ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Univ. of California founds digital library

The University of California (UC) plans to join the California State Library, the California Library Association, and the California Library Services Board to create the California Digital Library. UC President Richard C. Atkinson said, “Today we announce the creation of UC’s library without walls. Instead of seeking out information in place-bound libraries, limited by what is only available on the bookshelves, the CDL will allow scholars of all ages and interests to range worldwide in their quest for knowledge, using the Internet, the World Wide Web, and a computer.” Atkinson said UC envisions a library system that blends the print and electronic holdings of the university’s nine campuses, a collection of more than 29 million volumes. The initial collection in the virtual library will center on science, technology, and industry as the library creates new ways for the campuses to share their resources statewide.

The new library will be headed by Richard E. Lucier, university librarian at UC-San Francisco and special assistant for library planning and development at UC’s Office of the President. In his new position, Lucier will be founding university librarian and executive director of the California Digital Library. “What we hope to accomplish with the digital library is the appropriate use of technology to better generate, disseminate, and provide access to the scholarship and research produced by UC’s nine campuses,” said Lucier.

Indiana University launches digital library program

Indiana University (IU) is launching a new digital library program designed to create and make available a wide variety of electronic information resources to support the teaching and research of faculty and students. The office of Information Technology, the IU Libraries, and the School of Library and Information Science along with the Center for Copyright Management at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis are involved in the program.

Michael McRobbie, vice president for information technology said that IU is “committed to developing a digital library program that is prominent among those at educational institutions in the United States.” He said that the IU Digital Library Program will help promote the development and deployment of technologies for organizing, searching, and retrieving data from multimedia libraries.

University Dean of Libraries Suzanne Thorin was associate librarian at the Library of Congress when its National Digital Library Program was developed. “A part of our program at IU will focus on developing initiatives that will be useful to teachers and students in the K-12 schools throughout the state,” Thorin said.

IU has also joined the Digital Library Federation, a national project administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources in Washington, D.C.

Western Governors Univ. plans for virtual university

The Western Governors University (WGU) Board of Trustees and National Advisory Board met October 27 to move forward with WGU’s academic mission and discuss ongoing development and fundraising efforts. WGU CEO Jeff Livingston announced that WGU has finalized negotiations with IBM regarding the SmartCatalog Advisor, which will be used by potential students to research educational options, assess their academic skills, and enroll in courses. WGU begins a pilot phase of offering courses from one private and 16 public higher education institutions as well as two corporate providers. Initially, students in the pilot program may choose from the Electronics Manufacturing Technician certificate and the Associate of Arts degree programs. WGU plans to add content and providers as the year progresses.

WGU hopes to create a new learning model based on independent verification of learner competency. In one of its capacities, WGU will grant degrees based on demonstrated competencies. “With the WGU competency certificate, an employer can know exactly what skills a potential new hire can bring to the job they seek to fill,” said Bob Albrecht, WGU’s chief academic officer.

Utah Governor Mike Leavitt described an “academic common market” where students may choose competency degrees over traditional credit-based degrees on the basis of cost and time savings. Students can obtain formal recognition for their existing knowledge or competency through low-cost assessments and then enroll in only the courses they need to complete the degree program. Leavitt acknowledged that this change would not happen overnight. “We have to become an aggressive marketing organization and build the demand for competency-based credentials,” he said.

WGU was formed in 1997 as a result of the interest of the governors of the western United States to share higher education distance learning resources. WGU is a competency-based, degree-granting virtual university that aims to deliver cost-effective education using the Internet and other telecommunications and networking technologies. WGU’s mission is to expand educational opportunities for learners.

OhioLINK sponsored Web sites aid instruction

The Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) is sponsoring instructional Web sites whose goals are to stimulate innovative ways for higher education faculty to improve instruction through the use of a variety of local and worldwide resources and to enhance students’ learning experiences beyond the classroom. Faculty and library staff from OhioLINK-participating institutions have collected syllabi, tutorials, assignments, links to Internet resources and other teaching tools, along with OhioLINK resources, such as relevant databases, to create discipline-specific Web sites. The nine sites currently operational cover disciplines ranging from philosophy to engineering; each was created with grants of up to $5,000 from OhioLINK. Visit the site at http://iws.ohiolink.edu.

Graphic courtesy of Kent State University

Cornell, Arizona State, and others aid flooded Colorado State

Cornell University’s Mann Library responded to Colorado State University (CSU) Dean of Libraries Camila Alire’s call for help after CSU’s library was ravaged by a “500-year flood,” which washed away nearly one-fourth of the library’s holdings (News‚ 9/97). Although the library hopes to salvage much of the material, it must provide service to its library users now.

