Student users get their say: Library space redesign with students in mind - Mary Strife, West Virginia University
Surveys, focus groups and interviews of students were used to help redesign the library space. Dr. Cindy Beacham helped with Mary with the design process. Also they were able to enlist faculty to help. One faculty brought her entire class for a focus group.
During focus groups they used color coded index cards as well with focus group questions such as “what would you suggest to improve” and then gave cards back to students and asked them to work together to categorize the cards. Then the facilitators used the categories as the focus for discussions. Dr. Beacham recommended also bringing some “jumpstart” questions in case they are needed. Another question they used to solicit information and discussion from students was: “what characteristics would you like to see in a facility that would become the heart of the campus?” To capture student input they recorded and video recorded the students in order to create a report on their findings.
Students asked for many things. They were actually able to add: study rooms, color, individual spaces, more comfortable seating, more desktop and laptop computers, wireless connection extended outside of the building, and so forth. Students wanted design/display space to share their work with the entire campus. They shrank down their journal and reference shelving, improved furnishings, and now that have one service desk.
Stanford Engineering Library —Envisioning an Evolving Facility - Sarah Lester, Stanford University
In 2005, Stanford School of Engineering started fundraising for new student-focused, technologically-advanced showcase center. In addition, they will be focusing on innovation through cross-disciplinary collaboration. In parallel, the University Librarian began a visioning process for the library. The vision for the future library included: digital focus, less space with more staff, innovation and more technology. The library is moving into the Huang Engineering Center which in addition the library will include a café, lab spaces for students, and breakout rooms with flexible furnishings. They'll be moving into this new space later this summer.
Within the library, they have designated zones, quiet area & stacks, group study & brainstorming islands, and front entrance zone with offices and circulation. The library is moving from 16,000 sq ft to 6000 and they will maintain a collection of 20,000 print books and supplemented with 40K+ ebooks. They have no bound print serials and only have 100 print browsing. The overall plan includes: ejournals, ebooks, and moving fully to electronic theses and dissertations. Many of their print serials were sent to off-site storage which has 24 hr paging service. The Stanford Physics Library is closing, so librarian supporting Physics will move into this new engineering library space.
A few cool things: RFID tags for all books, self-checkout system, librarians no longer have offices, they will be in cubicles in the open area of the library, all furniture movable, they are lowering stacks to optimize lighting. They retained a special collection of the history of science and technology.
New Library technology: digital bulletin board, ereader checkouts (Kindle/Sony are very popular with students and they may buy and add content to them, but deleted upon return), touch screen info kiosk, iPhone for reference questions, iPad for content experimentation.
They are rolling out a new service & outreach model, being more embedded and going where the students are. Offering more classes and workshops. All librarians have laptops so ability to go “mobile” and to the users. They are now helping faculty and students on management of unique collections and digital content and data management. See their web site for more details.
Spaces, Relocation and Subject Synergies When a Subject Libraries Change - Jill Powell, Cornell University
The library that is the fastest growing on campus is the Annex Library. At Cornell, libraries are in transition due to financial issues, library budget reductions, and serials inflation among other factors. The strategic plan focused on collections and selectors.
The Physical Sciences librarian was cutting journals that got more than 300 uses per year, so was fine with consolidation with another campus library. They could then have funds to provide journals faculty/students need. Arts, Architecture and Visual library was identified as important to maintain as a browse-able collection. Management, Entomology, Engineering, Ornithology, Hotel, Physical Sciences, and Industrial & Labor Relations libraries are merging with others.
The vision for the engineering library was to keep services in place, but to move books and journals and staff. Moves will not happen until next summer, although the Physical Sciences Library has already relocated staff and collections. The Engineering Library has 500 reserve books and 350,000 gate count per year. More ways of generating revenue or saving money are in place. They sold their duplicates to a sister university in China for instance. Also, Cornell implemented Amazon print on demand. A new revenue model for ArXiv was devised to help support this global site.
In the engineering library, the librarians remain for the most part, but there will be some layoffs. Also, the study hall and computer lab will remain open and they are moving many books to Annex. For collections, like Stanford, there’s a shift to online content. They implemented MyiLibrary for purchase-on-demand which seems fairly seamless for users to view an ebook they are interested in.
Should libraries that are consolidating remove and/or also consolidate their web sites? At Cornell they haven’t removed the libraries from their web site it seems.
For journals that come with online equivalents, they will display for 6 months and then discard them. Make, Oil & Gas Journal are a few that Cornell has figured out how to “script” into these for their users online (some are one user at a time).
The good news is that cost-savings due to library consolidation will allow librarians (and users) to buy research materials needed as budgets shift and transitions take place. With the relocation of books there are many possibilities for creating new spaces for group study and collaboration areas.
It was recognized at the highest level that the librarians provide a lot of value and more instruction opportunities have out of this process.
ELD Poster Sessions:The Physical Sciences librarian was cutting journals that got more than 300 uses per year, so was fine with consolidation with another campus library. They could then have funds to provide journals faculty/students need. Arts, Architecture and Visual library was identified as important to maintain as a browse-able collection. Management, Entomology, Engineering, Ornithology, Hotel, Physical Sciences, and Industrial & Labor Relations libraries are merging with others.
The vision for the engineering library was to keep services in place, but to move books and journals and staff. Moves will not happen until next summer, although the Physical Sciences Library has already relocated staff and collections. The Engineering Library has 500 reserve books and 350,000 gate count per year. More ways of generating revenue or saving money are in place. They sold their duplicates to a sister university in China for instance. Also, Cornell implemented Amazon print on demand. A new revenue model for ArXiv was devised to help support this global site.
In the engineering library, the librarians remain for the most part, but there will be some layoffs. Also, the study hall and computer lab will remain open and they are moving many books to Annex. For collections, like Stanford, there’s a shift to online content. They implemented MyiLibrary for purchase-on-demand which seems fairly seamless for users to view an ebook they are interested in.
Should libraries that are consolidating remove and/or also consolidate their web sites? At Cornell they haven’t removed the libraries from their web site it seems.
For journals that come with online equivalents, they will display for 6 months and then discard them. Make, Oil & Gas Journal are a few that Cornell has figured out how to “script” into these for their users online (some are one user at a time).
The good news is that cost-savings due to library consolidation will allow librarians (and users) to buy research materials needed as budgets shift and transitions take place. With the relocation of books there are many possibilities for creating new spaces for group study and collaboration areas.
It was recognized at the highest level that the librarians provide a lot of value and more instruction opportunities have out of this process.
Seeking and Finding the Aerospace Literature from 1996-2010: And, the Winner Is . . . Google - Larry Thompson
Thompson looked at STAR items (mostly tech reports and memoranda) and found google to be the most useful in sleuthing out the full text.
The Engineering Index: The Past and the Present - Nestor OsorioA timeline was presented, the history of this index.
AVS: Science and Technology Virtual Museum – Susan Burkett, Cameron Patterson, and Nicholas A. Kraft A student project involving development of a web site for a museum.
An Analysis of ASEE-ELD Conference Proceedings: 2000-2009 - David Hubbard
New Knovel Interface - Sasha Gurke
