ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

CONFERENCE CIRCUIT: Racing toward tomorrow, Part 1: Coverage from ACRL’s 9th National Conference

“Every academic librarian should experience an ACRL National Conference. Variety of programs/papers were outstanding.”

“This is by far the most useful professional conference I have ever attended.”

“The ACRL Conferences are without equal for academic librarians! The programs were excellent; the opportunities for professional sharing and networking the best.”

Pat Schroeder

This sampling of evaluation form comments represent the enthusiasm attendees brought to the ACRL 9^th National Conference, “Racing Toward Tomorrow,” April 8-11, 1999, in Detroit.

Nearly 1,800 librarians representing all 50 states and 8 foreign countries participated in the 233 program sessions which included two keynote addresses, six invited papers, 54 contributed research papers, 41 panel sessions, 48 poster sessions, 73 roundtable discussions, and 5 preconferences. One-hundred eightysix companies brought 1,012 exhibitors and 158 individuals made use of the free exhibits passes to examine the products and services the companies had to offer.

Librarians had the opportunity to engage in discussions with academic administrators, peers, and exhibitors as they sought to update their skills and take home the ideas that would work on their campuses. They also had time for fun as they gathered at both the Museum of African American History and the Henry Ford Museum for evenings of entertainment and networking.

C&RL Newsis pleased to offer the following summaries of selected conference programs and thanks the many volunteers who provided these reports. Part two will appear in the July/August issue. More detailed information about sessions is available on ACRL’s Web page, through audiocassettes, and printed proceedings. See the sidebar for details.—Mary Ellen Davis

This summary of the ACRL National Conference 1999 keynote address is submitted from someone who wasn’t even at the event in Detroit! For the first time, the ACRL keynote was “live” on the Internet and was being watched at the INCOLSA offices in Indianapolis, Indiana, as a session of the Indiana Library Federation’s Annual Conference (see sidebar). This Web broadcast was sponsored by UMI.

James Neal

Gail McMillan, Pat Kreitz, Debbie Murphy, and Vicki Atherton ham it up with the Oscar Mayer wiener at the reception at the Henry Ford Museum.

The first step toward developing an effective DL library service program is to create a task force to oversee goal setting, adherence to established guidelines, and the promotion of services, said William Meloy (Cleveland State University). Once a taskforce has been established, the next step is to offer as many resources and services as possible, including, but not limited to a dedicated Web site, electronic reserves remote (e-mail) reference, online registration, and access to databases.

The final step, according to Meloy, is to promote the resources and services that are offered. Promotion may include sending memos to faculty announcing the resources and seivices available to DL students; meeting with DL faculty to discuss the availability of resources and services; offering “how-to” workshops at various times and places during the semester; and creating and disseminating specialized informational brochures to DL students via DL faculty.—Jonathan Buckstead, Austin QmmuntyCollege

The reference desk: to be or not to be shouldn't be the question

In “Creating Our Roles as Reference Librarians of the Future: Choice or Fate?” Susan Szasz Palmer (Cornell University) stated that the mission of academic reference has always been to support student curricular and faculty research needs. The reference desk seems as essential to that as the courtroom is to lawyers.

Some have experimented with eliminating the desk, and others have advocated answering most questions via computer. However, technology heightens the need for personal assistance, if not in frequency then in intensity, just as in banking the customer’s primary tool is the ATM, but a human expert is sought for substantive problems. If the reference desk is eliminated and librarians are hidden in offices, what will lead users to think that librarians will help them? “If you take it down, they will go away.”

Instead, Palmer advocated enhancing reference desk service by adding consultation by appointment and referral to librarian specialists alongside traditional desk service. Roving may also be part of the answer. And rather than focusing professional development on training that is far more extensive for databases than it ever was for print sources, librarians need to master the reference process and learn to live the question now.—AnneBerwind, Austin Peay State University

Are we all still in this together?

