Educause Center for Applied Research

The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 report was released the other day. This is the sixth in the annual series and it always has something of interest.

Use of the university library websites seems much more promising than the 2006 OCLC !--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resouces, where they found that only 55% of students used the library website at least monthly. The ECAR reports that 94.6% of students used library websites on a weekly basis. Of course, 90% of those student use social networking sites on a daily basis.

Another point that caught my eye was that 73.1% of the students reported they were using their library website for classwork during the period when the survey was taken.

Students were asked to rate their information literacy skills and not surprisingly that are very confident about their abilities to search online, find information and evaluate it. This has real impact on how we approach information literacy instruction. Many students believe they have the skills they need already. Over 30,000 students assessed their abilities. 80% said they were very confident in their ability to search the Internet effectively and efficiently. (p16) A third felt they were experts. The survey also asked students to assess their ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of online sources. Fifty-one percent felt they were very skilled expert in evaluating online information.

Students also felt pretty capable in legal and ethical aspects of accessing and using online information. 48.4% felt they were very skilled to expert. Only 17% felt they were not at all skilled or not very skilled in this area.

Handheld Internet Access

Just over half of the students surveyed report that they own an internet capable handheld device and another 12% plan to purchase a device with that capability in the next 12 months. Use of those devices to access the internet is more variable. About a third access the Internet daily and another third have never accessed the internet from their device. Cost and the wide available of other avenues to the internet are the main reasons for people not using handheld devices for Internet access. The ubiquity of internet access won’t change but the cost of mobile internet access is likely to drop. Librarians are thinking about how to provide their resources to handhelds this supports those efforts. The majority of students accessing the internet on handhelds are looking for information (76.7%). The information sources listed in the survey report seem more personal presently; news, weather, sports and specific facts are mentioned. Chances are that as mobile internet use becomes a more common part of students’ lives academic use could grow. In focus groups electronic reserve was mentioned as a possible use for handheld devices.

Textbook Rentals

One of the proposed solutions suggested to address the textbook affordability issue. Various states, including Illinois have evaluated the feasibility of establishing textbook rental programs as a way to help students better afford higher education. Many of the UW System colleges and comprehensive universities, including UW Eau Claire have textbook rental programs. Studies, like the one done by the Illinois Board of Higher Education, have focused on universities providing textbook rentals. This upcoming academic year will see publishers getting into the act. A recent New York Times article reports on this new development. Maybe this provides an answer to publishers who view the used textbook market as a threat to their business and students who see that market as their best source for recooping their textbook costs.

Fair Use Evaluator

I just learned about a new tool from the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy, the Fair Use Evaluator. This tool walks a person through the evaluation process of deciding whether their use of copyrighted material falls within the provisions of Fair Use. As you go through the process you can click on statements for and against Fair Use for all four of the issues that help determine fair use. The tool then calculates the pluses and minuses and creates a time stamped .pdf document that documents the process of deciding whether or not to use copyrighted material. It should be very helpful in documenting someone's good faith effort to exercise their fair use rights as they make use of protected material.

Technician - Textbooks available on reserve

The other day I learned that the D.H. Hill library at North Carolina State University is collaborating with their campus bookstore to provide one copy of every required course textbook through their reserve desk.Technician - Textbooks available on reserve

This is an impressive attempt by an academic library to address student's needs for relief from the continual rise in the cost of textbooks.

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Textbook Affordability

Today I received my University of Denver alumni magazine and learned that a professor there is trying to address the high cost of textbooks through electronic texts. The magazine reprinted an article from October, 2008 about Daniels College of Business professor Don McCubbrey's work to solve the textbook affordability problem facing his students. He worked with his graduate students to develop an electronic book that would be affordable. But Professor McCubbrey was thinking about the cost of textbooks in a more global manner. If textbooks are too expensive for students in the United States, what does that mean for education in less developed areas. Working with Richard Watson of the University of Georgia, Professor McCubbrey founded of the Global Text Project. The Global Text Project's goal is to marshall the resources of the United States to bring 1,000 electronic textbooks to students in the developing world and help education around the world.

