Shannon Pritting: ready.
Shannon Pritting: So I just wanted to say thank you to stephanie hell sure at the end, she is a resource sharing librarian with.
Shannon Pritting: over nine years of experience in resource sharing.
Shannon Pritting: And more than half of that time she's been involved in.
Shannon Pritting: Creating or or purchasing procuring accessible formats.
Shannon Pritting: Right now she's the resource sharing librarian at upstate medical university and she's involved in CSR sees resource sharing special interest group.
Shannon Pritting: And she's the Chair of that group and she's also an ids mentor and she's a part of the SLC srs working group and.
Shannon Pritting: You know stephanie and I long long ago, when I was still you know someone who considered myself young work together at Syracuse university so it's good to talk to stephanie again.
Shannon Pritting: as well, and thank her for want to thank her for talking about her libraries accessibility workflow for course content.
Shannon Pritting: i'll be keeping track of the chat and is it okay to interrupt you, if there's something that I think is a you know a good stopping point stephanie otherwise we'll just wait for for natural stopping points.
Stephanie Helsher: I think that would be fine.
Shannon Pritting: All right, i'll turn it over to you, thank you very much.
Stephanie Helsher: Thank you Shannon, thank you for those words and the remembrance of our time it to your q3 resource and formative years for me and it feels.
Stephanie Helsher: Like it was a longer time than it was, but I think we just work together for that one year, but it it definitely stands out in my memory.
Stephanie Helsher: So thank you, my name is stephanie hell sure i'm the resource sharing librarian at upstate medical university and today i'm going to be kind of explaining the process that we went through it upstate to create a workflow to address the accessibility of course content.
Stephanie Helsher: Before I really get into the meat of the workflow and the process that we went through, I want to stop and address some caveats here and what this this presentation isn't.
Stephanie Helsher: It feels kind of strange to be presenting on a workflow that really has not been exercised much yet I don't have any data to show you guys about how these requests gone or how it's been received by faculty or much in the way that experience would show you.
Stephanie Helsher: Because since it's been kind of solidified I think we've only really had one request that we've been able to apply this workflow to.
Stephanie Helsher: But I do think that it's worth having the conversation, because it was a kind of a lengthy process that we went through to arrive, and having kind of these guideposts and and goals and and structure within the library to address these questions that we had been receiving.
Stephanie Helsher: This this presentation is also not focused on making accessible documents, but making accessible choices what what we have control over when we choose what sources to fill requests from.
Stephanie Helsher: And I imagine that if other libraries were kind of to go through this process and decide what works best for them, I imagined that the workflow would would look pretty different.
Stephanie Helsher: you're going to have talent and abilities in different places in your library libraries that already are doing you reserves type services, probably have already addressed a lot of these issues.
Stephanie Helsher: If you have somebody who's dedicated main goal is accessibility, I think that they would probably be pretty involved in this workflow.
Stephanie Helsher: And for any library that really sees a heavy volume of requests of this nature, I think it would look pretty different and have different priorities, and in that same vein, libraries that have different budget considerations, I think I think would make some different choices.
Stephanie Helsher: So with those caveats out of the way um so let's jump back to 2019 I joined upstate in 2019 and it wasn't soon after that those he it standards were issued for us all to review and digest and compare ourselves to.
Stephanie Helsher: So I joined the library's he it committee that was chaired by that is chaired by Kara how and in turn Kara is a part of our campus wide he it committee.
Stephanie Helsher: And I think that that structure and reviewing those documents, looking back it really helped to allow the process that we went through to create this workflow a lot more smooth.
Stephanie Helsher: i've been a part of creating accessible documents and other libraries and I have to say it could just be the advancing of time and the advocacy that's gone on for for.
Stephanie Helsher: And to increase awareness of needing accessible documents, but in in that previous position, it was really tough to get traction and have things move forward, because you would.
Stephanie Helsher: set up a meeting with another party different department in library or outside of the library.
Stephanie Helsher: To discuss an issue and try to resolve something, but you really spend the hour going over what accessibility is and why it's important to bring somebody up to speed on the issues.
Stephanie Helsher: And so it was hard to have meaningful actionable conversations and move forward on things when the awareness needed to be increased in general, but having started.