At “Libraries, Vendors, and Publishers: Changing Expectations, Changing Partnerships in a Networked Environment” representatives shared their perspectives on this issue. Cheryl Kern-Simirenko (Purdue University Libraries) noted that libraries want products and services that are cost-effective and useful. Products should knit together for seamless access and use. She likened the current situation to early railroads where different gauge rails made true networking an impossibility. The industry should avoid grab bag models of bundling information products and allow for more customization. Shifting from subscription to licensing models would help libraries ensure long-term access to information. Finally, libraries hope to save time, money, and effort by using vendors to provide and manage information products.

Eve Davis (EBSCO Information Services) noted that users want the four access-As: anytime, anywhere, anyone, and anyhow. Vendors are trying to provide that access, but there are factors complicating this. Uneven technology across campuses, users with different skill levels, and private Internet access all make it difficult to provide consistent, quality information products and access.

Vendor roles in this marketplace are changing. They continue to help libraries manage information products such as journal and e-journals, but they also provide libraries with increased choices of products, packages, and access options.

Thomas Bacher (Purdue University Press) ended with a publisher’s perspective. Publishers, libraries, and vendors have the same eventual goals—to get information to someone who wants it. Publishers do experiment with cost-containment to keep product prices competitive. Camera-ready copy was one such experiment but copy often still needed editing.

Publishers are important for the editorial skills they provide. Great writing does not just happen. Authors must be discovered, developed, and yes, edited. This is part of what publishers continue to offer this ongoing partnership between libraries, vendors, and publishers.—Jeffrey S. Bullington, University of Kansas Libraries

In their shoes

During the panel session “Teach My Class the Internet: Internet Competencies for Undergraduate General Education Curriculum,” Pam Day, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, and Vanette Schwartz (Illinois State University [ISU]) described a new course in ISU’s general education curriculum that affected their library instruction program. Schwartz explained that ISU is an institution committed to the belief that first-year students need extensive personal contact with full-time faculty members; as a result, tenured or tenure-track faculty teach the new general education course “Foundations of Inquiry.”

Instruction librarians meet at least once with each of the 100 sections, reaching approximately 2,700 students. As “an act of self preservation,” Day said that they constructed modules for teaching students the Internet, not just how information is created and disseminated but also how users can evaluate information.

The modules are not canned or scripted presentations. Instead, they allow individual librarians to tailor their sessions to suit the needs of a particular class, using as much or as little of the modules as they want to. Curious to see how other colleagues would respond to a similar situation, the speakers asked the audience to brainstorm in groups for alternative solutions to their predicament.

Hinchliffe compiled the audience’s suggestions while Day demonstrated the modules they developed. Some noteworthy alternatives included creating instructional materials such as exercises and handouts for the librarians and faculty members to teach from, implementing teach-the-teacher workshops, and creating a peer or graduate student mentoring program.— Catherine Cardwell, Bowling Green State University

Reorganization, professional development in support of leadership

At Wake Forest University, a process of reorganization—beginning in 1995 with re-visioning and ending in 1999 with position re-writes, salary adjustments, workshops on teamwork, and a formal evaluation—has transformed library functional specialists into team leaders who also function as generalists. Four team leaders, who serve rotating terms of three years, focus on program planning and decision-making in the areas of special collections, access services, information services, and technical services. Each professional also contributes to the library’s instruction and collection development programs.

The traditional administrative hierarchy persists, but in a new, unusual form: the associate directors for administration and collections serve as a “director team” without any direct reports and the department heads restrict their authority to day-to-day decision-making.

According to Library Director Rhoda Channing, presenter for “Reorganization: The Next Generation,” this approach achieves the outcome of greater customer satisfaction even as it presented a few challenges, including staff reluctance to engage in peer and upward review, confusion about the leader vs. department head role, and an increase in hierarchy. Ultimately,

The poster sessions give attendees an opportunity to share ideas in a less-structured setting.

Charming reported, the reorganized library enables decision-making at the highest level that individuals can achieve; people work things out and come to her to ratify their solutions, a task she is regularly able to accomplish with a permissive “whatever.”

