ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Wayne State opens wired library

Wayne State University officially opened its new $35 million Undergraduate Library on September 12. On opening day, the 300,429 square foot, three-story building had 700 computers, with an additional 700 access points. The 2,700-seat facility, designed specifically around the needs of fresh— man and sophomores, aims to reduce the “library anxiety” often experienced by first-time college students.

“Many of our students come from high schools that have small libraries with very limited resources,” explained Patricia Senn Breivik, dean of university libraries. “So, when they walk into a large university library they may feel overwhelmed. One of our goals is to make the library experience more comfortable and less intimidating.”

The user-friendly facility has a snack area, a television viewing area that professors can request specific programming for, a 24-hour study facility, conference rooms, and a 150-seat auditorium. The library also houses a new Office for Teaching and Learning, a place where faculty can familiarize themselves with the latest instructional technology; a drop-off copy center; and a presentation software laboratory for learning how to prepare computer-generated visuals for papers and presentations.

The library also shares space with a new bookstore operated by Barnes & Noble. A main-floor atrium area designated “Windows on the Arts” will feature presentations such as poetry readings, scenes from plays, music ensembles, dance and art exhibitions, and even a fencing demonstration.

“Part of getting through the college experience is enjoying it,” said Breivik. “Yet, a great many of our students have commitments that prevent them from attending cultural events. We’re importing some of those things right into the building so students will literally be able to trip over the arts.”

In keeping with the philosophy behind the new building, Wayne’s traditional onecredit freshman library skills survival course has been redesigned, renamed “Information Power,” and will be housed in the new building.

For more information, visit the Undergraduate Library’s homepage at http://www.libraries. wayne. edu/ugl/.

New York history to be preserved and accessible

New York University (NYU) and the New-York Historical Society have agreed to preserve historical documents about the history of New York as well as 18thand 19th-century America and give greater pubic access to this material.

Under the terms of the agreement, NYU’s dean of libraries Carlton Rochell will oversee the cataloging and preservation of the society’s library collections. In return, the catalog records describing these collections will be included in NYU’s Internet-based online catalog, BobCatPlus.

Materials in the Historical Society’s collection include correspondence leading to the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the terms of surrender presented by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to Gen. Robert E. Lee, original photos documenting construction of the city’s subway system, letters and papers from every U.S. president from George Washington to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and 130,000 early photographic prints, including many by Matthew Brady.

Wayne State University’s new Undergraduate Library is fully wired, featuring 700 computer workstations with 700 more access points.

This collaboration is made possible by a $2.85 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a $300,000 gift from Madeline and Kevin Brine. The funding will also enable the society to extend its hours to five days a week, restoring easy access for researchers and making the society’s collections more fully available.

The Mellon grant will support the first three years of an overall five-year project.

All collections will remain the property of the New-York Historical Society. All work will be done on the society’s premises and all collections will remain located there. The collections of prints, photographs, and architecture, now administered by the society’s museum, will be managed as part of the library and be relocated to an area adjacent to the library.

The Historical Society also plans to create a museum collections database through a project that will create and assemble digitized images of the museum’s collections. Eventually the library and museum systems will have a seamless interface so researchers can search books, visual materials, and museum objects simultaneously.

ALA names 1997-98 Library Fellows

ALA has awarded twelve 1997-98 fellowships to 12 American librarians to undertake projects in Bolivia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Estonia, Germany, Japan, Moldova, Russia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Vietnam, and the West Bank (Palestinian Authority).

This will be the 11th year of the ALA Library Fellows Program administered by ALA and funded by the U.S. Information Agency. The program has sent 147 information ambassadors to more than 90 countries since 1987.

The 1997-98 ALA Library Fellows are: Sarah Andeen, reference librarian at the Superior Court Law Library in Phoenix, Arizona; Kenning Arlitsch, technology instruction librarian at the University of Utah; Roger Brisson, social sciences cataloger at Pennsylvania State University; Beau Case, assistant professor and librarian at Ohio State University Libraries; Susan Freiband, associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Puerto Rico; Michael Huff, computer services librarian of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Virginia; Kathy Hummel, a librarian with the Santa Ana Public Library in California; Helen Ives, associate librarian at the American University in Washington, D.C.; Steven Kerchoff, program specialist with the FEDLINK Network of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; Sherry Little, doctoral candidate at the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University; Kimberli Morris, reference/systems librarian at the California Western School of Law; and Michael Neubert, senior reference librarian for the Library of Congress European Division in Washington, D.C. For details, contact Carol Erickson at (800) 545-2433, ext. 3200; email: cerickson@ala.org.

SIRSI's UNICORN installations increase

Concordia University in Irvine, California, MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California; Athens Area Technical Institute in Athens, Georgia; North Metro Technical Institute in Acworth, Georgia; Paul Smith’s College in Paul Smiths, New York; Central Texas College and University of Central Texas in Killeen, Texas have selected SIRSI’s UNICORN client/server library system. These institutions will be installing WebCat, the World Wide Web Public Access Catalog and Z39-50 compliant interface.

ALA 1997—98 Library Fellows (l to r): Sarah Andeen, Beau Case, Roger Brisson, Kenning Arlitsch, Kathy Hummel, Steven Kerchoff, Sherry Little, Kimberli Morris, Michael Neubert, Susan Freiband, Helen Ives, and Michael Huff.

Other institutions with SIRSI systems are Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Virginia, and Emory University.

