The Florida State Libraries Resource Sharing Initiative: Did the Predictions Pan Out?

This article revisits discussion from “The Florida State Libraries Resource Sharing Initiative: Unity Among a Disparate Group” (Schmidt & Smith, 2012) on the implementation of a new resource sharing program within the Florida State University Libraries called UBorrow. The program and its effects are assessed after 2 years with comparison to the project launch's original predictions.     

Communication and Cooperation in Psychology Collection Development in a Large University:

This paper describes Selectors with Collection Overlap in Psychology Entente (SCOPE), a group of bibliographers at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, and the process used to identify gaps and overlaps in psychology collection development. The project included informal meetings, the development of a directory, and creation of a worksheet correlating Psychological Abstracts classified headings with call numbers and Research Libraries Group (RLG) conspectus levels. The process is compared to Hale's theoretical framework from library research.     

Facilitating Collaboration and Research in Sex and Gender Differences and Women's Health: Year One Experiences

Librarians at the University of Florida Health Science Center Libraries partnered with faculty to promote awareness of and access to research on women's health and sex and gender resources in an outreach project funded by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women's Health. The project featured elements that facilitated cross-disciplinary collaboration (using CoLAB Planning Series®, or CoLABs), instruction to various groups (including faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, and professional students), collection development, and information dissemination. Librarians leveraged existing partnerships with faculty and built new ones. Success in this project demonstrates that libraries can partner effectively with their faculty on emerging trends and new initiatives.     

A generic approach to the electronic access of scientific journals: The decomate project

The DECOMATE project (DElivery of COpyright MATerial to End users) is a joint project of three European partners (Tilburg University, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and the London School of Economics). The main objectives are (1) to develop a generic system that offers end users a new electronic service in the field of document delivery of scientific journals, (2) to find publishers who can provide the copyrighted material in electronic form, and (3) to start a study to examine the user's behavior related to the new service. This paper will provide an introduction to the project and a glimpse, at an abstract level, of the systems' environment and architecture, including the hardware and software that is used. This article addresses mainly the generic character of DECOMATE and the strengths and weaknesses of this type of system. It ends with an overview of general problems in this field that have yet to be solved.     

Reinvisioning and redesigning “a library for the fifteenth through twenty-first centuries”: a case study on loss of space from the Library and Center for Knowledge Management,University of California,San Francisco

The University of California, San Francisco, is an academic health sciences campus that is part of a state public university system. Space is very limited at this urban campus, and the library building''s 90,000 square feet represent extremely valuable real estate. A planning process spanning several years initially proposed creating new teaching space utilizing 10,000 square feet of the library. A collaborative campus-wide planning process eventually resulted in the design of a new teaching and learning center that integrates clinical skills, simulation, and technology-enhanced education facilties on one entire floor of the building (21,000 square feet). The planning process resulted in a project that serves the entire campus and strengthens the library''s role in the education mission. The full impact of the project is yet unknown as construction is not complete.     

National Museum of African American History and Culture: A New Integration?

The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) marks a milestone moment in American history; the project has taken almost a century to come to fruition. Beginning with the first glimpse of the new monumental building on the National Mall, a NMAAHC visitor encounters complex symbols and histories. This review explores NMAAHC's historical context alongside its symbolic capital and its inaugural exhibitions, focusing on the central topic of the museum's efforts to embody “a new integration,” a space wherein all Americans can see their country through the lens of the African American experience.     

Doing More With Less: How a Library Expanded Its Oral History Collection

This article highlights a successful collaborative project between the Toledo–Lucas County Library System, a university professor, and a local production company in order to expand the library's African American oral history collection. The project, made possible from a state technology grant, also resulted in the production of 20 television-quality DVDs and lesson guides. In addition to describing how we expanded the library's local African American history collection, we discuss how the project required a new collaborative culture. We also describe the unintended discovery of the evolving role and required skill sets of the librarian in the new collaboration relationship. The knowledge we gained helps us to fill a gap in our understanding about how to establish specialty collections as well as the required emergent role of the librarian.     

Librarians Team Up with Marketing Research Class

The Library Assessment Committee at Central Missouri State University has conducted numerous user surveys within the past three years. In an effort to come up with some creative new ideas, the Committee worked with one of the University's Marketing Research classes. The class's term project was to design a methodology to assess students' impressions of library service. Several of the ideas have been implemented, and an intern form the Marketing Department has been hired to assist with future surveys.     

E-Reserve in Blackboard

Abstract

Ryerson University Libraryin Toronto, Canada, embarked on an electronic reserve pilot project in 2004. The project soon took on new directions, including integration with Blackboard, using its new Content Management System (January 2005), employment of SFX links to offer database options for accessing articles (April 2005) and experiment with streaming a digitized video (May 2005). The reasons for these innovations are multifold. User's convenience of access via a portal like Blackboard is paramount. The SFX multi-database menu is revolutionizing electronic reserve access, though the concept has yet to be tested widely. Streaming AV content is ideal for distributed learning. From the staff perspective, the OpenURL Connector for SFX links is convenient for locating databases and creating links. SFX links are maintained centrally by the Collections Team in the Library and may reduce the occurrences of broken links. Some technical issues remain to be resolved. Extra library authentication after the Blackboard log-in and multiple clicks for downloading articles through SFX are the major ones reported. Excessive copy right clearance costs for digitized videos, lengthy course packs, business cases and so on are delaying or prohibiting some electronic reserve requests. The project has expanded the Library's collaboration with other e-learning stakeholder groups on campus and heightened copyright awareness in the University community.     

