About the 2023 Conference

The Academic Business Library Directors (ABLD) held their annual conference at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois from Tuesday, May 9th through Friday, May 12th, 2023. The 2023 meeting was the first in-person meeting since the 2019 meeting at Harvard University. The meeting was not offered remotely to people who could not attend. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, virtual meetings were held. The host for the conference was Carol Doyle of Northwestern University. The rest of the ABLD Board included Chair Laura Walesby (Michigan State University), Chair-Elect Carlton Brown (Duke University), Past-Host Angela Horne (University of California, Los Angeles) and Past-Chair Corey Seeman (University of Michigan). Carol Doyle not only served as host, but also as the Vendor Relations Chair.

The meeting opened on Tuesday May 9th with library tours and campus tours as per the normal practice.

The meeting started in earnest on Wednesday, May 10th. The welcome remarks were provided by Xuemao Wang, University Librarian, Northwestern University Libraries. At the time of our meeting, Dean Wang had been at the library only seven months after serving in the same role at the University of Cincinnati. His role has been to understand the library system and the University Press, hoping to implement changes that will enhance the library and its standing on campus. He has considered his first few months at Northwestern as his ‘visioning tour’ and he shared with the group what he was learning along the way.

Dean Wang wanted to ensure that the library was an active partner in Northwestern University’s academic mission. To this end, he stated that the library must do more than the traditional roles of acquiring, organizing, and preserving information for the community. The library needs to be at the forefront of supplying access to research and data that will enable the campus to study in practically every area. Dean Wang also spoke a great deal about scholarly communication - noting that the roles of data availability and data management are important roles for the library. Wang’s approach included making more money available from the library and continuing with transformative agreements with publishers.

After welcomes from the Vice-Chair and host, Ash Faulkner (Ohio State University) & Ken Peterson (Harvard Business School) presented on the Year in Review. The presenters reviewed the content from each member’s annual reports to pull out the themes and key topics across all our institutions. Among the trends that were identified were the tendencies of schools to add new endeavors without culling the ones that might not be as important as previously thought, physical space issues, vendor issues, and others. Of note were discussions of licensing challenges that had only started to cover machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) use by faculty. On the plus side, fifteen of the libraries did not report a single database cancellation - an appreciated indication that we are finding a bit of stability in budgets across our libraries. Peterson provided additional details in a Ticker article, “Trends in Academic Business Libraries 2022-2023: Highlights from Annual Reports of the Academic Business Library Directors (ABLD)” (2023).

A number of presentations were held about student engagement by business libraries. These were given by Heather Howard (Purdue University), Elizabeth Marshall (Western University) and Sandy Miller (Southern Methodist University). Heather shared the work that librarians at Purdue do to support undergraduate students who have elected to take extensive research projects. The Purdue librarians help students understand the need and role of elements such as literature reviews and project scoping. Their work culminates in the Spring Research Symposium at Purdue. Elizabeth talked about the work that the librarians do to support career management, entrepreneurship, ed tech, and intensive research. As part of this work at Western University, some of the links and resources used by students under career management moved to the library over the course of the last few years. This has cemented the role that the library has played in the educational journey of the students at Western University. Sandy shared the library’s role in an experiential learning program at SMU involving a zombie attack. From their LibGuide, this is how the program is introduced to students:

SMU has been overrun with zombies. It turns out that digging into the ground around the Cox buildings turned up more than dirt! We always knew there was something going on under our buildings. Now, the campus is infected and zombies are everywhere. It’s up to you and your team to save the world and create a zombie-proof plan to survive and thrive. (Overview Section, para. 1, n.d.)

The goal is for students to demonstrate business research proficiencies, apply complex problem-solving skills to a crisis that hopefully will never happen, and to explore the broader topic of thinking through a business problem. This was very popular among the librarians and students at SMU. It was their first attempt at gamification of an assignment or learning outcome and they are quite pleased with the results.

The Vendor Showcase took place after lunch, with participation from Global Financial Data, Morningstar, Inc., PrivCo, SimplyAnalytics and Statista. Mintel did not participate at the Vendor Showcase, but they presented on the last day of the conference.