A growing number of leadership programs are providing development for academic librarians, according to Teresa Neely (Colorado State University) and Mark Winston (Rutgers University), the presenters of “Snowbird Leadership Institute: A Survey of the Implications for Leadership in the Profession.” Snowbird Institute alums, Neely and Winston investigated the impact of this development program on the individual attendee and on the profession as a whole for the 1990-96 cohorts. They identified a positive movement toward greater leadership activity, such as publications and presentations, and an increase in leadership positions as a result of attending this experiential, self-exploratory institute.—Kathryn H. Carpenter, Purdue University, Calumet

Thinking style preferences among academic librarians

Is there a significant relationship between thinking style and administrative role? Between thinking style and gender? Between administrative role and gender? Linda Marie Golian (Florida Gulf Coast University) sought to answer these questions in her study “Thinking Style Preferences Among Academic Librarians.”

She compared the thinking styles of pairs (dyads) of librarians at the same level of administrative responsibility in public services and technical services in ARL libraries.

For instance, a pair in each library might include the assistant director of technical services and the assistant director of public services or the head of cataloging and the head of reference. Thinking preferences were defined according to the five styles identified by Harrison and Bramson in their InQ Instrument (1977, rev. 1980): synthesist, idealist, pragmatist, analyst, and realist (SIPAR).

The study had five major findings. Chi-square analyses revealed a relationship between gender and thinking style as well as between administrative area and thinking style. The study also illustrated that administrative peers (pairs working in the same library in different departments) generally use different thinking styles. InQ Instrument scores among the study population were often in the mid-ranges, implying that librarians have the potential to use all five thinking styles effectively. Finally, the fact that the study population was homogenous in terms of race and age (95% Caucasian, 96.6% between the ages of 40 and 60) indicates the need for aggressive recruitment of diverse library staff.

Golian suggested that librarians should apply a four-step process to use thinking styles to foster professional growth: 1) reflect (understand self and others), 2) identify situations in which certain thinking styles have been successful or have failed, 3) determine positive and negative effects of thinking style on various situations, and 4) modify (use the thinking style that is most appropriate to the situation). —Ximena Chrisagis, Wright State University

Interactive tutorials: Do they work?

In the information-packed “How Students Use Web-Based Tutorials and Library Assignments: Case Studies from The Ohio State University Libraries,” Nancy O’Hanlon and Fred Roecker presented their strategies for introducing thousands of students to the OSU libraries. Among the problems facing user education at OSU: the freshman library instruction program reached 10,000 freshman and had two library assignments, the user education department was understaffed, and the libraries were offering more and more Web-based resources, adding to existing confusion about library sources.

Faced with these issues and more, OSU’s User Education department decided to institute Webbased instruction that would reach a larger audience, be available remotely, be easily updated, and did not require additional staff. Thus net.TUTOR and the new Freshman Library Assignment were created. net.TUTOR consists of 14 interactive Web-based tutorials, with lessons, suggested activities, and interactive quizzes on using the Internet. The Freshman Library Assignment is used in University College (UVC) classes and students choose 1 of 4 assignments and follow step-bystep instructions on 1 of 8 topics.

Based on evaluations, surveys, and statistics collected, the two projects were considered a success. Without these tools, many undergraduates may not be exposed to the OSU libraries until possibly their third year. Overall, the conclusion was that these interactive tutorials worked! Future improvements to net.TUTOR and the Freshman Library Assignment include expansion of existing services.—Stefanie Dennis, Bowling Gwen State University

Look Ma, no pages!

In “Electronic-Only Journals in the Sciences: Challenges and Solutions,” branch librarians from Harvard University discussed the presence of electronic-only journals in their disciplines. Moderated by Michael Blake, librarians drew upon specific titles to demonstrate the impact this new genre is having on librarians and scholarly research.

Recurring concerns were matters of indexing, archiving, and access. All three lauded faster publication time, the capacity to link to related documents, and lower costs. Each highlighted specific contributions to her or his field.

