In order to manage the increasing cost of
our journal collection, the Library, together with help from
faculty in all departments, has been working to create a serials
management system. We have traditionally dedicated a
certain proportion of our budget for the purchase of books,
journals, media and electronic resources. In order for the
Library to continue to be able to purchase resources in all of
these categories, we need to work with each department to review
our journal collection and to determine which journals, and in
what format, our students should be familiar with when they
graduate.
We recently received a five-year
historical pricing analysis for our journal collection. It
was awe-inspiring to see that over the last five years, prices
have increased an average of 8.3 percent each year for a
majority of the titles to which we subscribe. (And that
really does mean that some titles have therefore increased in
price by 40 percent or more over that time period.)
In addition to the budgetary reason for
monitoring our journal collection, this is also a good
opportunity to ensure that it continues to reflect and support
our curricular needs. Many of you may have already been
contacted by your assigned subject bibliographers
to begin this process, and others will be hearing from us as we
continue to work upon this project.
User
Satisfaction Focus Groups:
The Library is initiating outreach efforts
to assess user satisfaction with Library services this spring.
The first initiative will be a series of focus groups to be held
the week of March 5. Professor Lee Bowker’s students
in Soc 584, Qualitative Research Methods, will run four focus
group sessions lasting an hour each with paid student
participants. These are expected to provide really valuable
information on student views and needs. Faculty, staff and
additional student comments will be collected later in the
semester, probably using an online survey. If you have any
questions, please contact Sharmon Kenyon or Mary Kay.
A new wave of efforts to develop successful
models for electronic books has led the CSU to put together a
group of six “lead libraries” to evaluate vendor
offerings and test alternative models in a one-year pilot project
during 2001. HSU Library is one of the pilot group. Project
purposes include developing an understanding of the potential
uses of eBooks in CSU Libraries; testing the viability of eBooks
as a medium for increasing access; developing a model for
cooperative collection development of electronic monographs for
the CSU. Two vendors have been chosen for the project thus
far: NetLibrary of Boulder, Colorado, and ABC-CLIO, an
established publisher of print reference resources.
NetLibrary offers two models for testing:
outright purchase of titles, and also a one-year lease model.
The 1,400 selected titles can be accessed through a database link
on the Library Databases menu, and also through records for the
individual titles loaded into Catalyst, our online catalog.
Titles were selected in the social sciences, sciences, education
and psychology with single-user access. Books in
business/economics, computer science/information technology, and
general reference works were leased for a single year with three
simultaneous users.
ABC-CLIO is in the process of bringing up
electronic reference titles monthly, and will be providing 160
reference titles by the end of the year. These will be
available for three years without further payment, and will be
accessible as a database or as individual titles in Catalyst, as
well.
The CSU system is fully funding this
project, with a probable extension for 2002. You can help
by providing feedback on your encounters with this new material.
You can send comments to Mary Kay at mhk1@axe.humboldt.edu, or
watch for the online evaluation form that you’ll be
encountering as you use the titles.
There
is a new http://library.humboldt.edu/
You may have noticed that the Library web
site has a new home page. This is not just a new look, but
a way to make the rapidly growing Library web site a bit easier
and faster to use. The new home page allows us to put more
direct links to content right on top. In addition to almost
doubling the number of links into the Library, we were able to
provide some extra information about where each link is leading.
The search box, to quickly find a page, is right up front, for
quick access. While we’ve added features and
upgraded our graphics and presentation, the new page is smaller
and fifty percent quicker to load, a particularly important
factor on slower, at home connection to the Internet.
The changes are the result of a lot of
study, discussion and effort from the Library’s Web Advisory
Committee. The group looked at many other library sites and
university sites, looked at new technologies, considered our
goals and reviewed the comments, questions and suggestions from
our users. We hope you can see the results of our
commitment to improving our electronic services, by listening to
you, our users, and making technology work for you. Let us
know what you think and watch us online as we continue to
improve.