Stephanie Helsher: Around the time when these committees were formed and everybody was reviewing the documents I found that there was just a baseline understanding of the issues and a respect and.
Stephanie Helsher: And acknowledgement of how important they are that we didn't have to get through, so the conversations were cleaner and and got more traction more easily, so I thought that was really nice and.
Stephanie Helsher: Really, a product of those committees and those standards, and so, in response to those standards we did some things in our library carry create care created an accessibility live guide with resources.
Stephanie Helsher: and information for patrons we purchased a lot of accessible technology and.
Stephanie Helsher: When we ended up with a budget surplus at the end of one year, we were able to advocate for a scanner for a document delivery department that is better able to scan it has a cradle and it ocr our document delivery scans.
Stephanie Helsher: But, well, we were dealing with our portion of those standards there was another group that was taking the standards for course content, the digital standards.
Stephanie Helsher: And starting to express them and explain them to faculty and as that was happening every once in a while we would get some inquiries from faculty.
Stephanie Helsher: Either with specific requests or asking what the library could provide and it was usually in terms of our print reserve material, and so there is kind of a mismatch between.
Stephanie Helsher: The goals that faculty are being asked to meet in their in their digital content and what we're able to provide from from prints were able to provide clear quality scans that are ocr, but there are definitely elements of settings and Meta data for pages setting the language is English.
Stephanie Helsher: And and doing those more intricate remediation steps for tables or all text for images that are not included in what we were providing from scans.
Stephanie Helsher: So we had questions to answer.
Stephanie Helsher: So the requests were coming my way and not not all together in appropriately.
Stephanie Helsher: They were coming my way, because it is a document delivery service of a kind.
Stephanie Helsher: And it is we do have the scanner.
Stephanie Helsher: And when there is a documented need we are the identified department to go ahead and handle it and create remediated content for that documented need, but there were questions about course content that I didn't have answers to independently.
Stephanie Helsher: The first question that I grappled with was really more in terms of providing an e resources type service, we do not have sorry he reserves, he reserves type service we don't have any reserve service it's not a service that we provide.
Stephanie Helsher: And so I would have to kind of consider the document delivery service a little bit differently, I have no illusions that I haven't been kind of serving this need for a while.
Stephanie Helsher: Probably not too often, but often enough, where a faculty would request something and Elliot and we would fill it from our print content and they would turn around and use it for their classroom needs.
Stephanie Helsher: um but I don't see any issue with actually providing that service with my my non lawyer.
Stephanie Helsher: Interpretation of Section one oh wait I just need to have a reasonable assumption that it's for individual use and then faculty on their end do their own copyright considerations for sharing content with their classroom, and that is a perfectly fine system, in my opinion.
Stephanie Helsher: But it does get a little bit murkier when the veil is lifted and I know to what purpose is being used it's being used, I know that.
Stephanie Helsher: Other libraries, who provide a reserve services have a few more stipulations that they want to have for those requests that I wanted to apply to our request as well, I wanted to apply their best practices.
Stephanie Helsher: The second question to answer is whether or not we were able to remediate content for an audience that doesn't contain a person with a that may or may not contain a person with a documented need.
Stephanie Helsher: For my time.
Stephanie Helsher: and experience with creating accessible formats it's always been for a person with a documented need that the laws involved.
Stephanie Helsher: Really lift up and and give you a clear go ahead to go ahead and remediate content and well, I think that ocr ring or providing structure to documents wouldn't really.
Stephanie Helsher: wouldn't really be in conflict with any copyright concerns, there are some elements that you need to get into with some scans.
Stephanie Helsher: That really might change the look of the document in terms of tables that you might need to reformat so that they are readable or adding all text to images that really could potentially put.
Stephanie Helsher: Words and thoughts into the document that are not be authors intent.
Stephanie Helsher: So things kind of came to a head when I received a request in the spring, that kind of crossed all those little lines not terribly not overtly.
Stephanie Helsher: But enough that made me want to pause and figure out all this from a procedural and policy standpoint, and I was actually really lucky to get the request the way that I did.
Stephanie Helsher: There was a conscientious faculty Member who wanted to get together all of her course content.
Stephanie Helsher: who had been learning about from instructional support about all these new accessibility requirements, who wanted to approach the library and asked about this item that she was asking to be scanned.