Attendees could check out state of the art products and services offered by nearly 200 companies

Dorothy Solbrig emphasized the inclusion of audiovisuals and large data sets. She demonstrated the impact an online “movie” has in conveying a concept such as molecular docking.

Chemistry literature benefits from the interactive capabilities of electronic-only journals. Theresa Kavanaugh showed examples of 3-D molecular manipulation and described “on-thefly” unit conversion, which enables the reader to choose units of measure.

In physics, timeliness of publication and affordability are key. According to Michael Leach, some of the hottest names in string theory restrict their submissions to electronic-only journals to ensure currency. Projected subscription prices in the hundreds are certainly preferably to the thousands of dollars paid for print titles.

More information is available at their Web site: www.physics.harvard.edu/ejonly.—DianeDσnham, MichiganState University

E-journal revelations

Anyone expecting this program to focus on “how to construct criteria for the evaluation of electronic journals” was probably disappointed, since this panel provided little more than a handout concerning evaluation criteria. However, the session, Electronic Epiphanies: Constructing Criteria for “Evaluation of Electronic Journals,” provided valuable information, despite the inconsistency with program details.

The panelists described in glowing detail Project Muse, JSTOR, EBSCO Online, and OCLC ECO. They provided an overview of electronic collections development, involving a range of players, from BI to ILL to serials cataloging to public services.

Two concerns raised during the session include the pressure from administrators who expect all information to be available in electronic format (so why do we need to budget for print?) coupled with exponential cost increases (147% in 10 years). “We are spending more and buying less,” Laura Crain (St. Micheal’s College) observed.

An unexpected gem was the overview of metadata creation for better access and integration; as Robert Bouchard-Hall (St. Micheal’s College) summarized, “The most carefully evaluated and selected electronic journal is useless if not accessible.” Issues that remain for electronic collections include authentication systems, public workstation printing costs, unified interfaces, instruction, archival solutions, collection development responsibilities, serials pricing, and the wait… e-journal publishing is only in its infancy.—Lori Driscoll-Eagan, University of Florida Health Science Center Library

Accreditation and accountability: meeting the challenge

“Don’t ask questions if the answers won’t help you to make changes.” With these words Debbie Masters (San Francisco State University [SFSU]) emphasized the importance of knowing what you plan to do with the findings of your assessment process. During their session “Aligning Library Performance Measures with Institutional Outcomes and Outputs: A Case Study,” she and her colleagues at SFSU offered concrete guidance on how libraries can identify and document the ways they contribute to institutional missions and goals.

Increasingly, educational institutions and their libraries need to account for themselves not only to accrediting bodies but to the general public, as well.

Bonnie Gratch Lindauer, consultant to the SFSU library staff and winner of the 1999 K. G. Saur Award for best article— “Defining and Measuring the Library’s Impact on Campuswide Outcomes,” College & Research Libraries (November 1998)—stressed that libraries must know their context both in terms of their relationships with other campus units as well as in the expectations of the accrediting body. Institutional strategic and planning documents are an important starting point for determining this context.

Since SFSU librarians sought to include all the library staff in the process, they found that explicitly separating individual evaluation from institutional assessment was absolutely necessary to obtain useful results. They also supplied sample user surveys and details on how they involved the library staff from all parts of the library.—Charlotte M. Droll, Wright State University

Usability studies assist in Web design

In “The User Is the Expert,” Ruth Dicksten (University of Arizona), Jerilyn Veldof (University of Minnesota), Abigail Loomis (University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Michael Prasse (OCLC) reported on how they employed a variety of usability studies to test and redesign homepages. Positing that poor homepage design is usually the result of developers’ misunderstanding of patron Web usage, they advocated user-centered design. Though librarians should not abandon their judgement and experience, Web design should be an iterative process of user consultation, redesign, and retesting.

