Information Technology Plan (Version 2.0)
May 10, 2007
Your feedback on any part of this document is eagerly awaited. You're invited to contact the committee members directly.
| The committee's first meeting, on March 23, led to identification of six initiatives for immediate action. A list of those projects, with updates on progress as well as a summary of the meeting itself, is available here. |
Skip the intro--where's the plan?
Introduction
This evolving Information Technology Plan briefly describes some of the steps Library Services might take in FY 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 in using technology to enlarge our libraries' role in the life of the South Texas College community. The unifying principle of these initiatives is one of increasing the relevance and convenience of all STC libraries for our users.
The objectives described here acknowledge the importance of our collections and services to faculty, college staff, local businesspeople, pre-college students, STC alumni and, indeed, the public at large―our user base includes them all―as we strive to further our role as a primary destination for information seekers of Starr and Hidalgo Counties.
The items comprising this varied set of projects address the goals of easing access to resources, streamlining workflows by enhancing efficiency, and building on our repute as a provider of exemplary library services.
Library Services uses digital technology to advance a number of aims. One is to connect students, faculty, staff and other users to the tremendous wealth of resources available in our libraries, in our proprietary databases, and beyond. The magic behind these connections—though ordinarily very complex from a technical standpoint—needs to appear deceptively simple to users.
Libraries everywhere are working to bridge the perceived gap between the free Web’s more intuitive applications, and their own comparatively cumbersome retrieval systems. Federated search engines use a single interface to simultaneously scour a book catalog, multiple article databases, and selected Internet sites, then use link resolvers on the back end to turn the searcher toward the full online article text or a local catalog record or an interlibrary loan request form in the span of a couple of clicks—amazing conveniences that yesterday’s scholars never dreamed of, and that tomorrow’s will quickly take for granted.
This plan is not to be construed as a list of new gadgets that Library Services should acquire. A good many of its items are cost-free and already familiar to aficionados of the social Web. It should be noted that some of the technologies in this plan have been available in our libraries for years. An urgent part of our mission, along with seeking out and installing appropriate technologies, must be the facilitation and promotion of the productive use of those technologies.
Giving life to this plan
The items described here include innovations that could be rolled out immediately just as described, as well as projects whose implementation should be expected to require a long series of mutations over several years . This initial draft does not presume to suggest timelines; that should be a collaborative project involving Library Services staff and other participants. Clear schedules and targets for each item retained in subsequent drafts will be necessary for the ongoing evaluation required to bring any of these ideas to fruition.
This plan is merely a draft. But it always will be. The technology landscape of the library world has undergone radical change in the past two years, and not for the first time. This document is in part a forecast, so like any forecast it is destined to at least partial failure. As such it will need to be retooled on a regular basis. Hence the proposed quarterly review by a committee of library staff, jointly with a semiannual review and reassessment involving the Vice President of Information Services & Planning and the Director of Libraries. Participation on a regular basis of the faculty Library Advisory Committee, and of willing student workers on the library‘s staff, would further enhance this plan's vitality.
Proposed timeline for the plan:
December 2006: Submission of draft Plan 1.0 to Vice President Cruz and Director Sesín
January 18, 2007: Discussion of draft Plan 1.0 by Vice President Cruz, Director Sesín, and Bruce Jensen
January 20, 2007: Publication of draft Plan 1.1 on Library Services site, with no links pointing here
February 7, 2007: Invitation to library staff to review and comment
By February 14, 2007: Appointment by Director Sesín of a small ad-hoc committee of library staff charged with initial review of the draft and quarterly evaluations of the Technology Plan
By March 2, 2007: Invitations extended to faculty Library Advisory Committee, Board members, students, and other possible outside participants to review the plan, offer guidance, and perhaps meet with staff committee
March 23, 2007: Committee meets for point-by-point discussion of the draft Plan 1.1, decides which elements should be discarded, kept, or revised; establishes benchmarks and timelines to be used in measuring progress
May 25, 2007: Publication of revised Plan 2.0 on the library’s website (linked out from the “Library Services Goals” page)
By June 30, 2007: Staff committee’s quarterly discussion of progress, revisions, and emergent new technologies relevant to the library’s mission
By September 30, 2007: Staff committee meets with Director and VP for reassessment of the plan and discussion of mid-course corrections
By December 31, 2007: Committee’s quarterly discussion, reevaluation of objectives
Mid-March 2008: Staff committee again meets with Director and VP for reassessment of the plan and its targets, evaluation of ROI, consideration of new unanticipated opportunities, and discussion of the effectiveness of the meeting and evaluation protocol used during the first year, to decide how it should be altered for 2008-2009
STC Library Information Technology Plan (Version 2.0)
1. Custom search engines as seen at a (Mozilla-unfriendly) sandbox page at
http://www.southtexascollege.edu/library/webref.htmThis recently introduced feature of Google facilitates the creation of a value-added product that we can make on our own, in collaboration with course instructors at STC, or with fellow librarians elsewhere. A good CSE is a tailored research tool that some students will consider handier than traditional pathfinders and webliographies. Producing, refining, and disseminating these with librarians at other institutions and sharing our work via recognized librarians' forums can bring recognition to our services and perhaps help our library forge useful relationships with peers whose varied collections and knowledge bases we can draw upon.
