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Library News for the Faculty |
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Winter 2003
In This Issue
What's New with the California Digital LibraryThe California Digital Library (CDL), the virtual tenth library of the UC system, is nearing the completion of major transitions for its Melvyl Catalog and hosted databases. Database Transitions Melvyl Catalog UCLA Library Joins CDL eScholarship RepositoryThe UCLA Library has joined the California Digital Library's eScholarship Repository (<http://repositories.cdlib.org>), which offers faculty a central location for depositing any research or scholarly output (including working papers and pre-publication scholarship) deemed appropriate by their UC research unit, center, or department. The Library joins more than 60 UC research units that are utilizing this alternative publishing model to more broadly disseminate research and scholarship. Initial contents posted by the Library include the Drew Clinical Research Paper Archive, which documents original projects conducted by Drew/UCLA medical students; Information Competence at UCLA, the report of a project to assess information competence skills of UCLA undergraduate students; and Nutrition Bytes, which contains the best papers submitted by all first-year medical students on topics pertaining to diet and nutrition. ORION2 Replacement UpdateFour library technology firms have submitted proposals for the replacement of the software that operates ORION2, the UCLA Library's online information system. Working with a functional sponsors group appointed by Jim Davis, associate vice chancellor for information technology, library staff members are currently structuring the evaluation process, which will include opportunities for faculty, students, and staff to offer input. The current goal is to identify the winning system in the spring, with the implementation process beginning during the summer and the new system coming online during Summer 2004. Further information is available on the Web at <http://www.library.ucla.edu/otng/index.html>, and future issues of Library News for the Faculty will contain progress reports on the process. Updates may also be issued more frequently by email, if developments warrant, by the Library and by Jim Davis on behalf of the ORION2 Oversight Committee. UCLA Library Participates in National Service Quality SurveyDuring Spring Quarter 2003 the UCLA Library will be one of four UC libraries participating in LibQUAL+, a national project to measure service quality in libraries. This project will enable the Library to identify areas in which users feel that services need improvement to better meet their research and instructional objectives. A random sample of UCLA faculty, students, and staff will receive an email message during the Spring Quarter 2003 asking them to complete the 25-question, Web-based LibQUAL+ survey. The results will then be analyzed and a report issued that identifies areas for improvement. In addition to UCLA, UC Davis, Irvine, and Santa Cruz are participating, along with more than 300 academic and public libraries across the country. This will enable the libraries to compare their service qualities in comparable categories, then develop benchmarks and identify best practices. Now in its third year, LibQUAL+ is co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and Texas A&M University and funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education. Visit the Web site at <http://www.libqual.org> for more information. Survey of Journal Usage PatternsAs part of a UC-wide, grant-funded research project, a random sample of UCLA faculty and staff will be asked in early 2003 to participate in a survey about their use of print and electronic journals. The survey is one element of the Collection Management Initiative (CMI), which is studying how scholars use and libraries can integrate and preserve scholarly journals that are published in both print and digital formats. The 12-month research phase of the project, which began October 1, 2001, involved removing from libraries selected print journals for which electronic access is provided and placing the print volumes in storage. The final phase of the project will be the evaluation of strategies, policies, and programs for archiving and managing both collections. The initiative is being coordinated by the California Digital Library and funded by a $670,000, two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Its advisory structure is headed by a steering committee chaired by Brian Schottlaender, university librarian at UC San Diego, with members including faculty and other university librarians. Information Literacy Instruction in ActionAre your students able to locate information efficiently, evaluate it. and use it effectively? Although librarians have long presented in-class sessions on library resources, the Library recently launched the Information Literacy Initiative to work with faculty more intensively to expand information literacy efforts and more closely integrate them with classroom instruction and assignments. As one example from the fall quarter, College Librarian Esther Grassian took on a more visible, ongoing role in support of the GE cluster course GE 80, "Frontiers in Human Aging: Biomedical, Social, and Policy Perspectives." Grassian attended every class meeting, participated in the discussion board, and followed up on sources and topics that arose in the class, thus enhancing the course content. As the course's assigned librarian, Grassian's consistent presence had a noticeable impact. When a freshman student in GE 80 was offered a library orientation by a UCLA librarian, he replied, "Not necessary; I have my own cluster librarian to help me." That's only the start of how the Library's information literacy efforts can enhance instruction. Working with faculty, librarians have developed quarter-long information literacy courses in disciplines including theater, film, and television; English composition; European and Eurasian studies; and epidemiology. Created and taught under the auspices of each department, these courses carry from one to six credits and vary in focus according to each instructor's needs. But they all provide students with the experiences and skills necessary to locate, evaluate, and use information efficiently and effectively. And there are many other ways the Library's information literacy efforts can help you and your students. Visit the Web page at <http://www.library.ucla.edu/infolit> for more details about these courses and other information literacy efforts. Or to find out how information literacy can enhance your courses, contact Eleanor Mitchell, director of the Information Literacy Initiative and head of the College Library, by phone at extension 63593 or by email at <emitchel@library.ucla.edu>. Alert Your Students: Campbell Book Collection Competition DeadlinesAll undergraduate and graduate students are invited to enter the 2003 Robert B. and Blanche Campbell Student Book Collection Competition, with a total of $2250 in prizes available. First and second prizes are awarded in the categories of undergraduate and graduate collections; prizes are also awarded