They described in detail several steps in University of Arizona’s (UA) thorough homepage makeover. Focus groups identified the need for major revisions of the library’s homepage and online tutorial. The design team then participated in cognitive walk-throughs of the homepage to anticipate problems in advance of user testing. One form of user testing was card sorting, in which patrons were asked to sort cards with names of online indexes. The team discovered that users preferred a highly specific list of subject categories and redesigned accordingly.

UA also conducted formal usability tests in which team members observed students performing real tasks on the homepage. The data they gleaned greatly informed a redesign featuring more graphics, fewer library terms like “index” or “catalog,” and more careful attention to color, buttons, and size. —John Haar, Vanderbilt University

Educators emphasize collaboration in educating next generation of professionals

“Whose Job Is It Anyway?” the title asks. Library school educators painted the new library professional and examined various roles in educating that professional. The pervasive sentiment was that professional education is a shared responsibility.

Presenters portrayed dynamic, exciting new roles for librarians as teachers, Web designers, contract negotiators, project managers, public relations experts, Internet catalogers, and creators of value-added services. In the words of Lynne Howarth (University of Toronto), “There has never been a better time to be an information professional.” But there is increasing pressure on library schools to turn out professionals who will succeed in the new environment.

Schools are revising curricula to address changing information needs of society. Even so, the consensus of speakers was that the primary responsibility of library schools is to teach core values and theory. In a profession in which the work environment changes quickly, core values are constant.

Betty Bengston (University of Washington) described the three-legged approach to professional education. Core values, team skills, assessment and evaluation, how to teach, and an interest in lifelong learning are important parts of library school education. It is the responsibility of libraries to provide skills development, continuing education, and retooling opportunities. The individual must take initiative for his or her own professional development and help shape the future of the profession.

Prudence Dalrymple (Dominican University) observed that librarians have traditionally been involved in library education through advisory boards, program accreditation, internship programs, and adjunct teaching. Speakers emphasized that we must look for ways to strengthen relationships between schools and libraries, communicate our needs, and build new collaborative models. In the words of Dalrymple, “Neither libraries nor library educators have sole ownership of the problem.” —Janita Jobe, University of Nevada, Reno

Redefining scholarship

Faculty have struggled against narrow definitions of scholarship that have placed it in an almost antithetical relationship with teaching and service. Inspired by the work of the late Ernest Boyer, academicians are redefining scholarship. In 1998 the ACRL Task Force on Institutional Priorities and Faculty Rewards completed a statement “intended to extend the range of activities recognized as scholarly for the purposes of tenure, promotion, merit, or reward system guidelines.” The panelists of “Scholarly Roles and Rewards for Librarians: Applying Ernest Boyer’s ‘Scholarship Reconsidered’” assessed this trend.

Both chemist and provost, J. Ivan Legg has spearheaded efforts to reform rewards systems in the American Chemical Society and at the University of Memphis. Despite his support for the Boyer taxonomy of scholarship, he argued that Boyer’s “scholarship of inquiry” (traditional research) lies “at the foundation of all that we do” as faculty members. The academy must produce peer-reviewed research, but must also broaden its definitions of scholarship and integrate scholarship, teaching, and service.

King Sundiata and his troupe entertain at the All-Conference Reception at the Museum of African American History

Betsy Park (University of Memphis) challenged librarians to peruse the work of the Task Force. She emphasized that if librarians abdicate responsibility for designing evaluation and rewards systems, less sympathetic persons will devise them.

Using peer-reviewed Web sites as an example, Mary Reichel (Appalachian State University) pinpointed Boyer’s “scholarship of integration” as an especially germane category for librarians. She underscored the benefit of linking the redefinition of scholarship with institutional priorities, which allows faculty to articulate a close relationship between all their duties and their institutions’ objectives. —Phillip J. Jones, Baylor University

Are faculty really using those electronic journals?

With the explosion in electronic journal publishing, the question could be asked, Do the faculty really use this new format? According to Deborah Lenares (University of New Orleans) in her survey of “Faculty Use of Electronic Journals at Research Institutions,” the answer is a definitive yes. Much of this use is a direct result of “parallel publishing, which is defined as the publication of an electronic version of a traditional print journal.”