We can offer subject-specific CSEs to instructors and classes, making them available on our website in a readily findable repository and, with instructors’ cooperation, in the courseware portals of appropriate classes. Instructors can share in the refinement of the tool if they so choose.
Costs: Staff time, though the initial learning curve is almost nil: a librarian with solid subject expertise or a good webliography in hand can publish an effective CSE in under an hour.
Benefits: For students, a useful tool for their research and coursework. For Library Services, a chance to show leadership in carrying out innovative user-focused work.
2. Screencasts—animated Flash-based learning objects— demonstrating how to navigate our article databases, our collections of electronic books and maps, our website in general, and potentially other common student destinations such as Jagnet, WebCT and useful websites. A screencast already on the STC Library Services site is http://www.southtexascollege.edu/library/guides/tutorial/remoteaccess.htm, made by Jacques using Wink freeware.
These files should be brief, focusing on a single point or two. They should include audio but be equally instructive if viewed without it. They should be available as close as practicable to likely points of need. An easy-to-use program like Camtasia, which enables post-production editing and dubbing, will make it possible for librarians with minimal training to produce high-quality screencasts in less than an hour.
This instructional initiative is consistent with the yearly goals for the library published in the institutional planning document A Comprehensive Plan for South Texas College, FY 2004-2005 to FY 2008-2009 (Institutional Effectiveness & Program Review):
Goal 2c): Provide 24/7 information literacy instruction to STC students, including distance learning students, through Web-based instructional modules.
Costs: $199 (education discount) for Camtasia Studio 4.0, bundled with Snagit (below); see http://www.techsmith.com/purchase/education.asp; staff time for creation and publishing of screencasts.
Benefits: For users, easy round-the-clock access to comprehensible library instruction. For staff instructional librarians, a potent means of communication.
3. Screen capture management software will speed the creation of graphic guides and one-off email messages to help train and update users of our Unicorn/WorkFlows integrated library system (ILS), particularly staff members, by vividly illustrating how to navigate interfaces and carry out tasks. The Snagit application can be seen at http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.asp
Costs: $20 when purchased bundled with Camtasia (above).
Benefits: For staff, the ability to better exchange information and questions about the intricacies of the ILS. For library users, better service from a better-informed staff; possible improvements to printed library instruction guides.
4. Surveys This element is essential to the progress of the Technology Plan. Our best possible services can be incubated only in a culture of inquiry in which the staff is encouraged to practice evidence-based librarianship. We should foster the collection of and, crucially, the use of data, collected not just from user surveys but also from structured observation and the statistics available through our ILS as Jacques and others do already. A noteworthy recent example is Arnold's observation that the mailing of 5-day overdue notices is far more effective than one-day and 10-day notices, which were subsequently discontinued.
Carl Spratt has pledged to give us access to the enterprise version, with developer’s rights, of the online survey package used by the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness; he is currently reviewing a draft of one proposed online library survey.
Of the 18,500 students enrolled at STC, only one-fourth have active library borrowing privileges. This might be because most students genuinely do not need our books or calculators, or because they use our Web resources instead of our physical collections. Whatever the reason, we do not know what it is, and cannot without principled investigation. This element is consonant with the Institutional Effectiveness & Program Review (IEPR):
Goal 4: Promote the use of a culture of evidence in decision making
Goal 4b): Create a mechanism for formal student input into library decision making
Costs: Staff time; financial costs will vary depending on the formats of the investigations and on the incentives offered to participants.
Benefits: For library staff, a stronger understanding of our community. For users, more responsive and more relevant services.
