2017 American Theological Library Association Annual Conference

Augsburg College and Luther Seminary are located less than four miles from one another, share a common history, and recently began sharing IT resources and instructional spaces. While Augsburg and Luther remain independent legal entities, in early 2016 our presidents challenged leaders on both campuses to explore opportunities for a strategic alliance.

The library directors and staff members collaborated to create a shared vision that would leverage the alliance to achieve enhanced services and programs, greater innovation, and cost-effectiveness.

This two-person panel will detail key points of our planning process, differences between college and seminary libraries, various questions/problems raised along the way, and our initial work of implementation.

Recent high-profile plagiarism cases have highlighted the challenge documented cases of plagiarism in published works present for libraries. Librarians must consider whether to pull items from shelves, add notes to physical items or catalog records, or leave previously-valuable research in place. In this session, we consider how libraries should handle documented cases of plagiarism by exploring the recent case of Peter O’Brien’s admitted plagiarism in his New Testament commentaries. There are two components of this presentation. First, we will report on a survey of ATLA librarians regarding policies and/or procedures of handling plagiarism in their institutions. To facilitate this, we are distributing an online survey through email. Second, we will have a panel conversation with a public services librarian, interested in the instructional value of documented plagiarism; a special collections librarian, interested in matters related to the access and description of the particular works in question; and a faculty member, interested in how to handle documented plagiarists in research and citation. We have intentionally selected panelists from the same institution to demonstrate how these roles interact with one another in one particular situation. After introducing the O’Brien case and reporting on a summary of how ATLA institutions have handled this particular case, each panel member will consider the problems (or opportunities) instances of plagiarism present for his or her role in theological education.

Join Danielle Cooper (Senior Researcher, Library and Scholarly Communication, ITHAKA S+R), Roger Schonfeld (Director, Libraries and Scholarly Communication Program, ITHAKA S+R) and others to continue the discussion about the ITHAKA S+R report Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Religious Studies Scholars. Attendees are invited to ask their questions, share their comments, and participate in a discussion about the research results, areas for further exploration, and implications of the research for religious studies and theology libraries and librarians.

As part of a broader Ithaka S+R project, “to study the research practices of scholars by discipline,” a number of libraries participated in “Looking at the Research Needs of Religious Studies Scholars.” Theological and Religious Studies faculty were solicited and interviewed, recordings were commercially transcribed and transcripts were coded by the investigating librarians. Results were analyzed in local reports as well as gathered in a national report published by Ithaka.

In this panel session, four libraries will share their unique context and findings from this ethnographic research. Together, panelists will speculate on the implications of the local and national analysis on library services specifically related to this group of scholars and the position of libraries within scholarly communication. There will be an opportunity for audience members to ask questions and share their experiences with faculty research practices.

At the 2016 Annual Conference, participants of the Small Libraries group talked about various collaborative projects. A few libraries in this group are creating information literacy videos to be shared with other small libraries. This session will cover the overall organization of the project and talk about how we created the videos and how we are sharing the videos. Participants will be encouraged to share ideas that they have for possible videos and to volunteer to create videos for the project.

The Small Libraries Interest Group will be having our FIRST meeting as an official interest group at the end of this session. Join us!  

ATLA Press publishes open access resources that identify major works, issues of contention, and schools of thought that propel research in religion and theology; develop knowledge and skills in librarianship, pedagogy, research methodology; and represent specialized topics of interest in religion and theology. Join the Editors in Chief of the four ATLA Press imprints (Summary of Proceedings, monographs, Theological Librarianship, and Theology Cataloging Bulletin) to hear about the current state of their publications as well as future visions and plans. They will also share information about working with an editor to turn ideas into a final published product.