for children's book collection and honorable mention. The deadline for entries is Wednesday, April 2. Entry forms are available at the reference desks in the Arts, Biomedical, College, Research, and SEL/Engineering and Mathematical Science libraries and can also be printed from the World Wide Web at <http://www.library.ucla.edu/committees/campbell/index.htm>. The awards ceremony will take place on Wednesday, April 16. It will begin at 3 p.m. in the Research Library Department of Special Collections (room A1713). Further information is available on the Campbell Web site at <http://www.library.ucla.edu/committees/campbell/index.htm>. Update Your Address for Email NoticesNotices regarding recalls, items on hold, and overdue items are now sent by email to all users whose accounts contain an email address. The notices can be identified by the sender (UCLA Library) and the subject (recall, requesthold, overdue). If you are not receiving these notices by email or if they are being sent to the wrong email address, contact the Library to update your account. You can do this in person at the circulation desk in any campus library or by sending an email at <yrl-circ@library.ucla.edu> with your preferred email address. If an email notice is returned to the library with an undeliverable address, a print notice will automatically be generated and sent. Users without email addresses will continue to receive print notices. Also, inventory lists of items checked out for semi-annual loan periods as well all item replacement bills will continue to be sent in print form to all library cardholders. UCLA Library Staff NewsInterim University Librarian Retires. Alison Bunting, who served as interim university librarian from July 1 to December 31, has retired. Bunting became director of the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library and assistant dean for library service in the UCLA School of Medicine in 1984 and associate university librarian for sciences in 1991. New Interim Librarian Named. Janice Koyama, associate university librarian for public services since 1991, has been named as interim university librarian, following the retirement of Alison Bunting. She came to UCLA from UC Berkeley, where she served as head librarian of the Moffitt Undergraduate Library; campus Management Fellow with the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Affairs; acting assistant provost in the College of Letters and Science; and co-chair, with Nobel Prize-winner Professor Yuan T. Lee, of the Chancellor's Committee on Asian Americans Affairs, established by then-Chancellor Ira Heyman following the Asian American admissions controversy. She is active in state and national professional organizations and has chaired the board of the community-based organization Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics. How the Library Builds Its CollectionsOver the past year the Library added some 200,000 volumes to its collections, and its total volume count of more than 7.6 million places it among the top ten research libraries in North America. In pursuing the Library's goal to support UCLA's many areas of study and research, subject specialists utilize a variety of strategies. This first installment in a multi-part series focuses on the humanities and social sciences. One major method for acquiring English and Western-language materials is through what is called an approval plan. Subject specialists work with various vendors to develop profiles in UCLA's areas of teaching and research; these profiles take into consideration subjects as well as such criteria as format, content level, language, literary type, and place of publication. The vendors then automatically send all monographs from academic and trade publishers that fit each profile, and the profiles are revised annually to keep Library acquisitions current with newly added faculty, courses, and areas of emphasis. The Library has approval plans in place with a number of vendors in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa through which the vendors automatically send current materials based on a profile, and it participates in a range of Library of Congress Cooperative Acquisitions Programs and formal exchange programs, which also facilitate the acquisition of materials published overseas. In addition, both area studies and English-language bibliographers review a variety of sources including bookseller catalogs, scholarly publications, and Web sites to identify materials. Bibliographers with responsibilities for acquiring non-English-language materials make acquisition trips to the countries they cover to attend book fairs and meet with publishers, government agencies, exchange partners, and book sellers. The bibliographers acquire items on these trips and cultivate relationships with key vendors who inform them when materials of interest are published. When new UCLA faculty members are hired, librarians assess holdings in their areas of expertise and add publications as appropriate. Subject specialists also actively monitor academic journals in their subject areas, review publicity materials from publishers, and participate in academic/scholarly listservs in order to identify publications of interest. Being part of the UC system further enhances the Library's collecting strategies. UCLA subject specialists participate in UC-wide consortia with their colleagues at other libraries to determine which campuses will acquire certain items; through the California Digital Library's (CDL) Request service, items at any campus can quickly be delivered to another at no charge to the requester. And through multi-campus licenses negotiated by the CDL, the UCLA Library is able to provide access to many more online journals than it would be able to afford on its own. Journal collections represent a particularly challenging portion of the Library's holdings. Many journal subscription prices continue to rise at a rate the collections budget is unable to keep pace with, and in the current budgetary climate, this presents the Library with difficult choices. In addition, increasing numbers of journals are available in multiple formats, raising questions regarding maintaining print versus electronic versions. In an attempt to explore these complex issues and suggest appropriate policies, UCLA is participating in the Collection Management Initiative to study journal usage patterns. These are only a few of the many strategies the UCLA Library employs to build its world-class collections in the humanities and social sciences. Library subject specialists are available to meet with faculty to discuss their collection needs for research and teaching; names and email addresses are posted on the Web at <http://www.library.ucla.edu/support/cd_librarians.html>. Requests for acquisitions can also be submitted through online forms, as follows:
In the Spring 2003 issue of Library News for the Faculty, the second installment in this series will focus on the acquisition of materials in the sciences. Powell Music in the RotundaFriday, February 28, 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 15, 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, 4 p.m. For further information, visit the Powell Music Series Web site. |