5. Website traffic analysis To continually enhance the utility of our site, we need to know which pages are being visited the most and the least, which browsers our visitors use, and the flow of their clickstream; this kind of data will give us powerful clues about how to structure the site and which features should be added, removed, or more vigorously publicized.
Costs: Inquiries since September to webmaster Daniel Ramírez and to the IS&P Help Desk about the data gathered on STC site visitors have so far brought no information about existing measures. If none are in place, Library Services would need to either contract with a Web analytics vendor such as WebSideStory (pricing there begins at $34.95 per month, or $320 annually for a lesser plan with graduated charges scaled to site traffic volume; it seems possible that we would fall within the lowest pricing levels, corresponding to 50,000 page views per month, but we cannot be sure at this point) or use the cost-free Google Analytics service through our shared stc.library account.
Benefits: For staff, important feedback useful in understanding public perception of the website and making appropriate revisions. For users, potentially a more responsive site that is sensitive to their preferences and cognizant of their limitations.
6. Promotion of remote access to user accounts Users will be encouraged to employ the account access function in the iLink online library catalog. Access through the website is not yet transparent, but the toolbar described in Item 12 does enable one-click access. Though a small number of users already know how to view their accounts and renew books online, explicit mention of the feature to newly registered users and in Bibliographic Instruction classes, perhaps coupled with promotional items such as bookmarks and table tents, will be needed increase use of this time- and gas-saving feature. This, together with Items 7 and 8, brings us closer to another goal of the IEPR:
Goal 2d): Develop 24/7 virtual library services for STC students, faculty, and staff
Costs: None, aside from printing and distribution of promotional items, and the staff time required to mention and explain the procedures.
Benefits: For users, increased convenience. Reduction in need to spend time and burn gas on otherwise unnecessary library visits. For staff, some net time savings when a circulation function formerly in their sole purview is placed in the hands of borrowers.
7. Online access to ILL items and course reserves will bring additional user convenience to these key services. Interlibrary loan articles are typically delivered to us as electronic files, whereupon we print the documents and ask the patrons to come pick them up. Many academic libraries have opted for electronic delivery of ILL articles and have created virtual E-Reserve desks as well; in our case, the wide use of course management software for this purpose by STC instructors may well preclude any need for the second type of service
Costs: Staff time initially to configure the access protocols and coordinate with instructors; ongoing additional staff time for electronic rights management. Some of this may be counterbalanced in the long run by reduction of the time needed to handle physical items and to print ILL articles.
Benefits: For users, a significant increase in convenience; possible boost in the availability of certain high-demand course reserve items.
8. IM reference service will put our librarians within easier reach via instant messaging, a medium that is familiar and comfortable for many of our student users. Many IM reference configurations are currently in use in libraries around the world. We can begin with one that is cost-free with no downloads required for the librarian nor the user, as seen on this functional sandbox page. It should be noted that the monitoring librarian can readily change the status message seen by users whenever s/he is pulled away from the computer; the few possibly new skills needed to effectively offer such a service are illustrated here.
Costs: Staff time. However, unless the service becomes heavily used, which is unlikely to happen, the person monitoring will almost certainly not be occupied for more than a few minutes of any given hour. Should our IM reference service attract more traffic it will be important to extend its hours; this will require payment for additional off-schedule staffing. Some of the student staff in the library could, with a little training, certainly be very effective in the IM librarian role.
Benefits: For users, convenient access to help from reference staff. For Library Services, a move into an important sector that other local libraries have yet to actively explore.
(Concerns about devoting desk staff time to chat monitoring prompted a suggestion that we purchase a wireless mobile device to be carried by the librarian on chat duty. This proposal must be dismissed for three reasons other than its expense: The librarian, though apparently 'online,' could face obstacles in quickly getting to a computer, logging in to the appropriate chat service, and accurately entering the questioner's screen name in time to seamlessly resume the interview. Signal strength is also an issue, as parts of the Pecan library are beyond the reach of certain cell phone providers. Finally, if the service is to be staffed by librarians at more than one campus, such a device would have to be physically passed between them.)
9. Mobile Reference-on-a-Cart To build awareness of the library while taking advantage of the new wireless connectivity at Pecan Campus, a book cart outfitted with a notebook computer, selected books, and garish signage can prowl the sidewalks as well as busy indoor areas such as the cafeteria. Staff operating the cart can perform research for students, demonstrating library databases, the online catalog, and NetLibrary, and in many cases show off the IM reference service (Item 8) or invite students to our building to take advantage of other resources.