Laura Walesby (MSU) & Angela Horne (UCLA) presented on “Thoughts on the Recruitment & Retention of Business Librarians” after lunch. This has been an important topic for business librarians as many searches have been extended or unsuccessful with business libraries during the last few years. They referenced the term “unicorn hiring” in the sense that we are seeking candidates that simply do not exist. Part of the problem stems from the general reduction in special librarians working for corporate libraries. Many academic business librarians came over from these types of positions in the past. Angela Horne talked about the hiring practices at UCLA in their business library, and how the smaller candidate pools are impacting their searches. Laura Walesby talked about the situation at MSU where two new librarians were hired before the COVID-19 Pandemic, but both left within two years. This has left their staffing level for librarians to be about half what was normally expected at the library. In addition to facing a shrinking candidate pool for business librarians, the MSU process is onerous which may only test for endurance. Both presenters suggested that ABLD might have a role here to help promote business librarianship as an option for students in iSchools. Among the suggestions was to play more of a proactive role with advocacy, development and teaching of foundational courses and the possibility of paid internships. Additional information can be found in the Ticker article “Thoughts on the Recruitment & Retention of Business Librarians” (2023).

Ilana Stonebreaker (Indiana University) presented with Anna Milholland (College of William & Mary) on “Engaging with AACSB: Best Practices & Success Stories.” The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is the accreditation organization for business education and works with all our member institutions. The AACSB accreditation standards have changed every few years, with the library attaining a more visible presence in the most recent changes for 2020. The authors, along with Jason Sokoloff (University of Washington) and Laura Walesby (MSU), have been working with the AACSB to find a space for libraries in their work. There is a great deal of potential for future collaboration between these organizations. Stonebraker and Milholland continued this discussion in Ticker, “Engagement with AACSB begins with You and Me: A draft AACSB Business Library Checklist” (2023).

The last session of the day focused on supporting entrepreneurship at our libraries. Becky Smith (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Christina Sheley (Cornell University) presented on “Pivot & Pitch: Bringing Business & Engineering Library Services Together to Support Entrepreneurship and Beyond.” Becky shared information about the changes that were taking place at Illinois involving new service models for supporting different areas on campus. This work included the consolidation and reduction in the number of departmental libraries on campus. At Illinois, they pursued a formula similar to Cornell and Dartmouth College, combining the business and engineering librarians into a single unit. Christina talked about similar work undertaken at Cornell where business, engineering, and entrepreneurship were pulled together under one organization. This new organization also oversaw the extensive resources for hotel administration (a prominent program at Cornell) that includes over 10,000 archived menus. Smith and Sheley shared more about their prospective teams in “Pivot & Pitch: Bringing Business & Engineering Library Services Together to Support Entrepreneurship and Beyond” (2023).

On the second full day of the meeting (Thursday, May 11th), the faculty presentation took place. Professor Angela Lee (Northwestern University), Mechthild Esser Nemmers Professor of Marketing and former Marketing Department chair, presented on the “The Rationality of Emotions.” In this engaging presentation, Professor Lee discussed emotions in our interactions with others and in marketing. Lee drew a great deal from the Disney Pixar Movie, “Inside Out” (2015) that explores the interactions between emotions in an adolescent child who recently moved to a new city. Professor Lee discussed how to convey feelings and thoughts through images and actions rather than words. This was tied to marketing as Lee featured a number of advertisements for entities including Barilla pasta and the Summer Olympics at Rio de Janeiro (2016).

The presentations for the rest of the morning featured collection-related themes. Four librarians at private and public institutions talked about licensing issues and experiences in the Post-COVID Economy. The presentations focused on a variety of case studies of interactions with vendors that went well and those that went poorly (for libraries). The presenters were Corey Seeman (Michigan), Carol Doyle (Northwestern), Carlton Brown (Duke), and Marcella Barnhart (University of Pennsylvania). Brown discussed his approach in the article “Strategies for E-Resource Renewals in a Post-Covid Economy” (2023). Sean Forbes (University of Toronto) then presented the implementation of Clarivate’s ProQuest TDM Studio at Toronto. The goal in providing this resource to the Toronto campus was to provide access to a platform for text and data mining as a component of research.

