation Writer’s Bootcamp events for our graduate students each of the past three years.

• 3MT: From 2021 to 2024, Caltech Library's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) event—an academic research communication competition developed by The University of Queensland in Australia—awarded over $25,000 in prizes with support from the American Physical Society, EBSCO, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Science of Synthesis/Thieme Chemistry, Springer/Nature, Wiley, and more. The Three Minute Thesis competition challenges Caltech graduate students to explain their research in an engaging and clear three-minute talk intended for a non-specialist audience. 

• Dissertation Writers Bootcamp: The Caltech Library and the Graduate Studies Office Dissertation Writers Bootcamp provides a calm, distraction-free environment for writing, along with refreshments and writing and formatting support. Over the two days, optional consultations with the Hixon Writing Center and Caltech librarians will help students address formatting, copyright, data, and writing questions.  We hold two bootcamps per academic year, and each one hosts 12-18 dissertation writers.

• S.F.L. = Stress Free Library: Each term we turn Sherman Fairchild Library, aka SFL, into the Stress Free Library during midterms and finals. SFL provides twenty-four hour study space and services to all Caltech students along with evening snacks and hot water, puzzle breaks, visits from the Huntington Hospital Pet Assisted Therapy volunteers (“the puppies”), our soundscape study and retreat room, and much more. We also sneak a little stress reduction in over the late spring, all summer, and early fall with our SFL Amphitheater outdoor movie nights.

• PST ART: The Caltech Archives was awarded a grant to prepare for the next edition of the region-wide arts initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x L.A., scheduled to open in 2024. Caltech is one of 45 cultural, educational, and scientific institutions throughout Southern California to receive support from the Getty Foundation for their projects, all of which will explore the intersection of art and science.
  
  The Caltech Archives’ project, “Crossing Over: Art & Science at Caltech, 1920-2020,” will tell stories from Caltech’s 133 years of using art and images in science and engineering research, science communication, and building campus community.
  
  Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x L.A. will include dozens of simultaneous exhibitions and programs focused on the intertwined histories of art and science, past and present, that together address some of the most complex challenges of the 21st century—from climate change and environmental racism to the current pandemic and artificial intelligence—and the creative solutions these problems demand. Read more >

PROJECTS

The running joke around the Caltech Library is that I’ve never met a project I didn’t like, and there is some truth to that. Over the past five years, we’ve migrated all of our back-end library systems and implemented a few new systems solutions, such as ARES, our online course reserves tool that is linked to Caltech’s Canvas courses. Below are a few of the behind-the-scenes projects we’ve done to help bring a better library experience to the Caltech community.

• EZ Proxy > Open Athens: After upgrading our proxy server, which allowed off-campus access to Library materials without using the VPN for improved security and performance for users, we switched off-campus authentication methods from EZproxy to OpenAthens. Read more about Caltech's VPN.

• EBSCO/FOLIO/LibSearch: After much research and deliberation, the Caltech Library adopted the FOLIO Library Services Platform (LSP) for use starting in the fall 2021 term. FOLIO, which stands for the Future of Libraries Is Open, is “an open-source project supported by many academic libraries worldwide, and a number of commercial vendors, including EBSCO. EBSCO contributes substantially to the technical development of FOLIO software and offers FOLIO hosting and data management services.” FOLIO offers our patrons a more integrated library search experience.

• RFID Inventory: As part of our new system of RFID (radio frequency identification) tagging, we conducted a collection inventory. In addition to confirming what’s on our shelves, the completion of this project means that we can reconcile our holdings with OCLC, helping DocuServe be a better interlibrary loan lending partner and allowing us to update our SCELC Shared Print commitments. Correct SCELC Shared Print commitments will allow other SCELC libraries to weed their collections with confidence in knowing we are retaining copies of these items.

