Being Strategic: Delivering Information in New Ways

With the continued rising subscription and ownership costs of electronic content (i.e., databases, journals, newspapers, e-books, etc.) all libraries are innovating new ways to connect the user with the information they seek. This is somewhat of a daunting task as prices for this information are moving targets (much like purchasing a new or used car). The University Libraries at SLU have taken on this challenge by creatively developing a multi-spectrumed access-on-demand information service.

What does this mean for students, faculty, and staff? It means access to quality information faster and much more convenient. For example, the University Libraries have begun a pilot project at the Medical Center Library to create an all online journal collection for medical literature. Known as the DIGITAL RESOURCES INITIATIVE, students and faculty will be able to access information in one of four ways.

1.) Self-Service Electronic Gateways through which users can access online journal via the library e-journal portal, publisher web sites, SLU’s online catalog, and full-text links within citation and indexing databases.

2.) D3: Digital Document Delivery where rapid, same day scanning and export of high-resolution PDF copies of journal articles are emailed to the users desktop from print library collections.

3.) On-Demand Access where the library purchases (at no charge to the user) and supplies (within one business day) original PDF articles from publishers, and

4.) Interlibrary Loan Resource Sharing where the library continues acquisition and electronic delivery of articles from interlibrary loan partners.

The brainchild of Medical Center Library Director Patrick McCarthy, the Digital Resources Initiative is on schedule to be rolled-out over two-years. On Demand access to select high cost journals began in January 2007. The D3: Digital Document Delivery pilot project began on Aug. 15, 2007 while the interlibrary loan service continues.

The goal within the next year is to have D3 fully implemented for all users as well as online only journal subscriptions for medical literature. In the field of information, the trend, specifically in medicine, is to obtain current, quality information in electronic form. As with all of our other information resources and library services, we will continue to evaluate and assess this program to see if it meets our users needs and, if it does, to expand the project where it makes sense to do so.

As always, we appreciate your feedback on our new products and services.

Pius Library Re-envisions Library as Place

Like most buildings, physical library buildings age over time. Both the outside and inside of a facility shows wear and tear over time and requires refurbishment to meet the needs of today’s society, very similar to the wear and tear of your home resulting in the need for renovation. There has been a dramatic increase in renovating and expanding existing libraries as well as building new ones over the past decade. This is occuring with all types of libraries — school, public, college, and university.

Challenges regarding having enough space as well as usable space are prominent in the world of university libraries. Why is this? Many universities are decades if not hundreds of years old. Collections of books, manuscripts, media, etc. are added as new information is produced. University library collections differ from school or public library collections which are smaller and make popular reading material available. In comparison, faculty require access to what is refered to as “deep” collections, meaning that professors doing research, particularly those in the humanities and social sciences, study subject areas in depth. There is also a growing trend for faculty to engage in cross-disciplinary research where other subject areas are explored in combination with the researcher’s primary area of study. Doing original research is the way for society to create new knowledge and to create new knowledge we need access to what has happened before us. As such, libraries in academic institutions select items that go into their collections very carefully and rarely weed or de-accession titles. The result? Expanding collections that may have started more than 100 years ago and have simply run out of the space. To meet the pressing issue of what we refer to as “stack migration” (i.e., adding more book stacks in the library to the point where it reaches maximum capacity), libraries create active storage facilities to be able to continue to house important works needed for research and scholarship. At this point in time, 189 years after the founding of SLU, Pius has reached the milestone of being over capacity in regards to collections.  Pius Library was built in 1959 to hold 1 million books. This year (2007) we reached 1.4 million books, or 400,000 books over the original design of the building. The University is in process of locating a library storage facility so that we can make better use of the space we have.

As we are working on storage, the library faculty and staff continue to collaborate with other entities on campus in order to develop a “one-stop-shop” for students and faculty to search for, locate, and analyze information, as well as obtain assistance in producing new knowledge. We are excited that over the past 12 months we have been able to renovate some areas of Pius Library to accommodate the academic needs of our students and research and scholarship needs of our faculty.  An underutilized browsing area on the main floor was transformed into a cafe in November 2006. Cafe Libros has bec0me the “hot spot” for everyone on campus to meet, chat, grab a coffee or sandwich and continue with their day, whether it be on another part of campus or doing research in the Library. The University’s new Testing Center and Undergraduate Writing Center Satellite location will open for the Fall 2007 semester. A collaborative project between the University Libraries, the University Writing Center, and the Affirmative Action & Diversity Office, both centers meet the increase demands of students seeking assistance. The Undergraduate Writing Center Satellite is in the perfect location. Undergrads can work with Writing Center staff to improve their writing skills within arms length of books, electronic resources, and library faculty. (Pius Library began hosting the Graduate Writing Center in 2006). The University-wide Testing Center is the location for students to take exams if they require special accommodations and/or if they missed an exam in class. Pius Library is able to host both centers in areas that were not appropriate to house collections, but were appropriate for collaborations that were a match with the type of resources and services that we offer.

Re-vitalizing the space of Pius Library will continue to occur as we work through implementing the University Libraries Strategic Plan. We appreciate and welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

University Libraries Engaging Others

iPhones, iPods, cell phones…portable technologies are changing the way we communicate with each other. We can almost reach anyone anytime and anywhere! These new technologies are not only significantly impacting the way we store and access information, but how information is created. Only a few short years ago, analog information such as text published in journal articles and books, was converted from static print form into digital form. Today, information can be “born digital”, meaning that the text is written in digital format first and that there may or may not be a print counterpart. Moreover, born digital publications almost always now include video, still images, and audio. And, these publications are interactive  in that you can converse directly with the author as well as with others who have similar interests as yourself.

What does this have to do with university libraries?  University libraries continuously assess the quality of the resources and services we provide to our communities — students, faculty, staff, researchers, and scholars. During the past several months, the library faculty and staff at Saint Louis University have been developing new ways to provide current information about our resources and services and to enable library users to communicate with library faculty and staff about the quality of our resources and services.

The initial steps down this path can be located at: http://www.slu.edu/libraries/pius/

Here you will locate blogs regarding strategic planning and the latest news on the University Libraries as well as our venture into RSS feeds and podcasting. At this time, we have a student-to-student podcast to assist incoming freshmen learn about the University Libraries.  In the Fall, we will be launching a podcast series called “Conversations” which will include interviews with SLU faculty about how they use library resources and services in their research.

University libraries continue to stay a-pace with information technologies that change the way we create information and how we communicate with each other. In this way, we ensure that we are engaging our constituents by providing them with avenues to learn about how libraries are changing services and resources to meet their information needs as well as ways to provide avenues for real-time feedback so that we may continuously improve access to quality information.