ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries F eb ru a ry 1 9 9 6 / 7 3 New s f r o m th e Fie ld M a ry Ellen D avis College of W ooster completes addition The College o f W ooster in Ohio recently com pleted a 32,000-square-foot addition to its library. The $5.6 mil­ lion addition was made pos­ sible by a $3.5 million gift from Flo (class o f 1948) and Stanley Gault. The new library is nam ed the Flo K. Gault Library for Independent Study in recog­ nition of the Gault’s signifi­ cant gift and of Mrs. Gault’s decision to return to the college in 1986–87 to com plete an independent study. During her research Mrs. Gault becam e very familiar with the college’s library bu t spent a great deal of her time working on her project in her dining room. “My dining room became my citadel. . . . I loved working there because I could watch .the winter birds in our backyard while reflect­ ing on the next sentence,” she said. The importance of the independent study as well as the interesting view was recognized in the development of private study carrels. “The most interesting feature of the new library will be the Independent Study carrels,” said Damon Hickey, director of libraries at Wooster. “Every senior in the social sciences and humanities will have a carrel. . . . Their design will provide privacy and virtually all o f them will be along­ side w indow s.” Each of the 285 carrels will be wired for electricity and the college’s com puter network. Students can bring their computers to the li- O ne o f th e n e w stu dy carrels at th e C ollege o f W ooster in Ohio. brary, p lug into th e n et­ work, and be fully hooked up to the Internet. The li­ brary also networked all its electronic indexes so that they are all accessible from a single database. “P reviously, th e e le c ­ tronic indexes w ere at sepa­ rate w o rk s ta tio n s ,” e x ­ plained Hickey. “With the networking, students now can gain access to electronic indexes from any terminal in the library, so there will be no more waiting in lines to use a specific terminal with a specific database.” In addition to the study carrels, the Gault addition p rovided space to consolidate the college’s special collections and established a single area for reference materials. Tennessee universities a w a it n e w libraries East T ennessee State University (ETSU) and Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) both h o p e to have new library buildings soon. Cur­ rently MTSU and ETSU are eighth and ninth on a list o f th e T en n e sse e H ig h er E d u catio n Commission’s capital outlay request to Gover­ nor D on Sundquist, w ho has pledged that the two facilities will be a top budget priority. ETSU library dean Fred Borchuck said, “I expect w e have a good chance of being funded since of­ ten the top ten items are funded.” ETSU has requested $28 million for a new 191,910-square-foot building fully wired for the information age. ETSU has an additional re- quest of nearly $1 million to purchase and outfit a variety of electronic learning labora- tories. MTSU has requested $32.75 million to build a 250,000-square-foot library that will also include a complete electronic informa­ tion system connected to the campuswide fí­ I b er optic backbone with 150 public access com puter stations. Borchuck and MTSU library dean Donald Craig are hopeful the projects will remain on the budget the governor recommends to the legislature. The legislature will act on the bud­ get this spring and a decision on funding the projects should be announced in April. 7 4 /C & R L New s Top 1 0 signs y o u ’ re g o in g to h a v e a b a d d a y a t th e lib r a r y 10. You have to walk through a metal detector to enter. 9. W hen you walk through the metal detec­ tor a guard asks you to turn your head and cough. 8 . The card catalog isn’t online. 7. The card catalog is online, but the system is down. 6. There are n o change machines by the photocopiers. 5. There’s a sign on the reference desk that reads: “No longer subscribing to journals. See UnCover m enu on your terminal for any issues from the last tw o years.” 4. There’s only one terminal in reference. 3. Just as you get your turn at the terminal, the system goes down. 2. W hen the system comes up, you can’t remember the title of the article or the journal and n eed to go back to an index at the reference desk. 1. When you get to the reference desk, there’s a new sign that reads: “No longer subscribing to print abstracts or indexes. See menu on your terminal for online access. . . .” Ed. note: This was originally part o f a presentation given by Barbara Meyers and Charles Germain at the 14th Annual Charleston Conference, entitled “T he Savage Marketplace.” This excerpt is copyright © 1994 by Charles Germain, Publishers Communication Group, Inc., and Barbara Meyers, Meyers Consult­ ing Services, and used with permission. It appeared in Scholarly Publishing Today, vol. 4, no. 1 ‚ 1995. ALA & ACRL to su rvey electronic services ALA’s Office for Research Sta­ tistics (ORS) and ACRL, with financial support from Amer- itech Library Services, will survey a stratified sample of college and university librar­ ies’ electronic services. Top­ ics to be covered are: elec­ tr o n ic p u b lic c a ta lo g s , e lec tro n ic refe re n c e d a ta ­ b ases, elec tro n ic journals; electronic reserves; Internet services; com puter hardware and software; technology for the disabled; electronic docu­ m ent delivery, digitization; cooperative practices, instruc­ tion, and future plans. Mary Jo Lynch, director of ORS, is principal investigator for the project. Advisory com­ mittee members are Jennifer Cargill (Louisiana State Uni­ versity), Thomas Kirk (Earl- h a m C o lle g e ), D e b o r a h