Preparing For Our Bulldogs

Before COVID-19 shut down the Armacost Library to receiving the public and Bulldog community members, we were open for 16 hours a day and all three floors were open with study spaces, groupings of tables and armchairs, and two study rooms and two computer spaces. This was the life for our Bulldogs and we looked forward to helping, greeting, directing, and welcoming EVERYONE as much as possible.

Once COVID-19 hit, the doors to the library closed because our campus shut down. But, through hard work and on a skeleton staff, the Armacost Library continued to function, offering Curbside Pick-Up to our community. Anything within our general collection and interlibrary loans, we can schedule a pick-up for you. The CDI's Book Lending Program is still in full swing but they are coordinating the mailing and pick-up of their books. 

Now that COVID-19 is getting under control and people are being vaccinated, the Armacost Library is preparing to open for our Bulldog community. For this Summer 2021, we plan to open a few hours from Sunday until Thursday and add hours when we reach Fall 2021. Safety precautions will be taken so that we can continue being safe and keeping everyone safe! For this summer, more information will be coming out soon but beverages with lids will be permitted. 

With everything going on, if you have any questions or comments for our staff, please do contact us! 

InSPIRe is Migrating to a New Platform in June

Armacost Library is pleased to announce that we are migrating our digital collections and publishing presence, InSPIRe, to a new platform. 

What will be affected by this migration?

All Our House material, student theses and dissertations, Journal of Computer Science Integration (JCSI) articles, and more will operate on a different platform beginning July 2021. 

How will this impact new submissions?

To prepare for the migration, we will halt all deposits in the month of June. You are welcome to deposit your work through the end of May or wait until July.

Will this result in broken links? 

Existing work will receive a new URL; old URLs will not work. However, works for which the Armacost Library has minted a digital object identifier (DOI) will be little affected. Anyone trying to access a work via a DOI URL (e.g., https://doi.org/10.26716...) will be taken to the new URL. 

Will I still receive monthly download reports?

Unfortunately, those accustomed to receiving monthly download reports will have to do without for the time being. However, the attention that a work is receiving will be publicly available. Authors of JCSI articles will see something like this example. Authors and creators of Our House work and student theses and dissertations will see a more modest version of the example provided. 

Also, when this kind of attention data is migrated to the new platform, its chronology will be lost. That is, downloads recorded for January 2021 (100 downloads), February 2021 (200 downloads), and March 2021 (300 downloads) will be lumped together in July as 600 downloads. 

Why did you decide to migrate to a new platform?

There are several reasons for this migration, that also align with our library's values and manifesto. 

The platform we were using was acquired a few years ago by Elsevier. As observed by many, Elsevier and its parent company RELX time and again prioritize power and profit over than the academic communities it purports to serve. Elsevier's and RELX's market dominance, profit margins which exceed those of Big Tech, aggressive business tactics, and contracts with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raise considerable concerns. As a result, the Armacost Library has been actively looking to migrate to a new platform for years. 

Our new vendor, Ubiquity Press, has a better reputation with those of us in the library community, offers much more transparency in its business practices, uses open source software, is an open access advocate, and adopts open standards which reduce the lock-in strategies used by many vendors.

What will the new site look like?

Glad you asked! It's still being developed at this point, but the site will go from this

to this

What if I have questions? 

Feel free to reach out to anyone in the library or contact InSPIRe personnel directly by emailing inspire@redlands.edu. 

I hope you're as excited about this as we are! :)