Annette Buckley (University of California, Irvine) and Jason Sokoloff (Washington) presented on the topic of accessibility with a presentation titled “Towards Greater Accessibility for Online Business Resources.” Annette Buckley went over a great number of tools that may be used to ensure that the electronic resources offered to our campus communities are accessible. The presenters also discussed how to make tutorials more accessible and scalable so that they may be used by other schools.

The last librarian presentation of the day was discussing how three institutions (two private and one public) were able to move from solo practitioner librarians to teams of two. The presenters were Erin Wachowicz (Yale University), Ryan Splenda (Carnegie Mellon University), and Annette Buckley (UC Irvine) and the title was “From Solo to Duo-"Business” Librarianship: Challenges and Success Stories.” They discussed the challenges of obtaining new librarian lines in libraries and the way that they were able to be successful in creating new positions using a data-driven approach. Splenda and Wachowicz continued the discussion in Ticker “From Solo to Duo “Business” Librarianship: Case Studies at CMU & Yale” (2023).

The ABLD conference day ended with a vendor presentation from Mintel that showcased some trends that they are spotting within North America. The presenters were Dana Macke, Director of Trends, North America and Melanie Bertelme, Associate Director Mintel Food & Drink. They provided a great overview of the 2023 global consumer trends that stood out to them and their colleagues. Included in this list were:

• intentional spending taking over, with consumers focusing on value and what that means to them.

• economic indicators casting a cloud over the current economy (especially with decreased savings rates and increased credit card debt).

• consumer perspectives, especially as it relates to inflation and food prices.

• in the market - brands are looking for more novel ways to share coupons and discounts on their goods.

• premiumization - the creation of quality brands and the blending of high-end and low-end features.

About the 2024 Conference

The Academic Business Library Directors (ABLD) held their 2024 annual conference at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut from Tuesday, April 23rd through Friday, April 26th, 2024. As with the 2023 meeting, the one at Yale University was not offered remotely to people who could not attend.

The host for the conference was Erin Wachowicz of Yale University. The rest of the ABLD Board included Chair Carlton Brown (Duke University), Chair-Elect Christina Sheley (Cornell University), Past-Chair Laura Walesby (Michigan State University), and Vendor Relations Chair Carol Doyle (Northwestern University), who also served as the past host. One of the central themes of the meeting was the use and management of artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI in higher education.

The meeting started on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024 with campus and library tours. The library tour focused on Sterling Memorial Library, as described in the program:

In the heart of central campus, Sterling Memorial Library is the largest of 14 libraries at Yale and one of the University’s most iconic buildings. Completed in 1930, it houses more than 2.5 million volumes on 14 floors of book stacks. Designed by architect James Gamble Rogers (Yale Class of 1889) and later named for its benefactor, John William Sterling (Yale Class of 1864), the library is built in the Collegiate Gothic style to resemble a European cathedral.

That evening, the opening reception for the conference took place at Siena at the Blake Hotel (9 High Street in New Haven) and was sponsored by EBSCO.

The meeting started in earnest on Wednesday April 24th with meetings in the Sterling Memorial Library’s Memorabilia Room and Lecture Hall. The meeting opened with a welcome from Chair-Elect Christina Sheley (Cornell) and Host Erin Wachowicz (Yale) who served as the program committee for the 2024 meeting. After introductions of new members and delegates, an excellent welcome talk was provided by Lauren DiMonte, Associate University Librarian for Research & Learning (Yale University Library)

Lauren DiMonte leads the Research & Learning Division, a new group at the library. DiMonte was relatively new in her role and discussed the challenges that are found in supporting a university that continually challenges entities like libraries. Libraries are forced to think differently with the relatively quick changes happening in the academy.

