ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Texas Information Literacy Tutorial now licensed worldwide

Nearly 60 educational institutions have licensed the nationally acclaimed TILT (Texas Information Literacy Tutorial), a Web-based information literacy program developed within the General Libraries and sponsored by the University of Texas System Digital Library, since it was made available this year under an Open Publication License.

TILT was developed to teach undergraduates (primarily freshmen) fundamental and transferable research skills. After a brief introduction, students can enter one of three modules where they learn to select sources appropriate for academic-level research, search periodical indexes and search engines, and evaluate and cite information. Students select one of six issues that most interests them: censorship, business, security, law, trends, and global communities. Examples are then generated based on their chosen topic.

The tutorial stresses general research concepts without highlighting specific collections. At the end of each of the three modules, students can test their comprehension and receive immediate feedback. Each module takes less than 30 minutes to complete.

For more information about TILT, consult http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/resources or contact Elizabeth A. Dupuis, head of the Digital Information Literacy Office, General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin, at (512) 475-9391 or tilt@mail.utexas.edu.

Harvard and key publishers join forces for electronic journal archive

The Harvard University Library and three major publishers of scholarly journals— Blackwell Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and the University of Chicago Press— have agreed to work together on a plan to develop an experimental archive for electronic journals. The preservation and the archiving of electronic journals—which are increasingly “born digital” and for which, in many cases, no paper copies exist— present unique, long-term challenges to librarians, publishers, and, ultimately, to the scholars and researchers who will seek access to them over time.

The new joint venture is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which recently made a $145,000 grant to the Harvard University Library specifically for the planning of an electronic journal archive. The grant challenges Harvard and its publishing partners to address a fundamental issue in the digital environment: until it is clear that electronic journals will be accessible far into the future, scholarly communities are hesitant to fully support the electronic medium for communication and publication.

The yearlong planning effort will explore the issues related to electronic journal archiving and develop a plan for a repository at Harvard for electronic journal publications. The expected outcome is a proposal for an archive for these journals. Major areas to be studied include: establishing agreements between the partners regarding archival rights and responsibilities; formulating a technical implementation plan; defining methodologies that the archive would adopt to validate its archival processes and assure the scholarly community that the journals for which the archive is responsible will be preserved and useable over time; and creating organizational and business models.

U.Va. students test e-books

This past semester, students and professors in two University of Virginia (U.Va.) classes—one in English, the other religious studies—tested the effectiveness of electronic books in an educational environment. The students used compact, handheld personal computers to read most of their assigned reading materials as e-books.

The U.Va. Library’s Electronic Text Center (Etext), which operates a busy public e-book library, worked with Microsoft Corp. and electronic course material publisher Xanedu to provide the students the tools they needed to read their materials as interactive e-books using Microsoft Reader software.

The project sought to gather feedback from the students and professors on how well the e-books integrated into their curriculum. This

The University of Missouri at Columbia celebrated the addition of its three-millionth volume, The Navigator, during National Library Week. The Navigator, published in 1817 by Zadok Cramer, is a compilation of travelers' journals and reports that gave "directions for navigating the Monongahela, Alleghany, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers with descriptions of villages, settlements, harbors and distances between points." The purchase was made possible by the contributions of family and friends to the Ruth C. Ellis Memorial Fund and monies from the Dr. Elmer Ellis and Ruth C. Ellis Fund. Mrs. Ellis, wife of the late University of Missouri President Emeritus Elmer Ellis (for whom Ellis Library was named), was an ardent supporter of the libraries and its mission. Pictured, left to right, are: Rachel Brekhus, humanities reference librarian; Martha Alexander, director of University of Missouri Libraries; and Darlene Schroeder, representing the Ellis family. included the students’ reactions to having most of the course materials on one device. They also wanted to understand whether such technology changes teaching and learning, and, if so, how.

For the project, each student received a Pocket PC, donated by Microsoft Research, which came preloaded with the Microsoft Reader software and other Microsoft programs that gave the small computer more powerful mobile uses.

The Etext Center staff loaded each Pocket PC with the required e-books for the semester and trained the students and professors to use the device and its software.

The Etext Center and Microsoft are evaluating how effective the e-books were and will use their findings for future planning. While results have not been fully analyzed, Etext Center director, David Seaman, said that some advantages of the e-books were readily apparent.

For example, using the original writings as e-books allowed the students instant, direct access to the primary sources, so they could form their own opinions about the work. Another e-book advantage is that one easy-to-carry, handheld device contained most of the course material, giving students the freedom and convenience of accessing their readings whenever and wherever they please.

For more information about the e-book classroom project, contact Sea-man at (804) 924-3230, or dms8f@ virginia.edu. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu.

UM Libraries to distribute titles via video-on-demand

The University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, and Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Inc. (FFH&S), signed an agreement enabling the campus libraries to distribute approximately 1,000 selected titles from the FFH&S collection of educational videos over the university’s state-of-the-art digital video-on-demand delivery system.

Allan C. Rough, manager of the university’s Nonprint Media Services Department, said that students and faculty will soon be able to access a wide variety of video programming, much of it in the performing arts area, from almost any location on campus. Rough explained that the goal is to allow users to instantly access a program directly from the libraries’ online catalog.

Charles Lowry, dean of Libraries at the University of Maryland, and Betsy Sherer, president and CEO of FFH&S, sign the agreement enabling the campus libraries to distribute approximately 1,000 selected titles from the FFH&S collection of educational videos over the university's state-of-the-art digital video-on-demand delivery system.

He added: “Digital video-on-demand systems have been a reality for a number of years, but copyright and intellectual property constraints have made most academic institutions reluctant to purchase expensive video server technologies. Universities were faced with a classic dilemma: if we purchase a server, will we be able to find video programming we can legally put on the system? This agreement answers that question with a resounding ‘yes’!”

The UMD Libraries expect to launch a pilot project in the fall, enabling users to access a limited number of titles in the collection, according to Jeff Bridgers, head of Digital Libraries.