• Invenio RDM: CaltechDATA, our institutional data and software repository, launched a major upgrade on Wednesday, September 21, 2022. InvenioRDM enables Caltech Library to more rapidly roll out new features and collaborate with other institutions to establish repository best practices. Our CaltechAUTHORS repository—home to over 100,000 publications written by Caltech researchers—also migrated to InvenioRDM. Most items in CaltechAUTHORS are articles, but there are also books, book chapters, conference papers, and more. The repository is updated continuously as departments and library staff add available and recently published documents.

• Website Redesign: The Caltech Library website now offers improved navigation, enhanced accessibility, integration with Caltech Archives & Special Collections, streamlined content, and a vibrant visual interface. Read more about the new website >

• NSF Grant: Research Data Specialist Tom Morrell and the CaltechDATA team were awarded a generous grant as part of the National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure program. (The Caltech Library’s very first NSF grant!)  Through a collaboration between the Library and Caltech’s Information Management Systems and Services (IMSS), the award will allow the standard free storage allocation in CaltechDATA to be expanded from 500 GB per research group to 1 TB per researcher. Learn more >

COLLECTIONS

Collections have been a major focus of the Library’s work in the past five years, and we hope you’ve noticed! We’ve negotiated with our publisher/vendor partners to bring our campus the research resources you all need, making access more seamless and putting up fewer barriers to research. Here are a few of our collection highlights: 

• AIAA: Beginning in 2024, we're subscribing to all​ AIAA journals as well as their meeting papers. 

• ASME Read & Publish: Beginning in 2024 if you have an accepted manuscript with ASME and are the corresponding author, you do not pay an article processing charge (APC) - it is free to publish Open Access in their titles. 

• JSTOR Collection Expansion: Our Library recently subscribed to 27 JSTOR Archive Journal Collections. Our new entitlements give us access to almost 3000 journals across every area of research on our campus. 

• IOP Read & Publish: The Library has subscribed to the Institute of Physics comprehensive journal package, IOPscience Extra, and more than 85 journals are included in this new subscription. We have also added read-and-publish to our subscription, meaning that our Library’s IOP subscription covers *both* reading and publishing in their journal titles.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT & GROWTH

As I said at the beginning, we have an amazing staff in the Caltech Library, and they have done a lot of work to grow as a team these past few years. They have leaned into learning new skills, humoring me (at least at first) in team-building activities, and continue to expand the level of service they provide to our community.  

• Staff Development: We’ve done quite a bit of hiring in the last five years! Many of the positions are reconfigurations of existing staff lines but to serve new purposes as the Library evolves, and, even more significantly, many of these positions were filled with internal hires who grew into their new positions by working at Caltech.

  • Head of Business & Operations, Head of Access & Collection Services (2), and Head of Research Services

  • Reference & Instruction Librarian, Access and E-Resource Services Librarian, Systems & Discovery Librarian, Programming and Student Engagement Librarian, Geology & Planetary Sciences Librarian, Humanities & Social Sciences Librarian, Engineering & Applied Science Librarian

  • Library Communication Coordinator, Repository Coordinator, Library Facilities Coordinator

  • Collections & Metadata Archivist, Digital Archivist

  • Exhibition Research Assistant, Library Administrative Assistant (CLOPS), Library Support Assistants (ACS, TechHub)

  • Web Services Project Manager, Metadata Specialist, Systems Administrator and TechHub Manager

  • Librarian & Archivist Interns

• Strategic Plan AY21-AY23 / AY24-27: The Caltech Library devised its first Strategic Plan for AY21-AY23 around the key theme of partnership. This plan serves as the foundation for progress at the Caltech Library and establishes future directions to ensure its growth as a premier research library befitting the world-class research institution it serves. Read the latest strategic plan here >

I feel a little tired after writing that list, but it really only reflects a small portion of what the Caltech Library has achieved! I have enjoyed working with everyone at the Library and across the Caltech campus. It’s truly an extraordinary place to work, and I will miss all of you very much.

Best wishes,

Kara Whatley

University Librarian