Is a New Era Dawning

A friend of mine asked me, in relation to libraries and cloud computing, if we were at a point where libraries were at a point where they were willing to forego the localization and customization that commercial ILS vendors provide for what OCLC be able to provide with their plan to provide web-based library management systems. His premise is that current commercial ILS vendors are responsive to library needs and adapt as needed. While I agree that librarians can make incredibly unrealistic demands on vendors, I'm not sure I agree with the assumption that current commercial vendors are particularly responsive or agile. Certainly this has something to do with the fact that the library automation market is limited with customers of finite resources. That may be the reason that vendors have not been able to keep up with the changing expectation of our users.

I'm not sure if cloud computing represents an answer to the challenges currently facing librarians and ILS vendors but the environment is inexorably changing. The idea of splitting out different ILS components and selecting the software packets that work best for individual libraries makes a lot of sense in my mind right now. At the CUWL meeting we were talking about having our patron database managed by the campus student/personnel system and library acquisitions/finances managed by the campus financial system. The idea of running our acquisition system through campus financials scares me to death but it makes sense budgetarily. In the current budget crises these types of efficiencies may be forced upon us. I remember going through an ILS vendor migration and the trade offs that change brought. I came to realize that no, one vendor had a product that worked well for all of our library's needs. At the same time I visited the library of the Universitat Freiburg. There they had one system developed for circulation, one for the catalog and one for financial management. Each was developed separately but all interacted with each other. I would like to see an environment where libraries could buy a circulation system from one vendor, a commercial financial system and a cooperatively developed open source resource discovery system. I don't know if current vendors have a business model that would support them being able to survive by selling there systems as discrete packets. They don't have the resources to invest in the r&d needed to keep up as it is. I'm convinced that the library automation business is just another of the businesses that libraries interact with that is facing a business model crisis; just like publishers.

CUWL Day Two

The second day of the CUWL conference started out with product demos from ExLibris and OCLC. The representative from ExLibris spoke about Primo and there new venture Universal Research Discovery and Delivery (URD2). The URD2 initiative looks like their attempt to address the issues that Marshall Breeding discussed yesterday. If it works, the system will harvest data from the library's ILS, DSpace, CMS, institution website and also "deep search" the library's licensed journal articles. They are also looking at ways to merge workflows in the back end that better link ebooks, licensing, journals and print.
The commercial concerns are being pressured by open source developers to better address our needs. The best quote I heard was the ExLibris rep describe open source developers as "a distraction" rather than a legitimate competitor.

OCLC continues moving steadily into the ILS world. We heard about their "web scale management services". As I understand it this initiative is a way to provide a "cloud computing" solution to manage library workflows. If this works it would take the OCLC cooperative model to our management processes. The example given was how libraries all have vendor files that they maintain individually. An OCLC cloud management service could provide a central shared space where libraries could cooperatively update one shared vendor file.

In the afternoon I attended a round table discussion of how system libraries are developing our electronic theses and dissertations repository. More and more Wisconsin universities are moving in this direction. UW-Eau Claire is moving deliberately, if cautiously, in this direction also. Dorthea Salo talked about the new software that the Digital Collections group is implementing. This software should make our system easier to manage, maintain and preserve. The big issue that came out of this was that CUWL needs to start thinking about data management. There is one project just beginning where a group at Madison is curating an archeology dataset. They are working with an archeologist who cataloged the results of excavations done in the first half of the 20th Century. In that period excavations could be much more comprehensive than what can be done currently so there is a lot work to be done to provide access to the data. The project looked very exciting. When I asked who provides a model for libraries moving into data curation, Dorothea said that Purdue is very active in the field. They have created a data curation department, D2C2.

CUWL Notes

The CUWL conference began with a welcome from Dr. Rebecca Martin, the UW Sytem Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Then Marshall Breeding delivered the keynote address looking at the library automation systems environment. It seems like the point that many people carried from his presentation was that the costs for commercial products and open source solutions are equivilant but show up in different areas. Overall the commercial ILS systems have not kept up with the migration from print to electronic resources. He reaffirmed librarians' widely-held frustration with current OPACs and bundled front end discovery systems. What I found interesting was his description of current business software solutions that rely on Service Oriented Architecture. I'm not sure I can write about this coherently but as I understand it, this architecture offers much more flexibility and uses a "Lego-like" middle structure that allow business and librarys the ability to mix our services in a way that is more adapted to the current environment. He remarked that the current model is based on rigid silos. and redundant data sources. Breeding thinks that new systems can be built to better allow libraries to provide access to electronic resources at the same level we provide access to our print collections.