Understanding social influence: Relations between lay and technical perspectives

This essay urges an appropriately complicated view of the relationship of the actor's and the researcher's perspectives on persuasion and social influence. As a foil for this project, it initially sketches an interpretive‐phenomenological approach that takes the researcher's central project to be that of describing the actor's point of view. It then argues that because commonsensical conceptions of how persuasion works contain beliefs that are not well‐founded, reproducing the actor's perspective will yield an inevitably inadequate account of social influence. For quantitative studies of persuasion, this points to the importance of assessing actual (as opposed to perceived) message effects; for qualitative investigations, this emphasizes the dangers of unreflective reliance on interview data.     

Learning by Doing: Performance Assessment of Information Literacy across the First-Year Curriculum

In the 2011–2012 school year, the instruction librarians at Augustana College, Illinois, changed their assessment approach in the college's required first-year sequence to focus on higher-level information literacy concepts. The librarians replaced a quantitative assessment instrument with performance assessments, which they integrated into their first-year library sessions. Although the sequence is taught by many faculty with diverse assignments, these new assessments could be applied organically across sections yet provide generalizable results. This case study describes that assessment project and its initial findings, analyzes the project's implications, and suggests how other college libraries might adopt similar qualitative assessments.     

RLG and OCLC: Combined for the Future

On July 1, 2006, The Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG) and the Online Computer Library System (OCLC) combined their organizations and resources. RLG's products and services were integrated with OCLC's, and RLG's program initiatives went forward within an expanded OCLC Research division. This was a historic moment for libraries and research institutions consonant with the incredible changes in the information environment that had been underway during the previous decade. The expansion of WorldCat that resulted and the renewed attention given to research libraries by OCLC in the merger has positively impacted libraries around the globe.     

Improving medical education in Kenya: an international collaboration

This paper describes a partnership between the University of Nairobi College of Health Sciences (CHS) Library and the University of Maryland Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HS/HSL). The libraries are collaborating to develop best practices for the CHS Library as it meets the challenge of changing medical education information needs in a digital environment. The collaboration is part of a Medical Education Partnership Initiative. The library project has several components: an assessment of the CHS Library, learning visits in the United States and Kenya, development of recommendations to enhance the CHS Library, and ongoing evaluation of the program''s progress. Development of new services and expertise at the CHS Library is critical to the project''s success. A productive collaboration between the HS/HSL and CHS Library is ongoing. A successful program to improve the quality of medical education will have a beneficial impact on health outcomes in Kenya.     

Tracing Johnson's Circle: Practical Experiments With EAC-CPF

Interested in collaboratively exploring the potential of EAC-CPF, the Beinecke Library at Yale and the Houghton Library at Harvard embarked on a year-long project to gain experience with the new standard and, in the process, strengthen connections between disparate but deep holdings of lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) and his circle. The project team set out to document metadata best practices while developing and maintaining one set of records and to discover the practical limits and possibilities of rich content within the EAC-CPF context. This article outlines the project's challenges, lessons learned, and remaining questions.     

Quality Standards in Children's Programming: An Independent Observation of Industry Claims

There is no standard definition for "quality children's programming" currently. This study sought to build from the work of Alexander, Hoerrner, and Duke (1998) and others in constructing a standardized definition. The Alexander et al. study defined the television industry's definition of quality. This project analyzed the attributes of the shows used in the 1998 study to determine if the content actually contained the aspects of quality stated by the industry. In doing so, this project sought to validate the television industry's self-imposed definition. The results were quite encouraging; consistency exists among several researchers' and industry definitions. Six categories set the standards for quality: instructional excellence, distinctive program characteristics, production excellence, age appropriateness, diversity, and prestigious participants.     

Where did the reference desk go? Transforming staff and space to meet user needs

ABSTRACT

A sharp decline in the number of reference queries prompted the library administration at Indiana State University to begin a project to combine the circulation, reference, and IT desks to reduce staffing at a new consolidated service point. All faculty and staff in the reference/instruction and circulation units participated in the project. The new arrangement and subsequent removal of librarians from routine desk duties have expanded instructional opportunities, consistent with the university's goals. Project participants plan further assessments to better determine the impacts of the new service arrangements.     

Accessing the Old and the New

Summary

The University of Arizona Library's tradition of outreach to the surrounding community is reflected in two examples of projects detailed here. The first project is a series of Web exhibits created by librarians and individuals from the community that explore the history of Tucson and southern Arizona. Some of the Web exhibits detail the experiences of immigrant and Native American cultures in the area while other Web exhibits deal more generally with the history of the area. The second project involves a Federal grant that will make certain parts of library's Special Collections more accessible to the community by building new facilities that are open longer hours, digitizing some of the materials and adding computer workstations for users.     

Concerns about crime and local television news

This project reports on a two‐part investigation into students' perceptions of behaviors constituting active participation in a college course. Seven factors emerged: Working Hard, Outside Contact, (Refraining from) Negative Behavior, Group Citizenship, Positivity, Attendance, and Class Discussion. Interestingly, students rated the Group Citizenship factor as the most representative of participation. High and low communication apprehensives differed on their ratings of the centrality of some of these factors to participation. The results of this study suggest that students have an expansive notion of what it means to participate in their classes, better characterized as “course involvement,” than is captured by conventional definitions of “class participation.”