Steve Jamieson

About Me

I am a collaborative library leader, who seeks innovative solutions to enhance patron experience and productivity—particularly through the application of technology.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8566-812X

<@stevejamieson@mstdn.social

Experience

Education

Master of Information Science and Learning Technologies—Library Science · University of Missouri—Columbia

Master of Divinity · Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis, MO)

Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry cum laude · Physics minor · Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA)

Selected Projects

Digital Loan (Controlled Digital Lending)

In the midst of a strategic shift to expand online and hybrid educational offerings, the library needed to develop new services to address the specific needs of online and hybrid students. The prior shift towards e-books in collection development was a foundational start, but the availability of curricularly-relevant materials for purchase in e-book format was still limited. Meanwhile, online and hybrid students had very limited or no access to the tens of thousands of print materials in the library’s collection, many of which would not be transitioning to e-book format in the foreseeable future. Through the Digital Loan program, online and hybrid students have been able to gain access to print materials that are not otherwise available electronically.

• Researched and monitored legal developments surrounding controlled digital lending.
• Crafted a controlled digital lending policy based on a strong fair use argument and aligned with institutional risk tolerance.
• Designed and developed workflows and instructions for processing requested items.
• Implemented ILS configuration changes to support request workflow.
• Wrote and designed public communications

Reference Metasearch

With a growing number of platforms hosting reference materials in e-book format, it became a challenge for students to know where to go when beginning their research. This custom-built reference metasearch interface provides one-stop, article-level searching for all of the library’s online reference material.

• Designed and developed a modular architecture for gathering search results from online reference providers.
• Developed connector modules to interface with each of the library’s online reference providers using documented APIs where available.
• Designed and implemented a public search interface.

OpenURL Interlibrary Loan Request Form

The library had been utilizing the basic ILL request form functions provided by each database platform, as well as a basic web form for other contexts. This presented an inconsistent user experience for the library patrons, with each platform requesting different information to complete the request, as well as for staff in terms of the format of the data received. The objective of this project was to create a single, consistent interface for requesting interlibrary loans that minimized the amount of information patrons would be required to enter, and to standardize the format of the data sent to staff.

• Designed and created an interactive web form for accepting interlibrary loan requests that could be auto-filled using metadata in OpenURL format.
• Integrated the form with the library’s ILS authentication API in order to manage access and to automatically retrieve patron information.
• Worked with interlibrary loan staff to design optimal format in which to receive request data.

Demand-Driven Acquisition E-book Initiative

Having identified the need to begin investing more heavily in e-books in order to support a growing emphasis on online programs, I launched a major e-book purchasing initiative through demand-driven acquisition that maximized return on money invested.

• Identified an e-book vendor that offered demand-driven acquisition and that could provide content from curricularly-relevant publishers.
• Performed initial round of title-by-title selection and began ongoing selection as new titles of interest became available.
• Developed workflows for e-book selection, communicating with cataloging staff, and managing reports of denied access due to user limits.
• After successful pilot, gradually transitioned responsibility to technical services staff.

Theological Libraries E-book Lending Project

Consulted on the conception and development of a multi-institutional, library-owned platform for hosting e-book content purchased directly from publishers. By leveraging this platform to disintermediate e-book acquisition, the participating libraries were able to negotiate agreements with the publishers that allowed for direct control over the e-book content, discounted prices, and allowances for interlibrary sharing.

https://www.theologicalebooks.org

Publications & Presentations

“Getting Started with Controlled Digital Lending.” Presentation, MOBIUS Annual Conference, Independence, MO, June 2022. [Conference Site · Slide Deck]

Inspired by the need to get more library materials to students remotely during COVID, Controlled Digital Lending—circulating print materials by digital means—has drawn a lot of attention. Even as COVID restrictions wane, Controlled Digital Lending remains a valuable tool for serving patrons, especially online students and other remote users. However, commercial systems for implementing Controlled Digital Lending are only just getting off the ground, and open-source solutions created by large academic institutions require significant technological expertise to implement. In this session we will look at how our small library launched a basic and affordable Controlled Digital Loan service. We will cover what exactly Controlled Digital Lending is, the legal basis for Controlled Digital Lending, the tools and resources we used to build out our workflow, and some recommendations for launching your own Controlled Digital Lending service.