Stephanie Helsher: And the good thing about the request is that, across all the lines and she was planning for her spring course she was planning for her fall course in the spring.
Stephanie Helsher: So that allowed me to hang on to this request and carry it with me so that I had this example, and it also had.
Stephanie Helsher: A ticking clock but it wasn't immediate and was with a very gracious understanding faculty Member who just wanted to learn about the service.
Stephanie Helsher: So that allowed me to kind of pull together what I needed and have and have it pushed me along so that I could actually get the answers and the the resources that I need needed to address this.
Stephanie Helsher: So the request was for an accessible version of multiple chapters of a book that upstate did not own and the book was only available in print, so we started having multiple conversations that we tried to turn into policies and plans.
Stephanie Helsher: So the first thing was we pulled together group.
Stephanie Helsher: That was headed by Kara how.
Stephanie Helsher: And had representation from with me for resource sharing acquisitions with Kim nolan and then we as on services and reserves.
Stephanie Helsher: Rebecca kingdon represented both of those concerns, as she sees overseas both of those departments.
Stephanie Helsher: and the first thing that we hash through pretty quickly was deciding on a set of rules to consider the request or what i'm considering to be the reserves portion of my considerations.
Stephanie Helsher: So we were able to sit down and agree upon that it has to pass a fair use assessment by health sciences library librarian.
Stephanie Helsher: Usually me.
Stephanie Helsher: And I put that in there because well I do do fair use assessments on our document delivery requests I don't usually have any qualms about paying copyright fees.
Stephanie Helsher: When we go in excess of that if i'm able to and it's available in available option, so that would not happen for these requests because paying for the licensing of or the royalties for one person would not be appropriate.
Stephanie Helsher: The other consideration to make is that we own the item, or we at least consider it for purchase and that we prioritize the purchase.
Stephanie Helsher: Well it's not realistic to think that we could own everything that's being requested, we have to make a good faith effort to decide if something that we could own.
Stephanie Helsher: And fits within our budget and within our collection and the third consideration is that it be from a published work just because there are two reasons for that the first.
Stephanie Helsher: That these these things are tough enough to consider with with items that are copy written.
Stephanie Helsher: But for items that are out there without copyright on them, I feel like it becomes a little bit mercury murkier and I also wanted to prevent any sort of.
Stephanie Helsher: notion that faculty could submit any kind of home grown created content that they have could be submitted through this service to become accessible.
Stephanie Helsher: And once we kind of cleared away all those parameters for what we would consider for this service.
Stephanie Helsher: There were a lot of questions that I had that I realized were really dependent on each other that I couldn't answer one without the answer to another.
Stephanie Helsher: So the next step was really just jotting down what kind of what those dependencies were and where I had to get those answers.
Stephanie Helsher: So Questions like you know you immediately think about well what kind of budget can we really get for this what really.
Stephanie Helsher: Another element that made me think that this was really a possibility for us is that I preached some document remediation vendors with questions about whether or not they're able to handle stem content and they gave me some pretty clear answers that they were able to.
Stephanie Helsher: Because that's something I confronted in the past that we were not really handling.
Stephanie Helsher: The remediation of you know, chemistry equations appropriately or or diagrams that were really complex, and so they gave me some assurances, but that has a price tag to it that that remediation service, so you would think about how much does this cost how much need is there.
Stephanie Helsher: But that would be dependent on whether or not we really have the ability to remediate it at all, and whether or not our legal counsel would approve, you know that action and agree with it.
Stephanie Helsher: But then that you would need to know what your justification for that service would be which depends on what kind of process you're going to go through to get to that step, and so it all started, building on itself to create a plan.
Stephanie Helsher: Where we kind of had to meet the elements of each phase before he moved on and we're really not finished gets communication about the service to faculty is really in its infancy right now.
Stephanie Helsher: And so we're really still in Phase three of this.
Stephanie Helsher: So the first step after that initial meeting was to draft a workflow The goal of the workflow flow is to obtain born digital sources and so it's it's kind of some common sense things looking for.
Stephanie Helsher: A resources that we can buy or even resources that we can interlibrary loan.
Stephanie Helsher: But once we get through those options, I have.