Highlights that I took away from the talk:

1. An anecdote about the Harry Potter book he keeps on his coffee table. He was giving a presentation where he demonstrated Amazon's one-click purchase service. In doing so he accidentally bought the Harry Potter book and it arrived on his doorstep a couple of days later. He wondered how it is too bad that libraries don't have that kind of problem. Point being that many of our processes for getting from discovery to delivery are very cumbersome.
2. Discovery should be decoupled from the back-end automation system and should expose the entire spectrum of our collections. Discovery should be based on havesting to create indexes searched locally not by going out to our databases one at a time and returning a small subset of information. In other words we would continually or at least often download bibliographic records from our shared catalogs, the entire fulltext data from our database vendors as well as our government publications, digital archives and institutional repositories.
3. Two discovery products that he talked about were Summon - Serials Solutions' product in development and OCLC's WorldCat Local. Both are making arrangements with journal aggregators to provide access to physical library collections as well as fulltext journal articles.

Later in the day I attended a presentation on RDisco, a project being developed at UW Madison to create a de-coupled discovery system that would provide one place where users could discover books from the UW catalogs and digital material from our digital repositories. There work is in the very early stages of development but provide a glimpse at the possibility of developing a home grown discovery tool that addresses some of the needs that Marshall Breeding discused.

Google Scholar and Journal Access

I'm sure others have faced this problem and probably found solutions but I and my colleagues at UW-Eau Claire are struggling with the best way to provide access to journals as we move from print to electronic journals. We are attempting to move most of our subscriptions into electronic format. This is part of the severe budget crisis that public academic libraries in Wisconsin and around the country are facing. We are cutting our subscriptions significantly and in the cases where we are being asked to keep journals that have been little used in print we are changing to digital subscriptions, thinking that at the very least we will save on processing and storage costs. At the same time I worry that our electronic journals will sit unused on virtual library shelves.

Google Scholar may play a larger role as a resource discovery tool in our library as one way of providing access to these electronic subscriptions. (Our current federated search tool is not up to the job. Students have reported using it even after having attended library research instruction sessions where librarians introduce subject specific databases. But that is fodder for another blog posting.) As part of the cancellation process I have been having quite a few conversations by e-mail and face to face with faculty. At one meeting I was surprised to have one faculty member tell me that she was forbidding students from using Google Scholar. Here I was thinking it was our salvation! She was directing students to the databases the library pays a lot of money for so I couldn't fault her for that. So we had a good conversation about how her students did research and how to get students to scholarly journal articles; current scholarly journal articles. She shook my confidence in Google Scholar.

But then, in the afternoon mail I received the current issue of College & Research Libraries. There on page 227 was, "How Scholarly is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases," by Jared L. Howland, Thomas C. Wright, Rebecca A.
Boughan, and Brian C. Roberts from Brigham Young University. Their research expanded on earlier comparisons by Chris Neuhaus and used an evaluation rubric designed by Jim Kapoun to measure the scholarliness of the articles retrieved. In their research they found that articles found in Google Scholar were 17.6% more scholarly than those found in the library purchased databases. They also found that results were not significantly different across disciplines. They suggest that the same type of study should be carried out with federated search engines.

Finally, they point out that Google Scholar is dependant on cooperation of publishers. And even more significant is that access to the journal articles students using Google Scholar retrieve is dependant on their library subscribing to journal aggregating databases. I wonder if databases, Google Scholar and a good url resolver are becoming more important than actual journal subscriptions. More thoughts on that as we move through this subscription cancellation.

Student Ingenuity

I love to walk around the library during finals week. The intensity and concentration fills the air with an almost electric charge. At the same time there is always something to make me laugh and shake my head at how ingenious our students are. Last semester it was the group of students who took over two tables and a couch on the second floor for the entire week. One member of the team was always there to save the space. They needed someone there to hold the space and to protect the coffee maker they brought and the food in the cooler that they had next to the window. Every time I went past someone was sacked out on the couch while others were studying.

This year I saw this sign on one of the tables on the second floor. If you can't read it, the laminated sign says, "this table is reserved. Thank you, the McIntyre Library Staff." It has our logo on the top and looks just like a sign that we would produce. There's only one thing wrong, the library staff do not reserve tables. I have to applaud the work and thought that went into coming up with a laminated table tent to keep a table. I also have to congratulate our student body as a really honest group. For the entire time it took for me to see the sign, make sure it wasn't really one of ours, and take the picture no one was at the table. In all that time they had left that laptop out and open. No one nicked that laptop. Way to go BluGolds.

