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The State of NC LIVE

A Year in Review and a Look Ahead

Claire Leverett | Executive Director

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Our Goals for Today

Learn from each other

Connect with peers and build community

Share NC LIVE updates and gather feedback

Have fun!

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Thank you to our conference planners & volunteers!

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Membership cooperative
Hosted by NCSU
28 years old
4 communities
208 libraries across North Carolina
Public / Private partnership

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Libraries Working Together

208 member libraries across North Carolina

Public Libraries (85)
Community Colleges (59)
NC Independent Colleges & Universities (35)
UNC System (29)

The same content, software and services for ALL libraries.

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“NC LIVE helps member libraries to better support education, enhance economic development, and improve the quality of life of all North Carolinians.”

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2025 Funding

BUDGET: $4.3M

EXPENDITURES

UNC System

$1.8M

State Library

$1.3M

Community Colleges

$.5M

NCICU

$.7M

Operations

$.7M

Content

$3.6M

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NC LIVE

2024-2025

HIGHLIGHTS

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Membership Themes

Funding uncertainty and instability
Concerns around censorship and academic freedom
Importance of communicating library’s value and impact
Helene impacts on WNC
Changes impacting libraries - AI, accessibility, accreditation, reporting
New library buildings and spaces

Funding at the federal level, but also the state level.

Federal level- IMLS, NC Cardinal, research funding, pell grants and other federal funding.
State level- proposed senate budget with funding cuts to COIs

With both of these themes-- thinking about what NC LIVE’s role is, and how can we best support libraries. So far, it’s been clear communication, and stability People look to us as a constant.

Communication and stability--

Thinking about-- what is our role in the face of the funding uncertainty and challenges facing libraries and higher education right now
our funding is not directly impacted. Communication on our funding. Sharing the impacts of LSTA from the state library. In a place of uncertainty, what is NC LIVE’s role? Trying to be a place of stability, and a continuing resource that people can depend on even if they don’t know what their budget will look like for the rest of their resources.

Importance of communicating value

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May 7, 2025

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Emerging Support Needs

Knowledge hub and source for information on rapidly changing elements in libraries

Accessibility, AI

Desire to build community between libraries

Knowledge-sharing and success-sharing

E-Resources marketing support
Communicating value and data-storytelling

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We want to hear from you!

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Authoritative Content

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Top Used Resources

NC LIVE 2024

ABI / INFORM (1.4M)
Health & Medical Collect. (1M)
Ebook Central (518,559)
Education Database (315,030)
US Newsstream (294,308)

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views in 2024

8,954,591

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Gale Indigenous Peoples

of North America

NC LIVE awarded LSTA Grant*
Historical materials on more than 70 tribes in NA and Canada
Permanent, unlimited access

resources/nclive.org/indigenous

*This project/program/service is made possible by funding from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (IMLS grant number LS-256834-OLS-24).

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Nursing Current Concepts Collection

700+ Nursing Videos added to Films on Demand

Features videos produced in the past 5 years

resources.nclive.org/nursingvideos

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HomeGrown & OverDrive

4,600 HomeGrown titles
138,000 checkouts last year
Unlimited, simultaneous use

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Filter by: shelf talker, bookmark, social media post, rack card, poster, and more!

New Print & Promotional Materials Page!

nclive.org/materials

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Training

Total Attendance 2024

28,291

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Newly enhanced, self-paced resource tutorials

Refreshed Resource Tutorials

nclive.org/training-calendar

nclive.org/trainingcalendar

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NC LIVE Team

Daniel Whitehead

Web & Database Development Librarian

Claire Leverett

Executive Director

Sophie Hollis

Community Engagement Librarian

Devon Waugh

Instruction Librarian

Julie Cline

Administrative Support Specialist

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A Look Ahead

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Resource Selection Cycle Timeline

April 2025 - Resource Value Survey launches

May - Dec 2025 - Collection community feedback

Jan- April 2026 - RAC finalizes recommendations

May 2026 - EC makes final decisions

August 2026 - Announce resource decisions

January 1, 2027 - New resource cycle starts

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Resource Selection Process

Gathering Community Input

Data Gathering and Evaluation

Current Resource Assessment

New Resource Assessment

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Selection Criteria

Value across COIs
Cost Per Use
Accessibility
User Experience
Quality & quantity for $
Change cost to the community

nclive.org/about/projects/resource-selection

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We want your feedback!