Costs: Staff time. The costs of outfitting a book cart for this purpose could vary enormously, judging from the work of Pimp My Bookcart contest entrants.
Benefits: For users, increased consciousness of the library, its online resources, and the campus wireless network. For Library Services, a chance to demonstrate the agility and convenience of our services.
10. Intranet availability of forms A recent incident in the Pecan library called for the filing of a particular form which the Library Director and several staff members were unable to find. The Hombre server installed by Jacques for the use of Library Services would be an ideal repository for such items.
At the library’s request, Carlos Magdaleno of Information Technology recently configured several staff workstations at Pecan for easier access to certain folders on Hombre. Previously, Hombre was invisible to machines working off a local login, which is the normal status of most of our computers. An informal survey of library staff revealed that few could recall how to get to Hombre; now, thanks to Carlos, doing so will be relatively simple.
Costs: Some staff time to convert certain forms to electronic files if necessary, and to mount them on the server.
Benefits: For staff, ready access to tools needed for their work.
11. Synchroneyes Kristina has pointed out the difficulty of maintaining the focus of Bibliographic Instruction classes and the impossibility of knowing what students are looking at on their own screens while the teacher works to lead them through Web pages. Synchroneyes software currently installed in the library’s public-access labs allows remote monitoring of multiple computer screens; the company also has a product tailored to the needs of teachers in classroom computer labs.
Costs: $195 to upgrade our current license to include a lab account (Dec 2006 quote).
Benefits: For instructional librarians, improved control of their classes. For students, more focused instruction and a better learning environment.
12. Custom STC library toolbar This user aid (Figure 1) installs in the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. It was created and refined in Nov-Dec 2006 to shorten the paths to important pages of the library’s website and to offer one-click access to, and descriptions of, rich resources on the free Web such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and KeepMedia. The toolbar is editable; changes to its configuration transfer instantly to computers that have it installed. Information Technology installed this toolbar on the five public catalog terminals in the Pecan campus library at the end of the Fall 2006 semester.
This browser toolbar will be installed in the browsers of library OPAC terminals at all the campuses pending results of the current trial, and students will be invited to add it to their own browsers. (Downloadable at http://snipurl.com/140jv; please note the desirability of resetting the default search tool on each machine from the one showing the magnifying glass icon to another option).
Costs: Minimal staff time for refinements to the toolbar and for promotion efforts during reference interviews and Bibliographic Instruction sessions.
Benefits: For users, faster and easier access to useful resources. For Library Services, the opportunity to offer a branded Web-based service enhancement with genuine utility.
13. Current awareness Promotion of the staff’s knowledge of emerging library technologies is indispensable. No one staff member can stay fully abreast of new tools for advancing the library’s mission. Workers in different areas are closely attuned to the needs, and potentially to the solutions, that pertain to their specialties. Awareness of novel uses of technology is a prerequisite to innovation; building this knowledge throughout the organization could pay tremendous dividends. The surest way to foster awareness is to offer the staff incentives and a sense of ownership of the learning process.
Information about library technology topics is not hard to find. The explosion of the ‘biblioblogosphere,’ together with the advent of easy-to-use feed readers, has simplified the task of staying on top of trends. We can inculcate among our professional library staff an ethic of keeping up by giving them frequent reminders that they are expected¾and paid¾to spend a certain small amount of time each day reading blogs and other library news sources.
One way to systemize this process would be to have reference and professional library staff rotate as guides or emcees for two-week periods during which they take charge of recommending a handful of pertinent articles and blog posts. Their colleagues will be expected to read some of the items and share comments in an online discussion forum focused on whether the ideas in play could or could not be adapted to our libraries; again, a wiki or an in-house blog would work well for all this.
Training is a constant of our evolving profession. There are a number of excellent free webcasts and 24/7 online training opportunities whose value often exceeds that of sessions for which libraries pay live presenters. Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL, http://www.opal-online.org/), Infopeople (http://www.infopeople.org/), LibraryU (http://learning.libraryu.org/home/welcome.html), the online Sirsi/Dynix Institute (http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/), and WebJunction (http://www.webjunction.org/) are excellent sources of timely training. A cost-effective alternative to live trainings would have one or two of our staff members act as facilitators in leading the rest through the content of such online trainings.