The Open Group Study Area at UW-Stevens Point

Librarians at UW-Steven Point gave a presentation on how they developed an open group study area for their library. They have two of these stations on their first floor near their reference desk. This is something we would like to do. It seems like students want to have a space where they can walk into the library and work as a group on the spur of the moment. They wouldn't have to sign up for a room. It would be quick. It also seems to provide that see and be seen that Brian Mathews from Georgia State University spoke about as a keynote speaker at the WAAL conference.

McIntyre Library, the place to be

Yesterday's Spectator mentioned the Library in Natalie Saeger's "Ask Anything" column. Natalie responded to a student's, Hunny Hunter's, question asking where were the best spots on campus to meet female students. Natalie said the number 2 spot is the 4th floor of McIntyre Library. Natalie says that is where the best looking people study. Its where she goes to study. She reminds her searching inquirer, "remember that you don't want to meet just anyone; you want to meet someone with dedication." College entry requirements gaurantee that fellow students have a certain level of intellect but Natalie says that the 4th floor is where the really dedicated high achievers are to be found.

Good advice Natalie!

John

Graduating Student Appreciation

Today we wished our graduating seniors happiness and good luck as they are moving on with they lives and careers. We asked each of the twelve graduating student workers to pick out a book that meant something to thew. We then placed a bookplate in it with their name.







John H. Pollitz


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WAAL Keynote - Brian Matthews

On Wednesday morning, Brian Matthews, who is the User Experience Librarian at Georgia Tech and soon to be of UC Santa Barbara, spoke to the group about his experience on bringing innovative services to the Georgia Tech libraries. I liked the idea that their mission was to design the "premier group study area on campus". It reminded me of the Pike Fish Market deciding to be a world famous fish market and how they decided to accomplish that goal. Here were the ideas that had resonance for me.

• Furniture on wheels so students could control their space; including movable walls and whiteboards. This seems to be a current design theme that we will need to remember as we buy any new furniture.
• They designed group work tables not just study rooms. This taps into the need to see and be seen while still getting work done. Bryan Vogh is already working on how we can create these types of work areas on the first floor of McIntyre Library. I think that we can use our flip-chart and map of the first floor to let students decide where we site the group workstations.
  
• They used Wimba software to deliver social web events to students on a current topic, ideas or issues instead of holding drop-in instruction sessions. It seemed like an innovative way to deliver information literacy in a non-class based manner.
• At Georgia Tech they promote class projects that use the library as a case study much like we are currently doing with Dr. Sutton's marketing class.
• Matthews mentioned how he discovered how immersing himself in the activities of the library led to new insights. While his office was being renovated for three months he moved his workspace out into the library with the students. I'm thinking this might be a great way for me to get out onto the floors for a couple of hours per week instead of being cooped up in my office.

WAAL Ideas 1

I arrived today in time for the first session by librarians from UW Stevens Point. Here are the ideas I found interesting.

• They have used a lot of moveable furniture in their public areas.

• They have a couple of rooms for presentation practice rooms. Our students have been asking for this. We need to set this up.

• In their coffee bar they have kiosk computers around their architectural pillars. It seems like a good way to deal with our pillars and answer the student's requests for quick search and print stations.

• They also have big screens that show computer availability on all their floors. This seems like something we could use since we have computers on all of our floors.

Jp



John H. Pollitz

Director of Libraries

UW Eau Claire

Eau Claire WI

715-836-4827

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McIntyre Library, that "foxy older woman"

Yesterday the latest issue of Volume One came out with an article that mentions McIntyre Library in the most delightful way. Online editor, Mike Paulus, offers up a paean to libraries in general and local libraries in particular. He remembers the time he spent in McIntyre Library as a student at UW-Eau Claire by describing the library as a "foxy older woman". I hadn't thought of this place like that but like how he talks about "her". I particularly enjoyed his description of long nigths studying in the library that he described as, "... usually ending up far more confused than when I started. You seemed amused by this, you clever minx, you. but you always gave me the answers I needed." There's more. This was a fun read and a wonderful description of the role libraries play in people's lives.