 Welcome. I'm Cliff Lynch. I'm the director of the Coalition for Networked Information, and I'll be introducing this session. You've reached one of the project briefing sessions for week three of the CNI fall 2020 virtual member meeting. Week three is focused on technology, infrastructure and standards, and a couple of logistical things. This is being recorded and will be subsequently available. We do have closed captioning available. Please make use of that if it's helpful. There is a chat running and we also have a Q&A box. You can use the Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen to pose questions at any point during the presentation. After we have heard from both of our speakers, Diane Goldenberg Hart from CNI will moderate a Q&A session and we'll try and address as many of the questions as possible then. So with that, let me introduce the topic here. We have two speakers with us today. Kelsey Schaefer and Chris Vincent both are from Clemson University Libraries and they're going to talk about technical solutions for managing occupancy and ensuring that density requirements are met. This is a challenge that many campuses are facing. Some of them have tried to deal with it on a sort of a by-facility basis like a library. Others have tried to go to broader campus-wide solutions. There are lots of interesting questions here about the best ways to do this and indeed even about whether some of these systems may persist after the current emergency for various reasons. So I'm looking forward to hearing about the experiences at Clemson and I just like to thank our presenters for joining us today to fill us in on this and I'll turn it over to Kelsey to start the presentations. Welcome. Hi, great. Thanks so much and thanks for that introduction. We're really excited to be here today to be talking about the solutions that we came up with to manage occupancy given the pandemic conditions. So I'm Kelsey Schaefer. I'm the Creative Technologies Librarian at Clemson. I'm going to start us off and then we'll hear from Chris Benson who's the head of library technology. So to start with we were faced over the summer with this idea of how do we take our library which is really highly so I'm going to be talking mostly about our main library, the main library that's really highly used and make it safe for people to use but still be able to let people in the building. So at Clemson we have about 23,000 students and we see about 10,000 unique visitors in the main library every day, pre-pandemic. So really we're in the middle of campus, just a ton of traffic and people what we what we now know is that people like to come between classes. We get really busy in the middle of the day and we know from our own research that we are a particularly high used high visit library. So when we were planning on what we were going to do for under these pandemic circumstances saying you know we need social distancing, we need a max capacity, what are we going to do when if we have 10,000 people trying to come back in the building that will not allow us to have social distancing and we did not want to be of course you know a place where the virus is spreading. So over the summer the leadership team started thinking about this of course many other libraries were doing the same. And you know in talking to other libraries there was a lot of conversation a lot of other libraries there are a lot of different solutions and some of them did a kind of no management solution. So you know we're just going to see what happens and then go from there. We decided especially given how many visitors were used to seeing that we would anticipate that we would have high usage. So we really wanted to put in place limits on how many people could enter but we were figuring out exactly what that would look like. Also figuring out what our capacity was supposed to be that was a big question for a lot of people of course. And we ended up taking our seats down from about 2500 seats to about 500 seats so only 500 you know places you can sit in the building and set our capacity at like 600 again you know we're used to seeing more like several thousand in the building at any given time. So this was a big difference for us and some of and that involved a fair amount of calculations we were a part of a cohort with bright spot consulting that kind of helped us figure that out as well and then we had a lot of ideas about how we were going to manage this and that's what we'll talk about today. So should we do seat booking okay if we have seat booking what are the problems that come with that like how do we manage if somebody how do we check to see if somebody has a seat that seems like a lot of management what if we did wristbands and stats we give out wristbands and that allows us to see how long somebody's been in the building that was a problem we were anticipating. So you know because of the virus longer exposure longer time spent in the building is more risk and also we wanted more people to be able to use the library so we were setting you know time limits and that was linked to all these questions that we were having. So we went through a lot and we also at this point didn't know how many visitors we were going to have. Of course we then found out once we put into place what we're going to talk about today we came back and ended up with about 600 people total in the library on a given weekday. So that's a dramatic difference between 10 000 and I think part of that is the restrictions we put in place and part of it is the campus culture but we do have students back on campus. Okay so this is what it looks like now and we're going to work backwards but I just want you to have an idea from the patron perspective. Somebody entering the library and there's two little dots on this map here. We have a strange library for many reasons. One of them is that we have different entrance and exit doors so there's entrance and then this is a wall of windows and you actually leave out the other side. So we blocked off the entrance there's only one door to enter rather than three before. You have to swipe to unlock the door then you swipe card swipe again at a security desk that we set up. So we set up this very limited flow into the building where you have to pass by the security guard which we didn't have before and you have to show you have to have an interaction basically with the security guard. We also implemented curbside pickup from the entrance without needing to enter the building. So basically you're a patron you have to card swipe twice at this point once to unlock