Central to DiMonte’s talk was deliberate efforts to think more about the end user and their needs and less about the traditional silos that are common among university institutions such as libraries. DiMonte has promoted a strong collegial approach to problem identification and solving. More complex combinations of programs force everyone in libraries to think differently and less siloed. This is especially true when we consider that our work is focused on supporting interdisciplinary approaches and technological approaches that might not have been the case even just a few years ago. Fundamentally, DiMonte stated ‘everyone is a data librarian’ and that reflects a great change in what types of skills and collaboration that is needed to support modern research.

As technology and artificial intelligence (AI) played an important role in the building of the program, DiMonte addressed the dramatic shift whereby all libraries have to become knowledgeable about generative AI including tools like ChatGPT among others. The race to jump into this arena is happening everywhere, and libraries need to be there to help navigate this potentially alien landscape. The library has a role at the table when data policy, infrastructure and governance is discussed. Whether or not the library has a seat at that table hinges upon the desire to learn this new dimension with everyone on campus. That being said, the challenge is extensive, and we do not have a perfect understanding where this AI ship is going.

The ensuing discussion with the ABLD members was excellent, focusing in large part about outreach and engagement with faculty who are often narrowly focused on their own work. DiMonte suggested that it might be easier to work with new faculty as they are not as ‘stuck in their ways’ as senior faculty. On statistics, DiMonte suggested that success stories might be more valuable for showcasing the value of the library than simply by sharing numbers of users. . If faculty see the success from others in using library services, they will connect with the libraries. Capturing these success stories remains difficult, but not impossible. And I would be remiss if I did not share DiMonte referencing a former colleague who insisted that a silo is merely a cylinder of excellence. This was a great way to kick off the meeting.

Ken Peterson (Harvard Business School) presented on the Year in Review as submitted by members in the months and weeks prior to the meeting. This is a very useful session because it lets members see trends that are taking place across membership, and it lets individual libraries understand how they are performing in relation to their peers. In a novel approach and one that was on-theme for the meeting, Peterson loaded the reports into ChatGPT to make slides. Among the library initiatives discussed in the meeting were changes to cataloging platforms, mental health and wellness for staff, and addressing the fast-moving embrace of AI by our schools. Among the organizational changes and new staff, there were a number of new leadership positions at member libraries (more so for business libraries that are part of larger university-wide library systems), as well as a number of institutions where it was reported that budgetary woes were leading to frozen or permanent position cuts. A great deal was shared about databases acquired and canceled as is the case every year. Among the top added databases were Statista, Sage Business Cases, Pitchbook, and TDM Studio. The top three things affecting our libraries were organizational and leadership changes, budget and resource constraints, and technological challenges in many forms.

The next two presentations were focused on management and behind-the-scenes work needed to support business research. Hilary Schiraldi (University of California, Berkeley) presented on “Every Contract Everywhere All at Once: Transferring Data Licenses from B-School to Library,” and this author (Corey Seeman - University of Michigan) presented “But I Need It! Exploring a Magic Quadrant for Collections Needs, Wants and Contributions.” Hilary described the process whereby management of the licensing of data resources (including WRDS - an important data source for business research) was transferred from the Haas School of Business to the Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Driven by a retirement and organizational changes at the Haas School, a Memorandum of Understanding was established between the two entities to ensure that the school had access to data without needing staff to manage the licenses. Hilary explored the vendors that were easy to work with and those that were challenging. Additionally, there are some vendors that will not move over to the library and those will have to be sent back to Haas. Corey (this author) presented about using a two-by-two matrix to help classify resource purchases for business (or any) libraries. The two-by-two matrix explored the value of the resource by your community and the willingness for external parties to help fund those resources.

The Vendor Showcase took place before lunch and featured the following participants: BCC Research, Data Axle, EBSCO, PrivCo, and WRDS. This provided ABLD members to learn about these vendors and their new offerings to the library community. This was followed by lunch for members and vendors at Mory’s Association (306 York Street, New Haven).

