ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Irvine Valley gets new building

On October 31 Irvine Valley College (IVC) broke ground for its new 35,000-square-foot, two-story Learning Resource Center (LRC). The $5 million in construction costs are funded through state bond measures and Saddleback Community College District reserves.

The LRC will be the technology hub of the campus, featuring a fiber optic network to link computer and video information with other parts of the college. It will also include an automated catalog, a multimedia center for student and faculty use, offices, and space for about 80,000 books and 600 periodical titles, tripling the amount in IVC’s current library.

Future expansion plans could include a three-way partnership to provide library services to the community as the Irvine City Council is interested in withdrawing from the Orange County Public Library System and is seeking alternative ways to provide library service to the community, according to IVC director Dave Everett. IVC has had one meeting with the city of Irvine and the Irvine Unified School District to explore possibilities. Everett said that there were “lots of interesting synergies” but that they were “a long way from a formal agreement.”

LSU Book Bαzααr earns $58,000

The Friends of the Louisiana State University (LSU) Library raised more than $58,000 at its annual Book Bazaar, making this year’s effort the “biggest ever,” according to Jennifer Cargill, dean of libraries. The annual event took place at the Agricultural Center’s mini-barn over a three-day period in September, when the fundraising group offered used books for sale—books that the public had been dropping into purple bins at a local cleaners since last spring. The sale proceeds will be donated to a $600,000 library endowment supported by the Friends, along with an additional $8,000 earned by the group during its textbook room sales.

President Clinton dedicates new UConn research center

President Bill Clinton dedicated the new Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut on October 15. The dedication was a kickoff for a year of events designed to investigate and analyze the status of human rights in today’s world, a particular interest of President Clinton’s.

The late U.S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd served as Executive Trial Counsel to the Chief Prosecutor of the Nuremburg International Tribunal and was an outspoken opponent of communism and totalitarianism.

The 55,000-square-foot research and archival facility holds Dodd’s papers as well as UConn’s archival collections on Connecticut politics, labor, business, immigration, and enterprise, as well as a record of the university’s

The new Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.own history and many of the university’s special collections.

The $9.9 million facility includes an auditorium, lobby, lounge, gallery, conference room, reference and pubic reading rooms, and offices, and provides a technologically advanced, climate-controlled environment for storing and preserving the collections.

ACRL 7th National Conference proceedings now available

Continuity and Transformation: The Promise of Confluence: Proceedings of the Seventh National Conference of the ACRL,edited by Richard AmRhein, is now available.

Discover how academic librarians are coping with the challenges of building a new information infrastructure. This compilation of presentations at the ACRL 7th National Conference in Pittsburgh describes how librarians across the country are incorporating new and established technologies to enhance the teaching, learning, and research processes in their institutions. Included are 54 refereed contributed papers and 31 abstracts of panel sessions organized into four theme tracks covered at the conference: Technology and the ServiceCentered Library; Knowledge Workers and Their Organizations; Multiculturalism and Internationalism; and Society, Economics, and Politics. The $49.95 publication (ISBN 0-83897786-3) is available to ACRL members for $44.95. Send your order to: ALA Order Fulfillment, 155 N. Wacker Dr., Chicago, IL 606061719; or call (800) 545-2433 (press 7); or fax: (312) 835-9958.

Libraries sought for traveling exhibit

ALA is accepting applications from libraries to host the traveling exhibition “The Frontier in American Culture.” The deadline is January 15, 1996.

Developed in cooperation with the Newberry Library in Chicago, the project is funded by a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The project includes educational and interpretative materials and examines how new stories and images of the frontier and the setting of the West have played an integral role in shaping American identity and values.

Forty-five U.S. public and academic libraries will be selected by ALA to host the traveling exhibition scheduled to tour between September 1996 and August 1998, with a six-week stop at each site.

Applicants must agree to appoint an exhibition coordinator, develop public programs related to the exhibition, seek community support, and provide reports to ALA.

To obtain an application form contact: ALA Public Programs, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611; voice: (800) 545-2433, ext 5053/5056; fax: (312) 280-3224; e-mail: public.programs® ala.org.

OhioLINK online borrowing system increases book requests ten times

Book loan requests among Ohio’s colleges and universities have increased tenfold since the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLIINK) made patron-initiated online borrowing available in January 1994.

“Half of the loans are delivered to the borrower’s library within 48 hours and 90 percent within 72 hours,” said OhioLINK executive director Tom Sanville. “OhioLINK use has grown so much that we now routinely process as many loans in a week as we used to do in a quarter. Even this weekly volume will likely double … as we witness the full impact of all of our new members being part of the system.”

OhioLINK allows patrons access to resources from its 41 member libraries, for which they place requests directly from their workstations. Approximately 50 percent of the requests made in the past year were for materials for which only one or two copies are available in the state.

The OhioLINK Gopher and Central Catalog are available via the Internet telnet address cat.ohiolink.edu.

RLG initiates new record service with Casalini Libri

The Research Libraries Group (RLG) has launched a new service for its users—direct access to and local use of major book vendor records—with the addition of over 18,000 inprocess records, created by the Italian book dealers Casalini Libri from 1994 through July 1995, to the RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) Books file.

The Casalini records may be exported from RLIN to the local system to create order records or local cataloging.

“We are very pleased about this new venture,” said Michele Casalini. “It has been one of our primary concerns over the years to offer a bibliographic information service as complete as possible to libraries abroad. We are delighted that this information can now be of assistance for acquisitions and cataloging, thereby saving library staff a great deal of time.”

ALA gets own Internet server

ALA is installing its own Internet server. Please be sure to use the @ala.org addresses to reach ALA and ACRL staff, instead of the numbers previously issued. Generally, ALA Internet addresses take the form of firstname.lastname@ ala.org. For a list of ACRL staff e-mail addresses, see page 797 of this issue in the Annual Report, or you can refer to the “Meet the ACRL Staff“ article on page 648 of the October issue of C&RL News.

Ohio University celebrates two million volumes

Ohio University (OU) Libraries celebrated its growth to two million volumes with the addition of John C. Baker: An Oral History to its collections. Ohio University was founded in 1804, and Baker was its 14th president, serving from 1945 to 1961. The book, Baker’s autobiography, was published by Ohio University Press and was formally presented to the libraries in October at a ceremony to celebrate Baker’s 100th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the Ohio University Foundation, an organization created by Baker.