ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

The teaching library enters the Electronic Age

By Hannelore B. Rader Director. Library/Learning Center University of Wisconsin-Parkside

Microcomputer technology for user instruction and access.

It was only seven years ago that the concept of an academic “teaching library" was described in detail in the library literature by Guskin, Stoffle, and Boissé.¹ Highlights of the teaching library's activities were:

•instructing faculty, students and staff in the effective identification, use and evaluation of information sources;

•fostering the development of students in effective life-long learning;

•providing access and encouragement to community residents to use information sources appropriately;

•building an appropriate materials collection to support the curriculum and together with a major resource sharing effort to support all research activities.

The article was based on the UW-Parkside library mission and goals and its teaching activities and services in the 1970s. More than twenty additional articles can be noted in the library literature which describe various facets of the UW-Parkside teaching library, including, among others, major contributions to workbook development of library instruction, teaching high school students research skills, developing objectives for basic and advanced course-integrated library instruction and requiring a competency test for basic library skills.

While the teaching mission of UW-Parkside’s library was continually strengthened, it had to remain flexible to adapt to changes in the curriculum and changes resulting from the influx of new information technology in the 1980s. Fortunately, a teaching library is uniquely suited to incorporating new information formats into its instruction, service, and collection objectives. The teaching library’s staff has an in-depth understanding of the organization and structure of information and is very effective in being the interface between users and information. At the same time, the staff is adept in teaching effective access routes to new ways of finding information and is able to assist the novice user of technology in a capable and sympathetic manner.

Microcomputer laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

In 1982 the UW-Parkside administration chose the library as a site for the new microcomputer laboratory, particularly because of its service and teaching missions and its non-intimidating atmosphere." The influx of microcomputers in the library has resulted in the following changes and expansions of library activities:

•Librarians teach microcomputer workshops and seminars to faculty, staff, students, and community members to facilitate improved access to and handling of information. Automated information gathering is incorporated into all facets of the library instruction program.

•Librarians cooperate with faculty to introduce students to discipline-specific applications of microcomputers.

•Free online searching of databases is provided and users are taught to perform their own searches.

•An extensive public-access microcomputer laboratory has been developed that offers the latest in technology and applications.

•Microcomputer technology is incorporated into many services to provide more efficient user access to information.

•Microcomputer software and information in electronic formats is collected and circulated.

•All library staff are trained in the latest technological developments in information science.

•The Reference Assistance Program (RAP) for minority students to create academic peer role models has been expanded to include microcomputer applications and training.

•It must be noted that the process of moving the teaching library into the electronic age is a long and difficult one, but progress has been made and automation development continues. The staff has been planning for a library automation system since 1980 and is in the process of implementing OCLC’s LS 2000 System for circulation and the online catalog. As this slow and problematic process progresses, the staff has gained valuable technological skills and is confidently incorporating the new system into all facets of the library operation.

The staff members are by no means technical experts but they are experts in organizing information and in teaching users how to access and evaluate information in different formats. Automated technology, especially the microcomputer, is being utilized to obtain, manipulate and produce new information. Librarians, especially those involved in library instruction, are uniquely qualified to teach users this information as well as how microcomputers can extend their intellectual power. ■ ■

Generous state aid for New York libraries

A library aid bill increasing state aid by $16 million was passed by both houses of the New York Legislature in conjunction with the state’s 1986/87 budget. Assembly support for the library program was led by the Hon. Edward C. Sullivan, Democrat of Manhattan, who enlisted every member of the 150-member Assembly as a cosponsor for the bill. The Senate bill, introduced by Senator Hugh T. Farley, Republican from Niskayuna, was cosponsored by 35 senators.

The new law strengthens the comprehensive library systems and aid program enacted in 1984 (C&RL News, October 1984, p.487). Support has been increased for public library aid, public library systems, regional database development, reference and research library resource systems, school library systems, and conservation of endangered research materials.

New York’s ambitious program to develop a database of over 57 million records will get a major boost with an increase in state aid from $1.3 million to $3.1 million. Each reference and research library resource system and public library system will receive funds under the program, and regional plans developed in 1985 will bring academic, school, special, public, and other library holdings into the database. State and federal funds have been used to complete 37 % of the monographic and serials databases.

Conservation of deteriorating research materials will be accelerated. The legislation increases support for coordinated conservation in the eleven New York comprehensive research libraries from $1.1 to $1.4 million, and increases the discretionary grants program (open to all libraries) from $200,000 annually to $500,000.

The new budget also includes a $2 million materials acquisition budget for the State Library and additional temporary staff, including two positions in the New Netherlands project to translate 17th- century Dutch colonial records. ■ ■

Access to federal information

“Federal Restrictions on Access to Information: Implications for Scholarship and Research" was the theme of a colloquium presented at the University of California, San Diego, on April 16. Speakers included John Shattuck, vice president for government, community, and public affairs at Harvard University; Anna Nelson, of the Department of History at American University; and Anne Heanue, associate director of the ALA Washington Office.

John Shattuck noted that U.S. government information policies have reversed trends in the 1970s of making information more available. Current policies have reduced access not only to information produced by the government, but also to information produced under government contract or produced privately by individual researchers. He said that we have to work hard to preserve access taken for granted only a few years ago.

Anna Nelson cited an Executive Order that allows documents once declassified to be reclassified and other procedures that slow declassification and restrict the amount of information that can be declassified. She also noted how the storage of information in machine-readable form endangers future access to historical data, because it is usually not centrally archived and accessible only through hardware and software that may soon become obsolete. She concluded by pointing out that the federal government has no real information policy— only a system of information management that has been shaped by the marketplace, a lack of historical perspective, and an obsession with secrecy.

Anne Heanue noted how federal budget reductions and new OMB policies have affected information access. She listed many examples, including increased postal rates, reduced library budgets, libraries closing to the public, and the privatization or elimination of government publications. She noted a new policy of government disinformation that calls into question the accuracy of even unclassified, published information, and concluded that current federal government information practices will lead to limiting access to information to those who can pay for it or those who the government decides have a need to know.

The colloquium was sponsored by the UCSD Librarians’ Association, the UCSD Departments of History, Political Science, and Sociology⁷, and the California Space Institute. ■ ■

Notes

1. Alan E. Guskin, Carla J. Stoffle, and Joseph A. Boissé, “The Academic Library as a Teaching Library: A Role for the 1980s," Library Trends 28 (Fall 1979) :281—95.
2. Alan E.Guskin, Carla J. Stoffle, and Barbara E. Baruth, “Library Future Shock: The Microcomputer Bevolution and the Bole of the Library,” College and Research Libraries 45 (May 1984): 177-83.