Marriage of Three Partners:
Collections, Reference and Technology
in an Emerging Electronic Household
Selection and Delivery of Electronic Resources:
Issues and Solutions in Collaborative Efforts
Assunta Pisani
Assistant Director for Collections & Services
Stanford University
Moderator: Jim Jacobs
Data Services Librarian
UC San Diego
THEMATIC
INTEREST in this preconference bridged how the increasingly electronic environment
of libraries requires more communication between library units and dependency
on flexible staff and organizational structures to allow for new services
utilizing electronic access.Three
speakers addressed specific concerns from collections, reference and systems
perspectives. Not surprisingly, none of them could isolate their work without
mentioning how much collaboration and joint ventures are necessary to provide
sufficient access.Pisani
led off with historical background on the evolution of collection development
and focused her comments on the research enterprise of large and significant
collections in today's teaching and research environment. Building on collection
strength, reinforcing democratic rights of faculty and students, serving
as purveyors for the future by practicing conservation and preservation
principles, and anticipating competition among universities is central to
how library resources develop. The need to monitor local programs and needs,
as well as the publishing activities by disciplines, and maintaining the
awareness of research trends is part of accurate information gathering for
a solid collections program. The challenge thus becomes how to devise strategies
to introduce new mediums to support teaching and research.At
Stanford, like other institutions, some organizational redesign and repositioning
was necessary, due to the blurring between public services and collection
development and technical support. What often is difficult to achieve is
how to best evaluate the services necessary to support the collections.
Under Pisani's leadership in the last year, a new organizational structure
evolved, combining services with collections and access. It was introduced
so that the Library could continue to encourage a "format blind" approach
to collections, and to support a move from mainframe systems hierarchy to
a client server system, and institutional support for subject specialists.One
of the primary outcomes was the establishment of a web advisory council
to examine access to electronic resources and to promote internal sponsorship,
consistent imagery, and the look and feel of the access page. This contributed
to the creation of the Digital Library Program, which blended Academic Technology
and the Information Services units. Some of the immediate benefits of this
new vision of a library are the experience of a new culture uniting collections
and services; a creation of hexagonal galleries with more outreach to establish
new and old communities of resources, and a way to build expertise among
staff. The issues staff now share are reviewing site licensing, and building
local expertise among the subject specialists who also deliver services
in many mediums. This presentation paved the way to how critical communication
and information sharing is established in the example of the Stanford research
library environment and was a theme that was reinforced by other speakers.
Collections and Technology:
It All Comes Together at the Reference Desk
Kathleen Dunn
AUL for Reference, Instruction and Collection Services
Cal Poly Pomona
SECOND
SPEAKER, Dunn, enthusiastically supported the notion that cooperation was
the only way that reference service was going to evolve in academic libraries.
She sees a partnership involving reference, collections, systems and even
technical service catalogers as participating in the delivery of public
services. Her definition of reference included every kind of instruction,
and she calls for a service plan for electronic resources that impacts everything.
This range includes selection of resources, technical support--and she indicated
the need for backups when technology fails--intervention for product stability,
updating web-based access and information--especially from the 856 fields
in bibliographic records--and urging new methods to cope with the complexity
of information choices.One
of the emerging roles of librarians is to assist users with the new gateways
to access. The Web leads to new paradoxes and offers terrific challenges.
Users need help to distinguish and assess resources. Librarians have been
successful in selling self-service; however, they are beginning to realize
that in the electronic environment, especially with the Internet, users
may not be selecting appropriate resources. Thus, Dunn advocates for librarian
self-promotion as the best way to convince users that an information professional--the
librarian--is needed to assist in quality 'Net searches.Dunn
suggests ways to facilitate collaboration in libraries to be assured that
users are being directed appropriately: to gain an awareness of interdependence
and to foster new interrelationships; to build stronger communication between
units; to adapt the organizational structure to formalize cross-training
among the staff, and to understand how decisions are made regarding selection,
access, and use.The
CSUs are moving toward establishing more core collections for electronic
resources and ways to practice more cooperative collection development.
This is not easy, but the individual libraries need to have strong in-house
library systems staffs to support changing services. This is a time of unsettling
change, but they are very exciting times; electronic resources will be the
center stage of reference transactions.Through Technology
Roberta Corbin
Head of Library Systems
UC San Diego
THIRD
SPEAKER, Corbin, outlined a brief, historical chronology of delivery mechanisms
in different environments, with the changes made most paramount due to network
developments. She said that systems considerations had to be made at the
earliest stages of selection of collection resources, along with an analysis
of content, format, equipment needs, access methods, purchase or lease options,
cost structures, multiple format coverage, etc.Reference
service models composed of directional, informational, consultative, and
instructional strategies not surprisingly require technology assistance
and an understanding of the software interfaces and appropriate equipment
necessary. The move from personal service or access to the delivery of core
services across a network is one of the major changes in access.Systems
issues require examination of the method of delivery--by CD-ROM, the WWW,
etc.--and the type of workstation, plus added services for connectivity,
to printing, e-mail, downloading, which all pose greater challenges. Network
infra- structure determines the capacity to add new enhancements for sound
and other elements. Computer security--including the concerns about restricted
access, physical security, software security--determine how libraries proceed
with user codes and passwords, IP addresses, authentication. Limiting access
leads to potential methods of censorship and having to study whether one
wants different configurations to allow for e-mail and other transactions
that are not necessarily collections oriented. However, remote access is
critical and necessitates serious study. The organizational structure of
centralized, decentralized or a mixed environment, suggests how significant
computing and technical support is to promoting the use of collections and
reference services.The
UCSD Support model is an example of a cross-function team approach for planning,
development and management. It has centralized infrastructure support, a
semicentralized server support, and a decentralized workstation and peripheral
support, along with a decentralized application support model. Flexibility,
adaptability and cooperation are essential components to make the triad
of collections, services and systems function harmoniously.So
what did we all learn from this preconference? The break-out groups grappled
with some of these issues and concluded that solidarity between librarians
and information producers/vendors would be helpful; there is a need to increase
the momentum for archiving by suppliers; an increase in bibliographic access
for electronic resources is a goal of nearly all libraries; and forums such
as this are very useful to share ideas and information.In
conclusion, information competencies will improve if users have reliable
access to resources, and that library instruction as we know it takes on
different dimensions to help users make better decisions about the information
they retrieve and the quality of that information. The marriage will continue
to have odd partners, because change continues to lie ahead.
Julia Gelfand
UC Irvine
Annual
Conference Highlights