ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Center explores digital libraries' potential

The Texas A&M University Board of Regents approved the establishment of the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries at the Texas Engineering Ex- periment Station (TEES). The center will build upon the work of the Hypermedia Re- search Laboratory (HRL) at Texas A&M.

“I see the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries pro- viding expertise and experi- ence to help the Texas A&M community transfer its collections of books, journals, bugs, plants, animals and so forth into useful digital libraries,” said John Leggett, codirector of the HRL. Leggett and others from HRL are expected to be part of the new center.

Leggett added, “The new center already has research projects in the areas of computer system architectures for the storage and retrieval of digital libraries materials, user-interface and client software for digital libraries, and collaborative scholarship within digital libraries.”

UnCover Reveal adds features

Uncover Reveal, an electronic table of contents alert service, has added new subscription options. Its users can receive current information direct to their e-mail addresses in two ways— by creating and storing a list of journal titles or by creating and storing special search strategies (author or topic searches). Libraries can now get a site license for the service. UnCover Reveal allows users with profiles to create a list of journal titles in which they are interested. When the next issue of any of those titles is entered into the database, the table of contents is automatically e-mailed to them. Users who stored search strategies will have the results of those searches e-mailed to them when new articles are entered into the database.

Everything you ever wanted to know about L.A.

The University of Southern California (USC) will launch the first multimedia database dedicated exclusively to the city of Los Angeles. The Information System for Los Angeles (ISLA) will plot images and informa- tion on a grid system, al- lowing researchers instant connection to historic re- sources for the study of Los Angeles, including census data, newspaper accounts, and photo- graphs with the sites they describe.

“ISLA will be the first database dedicated exclusively to the history, geol- ogy, geography, econom- ics, sociology, and culture of a single city,” said his- torian Philip Ethington, who headed the USC team—a joint librarian and faculty team—that conceived the database.

The ISLA project is housed in USC’s Center for Scholarly Technology (CST), a part of the USC library. Lucy Wegner, director of CST, is a member of the ISLA team.

Major funding for the project is coming from the RCL Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization dedicated to educational research, that has budgeted $250,000 over the next five years to develop the project in collaboration with USC and a $500,000 gift from the estate of Lucy Doheny.

The database is expected to be fully operational by the year 2000, but it will be accessible on the Internet via the World Wide Web by the end of 1995. A demonstration version will be available in June. While the address for the demonstration was not available at press time, it may be found at the USC homepage: http://cwis.use.edu/Library/CST/index.html.

English & American Lit Section starts listserv

ACRL’s English and American Literature Section has recently established a listserv. Topics for discussion will include collection development, electronic texts, user education, literary reference work, humanities databases, and administrative issues necessary to managing the section.

To subscribe to the list, send a message to: listserv@gwuvm.gwu.edu. The first (and only) line of the message should read: subscribe ealsl your name. Example: subscribe ealsl Linda Miller

Inquiries should be directed to the list moderator, Scott Stebelman, at e-mail: scottlib® gwis2.circ.gwu.edu.

Call for sci/tech abstracts

Science and technology librarians and information specialists take note—here is an opportunity to present your preliminary original research results or ALA committee findings by submitting an abstract to the Forum for Science and Technology Library Research. ACRL’s Science and Technology Section Forum Committee invites abstracts describing recent research or work in progress of interest to science and/ or technology librarians. Committee members will select individuals to present reports of their research at the 1996 ALA Annual Conference in New York.

Proposals will be judged on the basis of timeliness, evidence of scholarship in methodology, and relevance to science and technology librarianship. Proposals should be limited to one page and contain an abstract of not more than 250 words, as well as the researcher’s name, institution, phone number, and e-mail address. The deadline for submission is January 3, 1996. Papers will be selected at ALA Midwinter 1996. Send abstracts to: Sheila Johnson, Oklahoma State University Library, 204 Library, Stillwater, OK 74078-0375; sheila@okway.okstate.edu; fax: (405) 744-7579; phone: (405) 744-5271.