the door once again at the security desk. So the three projects that we'll talk about today introduce those ideas. And Chris are you muted Chris? Hi good afternoon everyone. There's a button that I always hit on my microphone but I'm going to talk to you about three solutions that we put in place today to help manage occupancy in our buildings and those are the send source occupancy monitor, spring share seat booking, and an access management system which we work very closely with our central IT department called CCIT on. The three major characteristics that are shared between these three solutions is that they were in some part already implemented in some way at Clemson University or at the libraries. So just given the limited amount of time that we had over the spring and the summer of 2020 to develop solutions in time to reopen for fall of 2020 semester, we made the decision to implement solutions that really built upon existing technologies and apps that were already deployed here and across the university. And the first one I'll talk about is send source. So we adopted send source as a people counting solution in August of 2019 after we removed our old security gates which were fairly old, unreliable and really provided us with inaccurate counts. At that time we installed a sensor at the entrance that Kelsey showed you on the map earlier that was that's one way in. So we were counting people as they came in. We did not have a sensor installed at the exit at that time because our primary objective was really to get account of the people coming into the building. At that time we weren't really that we weren't really that interested in occupancy for various reasons. Once COVID hit obviously though we quickly realized that in order to reopen safely we would need to get an accurate picture of occupancy in the building. We knew that other buildings across campus were also likely looking for a solution. So we reached out to our central IT department to kind of get a better sense of what they had heard from others on campus in terms of solutions that they were searching for in order to manage occupancy. And they were really great about it. We started up a project with their project management office to kind of look at some different solutions that were out there both around campus and external. And after discussing and reviewing some of these alternatives the libraries and central IT decided that adopting send source campus wide would be the best approach. One it was already in the library which is one of the major major buildings on campus and one of the busiest buildings on campus one of the highest traffic areas. So CCIT then took the lead in installing those sensors and other high traffic areas on campus including placing one at the exit to Cooper library so that we weren't only getting people coming in we were also getting them leaving so that we could actually get a full count accounting of who was in the building. Some of the other high traffic areas that campus IT installed sensors and integrated into send source included dining halls, our gyms, and a bookstore on campus. Actually, yeah if you could stay on that slide or the one yeah so at Cooper library the first image here is on the top. It shows this is the display that was developed with CCIT to display occupancy to visitors to campus. So we have we have this display showing in our lobby on a large screen that we have in there. We also have a mobile monitor that we have pointing out towards the pointing outside towards where people approach the building so that people can see before they come into the building what our occupancy is. So part of that project with CCIT was developing this app branded as healthy Clemson to give a visual display of what our occupancy is. This was also integrated into something called the my Clemson app which is just Clemson's you know standard mobile app. So here you can see Cooper library is included on that app along with a number of other locations across campus including the dining halls and some other places. So that students can get a real quick view of what's available and where. Just using that data that we pull out of send source using their APIs. The second solution that I'll talk about today is SpringShare's LibCal Seats booking. So like many of you and a number of other libraries Clemson uses the SpringShare suite of products in order to publish research guides, provide chat and virtual reference services, and manage spaces and appointments. When over the summer SpringShare announced that they were extending their LibCal product to include something called seats, we immediately identified it as worthwhile to investigate just given that we already used LibCal for room and space reservations and all those other things I listed earlier. So we entered into a trial period with LibCal seats and you know seeing the wonderful work that was done with LibCal at the University of Miami. We decided to jump in and make the investment in it for the fall semester. Like Miami we defined our spaces as types of seating. So for example our spaces are like individual seats, computer stations, shared study tables, carols, etc. We started out with overall we configured four locations which included 50 spaces and 515 seats. So we started with pretty strict booking parameters for those spaces. We started out at having students only being able to book up to two hours a day with one booking per day. Once we realized that there weren't as many people coming into the building as we expected, we ended up extending those out to four and then six hours without any restrictions on the number of bookings per day. We also realized that a number of our attendee of our patrons, we just wanted to come into print in the libraries. So we accommodated for that by creating 15-minute appointments for printing. So students come in, print, and then quickly be on their way without having to actually book a seat. We added a section to our website which you can see here on the slide which outlines all of the different seat and space options that we have across our branches. And again this is based off of the University of Miami model. We have, I thank them a lot for the work that they did in trailblazing this. And basically this helps makes it easier for patrons to identify the types of spaces that they can book. And once they find that, it takes them directly into LibCal to complete the booking. And we have LibCal integrated with our single sign-on solution so that once they make a booking, they verify by signing in with their clinic credentials and we