While some form of ongoing current-awareness development training should be required of the library’s professional and reference staff, it would be wise to invite participation by staff not so categorized. Many student and hourly employees bring an energized enthusiasm to their library work; not giving it chances to flower would be an unfortunate mistake. All staff members should be openly encouraged to explore and participate in the technological life of the library.
Costs: A continual investment of staff time, though it bears mentioning that some of this might be salvaged from otherwise idle moments at the reference desk.
Benefits: For users, a more agile library with the vision to respond to change. For staff, opportunities to learn and to teach, in an environment geared toward bringing progressive innovation to their work experiences. For Library Services, an even more inventive and wide-awake workforce.
14. Staff pictures on the library’s website, with details about the educational backgrounds of reference/professional staff members. This serves to foster familiar personal connections between the users and their library and helps reference librarians and patrons know whom to turn to for help with specialized queries¾it is not necessarily widely known, even among Library Services employees, which member of our staff holds an MBA, or which one is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Further, the absence of photographs of our staff is an aberration on the STC website: most other departments appear far less camera shy.
Costs: Staff time to supply pictures and capsule biographies; webmaster time for page preparation and maintenance
Benefits: For users, a more approachable library. For Library Services, enhanced exposure of the library’s unique human resources.
15. Director’s Station The need to prepare reports and gather statistics that go beyond Jacques’ monthly summaries is sporadic but ongoing, and is likely to increase as the college moves toward support of a growing number of four-year degree programs. Jacques describes a situation a few years ago in which it was impossible to compile some requested statistics on fines and overdue books. He also recalls spending nearly a month, along with another staff member, preparing a collection breakdown by call number in 2005 in conjunction with a SACS visit regarding the BAT program. Jacques says that with the Director’s Station module available from Sirsi he could have produced a better report in less time, and would have created templates for generating updates of the same reports on demand whenever they are needed.
Costs: $15,199.52, plus $3,000 annual fee (Sept 2006 quote).
Benefits: For library directors and administrators, a capacity to readily produce detailed reports otherwise unavailable except through custom contracts with Sirsi. Director’s Station enables analyses similar to those used by retailers to help spot trends, target resources, and tailor services. The graphing and formatting options enable the production of instantly comprehensible reports that lend themselves to public presentation in board meetings, press packets, as well as proposals and quarterly reports for grant projects.
16. Automated backup to disk of the library system database. The weekly backup of the library's records is a critical procedure. We have always done it manually to tape; scripting an automated backup to disk would add flexibility to our workflow while adding further protection for our files. There are no plans to discontinue the manual backup, but this additional backup to disk would mean an extra layer of security for eight years' worth of irreplaceable records.
Costs: Staff time, much of it Information Technologies staff, to develop and debug the script.
Benefits: For Library Services, further protection of vital data.
17. Promotion of library database access by College staff Although the of privilege off-campus use of research databases and electronic books is available to all STC staff, informal polling suggests that most neglect to take advantage and thus in effect are isolated from many of the library's richest and most convenient resources. Reversing this is a step toward a smarter institution. Campaigns to promote the acquisition of an EZproxy user account through the Department of Distance Education Technology, as well as a NetLibrary account via any computer on our network, can be carried out using announcements in Jagnet’s staff portal; Human Resources can be given information to distribute during staff orientation; and a once-per-semester message can be circulated on the pan-campus faculty & staff email list.
Costs: Staff time required to prepare promotional announcements.
Benefits: For the College, a better-informed workforce. For Library Services, enhancement of our image as a helpful source of information. For students, potentially, increased appreciation of the power and breadth of our online resources as they perhaps hear of them from campus personnel other than librarians.
18. Online forms for Interlibrary and Intercampus Loan Forms for online request of ILL items (as in this prototype), along with those for intercampus loan deliveries, will be placed on the library's site. Currently patrons are expected to come to a library to submit these requests on paper. (Links to the prototype were placed on two separate pages of the library's site Mar 6; the first online ILL request came at 8:20am the following day.)
Costs: Staff time to create the interactive forms, with the cooperation of the College's webmaster.
Benefits: For users, the added convenience of an additional option for request of these services.
19. Update STC's holdings in WorldCat WorldCat is the nearest thing to a universal worldwide library catalog. It is an essential tool for leveraging the resources of libraries of all kinds: our library uses WorldCat daily as a source of cataloging records and to identify institutions that can fill our interlibrary loan requests. STC library records, in turn, should be available to other libraries for the same purposes but currently only a fraction of our collection is in the WorldCat database. OCLC, the cooperative that manages WorldCat, offers libraries a one-time batchload at no charge to update their holdings. This initiative opens doors to others such as Item 20.