IBM launches digital library initiative

IBM has launched the IBM Digital Library, an initiative aimed at helping owners of information content in all its forms—including films, music, text, art, and rare manu- scripts—become electronic pub- lishers able to make their infor- mation available on networks around the world. The IBM Digi- tal Library will consist of an ar- ray of products and services aimed at helping customers trans- form information into digital mul- timedia that can be shared via networks. The initiative will give customers the tools to manage, present, and protect that infor- mation. The five functions of the Digital Library are: storage and management, search and access, rights management, content cre- ation and capture, and distribu- tion.

Readmore sponsors Backserv

Backserv is a listserv devoted exclusively to the informal exchange of serials back issues and books in all subject areas sponsored by Readmore, Inc. The Backserv archives are publicly accessible. They are also part of a gopher and are fully searchable using built-in WAIS indexing. In addition to the searchable archives of the Backserv list, the gopher will provide access to back issue dealers’ catalogs in browsable and searchable formats, including online order and information request forms which may be e-mailed directly to the dealer. The Jerry Alper catalog is now available as a prototype. There is no cost to the library for using any of these services and they are not restricted to Readmore clients. To subscribe to the list send the message “subscribe backserv first name last name” to listserv©sun.readmore.com. To access the gopher: gopher. readmore.com.

ECLSS seeks researchers

Providing library services to extended campus students is a fertile field of research concluded the Research Committee of the ACRL Extended Campus Library Services Section (ECLSS) after analyzing the results of a comprehensive survey of extended campus librarians across the U.S. and Canada. The committee hopes that by offering key research topics as identified by professionals working in the field, interest will be stimulated among library school faculty, graduate students, and others seeking problems and issues for original research.

This is a digitized image of a world map from Ptolemy’s Geography as it appears on an IBM display terminal. IBM’s Digital Library is making available to scholars replicas of selected Vatican manuscripts.

Respondents to the survey itemized a total of three dozen research topics they would like to see addressed. Here are the top five:

• Bibliographic instruction for extended campus students. What techniques are being used to deliver bibliographic instruction to distant learners and what is their relative effectiveness?

• Use of new technologies to enhance library support for distant learners. How can emerging digital resources best be integrated into library services for extended campus students? How do we measure their effectiveness?

• Perceptions of campus administrators regarding the value of extended campus library services. Do campus administrators view library services to extended campus students an important and justifiable use of resources? If so, why? If not, why?

• Funding extended campus library services. What are the cost components of providing library services to extended campus students? What funding models and formulas are being used and how adequate are they?

• Providing library services to independent learners who are not able to use an academic library in person. What are the essential library services off-campus students should be provided? What models are in place for providing these services and what are the factors that contribute to their success?

Other topics identified which merit research include: how does copyright law affect delivery of library services to distant learners? and how are library schools preparing aspiring academic librarians for serving the remote, non- traditional student in an electronic environment?

ACRL collecting information literacy data

This fall ACRL was approached by the Middle States Association Commission on Higher Education to enter a cooperative research project for the purpose of collecting data on existing information literacy programs in higher education institutions across the U.S. The address files of the six regional accrediting agencies were used for the mailing to campuses, which was addressed to the accrediting agencies' campus contact (usually presidents, provosts, and deans) with instructions that the instruments were to be distributed on campus to the unit best suited to respond. In some cases the campus identified the library as the appropriate unit to respond.

More than 3,000 surveys have been mailed; over 1,000 responses have been completed. We are trying to obtain the clearest and most complete picture possible of current state-of-the-art information literacy programs at institutions of higher learning across the U.S. If you have a program at your library and have not completed the survey, we invite you to use the form below and respond. Please attach any documentation (course syllabi, text, worksheets, or goal statements) that provide further clarity about your program. If you have any questions, call Althea Jenkins at (800) 545-2433 ext. 3248 or e-mail: althea.jenkins@ala.org.

The survey also identified people who are interested in collaborating with others on research. There is not only considerable interest in seeing the results of that research, but also in working with others to carry out and report it. The committee will be pleased to provide the names and e-mail addresses of respondents willing to collaborate, as well as detailed results of the survey, to anyone interested in researching topics in extended library services. Please contact Alexander Slade at e-mail: libext@uwm.uvic.ca.