have all of their information already. So that's less for them to fill out when they make a booking. All right. I think we can move on to the next slide, Kelsey. So as I mentioned earlier, we configured 515 seats. Sort of the one thing we anticipated but didn't realize how much trouble it was going to be was creating 515 stickers and QR codes to put out in place on those seats. So here you see an example of those seat labels. These QR codes are generated by LibCal. We took those, Kelsey and her interns took those QR codes and made them look a little nicer and designed some really nice stickers which define the space and the seat number for students to make it easier for them to find it when they come into the building. Students scan the QR code. They check in by entering a code that's sent to them, that's emailed to them by LibCal after they make their booking. And then once they're done with their booking, they can then use that same QR code to check out. We also designed floormaps showing the reserved seat numbers so that students could find their way around the building and figure out where their seat was. We identified that as an early challenge just because it's hard enough finding your way around our strange library but especially so when you have a bunch of numbers on seats. So we realized early on that we needed something directional to provide students. Okay, next slide. So the final solution that I will talk about today is the access management system. So this is something again we developed with our central IT department and there's two major components to this. The first component is actual access into the building. So buildings across campus are restricted by to only people who are affiliated with university and people, university affiliates who have had a recent negative COVID-19 test. So the the bad gen that we have at the entrance to the building checks both of those things. If both of those things come up okay, then the person's allowed into the building. We managed that through the university's Tiger 1 card services. We didn't have much to do with that implementation but it does help at least have that help us to have that pre-clearance because we are not allowing any community members to come into our libraries during this time. After that the second piece is sort of the lobby checkpoint where we have a security officer stationed. The access management system that we developed was an app that was a partnership between the library, central IT, and Tiger 1 card services. We developed this to minimize the interaction between the security officer at the lobby checkpoint and that patron. Basically how this works is the student comes in, they're in the building, they walk up to this checkpoint and they scan their ID or their Apple watch or their phones to the card reader and it tells the security officer whether that person is an employee, a student, or any other affiliation with the university. It is the app is designed to check against our university's identity vault to determine that person's university status. All university employees are automatically granted access so when an employee comes up to this checkpoint and scans their phone the security officer will see a green check along with that person's information just like this so it'll identify the patron, their username, their affiliation, and the check indicates that they're allowed in. If they are a student and they scan their ID, you want to go to the next slide Kelsey, they'll get this no, they'll get the red no sign. That indicates to the security officer that they then have to ask the student do you have a reservation in the library? If you want to go back a couple slides Kelsey. Students can get into the building if they have a class in the building. We were able to automate that process by checking against our student registration system banner to confirm that that student's class is in the building and they are allowed entry up to 15 minutes before their class and for the entire duration of their class so they students get a green check mark if they have a class in the building at that time. They also get the green check mark if they have a reference appointment scheduled with a librarian or someone else who works in the building. We configured that using spring shares APIs which already existed for LibCal. Students will continue to get the red no entry into the building if they have a LibCal seat booked and the reason for that, if you want to go to the next slide Kelsey, the reason for that is that's under reservation information coming soon. The reason for that is the API for spring share was not available until later in October so we did not have time to build that into the initial phase of this app. However, the project has been reopened with our central IT and any day now that will become available so and it will definitely be available for spring semester so we will be using the LibCal Seats API to check LibCal's reservation information so that students will then if they have a reservation in the library they'll get the green check mark. That will further reduce the interaction between the security officer and the student because right now the student has to physically show the security officer their phone and email that they receive confirming their reservation so we're really excited that that API was released and we look forward to getting it into production for the spring. Thinking about all of that that's a series of significant changes to our public services right so we are used to people obviously just being able to walk right in and now it switched to the door is locked you have to swipe to unlock the door then you have to swipe to show that you have a reason to be in the building and we were there were a number of reasons that I talked about at the beginning about why we set it up like that concern about crowding and also we wanted to make sure that the people who needed to be in the building like people in their classes the people who had classes in the building could come in so that there were a number of decisions I feel like we spent most of the summer planning as everybody did for this kind of unknown but so just we wanted to talk a little bit about the impact on public services this obviously changed access policies so you know we're allowing faculty staff so employees to come in without a booking without a reservation or appointment booked students have to show that they have booked something and we are not allowing community members in at this time and that is a university wide mandate basically because you