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COMMUNICATING VALUE

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Usage Statistics Portal Refresh

Goal: Make usage statistics easier for libraries to access and use
New Features

“Quick Report” - with recommended metrics
Peer comparisons
Top 5 resources for my library
Visualization / charts

Deployment Goal: Summer 2025

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Upcoming Training

Demonstrating Your Library’s Value

Effective messaging
Communicating with stakeholders
Collecting and interpreting impact data
Creating compelling one-pagers

We’re also gearing up for an upcoming September learning series centered on the theme “Demonstrating Your Library’s Value.” This will include webinars designed to help library staff collect, interpret, and communicate impact data - whether it’s usage stats, patron stories, or programming outcomes. The goal is to equip participants with tools they can use to advocate for their work and make the case for their library’s essential role in their community.

We are also organizing webinar panels that focus on enhancing e-resource usage and promotion - bringing library staff together to share strategies, troubleshoot common challenges, and learn from one another. Based on feedback from past sessions, we know this kind of collaborative, practical training is incredibly valuable, so we’re excited to expand that format in the coming year. The first panel was held for public libraries on April 22nd and the second panel will be held for academic libraries on June 16th.

All of these projects are grounded in the same core mission: helping library staff feel confident using resources, telling their story, and serving their patrons effectively.

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Maximizing E-Resource Engagement in Public Libraries: Marketing, Training, & Outreach Strategies that Work

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NC LIVE & Accessibility

We’ve already been doing this work
Continue to advocate for accessibility on statewide level
Accessibility Training for ADA Title II updates
Communication and support for libraries

nclive.org/accessibility

So now I’m going to talk about what we’ll be doing at NC LIVE to help libraries with this. The good news is that we already have a head start on this. In the 2023-2026 NC LIVE Strategic Plan we received feedback from member libraries that they wanted help with accessibility. So we started doing this work in 2022, and advocating for the accessibility of our resources on a statewide level. We’ve performed accessibility audits of all our subscription resources and our permanent resources. All vendors were very responsive to our requests, and all issues have been fixed or in development.

We’ve added accessibility language into all of our licensing agreements.

The 2026 compliance date also works well for us. Our next 3-year resource licensing period will start on January 1, 2026. We can also use this upcoming licensing date as leverage to get vendors to comply with the standards. Vendors who do not comply, will be highly scrutinized by the resource advisory committee for renewal.
I’ve already emailed all of our vendors about this new ruling, just to give them a heads up that we’ll be expecting them to be in compliance by the April 2026 date. And I’ve already heard back from some of them that they are at the level where they need to be.
We want to do this work at a statewide level, so you don’t don’t have to worry about it for your N CLIVE resources.
We also want to be able to provide support for libraries as they do this work in their own institutions. So we’ll be talking about this more in our advisory committees- how can we support libraries, so they have the resources they need to make these changes.

I’ve also posted a URL on the slide where you can find more information about all the accessibility work that we’ve done, include accessibility reports from vendors.

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nclive.org

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Thank you!

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ICE BREAKER

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Would you rather eat a bowl of candy or a bowl of whipped cream?

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Which fictional character would you trust to run your library for a day?

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What’s the most ridiculous thing you believed as a kid?

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If you could learn one skill instantly, what would you choose and why?

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Which of these medieval lions do you most identify with today?

(Credit to Kelly Wooten at Duke for this excellent ice breaker)