Lorna McNally (University of Strathclyde and President, European Business Schools Librarians’ Group) presented an update from the European counterpart to ABLD. The EBSLG currently has 40 members in 13 countries. Each of the 40 members is in one of three subgroups: United Kingdom & Ireland, Northern Europe, and Continental Europe. No one country may have more than 20% of the total membership. This may be an issue with the number of libraries in different countries, but within the United Kingdom. The EBSLG is hosting the next global meeting in Vienna, Austria. The meeting will take place between May 19th and 22nd, 2025. The Vienna meeting will be hosted at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), the host when the 2020 joint meeting was canceled with the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Professor of Organizational Behavior Balázs Kovács (Yale School of Management), presented on the topic “How I use ChatGPT in my Research.” Artificial intelligence (AI) has been in the academic and technology toolkit since 2008. Over the last few years, it has skyrocketed in the usefulness of using AI in writing, teaching and research. ChatGPT (introduced in 2022) was the first LLM to the market and has brand name recognition. Kovács uses ChatGPT as an editing tool by sending all his articles there for editing purposes. He gets to review each change that is recommended - especially under the umbrella of editing and copywriting. He has also used it to create an abstract for his works. You can set the parameters and he believes it does a good job and saves him time. From a research perspective, Kovács uses ChatGPT to help distinguish reviews that might be written by bots or by humans. Most AI detectors are not that effective yet. Finally, Kovács shared one of the key issues with LLMs such as ChatGPT; they use up a great deal of energy. He feels that this issue will eventually be ‘solved’ because the incentives are so great.

Laura Walesby (MSU) and Angela Horne (University of California, Los Angeles) presented on “Unlocking Success: The New Business Librarian Adventure.” It should be noted that Angela was sadly not able to attend the meeting. Recruitment and retention continue to be an issue with business libraries - even more now that the pathway from special libraries to academic business libraries is no longer a common path taken with the reduction of jobs in the corporate world. Many of the studies are dated, with the most recent one being in 2014. There also is a change in the move from more traditional library schools to schools of information. Fewer and fewer students in the programs are looking for conventional librarian positions upon graduation. The dynamic of how to attract librarians into our positions is one that gets more and more challenging each year. Laura shared that the ABLD needs to take a more active role in helping younger librarians learn about the opportunities in academic business libraries.

Data Collections Librarian, Barbara Esty (Yale University), talked about their work to build the Data-Intensive Social Science Center (DISSC) at Yale. The timeline for this activity actually goes back to 2016 even though the first staff hires did not take place until 2022. In the two years of implementing this work, they have been able to see some real benefits on the cultural side. Paramount to this work was an understanding and an accounting of data assets that were available for researchers at Yale. As with many cultural changes, the pace is often slow. Barbara Esty gave a fantastic presentation about all of the chances that are taking place and what work is on their agenda.

The last presentation of the day was from ISI Emerging Markets Presentation (EMIS/CEIC). The presentation was given by Valerie Ruiz, Account Manager, Kaan Anlar, Head of Account Management, and a third colleague. They discussed the ISI products focusing on economic data, international news and distressed markets.

The second full day of the meeting started with Roundtable Discussions of our Day-to-Day (Dilemmas, Difficulties, and Delights) and was moderated by Laura Walesby (MSU). The members rotated around the room changing tables and topics every few minutes. A great deal of ideas and issues were being shared by the members as we talked about our vendors, space, staffing, services and other elements of our day-to-day lives.

There were three presentations after the morning session on research services that were particularly useful in regards to the new landscape of supporting research on our campuses. Alex Caracuzzo (Harvard Business School) presented on “Internal Drivers of New Research and Data Services.” Like with the presentation by Barbara Esty (Yale), Alex shared a great deal of their work to help understand all the data needs and available datasets used by Harvard faculty. In the spirit of ‘it takes a village,’ Alex shared how this work is spread to numerous groups within Harvard Business School - with the role of the library to help coordinate these efforts. Greg Fleming (University of Chicago) presented on “Text Mining: From Nuisance to (Almost) a Service.” Greg shared some of the early efforts and problems with students gathering large amounts of text data and carried it through the current situation with TDM Studio, Constellate, APIs, and managing text mining in licenses. Shikha Sharma (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) presented on “Working with Faculty and PhDs: Issues and Insights.” Shikha brought up a variety of concerns for librarians including data licensing, storage, access and discovery. One of the more interesting elements in her talk was related to changes in corporate reporting of subsidiaries that created problems with a variety of datasets. Additionally, managing data acquisition and access is insanely difficult since faculty are not sharing that information with others; nor are they interested.