Stephanie Helsher: We we built in this piece where we're looking for alternate material to maybe present instead of what was originally requested material that covers the same content and what I was trying to do there was build.
Stephanie Helsher: A market failure argument now before you get in love with this idea to it was not our legal counsel did not necessarily go for the argument.
Stephanie Helsher: He didn't say no to us for mediating content, but he did say no to it being available.
Stephanie Helsher: To a wide audience so i'll get more into that later, but the idea of the market failure argument was abandoned, but the idea of the alternative presenting an alternative options still serves a purpose and we'll get more into that as we look at the workflow itself.
Stephanie Helsher: After we put the workflow together we seek some input from some outside parties, I had a lot of conversations with an instructional support associate a technician.
Stephanie Helsher: in charge of communicating to faculty educating faculty about how to create accessible documents and accessible courses and those are some really fruitful conversations.
Stephanie Helsher: about what she's telling faculty about their own content she had the same kind of misgivings about advising them to remediate copy written content.
Stephanie Helsher: And she had some questions for me that I wasn't expecting.
Stephanie Helsher: Such as would.
Stephanie Helsher: documents provided through this service would faculty be okay for emailing them.
Stephanie Helsher: To their students, so I guess she had heard that a lot of faculty instead of uploading documents to blackboard that they prefer to email out the readings and i'm not i'm still not satisfied with the way that I answered her questions, and I still think about it.
Stephanie Helsher: Where I, but you don't have the same element of control that you need when you're doing a traditional E reserve system you don't have archiving and purging and a password protection, but all these people usually wouldn't be able to access the same material.
Stephanie Helsher: From the library directly and emailing I ended up that I wouldn't support it overtly through language about our service but I it still left me questioning I thought that was an interesting question.
Stephanie Helsher: The other party that we had a conversation with was obviously our legal counsel.
Stephanie Helsher: who looked at our.
Stephanie Helsher: are competing needs who, who I wrote up a justification for using a remediation service when we can't when we're filling exclusively from a print resource and.
Stephanie Helsher: And weighing that with our need to provide our provide our course content and an accessible version for our students and our obligation there.
Stephanie Helsher: versus we've exhausted the market tried to find alternatives and been told that this is not, you know what we were able to find was either nothing or not a true substitute.
Stephanie Helsher: And while he said that we could move forward with remediating in anticipation, for a need that we could not send that to the Faculty to put up in blackboard that that would.
Stephanie Helsher: that he would not support that idea of distributing it to a wide audience, but we could remediate it and keep it to have it available immediately immediately if we're approached with a documented name.
Stephanie Helsher: So, once we had those conversations and answers behind us, we had to think critically about the budgets.
Stephanie Helsher: When I was originally thinking of this workflow I was assuming it would have to be charge backs to departments, because of the expense of it, I wasn't sure if the library could ingest that type of expense and by expense, I mean.
Stephanie Helsher: it's not an unreasonable amount, you know for a regular maybe 20 page Chapter I think we're talking about a little over $100 but we were unsure about.
Stephanie Helsher: What the volume of this service would really become.
Stephanie Helsher: So.
Stephanie Helsher: I was assuming it would be a charge back to other departments.
Stephanie Helsher: But in talking with the library at large, there is some real optimism that if we approached financial leadership we could make a really good case for it's.
Stephanie Helsher: Being needed to support students but where we eventually ended up because I wouldn't call this something of requests that we received frequently.
Stephanie Helsher: it's more habitual it reliably will be asked three or four times a year about providing content to this end.
Stephanie Helsher: So we decided for at least this year just to take us to create a small line item out of our existing budgets and where we took it from really make sense.
Stephanie Helsher: We have a line for purchasing print items on demand, and that includes materials for our reserves collection and so it makes sense that a small portion of that budget would go to supporting making those print items accessible.
Stephanie Helsher: So here is a look at the workflow in its entirety and I don't assume that you would be able to read that, but let me see.
Stephanie Helsher: I was going to put.
Stephanie Helsher: I forgot oh sorry.
Stephanie Helsher: A link to this in the chat.
Stephanie Helsher: Hopefully that works for you guys, so that you can follow, along with the workflow if you care to but we're going to zoom in and and look at some of.
Stephanie Helsher: The workflow in depth.