“As a land-grant university, we have a strong collection in priority CSU teaching and research areas,” explained Sarah Thomas, the Carl A. Kroch University librarian at Cornell. CSU’s Morgan Library already had a long history of collaboration though interlibrary loans with the Mann library. While there may be a few books passing back and forth, the emphasis will be on supplying articles from academic journals and other periodicals. When a CSU library patron requests an article, the Morgan Library staff will look up the periodical in Cornell’s online library catalog via the Internet, obtain the call number, and transmit the request directly to Mann Library. A Cornell student employee will get the periodical from the Mann Library stacks, bring it to a special scanning station, and a scanned image of the article will be transmitted over the Internet to CSU where it will be printed out and delivered to the patron. Arizona State University and four members of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries are also sharing their collections with CSU.

JAI Press acquires Research Strategies

JAI Press, Inc. has acquired Research Strategies beginning with volume 16 (1998) from Mountainside Publishing, Inc. Natalie Pelster, educational and outreach programs librarian at Northwestern University, will become editor; the journal will continue to address issues faced by bibliographic instruction librarians and others engaged in teaching/instructional aspects of library information.

Rutgers installs SIRSI

The State University of New Jersey will install Sirsi’s UNICORN system in its libraries. According to Marianne Gaunt, Rutgers university librarian, “UNICORN will offer users a gateway to information resources held at Rutgers and elsewhere.” Rutgers has a sophisticated campuswide network, which includes more than 10,000 computers on three major campuses. Gaunt said that the addition of an integrated library automation system to Rutgers’ technological infrastructure will make online access even easier for patrons and staff.

EBSCO Publishing expands databases

EBSCO Publishing added access to the National Information Center for Educational Media (NICEM) to EBSCOhost. NICEM compiles information about audiovisual media; its 315,000 bibliographic records describing nearly 400,000 items produced since 1984 can now be accessed by users of EBSCO host.

EBSCO Publishing also signed an agreement with Yankee Magazine, the award-winning magazine of New England. It will be available on EBSCO3/4osí and several of EBSCO’s databases.

Diversity Newsroom available on Web

The Diversity Newsroom provides reporters and other members of the media information about higher education’s role in influencing diversity in higher education, the community, and the workplace.

In a media audit conducted in 1994, print and broadcast journalists expressed exasperation that diversity spokespeople were not giving them information packaged appropriately for their needs, including usable quotes. The Diversity Newsroom (http://www.inform. umd.edu/diversitynews) is designed to address this concern. The Web site is arranged into five areas: campus access, including hiring practices, student admissions, retention, affirmative action and related policies; curricula, covering the impact of diversity curricula and student success stories; trends in campus life, learning, campus climate and leadership; the university and the public, exploring public views about higher education, the diverse workplace, and world; and research, offering statistics, analysis, and other information.

The Diversity Newsroom is part of Diversity Web, an electronic hub linking the diversity work of about 300 institution of higher learning. Funded by the Ford Foundation, Diversity Web is a project of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the University of Maryland, College Park, in cooperation with Diversity Connections at Wesleyan University.

Appalachian Colleges gain access to JSTOR

Selected member institutions of the Appalachian College Association (ACA) will provide their campuses with access to the JSTOR (Journal STORage) database, which contains searchable, scanned images of back issues of a minimum of 100 scholarly publications from a variety of humanities, social sciences, and mathematics disciplines.

This access is made possible by a $1.8 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. ACA is comprised of 33, four-year liberal arts colleges and universities in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Alice Lloyd, Berea, Bethany, Carson-Newman, Emory & Henry, King, Lee, Milligan, Montreat, West Virginia Wesleyan, and Wheeling Jesuit will participate in the first phase of the project. Maryville, Lincoln Memorial, and the University of the South already had access to the JSTOR collection but will participate in training sessions and general meetings related to JSTOR.

Join the ALA members listserv

Share your opinions about ALA’s business. An electronic discussion list has been created to encourage member participation in ALA governance. Member-Forum will make information about ALA issues and projects more immediately available; provide members with an opportunity to ask questions and receive answers from officers, staff, and councilors; serve as a site for member discussion of concerns; and provide a way for members to speak directly to those representing them on Council. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to listproc@ala.org. Leave the subject blank. In the body of the message, type: subscribe member-forum ‹your first and last name>. Do not use angle brackets when entering your name. Drop down two lines and enter your membership number. Questions may be directed to Internet Coordinator Rob Carlson at 312-280-2431, or rcarlson@ala.org. ■