Harlan, Lydia

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/30381

Lydia Harlan is the Budget Analyst for Collections, Discovery, and Digital Strategy at University of Oregon Libraries. A librarian by training and budget analyst by circumstance, she holds an MLIS from San Jose State University and a BA in film from Emerson College.

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Browsing Harlan, Lydia by Subject "academic libraries"

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    Don’t Call It a Comeback: Popular Reading Collections in Academic Libraries
    (American Library Association, 2018) Brookbank, Elizabeth; Davis, Anne-Marie; Harlan, Lydia
    Despite the persisting notion that recreational reading does not have a place in the academic mission of college and university libraries, these libraries have a long history of providing pleasure reading for their patrons. During the latter half of the twentieth century, the idea of academic libraries meeting the recreational reading needs of students seems to have fallen out of favor, but a literature review of that time period shows that the collections themselves still existed. Discussion of—and justifications for—these collections, however, has enjoyed a resurgence in the library literature over the past decade. Given this renewed interest, this study seeks to assess just how common these collections are in US academic libraries today, and whether or not they are, in fact, enjoying a comeback from previous decades. This study surveyed the thirty-nine academic libraries that make up the Orbis Cascade Alliance in the Pacific Northwest, a diverse group of libraries in terms of size, type, budget, and student populations. The results of the survey show that a majority of libraries have a recreational collection and that these collections are valued by patrons and librarians alike. Recommendations are made for shifting the perspective on popular reading collections and their place in academic libraries, as well as for how to study them in the future.
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    Weed Your Budget: Visualizing an Academic Library’s Financial Position
    (The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), 2025-03-17)
    This paper presents a case study about opportunities for libraries to elevate reporting on their organization's financial status, transactions, and available funds using data visualization, specifically with Power BI, based on work at University of Oregon Libraries. The Power BI dashboard aggregates data from the university’s financial system and integrated library system to provide a consolidated view, and to tell the library's story in a more engaging way. The author proposes using this type of business intelligence technology to provide a transformative impact on financial operations of libraries.