Stephanie Helsher: So the first step of the workflow is simply meeting the criteria so that, when we receive a request it's sent to document delivery, which is me and I assess whether or not it passes my own fair use assessment and that it's from published work.
Stephanie Helsher: So the first what i'm going to call pathway number one is for items that are owned electronically, and this is, this is the most preferred path.
Stephanie Helsher: So in this scenario, the material is owned we own it electronically, so when that's the case I in Document delivery I.
Stephanie Helsher: So oh I forgot to mention in my discussion with our instructional support technician technician.
Stephanie Helsher: I was discussing how faculty are being told to assess their documents for accessibility.
Stephanie Helsher: I was originally planning on just using adobe pro to go in and look at accessibility elements of the documents look and make sure.
Stephanie Helsher: That it's scanned that the text is recognized correctly that there's some structure there's all text, but since faculty are going to be assessing these materials with ally, we have ally for our blackboard environment, I had.
Stephanie Helsher: We were given a little sandbox within blackboard so that we can upload materials and assess them with ally ourselves so that we know what kind of score it's going to give faculty before they're given the score.
Stephanie Helsher: And then, if it's an owned item if the way that ally scores it.
Stephanie Helsher: There are any accessibility concerns with the item we go ahead and communicate those to the publisher or vendor that we are licensing the item from.
Stephanie Helsher: And, and this is the ideal option, hopefully we own most of what is being requested electronically, and when, whenever possible, we are providing perma links, instead of just pdfs of material if there is an html component and companion to whatever is being requested.
Stephanie Helsher: pathway number two is to purchase the item electronically.
Stephanie Helsher: So in this scenario, the material is not owned, so I would send it over to Kim and acquisitions.
Stephanie Helsher: Then she checks whether or not we're capable of purchasing it electronically, so that could either be it's available or it's available outside of we're not willing to necessarily commit ourselves to an enormous package of ebooks just to get one title so that's that's a delicate consideration.
Stephanie Helsher: So once we've purchased it, we will do the same situation where we will review the material with ally send it to the Faculty and express any concerns about accessibility elements to the vendor or the publisher.
Stephanie Helsher: So in pathway number three we get into some of the IRL material and options, so in this scenario, we would own it in print and pursue.
Stephanie Helsher: electronic versions of via interlibrary loan.
Stephanie Helsher: So in this scenario we own the material, but we do not own it electronically, so we look for iowa options and we hit on some and we're able to get some, and so we review that material with ally and fill the request.
Stephanie Helsher: It it well, we could go ahead and notify publishers of any of any issues with the document accessibility wise.
Stephanie Helsher: It doesn't.
Stephanie Helsher: We don't exactly have the standing with the publisher since we don't license the material and if they were to make any improvements to the item we wouldn't benefit from that because we only have a PDF that was given to us by another library, and we would not be updated.
Stephanie Helsher: And that updated version would not be accessible to us, unless we requested again so it doesn't behoove us to really say much except to advocate more and so maybe we'll take that step when we're able to, and when we see it really necessary.
Stephanie Helsher: The fourth pathway is to purchase a print copy and I select an electronic version.
Stephanie Helsher: So in this scenario, the materials not owned send it to acquisitions, who does not find that an electronic copy can be purchase, so we tried to purchase the print copy if it's available.
Stephanie Helsher: and send it to document delivery and if their electronic file options available, we will do the same little fill the request and review it with ally.
Stephanie Helsher: pathway five, is where we get into that alternate content suggestion, so if we get to that there are no electronic versions that are owned or purchasable.
Stephanie Helsher: And we research, the item through I ll and we find that no electronic version is available, and that could be either that one does not exist.
Stephanie Helsher: Or the licensing terms of it or is are such that it's not shareable we will turn to our liaison services team, and we will tell them about the request.
Stephanie Helsher: And they will look at the content of the request and look into whether or not they'll they'll do a search to see if they can find some comparable content.
Stephanie Helsher: And to suggest in the original request place so they will send us those suggestions and we'll bring those suggestions back down through the workflow to assess whether or not we could get two more accessible versions of this content that we can for the one that was originally requested.
Stephanie Helsher: So if the Faculty says yes, this alternate content is a true substitute, we can go ahead with this we fill a request with that alternate content.