The last presentation of the morning was mine, Corey Seeman (Michigan). I presented on “Back to the Future: Are Business Libraries Adjusting Forward or Adjusting Back after COVID-19.” This presentation will likely be expanded for the 2025 Global Meeting in Vienna to explore how business libraries are managing changes. The presentation focused on a survey sent to ABLD members prior to the meeting to discuss how the return to normalcy (or an arrival to a new normal) is happening at different member institutions. The questions asked of members included if managing the library is more challenging than before the pandemic (36.4% Yes, 27.2% No, 22.7% Maybe, and 13.6% had no basis to judge). Questions were asked about services, workforce status (hybrid, in-person, remote), and collections. The answers were shared with the members. The challenge for library directors is to balance between the temptation to return to the world of early 2020, and the need to embrace the new world of the academy.

After lunch (great New Haven style pizza from Sally’s – 237 Wooster Street, New Haven), we had a wonderful presentation on ABLD’s organizational history with two retirees who joined us for this session. The moderator was Erin Wachowicz (Yale). The panelists were Michael Enyart (University of Wisconsin, Madison) and retirees Alicia Estes (New York University) and Jill Parchuck (Columbia University & Yale University). The organization formed in the mid-1980s and the first meeting was held at Columbia University. The ABLD was originally formed to ensure that there was retention and understanding of where the major collections were located. At first, the group was limited to schools with large MBA programs and a separate business library space. The group was also capped at 50 to ensure a ‘cozier’ experience and that hosting a meeting would not be a burden for the host institution. In 2002, the first vendors participated at the meeting. The discussion with Michael, Alicia, and Jill was wonderful, especially given the large turnover of the group during the last five years. As the organization has spanned from the mid-1980s to today, it has borne witness to amazing changes in the role, function and operation of the library during that period. I expect that more changes will be coming for our member libraries in the years to come.

The last presentation of the day was “Drinking from the Data Firehose: Building Future-Focused Business Data Collections” from Dan Hickey (New York University). As it followed the session on ABLD history, it was worth noting that Dan provided pictures of Disclosure CD-ROMS and other early electronic resources that business librarians and faculty used. Like with the presentations from Yale and Harvard, the focus of Dan’s talk was to describe how they approached management of school and university purchases of data and how to make them available for future use. Among the many steps that Dan took at NYU included a shift in an open business librarian to one that is focused on data analysis. Dan showed a number of the guide pages that he established for the NYU community.

The late afternoon was taken up with somewhat unstructured time. Many members took advantage of a group visit to the Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel Street, New Haven) and then had the conference dinner at ZINC (964 Chapel Street, New Haven).

The final morning of the ABLD meeting served as the business meeting, and those who could not attend in person were able to remotely join the meeting. Of primary note was the recognition of the passing of ABLD Member David Ernsthausen, who served as business librarian at the University of North Carolina since 1997. He passed away on March 27th, 2024 at the age of 61. In his honor, the ABLD authorized a donation to Second Chance Pet Adoptions in North Carolina. The group also acknowledged the retirement of Diane Zabel (Pennsylvania State University). Diane was later joined in retirement by Tom Marini (University of Virginia) who announced in June 2024. The ABLD Board Elections were held, with Erin Wachowicz (Yale) being voted as Chair-Elect and Dan Hickey (NYU) as Vendor Relations Chair. The members discussed the format of future ABLD meetings (in person, virtual or hybrid) and the ongoing work of becoming an independent non-profit organization. The meeting ended with presentations about ABLD’s open access journal, Ticker, and the new ABLD website that is now hosted on Wild Apricot. The members also toured the Yale School of Management (165 Whitney Avenue, New Haven) and the Marx Science & Social Science Library (219 Prospect Street, New Haven).