MAKE PLANS NOW TO ATTEND THE LIBRARY BOOKSALE
We will be hosting our annual fall booksale in the Library's Nordstrom
Lobby from 7:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26. On that day,
we will have thousands of books and other items available for purchase at bargain
prices. The sale will include materials in virtually all subject areas, but
come early for the best selection. All proceeds from the sale directly benefit
the Library.
DIGITAL LITERACY CLOSET UPDATE
The Digital Literacy Closet (DLC) will be open by appointment only during the Fall 2005 term. Recognizing that flatbed scanners are now available in the Academic Computing Labs, the DLC will be focusing on those services that are still unique to the DLC.
Due to budgetary constraints, printing will no longer be available from the DLC. To schedule a time to work in the DLC, send an email message to dlc@lib-mail.humboldt.edu. Appointments are only available Monday through Thursday, from 9 am to 4 pm and Fridays 10 am to 3 pm.
In the previous newsletter (Spring 2005), we introduced our Humboldt eScholar Pilot Project. The Humboldt eScholar institutional repository is now live and open for submissions. Any member of the HSU faculty may sponsor a collection of digital scholarship by HSU faculty or students.
The Humboldt eScholar Steering Committee has begun working with representatives of the Graduate Council and several academic departments to identify material to be included. Among the first works to be deposited in Humboldt eScholar are selected Masters Theses. As discussions continue with a variety of faculty, we expect to see a diverse collection of Humboldt State University digital scholarship developing on Humboldt eScholar.
Humboldt eScholar is open for any collection of digital scholarship sponsored
or produced by a member of the HSU faculty. Faculty members are encouraged to
submit their publications to the repository, if their publishers have granted
rights for open-access institutional archiving. Allowing authors to make their
works available to the world on open-access institutional archives
is becoming more accepted by academic publishers, but authors must often ask
for these rights. The Faculty Senate recently passed a resolution encouraging
all faculty members to retain these rights to their work. The eScholar Steering
Committee encourages all faculty members to make their works available on Humboldt
eScholar.
Humboldt eScholar is operating as a pilot project of the Library to determine the levels of support necessary to maintain an institutional repository long-term. During the pilot phase Humboldt eScholar will be accepting works in all digital formats, but the storage space available for large format digital works, such as multimedia and mapping data, will be limited during the pilot. During the pilot, the number of collections and the total size of each collection will be limited.
Humboldt eScholar is using DSpace software, an open-source system created by a collaborative effort of MIT and Hewlett Packard. The system continues to be developed by an international community of universities. In addition to being specifically designed for long-term archiving, the DSpace software makes the data about items in the archive available to scholars world-wide, through the Open Archives Initiative and creates a stable, long-term URL for every item. It is designed to allow direct input of items by users, through a simple form-based interface.
The long-term success of the project will require a collaborative effort among the faculty, the Library, Information Technology Services, and the administration. The pilot will run at least through April 2006, to be followed by an evaluation and recommendation on the future of the project.
If you are interested in browsing the developing collection of Humboldt eScholar,
it is available for browsing at http://dscholar.humboldt.edu:8080/dspace/index.jsp
If you are interested in submitting to Humboldt eScholar, contact the Steering
Committee at eScholar@humboldt.edu
There is some good news to report on our budget. The Provost has found additional money to help support the library materials budget, so we are now able to expend $96,000 on monographic materials this year, quite an improvement over last year. This will have to cover books, videos, cds, reference books, all one-time purchases. While this is less than 1/3 of our past monograph budget, it is a very welcome gesture in these financially difficult times at HSU, and one that will help the academic programs do their job. At the same time, though, we will still need to cut $30,000 from print serial subscriptions in order to cover the annual inflation increase to subscriptions. Your bibliographer will be in touch concerning any titles suggested for cutting from the collections.
At the end of last year, we had one retirement and one resignation. Sally Macomber, a long-time Circulation staff member, retired and Bill Folden, ONCORES supervisor, resigned to move to another location. Barbara Albanese, ID Supervisor, has had her time base augmented and will be assuming some of the billing responsibilities formerly done by Sally Macomber. Keith Reagan, who has been our print reserve/stacks supervisor, is temporarily filling in as ONCORES supervisor until we search for a replacement. One of our students, Davia Wender, is assisting us in the print reserve operation temporarily.
Most Americans know that July 4th is our nation's birthday. Far fewer Americans know that September 17th is the birthday of our government, the date in 1787 on which delegates to the Philadelphia Convention completed and signed the U.S. Constitution.
The ideas on which America was founded--commitments to the rule
of law, limited government and the ideals of liberty, equality and justice--are
embodied in the Constitution, the oldest written constitution of any nation
on Earth. Constitution Day is intended to celebrate not only the birthday of
our government, but the ideas that make us Americans.