Stephanie Helsher: So the original intent again of that alternate content suggestion was trying to make a case for market failure that didn't really work out for us.
Stephanie Helsher: But it's still a really good step, I think, for a longer term game and getting an accessible sustainable model.
Stephanie Helsher: The way that the workflow was originally in kind of conceptualized really tried to take out the pain points and and put a bandaid on inaccessible contents.
Stephanie Helsher: And and help faculty to achieve you know what they're being asked to achieve inside of blackboard.
Stephanie Helsher: But like faculty we're just going to have to take the steps that are in our control to take and make more accessible choices, and I think that presenting faculty with alternate content at the point at which they're requesting it for their classes might have been.
Stephanie Helsher: A little too, a little too much for them to take on right before their classes start to ask them to revise their syllabus to include a different different content.
Stephanie Helsher: I think, suggesting alternate content that's more accessible gives them an outlet so that once they're being held to having increasingly.
Stephanie Helsher: compliant compliance accessible content in their courses that they have something else to consider when they have the time to consider it and when they're approaching the class next time.
Stephanie Helsher: The sixth and final pathway that's in the workflow is for remediation so the Faculty does not choose to go with the alternate content we scan the requests the request is ocr.
Stephanie Helsher: And we, and so the for the faculties purpose, the request is finished, but on our end we send the document to remediation vendor and then we will store that remediated document in a repository to supply on request for students with documented needs.
Stephanie Helsher: And there could be more nuanced probably that will be created in this portion of the workflow.
Stephanie Helsher: it's certainly probably not a step that has to be taken with all content, but a lot of the content that we see it's it's necessary, so the history of what i've seen be requested from.
Stephanie Helsher: from us to be scanned is is complex, usually textbook content, if it were straight passages, it might be something we would think about it might be willing to remediate in house.
Stephanie Helsher: And not go out to a vendor, but I think that we need more experience with the requests that we're going to see from our library before we really build in.
Stephanie Helsher: nuance and different directions with this branch of the workflow.
Stephanie Helsher: Oh here's here's the explanation of those steps.
Stephanie Helsher: And so we've already seen changes to the workflow at at the advice of legal counsel we changed the the end of our workflow to not filling with the remediated content but holding it so that.
Stephanie Helsher: It could be available immediately on demand from a user with the documents need.
Stephanie Helsher: Changes are also possible that ending of the workflow once we hook up and and find more possibilities with repositories of accessible documents.
Stephanie Helsher: Because, if this is only going to be available to users with documented needs, then that kind of opens up possibilities.
Stephanie Helsher: For that we don't necessarily have to create it ourselves as it's already existing it's just so we need to clear that step and and show that we have a documented need to have it immediately and then i'm trying to keep my mind towards ideas for scaling the.
Stephanie Helsher: service if demand is higher than.
Stephanie Helsher: What we assume is it is or is going to be.
Stephanie Helsher: So right now we're just planning to have a request a standalone request form not attached to a request management system.
Stephanie Helsher: And so we're thinking about ideas for changing that if if the volume is higher and then also if we are seeing more requests for.
Stephanie Helsher: That actually get to that point and can't be filled by any resource, other than prints if that remediation budget gets exhausted too quickly and too much.
Stephanie Helsher: I think that we would have to reach out to our disability services coordinator to see if we could pinpoint or highlight or target certain classes, or certain disciplines or different colleges.
Stephanie Helsher: So that is the end of the content that I have prepared for you guys if there are any questions, I would be happy to to Tom.
Shannon Pritting: stephanie there was a question in the chat from Rebecca at purchase i'm asking you know the assumption that that medical content is heavily image.
Shannon Pritting: based, and you know that that probably was a challenge with remediating did you run.
Shannon Pritting: into that.
Stephanie Helsher: Yes, um it's specifically chemistry equations have been hard for us to to.
Stephanie Helsher: remediate i've definitely learned more than I initially knew about remediating those but I don't know enough about chemistry to really express in full sentences what.
Stephanie Helsher: What the equation is trying to express and I don't think it's it's really my place to try or guess at that and so outsourcing it to vendors, who have expertise and knowledge of that seems like the way to go.
Good point.