You may have noticed a few changes in
Catalyst, when you returned for the spring semester. Over
the break, the Library installed a new version of the Endeavor
Voyager software that runs Catalyst. The displays are
providing more information about where the results of your search
are located. The options for formatting the screen have
improved, resulting in an easier to read display and better
online help messages. Options for refining your search
without re-entering it are now available, as are options to sort
your search results as you are viewing them. We have added
“Fast Search” options to the first page of catalyst, to
save time and typing. If you are an advanced user who has
had to remember to capitalize all of your boolean operators, you
may quit typing AND, OR and save a little time, Catalyst no
longer requires this capitalization. As with any software
update, some of the changes in the software are behind the
scenes, giving the system enhanced support for national
information standards. These standards allow us to expand
the catalog’s contents and participate in some innovative
resource sharing projects. Let us know what you think
about the new Catalyst and help us improve upon it.
The
Library's Public Workstations are getting a new look
The public computers in the Library are
getting a new look and a new functionality this spring. Microsoft
Internet Explorer Version 5.5 will be replacing Netscape as the
public interface of the Library's public computers. After
years of supporting the Netscape Web browser for the Library's
public stations, we have decided to make the switch to
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Version 5.5. There are a
number of reasons for this change. The version of Netscape
that we are supporting is now obsolete, and has been causing more
problems over time. Internet Explorer provides better support for
the more advanced technology that we are now using on the
Library's home page. The same technologies are used in more
of the databases and information services that the Library
subscribes to. The newest release of Netscape, version 6.0, is
technically advanced in many ways, but is incompatible with a
number of the services that the Library subscribes to. We
will continue to watch the development of the new Netscape, but
cannot support it at this time. With the change to Internet
Explorer we will be able to provide better access to services,
supporting more advanced programming that many of our information
providers are using. We will be retaining an option
to use Netscape as a web browser on the start menu of the public
workstations.
The reach of the Humboldt State University
Library card is going to extend in the next few months. The
Library is participating in a project that will allow you to
search all of the California State University libraries and
borrow from them, using your HSU Library card.
The Pharos system will link all 22 CSU
Libraries, beginning with a smaller test group, which includes
Humboldt State. The diversity of collections in available in the
CSU Libraries may make a surprising difference in the books you
have available for your teaching, research and recreational
needs. The technology involved is state of the art
inter-networking, allowing multiple database searches from a
single interface and real time status information on books and
the people who borrow them. You will be able to find out
that Chico State has the book you need, find out if it is checked
out or on the shelf and request it to be delivered, all in one
session.
Making the networking technology work to
make connections between many different computer systems has been
a major effort. Your Library and the other libraries we
will be working with have been preparing for this for years.
We have very powerful tools to design an interface that is both
convenient and effective for your information needs. To do that
we need to hear from you, the good, the bad and the what-if.
Please, watch for our announcements, try it out, and let us know
what you think.
Library
joins new Cascade Pacific Library Network
Last fall, the Humboldt State University
Library signed on as one of the charter members of the Cascade
Pacific Library Network (CPLN). The CPLN is a new State-supported
non-profit library consortium organized under the aegis of the
Library of California Act. The 39 current members include
academic, public, school, and special libraries from throughout
the 13 northernmost counties in the state. Quoting from the CPLN
web site at http://cascadepacific.org/index.html, "the
purpose of Cascade Pacific Library Network is to promote
cooperation and coordination of library collections and services
to meet the educational, informational, research and other
library needs of all residents of northern California."
Within the next few years, the CPLN is expected to supplant the
North State Cooperative Library System (NSCLS), another
State-supported library network. For more than a decade, the
NSCLS has been serving a similar mission, facilitating
resource-sharing between libraries within the same geographic
region, but with a more limited clientele of public and academic
libraries.
For further information, consult the CPLN
web site or contact Wayne Perryman, chair of the HSU Library
Access Services Department and vice-chair of the CPLN Board of
Directors.
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