Ten more libraries pick UnCover's Gateway

Clemson, East Carolina, Florida Gulf Coast, Kansas State, Lehigh, Southern, and Louisiana Technical Universities, Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Notre Dame have selected the UnCover Company’s Gateway system. Libraries subscribing to the system can match their serials holdings with the UnCover database collection of 17,000 journal titles. This customized database can then be accessed by patrons using a powerful new Web-based interface to simultaneously search for library articles as well as those in the UnCover collection. If the article of interest is not available in the library, users can place a library-subsidized online order from UnCover. However, if the institution does own the item, an automatic block prevents the patron from ordering the article with library funds.

UnCover currently has 90 Gateways that represent hundreds of libraries, many of which use Gateways through consortia. Three new features have been added to the Gateway system: SUMO (Subsidized UnMediated Ordering) blocking on full-text databases, allowing libraries to automatically block orders from full-text databases, in addition to blocking orders from locally owned print journals; individual cap limiting for SUMO, allowing libraries to put a dollar or article limit on the amount of total subsidized orders for a particular group of users; and remote patron validation, which allows libraries to validate patrons without sending the full patron files to UnCover.

CIC aids flood victims

Member universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) are partnering with the University of North Dakota (UND) to help the library meet the information needs of its users this year. On April 19, 1997, floodwaters inundated the UND campus, entering 72 of the 238 buildings and infiltrating 69 miles of buried steam and utility tunnels. The remainder of the spring semester was canceled, and the campus was closed until May 8.

CIC members will provide access to their collections, provide consulting service in disaster recovery and material conservation, and supply much needed copies of books lost or damaged in the floods.

“UND faculty, staff, and students can simply request items as usual. We’ll work with the CIC libraries to fulfill these requests,” said Frank D’Andraia, director of the libraries, UND. “Our staff are particularly pleased about the offers of assistance with recovery of damaged materials, and the donation of replacement copies of items that are missing or too damaged for recovery. The assistance provided by the CIC libraries will make a real difference in rebuilding our collections and services.”

The CIC is a consortium of 12 major teaching and research universities in the Midwest, and comprises the Universities of Chicago, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Indiana, Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, and Purdue Universities.

Hawaii's library school merges with computer sciences

The University of Hawaii Board of Regents approved the merger of the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) with the Department of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) effective this fall. The consolidation will save the university about $50,000 annually.

Oregon selects InfoTrac

A three-year plan to achieve statewide electronic resource sharing among Oregon’s libraries has resulted in an agreement with Information Access Company (IAC) to provide 28 public and academic libraries with access to InfoTrac SearchBank. The contract means that 64 percent of Oregon’s population will gain access to IAC’s General Reference Center, Expanded Academic Index, Health Reference Center, and Business Index.

The Oregon Information Highway Project was the impetus for the agreement with IAC. In 1994, a group of public and academic librarians began developing a plan to connect all libraries to the Internet and to achieve broader access to electronic resources by aggregating demand throughout the state.

Deb Carver, associate university librarian at the University of Oregon and liaison between IAC and the Oregon database licensing task force, said that working out the terms and conditions of a consortium agreement among county, city, and academic libraries was challenging, but most participants viewed the process as an important investment. “We have paved the way for future agreements and created an infrastructure that will have major payoffs,” she reported.

Univ. of Puget Sound joins Orbis

The University of Puget Sound has become the 13th member of Orbis, a consortium of baccalaureate-granting public and private institutions of higher education in Oregon and Washington. The Orbis consortium provides a union catalog of the collective holdings of the participating institutions and a patron-initiated delivery system called Orbis Borrowing. Materials requested are delivered via library courier within 48 hours.

Orbis was established in 1993 with start-up funds from the Meyer Memorial Trust. The consortium is governed by a council consisting of the library directors of the member institutions. Orbis offices are housed at the University of Oregon. Current members include: Eastern Oregon University, George Fox University, Lewis & Clark College, Linfield College, Oregon Institute of Technology, Reed College, Southern Oregon University, University of Oregon, University of Portland, University of Puget Sound, Western Oregon University, Whitman College, and Willamette University. Oregon State University is in the process of joining Orbis and will become the 14th member of the consortium.

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STS seeks research proposals

The Forum for Science and Technology Library Research Committee of ACRL’s Science and Technology Section (STS) is seeking proposals for its annual research program at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. in June 1998.

Use this opportunity to share with your colleagues recent research or works in progress that address significant issues to science and technology librarianship in its broadest sense.

Proposals will be selected through a blind review process on the basis of timeliness, evidence of scholarship, and relevance to science and technology assembly.

An abstract not exceeding 250 words should convey the title and purpose of the project, its scope, methodology, conclusions, and relevance to science and technology librarianship. Priority will be given to papers that indicate research analyses, either quantitative or qualitative.

Deadline for submission: November 21, 1997. Papers will be selected at the ALA Midwinter Meeting.

Authors of accepted proposals should be committed to providing a 30-minute presentation at the 1998 ALA Annual Conference. Electronic publication of papers through ACRL/STS is an option.

Submit abstract (e-mail preferred) with name, institution, phone, fax, and e-mail address to: Tamera Lee, Vet. Medical Library, 101 Greene Hall, Auburn University, AL 36849-5606; phone: (334) 844-1749; fax: (334) 884-1758; e-mail: TammyLee@Lib.Auburn.Edu. ■