have to show that you have a negative test to be able to enter any of the buildings and that will be the same for the spring and we had a big question of how long people could say at first we were limiting the number of times people could enter to one so you could have one booking a day and you could stay for two hours at a time we have extended that so you can stay for at first we bumped it to four hours and now it's to six and you can enter more than once and people were running into problems with that when they needed to run into print something and then they wanted to come back later to study so we expanded that so just being fluid and that's part of the continual adjustment so we were looking at social media we have chat on the library website so people can chat you know reference questions but we would also get a lot of questions about building procedures and we added those printing appointments at first we were having people just book a seat to be able to print and then we figured out a way to actually have them book an appointment to be able to print again being in the middle of campus means we are a catch-all for people doing you know needing to fill all sorts of things printing being one of them and expand at those hours and then to kind of elaborate on parts of that some of the things we learned we learned a lot one of them is that marketing I mean this is something we we knew but to emphasize marketing was really important here so anytime we made changes going from two hours to four to six and it was really important to communicate that of course we did a lot of marketing both you know traditional what I would call traditional marketing so on social media or the library website but we also made a lot of flyers that we handed out in the building posters outside the building this is an example of one of them so book a spot in the library and we wanted to make sure that people could still access physical collections so you can browse most of the stacks still and then we have a pretty robust curbside pickup program that has been used and has been an exciting new service so that's part of the modified services basically if you think back to the map that I first showed there's a there's an area between the entrance and exit that now is a hold shelf and we have a library employee there when somebody has requested a book they call when they have walked up to the library and say I'm here the library employee grabs the book and brings it to them just just opens the door and hands it to them so curbside but without us basically there's no curb in the way that our library is set up so we had to modify that a bit and of course we've seen really a big rise in virtual reference which is exciting see bookings happy to talk about this more people have questions we have individual seat numbers but largely people are just some most people don't care exactly that they sit in that number and that's been okay it will become a problem if we have a ton more people so that something we're monitoring um and a lot and most seat bookings are not made super in advance they're they're made walking up to the building or right outside of the building um okay briefly so for the spring we're keeping largely the same system until it's no longer necessary of course we don't know when that's gonna happen so spring summer you know we'll see um the libraries are playing a role in managing study spaces across campus so we have a lot of ongoing projects um to identify you know um where else we don't have as many individual study rooms as I would like to have so looking at across campus how we can use some classrooms that kind of thing for people to take zoom classes or virtual classes um and then after COVID-19 we like the occupancy monitoring we're gonna keep that um we're thinking about keeping some seat booking but I we're not gonna we're not planning on keeping all seat booking um people have been asking for like you know to know because we're so highly used it sometimes it's hard to find a seat in the building so sometimes people you know request that kind of thing but we worry you know we want to make sure that it's equitable access that kind of thing so monitoring that um but we'll remove those occupancy restrictions once it's safe to do so um we might still shift around some of the entry procedures because parts of those are nice like the curbside pickup and we'll keep the focus on the virtual reference so uh we have one minute so um we'll see how that goes for questions but um here's our contact information um and we're happy to talk more about this um as any people want to that's great thank you Kelsey and Chris uh thanks for that wonderful overview really interesting strategies that you're using to deal with a um challenging problem uh the floor is now open for questions as Kelsey pointed out we're kind of at time right now but we might be able to sneak in one question before folks need to peel off please feel free to enter that now in the q&a box um I don't see any questions at this time but please feel free to enter them I just wanted to ask a very quick question do you have to have an app to make a reservation or can you can you walk in and make your reservation if you don't want to download that app or you don't have it yeah so it's um it's actually a web app so um if they don't have to download an app to their phone they just have to access it um via web but there is no and this is something that we had discussed to um early on but just really didn't have a chance to implement was being able to provide like an onsite kiosk in order to to book a spot for those people who just came in and wanted something immediately so I think that's something we probably want an eye on towards spring too and um our campus partners have asked about maybe implementing something like that as well so we may need on them to do it and then we we take it from them okay interesting all right well thank you very much for that and I do want to be mindful of time um so I just want to thank you Kelsey and Chris one last time for coming to CNI and sharing this with us really helpful and interesting and thank you so much to our attendees for joining us here today we appreciate you spending some time with CNI we hope to see you at other sessions as this meeting continues I'll go ahead and stop the public portion of the um session I'll stop the recording but if you want to hang around I think Kelsey and Chris have a few minutes to chat with us if you want to raise your hand I will be happy to turn on your microphone so thanks everyone take care bye bye