Shannon Pritting: um yeah calling just ask if if if the slides will be shared and you know I i'll leave that up to you, but i'll post the recording and if you share the slides i'll definitely share this as well.
sure.
Shannon Pritting: Other questions didn't see anything else in the chat.
Rebecca Oling: I guess I had another question Shannon it's Rebecca again from purchase.
Rebecca Oling: Sure stephanie Thank you so much for doing this you're yeah this is similar to mine but you seem to have more access to legal counsel.
Rebecca Oling: And not going into that while we're recording.
Rebecca Oling: But i'm interested in how you were able to advocate to get a budget to do this because that seems like an uphill battle on my campus.
Stephanie Helsher: yeah I assumed that it would be, it seemed you know, there was more opposite optimism in my library than I was assuming that there would be for trying to find the money to support this.
Stephanie Helsher: Our director was willing and was you know pretty sure that we would be able to get money if we asked for it and framed it in the way of supporting student services, which is.
Stephanie Helsher: Our we're lucky in that art administration is always looking for a way to invest in our students and put money towards supporting them.
Stephanie Helsher: But our print budgets, we decided to go with a smaller budget that was already from our existing.
Stephanie Helsher: print budgets, just because we always you always have a little bit of money left over there, anyway, at the end of the year we're always trying to kind of.
Stephanie Helsher: figure out what we're going to do with that small pot of money, I know that it's, this is not the situation for most and I apologize.
Stephanie Helsher: But we're we we leave a lot of money to purchase things on demand from our users, because every once in a while they'll come out and medical resources are expensive, especially the texts and and the large instructional.
Stephanie Helsher: volumes that they need frequently or infrequently so we we do pad that a little bit, but we always seem to have money left over in the budget, so it makes sense to kind of skim off the top of it and reserve some to making the the things that we purchased in print.
Stephanie Helsher: That were able to finance making those accessible.
Shannon Pritting: yeah that's an interesting strategy that I think others would employ just in a slightly different way of like you're taking money away from content to make other content accessible, which you know I know is a challenge, but you know it is practical necessity, a lot of the time, Sam.
Stephanie Helsher: mm hmm and like I said, if it wasn't if we encounter some.
Stephanie Helsher: Some texts that aren't so image or graph or table written that we would probably try to remediate those in house.
Stephanie Helsher: If if the font isn't problematic.
Shannon Pritting: Other questions, this has been you know, really, really informative.
Shannon Pritting: anybody else from the group.
Shannon Pritting: I just had a question stephanie on just general volume that you've processed in this area i'm just curious like.
Shannon Pritting: How many requests are you getting through.
Shannon Pritting: And you know just any sense of like amount of time you're spending processing these requests and I know that might be challenging because it seems to move from different departments.
Stephanie Helsher: yeah so like I said once once the workflow was solidified we've only really seen one request.
Stephanie Helsher: And it was that preferred scenario where we owned it electronically, and so I was able to just kind of assess it by uploading it to ally uploading it to blackboard and reading the ally score um.
Stephanie Helsher: And so that was, you know that was just maybe a half an hour.
Stephanie Helsher: Maybe less for that request for others, I mean.
Stephanie Helsher: So we've only I can count maybe five requests that we've had since I started.
Stephanie Helsher: And the other requests were all from textbooks, I tried remediating the first one, myself and that took you know 2025 hours.
Stephanie Helsher: But since we're not actually taking that step, I don't.
Stephanie Helsher: I pegged the request system, to take one to two weeks, I think I can cut cut that down to one week just because that remediation step is going to happen on the back end with the library and not be presented to the Faculty.
Stephanie Helsher: But I think to for.
Stephanie Helsher: The back and forth between interlibrary loan and acquisitions.
Stephanie Helsher: That would take at the very a couple of days, if we get into alternate content suggestions I think it could be a week and a half, I can't see us going the full two weeks terribly often.
Stephanie Helsher: Because we're not actually looking to receive.
Stephanie Helsher: Anything any.
Stephanie Helsher: volume through I ll so we don't have to wait for that will be we're only dealing with portions of content.
Stephanie Helsher: yeah.
Shannon Pritting: Excellent.
Shannon Pritting: Any other questions or comments anything to add.
Shannon Pritting: Right.
Shannon Pritting: Stop the recording.