“Expanding Your E-book Collection with the Internet Archive,” with Becky Givens. Presentation, MOBIUS Annual Conference, Independence, MO, June 2022. [Conference Site · Slide Deck]

The Internet Archive offers a lending collection of over 3 million e-books that anyone can read online through Controlled Digital Lending. These are in-copyright titles, many of which may be part of our print collections. The Internet Archive’s Open Libraries initiative allows libraries to supplement their print collections with online access by matching holdings against the Internet Archive’s collection and loading records for those e-books into the library’s local catalog. The Open Libraries initiative also gives libraries the option to convert print holdings into online access to make even more books available online. In this session we will briefly describe the Internet Archive’s implementation of Controlled Digital Lending, and then we will discuss the Open Libraries initiative and the various levels of participation that libraries can choose from. We will also provide a thorough overview of how we worked with the Internet Archive to match our print holdings against their e-book lending collection, and then how we imported those records into our catalog. We’ll even touch on some of the MarcEdit cleanup we had to do—for those who are interested in the technical details.

“Library Web Apps.” Poster presentation, American Theological Library Association Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN, June 2018. https://doi.org/10.31046/proceedings.2018.112

Previous conferences have included workshops encouraging librarians to learn computer programming skills in order to develop efficient, software solutions for problems they face in their work. This poster presentation highlighted two web apps developed by Covenant’s library staff—a reference e-book meta-search engine, and an interactive ILL request form supporting inbound OpenURL linking. The poster described motivations for developing these apps, reviewed the technology used and the development process, summarized the impact on library service, and identified directions for future development.

“E-Book Lending Project: Progress Report,” with Donna R. Cambell, Thad Horner, and Stephanie Fletcher. Panel presentation, ATLA Annual Conference, Denver, CO, June 2015. ATLA Religion Database/ATLASerials (EBSCOhost).

The leadership team of the Theological E-books Lending Project presented an update on the progress towards the goal of creating an independant platform for theological libraries to host, lend, and share e-books licensed directly from publishers. This update centered on patron experience, back-end administration experience, publisher relationships, evaluation of the hosting platform, feedback from the pilot libraries, and future plans.

“The Writing Center in the Library: Alliance and Collaboration,” with S. Brady Shuman. Roundtable discussion, ATLA Annual Conference, Louisville, KY, June 2010. ATLA Religion Database/ATLASerials (EBSCOhost).

This session offered an overview and discussion of how a library can establish a new writing center or support an institution’s existing writing center. The facilitators addressed the need for writing support in the context of graduate education, and the mutual benefit that can be gained through collaboration between the library and the writing center, before presenting Covenant Seminary’s The Scribe writing center as a case study. The discussion then turned to issues around starting and maintaining a writing center.

“Affordable Barcode Scanners & Millennium.” Poster session, MOBIUS Annual Users Conference, Lake of the Ozarks, MO, June 2008.

Rather than invest in the ILS vendor's expensive, first-party handheld barcode scanner to track in-house usage of materials, this poster presented a means to use a less expensive, third party product.

“Finding the Right Student Workers and Training Them to Perform,” with James C. Pakala. Roundtable discussion, ATLA Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, June 2007. ATLA Religion Database/ATLASerials (EBSCOhost).

This roundtable discussion sought to bring together ideas on how to maximize the effectiveness of student library staff. Topics presented and discussed included job descriptions, recruitment, interview methods, testing, training, and models of supervision.

“Thou Shalt Not Share? An Ethical Analysis of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing.” Presbyterion 32, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 93–105. ATLA Religion Database/ATLASerials (EBSCOhost)

This article reviews the development and spread of peer-to-peer file sharing technologies, and examines the ethical implications in light of the 8th commandment to not steal. A theology of property and work is explored and adapted within the context of copyright, and a Christian ethical framework is developed for addressing copyright infringement by individuals. This framework is then applied to several common justifications for file sharing proffered by its practitioners.

“Faculty Bibliographies: Professors Calhoun, Jones, and Vasholz,” with James C. Pakala. In All For Jesus: A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Covenant Theological Seminary, ed. Robert A. Peterson and Sean Michael Lucas, 379–389. Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2006.

Published as part of a commemorative volume celebrating the 50th anniversary of Covenant Seminary, as well as the careers of three long-serving faculty members, this comprehensive and exhaustive bibliography chronicles the published works of those three faculty.