Undergraduate use of online journals in the popular databases such as Expanded Academic Index has been well-documented, but faculty use of more scholarly titles was not so discernible. However, Lenares provides clear evidence that this new technology is steadily gaining acceptance in the academic community with 61% of the faculty at “research level institutions” reporting some use. Although the print product is still more heavily favored, there was a noticeable drop in that use once an online version became available.

As expected, the greatest acceptance of electronic journals was in the physical sciences with 90% of faculty reporting some use in 1999; however, even the faculty in the Arts and Humanities reported 57% use. While the frequency of this use was still low, the 31% reported in 1999 was an increase over the 24% reported in 1998.

Even allowing for the limited nature of this survey, all indications point to continued faculty acceptance of electronic journals. Lenares summed up the importance of the survey results by stating that “understanding the changes in acceptance and the current amount of use of electronic journals will help librarians determine what resources are necessary” in meeting future demands of their faculty. —Susan B. Markley, Villanova University

Harvesting hyperspace

“Finding the right resource on the Internet can be difficult.” Improving access to electronic resources was the subject of a paper written by Albert L. Mann Library catalogers, Tom Turner and Gregory McClellan (Cornell University). Funded by an internal grant, the project began January 1998, with the goal of using Web indexing technologies in a local setting to provide increased access in a cost-effective manner.

Cornell’s Internet resource cataloging process includes creating a “Gateway” as well as MARC record. The CUL Gateway is a Web-based system, that provides a searchable database to identify electronic resources. In this project the Internet indexer, Harvester-NG, was integrated into the architecture of the Gateway, thus both human-generated and automatically generated metadata were searched.

Eleven simple and complex Web sites including serials, aggregations, and non-HTML-based document formats were tested and evaluated for technological success and usefulness by staff. Results showed the Harvest indexer could handle complex resources, find and reference aspects not evident to catalogers (leading to reduced effort by catalogers and selectors), and provide more information to patrons. In the future researchers plan to maximize embedded metadata, improve the interface, deal with frames and other context issues, experiment with for-fee resources, evaluate how much of a site to index, and merge Harvest Indexer results with Web OPAC, thus having several different forms of description available for users. —Lauren Matacio, Andrews University

The bleeding edge of access to fulltext electronic information

Billie Joy Reinhart (Cleveland State University) set the context for the session, noting that the scientist’s desire for readily available literature is becoming more of a reality through electronic delivery and access.

Flora Shrode and David Atkins, of the University of Tennessee (UTK), presented information on the use of UnCover Subsidized UnMediated Ordering. Library users ordered fax delivery of 1,500 articles in 1998, costs exceeded $36,000. UTK librarians have identified 279 titles as “cancellation candidates,” representing $199,000. Twelve hundred print journals were cancelled prior to the SUMO project, while electronic subscriptions are increasing in number. UTK utilizes software to create, import, delete journal records in the online catalog, and to automate a regular review of links for those journals.

Thomas Dowling (OhioLINK) demonstrated the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Server, running on ScienceServer software. It brings together issues of multiple publishers with one search interface and centrally mounted archives. Keyword searching of articles is complemented by journal title access from the central catalog. Article-specific links to the journal server from many databases facilitate retrieval. Links from full-text on the journal server back to ISI Web of Science enhance cited reference searching capabilities.

Patricia Kreitz (Stanford University) spoke on the “impact of self-publishing on information management” at the Stanford Liner Accelerator Laboratory Library, which maintains the High Energy Physics database (HEP) of preprints (a SPIRES database). HEP covers more than 374,000 items (gray and white literature), dating from 1974. It tracks the eventual publication of preprints in peer-reviewed sources, and has become a critical resource for the high-energy physics community. Submissions to SPIRES are electronic and processed within hours of receipt; it is the initial step when submitting an article to the new Journal of High Energy Physics. —Alison Richer, Oberlin College ■