Leather (Towson State Uni­ versity), Richard Madaus (Col­ lege Center for Library Auto- Celebrate N ational W om en ’s His­ tory M onth w ith th e “20 th Cen­ tury W om en” p o ste r se t featur­ in g w o m e n p r o m in e n t in s ix fields in clu d in g literature (above). The th ree-color, six -p o ste r set is available for $10, p lu s $4 sh ip ­ p in g /h a n d lin g , from th e N ational W om en ’s H istory Project, 7738 Bell Rd., D ept. P, W indsor, CA 95492; (7 0 7 ) 838-6000. mation), and Ronald Naylor (University of Miami). The re­ sults will be published by ALA in the fall o f 1996. Lαzerow research a v a ila b le from ACRL K u an g -H w e i (J a n e t) Lee- Smeltzer, catalog librarian at Oregon State University, has c o m p le te d th e r e s e a r c h p ro jec t fu n d e d by ACRL’s Samuel Lazerow Fellowship for Research in Acquisitions o r Technical Services in an Academic or Research Library. A copy of her report, “Library A utomation in Taiwan: Ex­ ploring the Potential for Co­ operative Cataloging o f Chi­ nese Language Materials on an In tern atio n al B asis,” is available from ACRL. The re­ port recognizes how the cata­ loging processes in Taiwan­ e s e lib r a r ie s h a v e b e e n affected by the developm ent o f C hinese MARC an d the Chinese Character Code for Information Interchange, the F eb ru a ry 1 9 9 6 / 75 use of automation technology, and the estab­ lishment of the national online bibliographic database (NBINet). The report outlines the de­ velopment and current status of library auto­ mation in Taiwan and discusses issues related to cooperative cataloging of Chinese-language materials at the international level. Contact Elisa T o p p e r a t (800) 545-2433, ext. 2523, or elisa.topper@ala.org to request a copy. Consortia sign agreem ent w ith Encyclopaedia Britannica Four university consortia have signed agree­ ments with Encyclopædia Britannica, bringing the num ber o f college students with access to Britannica Online to well over one million. Sign­ ing agreem ents with Britannica w ere seven members of the Committee on Institutional Co­ operation (CIC), consisting primarily o f Big Ten universities; 16 members of OhioLink, a con­ sortium of colleges and universities in Ohio; the University System of Georgia, with 33 mem­ b er schools; and the Virtual Library o f Virginia (VIVA), a consortium o f the 39 publicly sup­ ported colleges and universities in Virginia, as well as a num ber of private institutions. Britannica Online contains the entire text of the 44-million-word Encyclopædia Britannica, more than 2,200 graphics and illustrations, and thousands o f direct links to other sources of information on the Internet related to topics covered in Britannica Online. Users can ask questions and receive a list of articles ranked according to their relevance to the query. Communicating v ia computer in lib ra ry credit courses Computer-mediated communication has re­ cently been used to enhance library credit courses at Penn State University’s Berks Cam­ pus. Computer-mediated communication, or CMC, includes vehicles such as electronic mail, electronic conferences, and com puter bulle­ tin boards. CMC has been used successfully in a v ariety o f c o lleg e co u rses, a n d its asynchronicity has been found to increase the efficiency and flexibility of the classroom. In an in d e p en d e n t study library credit course in spring 1995, an electronic confer­ ence (a listserv) was used with three students to facilitate communication among students and library faculty. Patrick Crispin’s “Road­ map for the Information Superhighway Inter­ net Training W orkshop” was sent via the class listserv to the students; communication be­ tween faculty and students was increased via e-mail; and students w ere required to post some assignments to the class listserv. Stu­ dents reported positive reactions to the use of CMC. Their level of comfort with e-mail and electronic conferencing increased, they enjoyed and learned much from the “Road­ m ap,” an d they appreciated the increased availability of faculty via e-mail. In fall 1995, in another library credit course w hich is part of a special com puter-based learning project called Project Vision, twenty students using IBM laptop computers used several forms of computer-mediated commu­ nication with faculty. A World Wide Web page was created for the course, which included the syllabus and assignment list, and students were taught the use of the Netscape browser to access the Web. Students turn in assign­ ments via e-mail, and they can use e-mail to ask questions of faculty at any time. FirstClass, a com puter conferencing software, is used to hold some group discussions, and students can use e-mail and com puter “chat” software called PowWow to communicate with each other outside of class. Training in the various technologies was part of this course, which was team-taught with Computer Center per­ sonnel and three other faculty. Most students have responded positively to the course and have done well, and ongoing evaluation will determine w hat elements o f this experiment can be broadened to other courses. Key conditions for success o f CMC include student access to computers (preferably from homes or dormitories, as well as a campus Computer Center); availability o f training for the students in e-mail and any software they are asked to use; required use of the technol­ ogy by students as part o f class participation; and planning by the instructor for how the technology will b e used. In th ese library courses, computer-mediated communication has enhanced class contact and increased the flexibility of the co u rse s— Nancy H. Dewald, Penn State Berks Campus‚ Reading mailto:elisa.topper@ala.org