A new law mandates that, starting this year, schools that receive federal funds
from the U.S. Department of Education "implement an educational program
pertaining to the United States Constitution ...." This Congressional initiative
is summarized in the Federal
Register.
HSU Library has gathered materials in a display to observe this day, and can
be seen on the third floor of the Library, or online at http://library.humboldt.edu/govdoc/Displays-Current/ConstitutionDay/ConstitutionDay2005.htm
As
we face another year with a minimal book/video budget, gifts from our friends
are doubly welcome and will make possible the purchase of the most essential
materials. Our annual appeal letter will be mailed in October, and we thank
you in advance for your generous response.
HSU LIBRARY WEB PAGE REFRESHED
You will find a new look to the Library web page. Starting with a user survey last Spring, a Library committee worked hard over the summer to redesign the web page to reduce redundancy, reorder links to place the most heavily used links on the top page, and provide a new background design. A follow-up user survey helped the committee refine the final web page. Some new additions to the top page include a search form for directly searching the Library Catalog; a How Do I Find...? section that links to information on how to find different types of materials, e.g., speeches and opposing viewpoints; and a new perpetual calendar of library hours.
INTERLIBRARY
LOAN SYSTEM ENHANCED
At the beginning of the summer a new interlibrary loan system was installed which has the following user enhancements.
Users can view current, completed and cancelled requests, including complete
bibliographic information and tracking data.
The first time you logon
to the new system you will be prompted to create a user profile. Upon subsequent
logons you can do any of the above tasks without having to enter personal
information. For further information on ILL services see Interlibrary
Loan Frequently Asked Questions.
To cover unexpected cost increases that occurred last year, the Library has been forced to drop seven databases: Cochrane Library, CollegeSource Online, Congressional Universe, Gale Ready Reference Shelf, PAIS, Ulrich's, and Zoological Record. It was also necessary to modify undergraduate access to SCISEARCH and SOCIAL SCISEARCH databases, so that now they need to come to the Reference Desk to perform these searches, due to the high costs of usage. Grad students and faculty may still access the citation databases directly using their barcode number.
At the
same time, due to changes in some of our subscriptions, several new databases
have been added. New to the campus are three files that have been added to
current subscriptions by the vendors: Sustainability Science Abstracts,
Human Population & Natural Resource Management, and ClasePeriodica.
The first two come as part of our subscription to the Environmental Science
and Pollution Management database cluster. ClasePeriodica is a
new combination database hosted on the FirstSearch system, indexing Latin
American periodicals. Clase indexes humanities and social sciences titles,
while Periodica indexes science journals. You may search this database using
English or Spanish index terms. Program Review funding has provided a subscription
to Poiesis, a fulltext search of philosophy journals. And finally,
the CSU system has expanded access back to 1971 for the ABI Inform
files, as well as adding pdf versions of the content.
To help mitigate the problems created for students by the campus not being
able to purchase new books for the second year, the Library has been able
to fund access for this year at least to the ebrary Academic Complete database.
Once you download their proprietary reader, ebrary offers fulltext
searchable access to about 24,000 current scholarly monographs 
including
some titles from 2004 and 2005. In addition to the titles being searchable
within the database, records for the titles are being loaded into the Library
Catalog for easier access. The collection is growing monthly, and any number
of authorized users may access a title at the same time. The database has
numerous advanced features that you might want to try out, including highlighting
and a personal bookshelf feature, and printing of up to 10 pages at a time
is enabled. Subject areas of titles include Business & Economics; Computers,
Engineering & Applied Sciences; Humanities; Science, Medicine and Allied
Health; and Social & Behavioral Sciences. Check it out at http://library.humboldt.edu/infoservices/restricted/ebrary.cgi.
SHUSTER
AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION
Look for a major exhibit in the Library in February to celebrate the opening of this collection of 2,300 aerial photographs taken in the 1940s-1950s of all areas of Humboldt County. Merle Shuster, the photographer, donated his collection of negatives to the Humboldt Room in 2001. Since then we have planned for and raised funds to digitize the collection. The scanning has been completed and we have had the opportunity to show off some of these images as a demonstration for several events. The accompanying database of information about the individual photographs is being completed this semester and the final product will be available on the Library's web page as well as on the Online Archive of California by the end of fall semester. Here are a few sample images from the collection:
PRESIDENT
OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION VISITS HSU
This year the president of the American Library Association is Michael Gorman, Dean of the Library, at Fresno. He attended the CSU Council of Library Directors meeting held on our campus September 9-10 and also gave a speech on the future of libraries at a luncheon sponsored by the Humboldt Area Resource Consortium and the North State Cooperative Library System.
September 2005