Costs: Staff time¾much of it already expended¾to set timelines, communicate with OCLC and Amigos Library Services, and to pull the necessary files from our database.
The initial batch load is free; subsequently we will incur charges and receive credits from OCLC for setting our holdings with quarterly updates. Each added catalog record upgraded or created originally by our staff earns 21 cents if OCLC-derived, 35.9 cents if not; we will pay 6.9 cents for adding each non-original record that is OCLC-derived and 23.5 cents for each non-OCLC record. Records we delete from our holdings will get offsetting credits at the latter two rates (Sept. 2006 quotes for FY ’07 from Amigos). What may be the most significant cost will be one that is impossible to predict: the almost certain increase in ILL requests once our holdings become visible to other libraries.
Benefits: For Library Services, full participation¾neighborly rather than one-sided¾in our greater library community. Increased exposure through the popular, recently launched Open WorldCat program which puts details about books and the libraries that own them on the results screens of major search engines as well as the Google Scholar portal.
20. WorldCat Collection Analysis Sophisticated peer-library comparisons and collection breakdowns are possible for the thousands of libraries that participate in WorldCat (Item 19). Tamara has followed closely the evolution of OCLC's Collection Analysis tool, and an effective demo of its current capabilities can be seen at http://www.oclc.org/info/wcademo/swf/ Collection maps like the one mentioned in Item 15, produced by Jacques and his assistant over the course of several weeks, are instantly available with this tool. Further, it facilitates comparisons with collections at other libraries such as UTPA's, enabling us to identify subject areas where neighboring libraries have rich collections, or those where widespread deficits exist. Such data could be another useful factor in the decisions we make about how to channel our acquisitions budget.
Costs: $1,600 first year, $3,850 per year subsequently (Oct. 2006 price quotes from OCLC)
Benefits: For Technical Services staff, much stronger data to inform decisions about acquisitions and weeding. For users, a better and more responsive collection of materials. A potential benefit for Library Services as a whole is, again, the chance to be a better neighbor in our community of area libraries. In an era of distributed resource sharing, no library is an island: since we are working to facilitate the borrowing of materials held elsewhere, this tool could enhance our ability to intelligently contribute to the enrichment of the regional collection.
21. Automated print logging Staff members at each library’s public printer currently have to keep track of print jobs picked up by users by marking a tally sheet. Automated logging of printer activity would streamline their workflow while introducing greater accuracy in reporting. (It's important to note that the existing VendPrint print management system facilitates daily, but not hourly, logging.)
Costs: A small amount of staff time to configure this function; VendPrint has built-in logging capability.
Benefits: For library staff, elimination of the need to manually tally and total the print pickups for reporting purposes.
22. Systematic communication with IS&P Information Technology staff The library sometimes suffers from poor communication with IT staffers even when their work directly impacts library users. A recent example: when wireless access for the loaner laptops at Pecan was discontinued, only selected public services staff members were notified. Several subsequent changes left library staff at all levels uncertain of the usability of the machines and the status of the wireless access hubs.
Though it would be absurd to suppose that the Library Director would want to know of every change in the configuration of every library machine, it is nonetheless desirable that IT staff systematically notify Library Services of each change that affects users. One possible means would be email to the Administrative Assistant or other designated library staff member who would decide on a case-by-case basis which of our personnel need to know of any change. Such a requirement could understandably be considered onerous by IT; supervisors at IS&P should make it clear to their technicians that sending the email message will be regarded as part of the job for any work order involving services to library users. (A related proposal suggesting that an IT staffer could attend monthly library staff meetings might be problematic, given the irregular scheduling and rotating sites of the meetings.)
Costs: None, aside from intermittent expenditure of brief bits of staff time.
Benefits: For users, potential improvements in our services with less uncertainty from library staff at all levels. For library staff and administrators, greater awareness of what is happening in the library.
23. Internal site search or other navigation aid, such as a site map or a hotlinked index, for the library’s website. Though admirably compact and well-organized, the site already has enough difficult-to-classify material to warrant such an aid, and is likely to only grow larger.
Costs: Webmaster’s time for design and implementation.
Benefits: For users whose intuition does not lead them down the clickstream anticipated by the site designer, a faster way to find what they seek at our site.
24. Website gateway to trial databases Vendors sometimes give STC temporary access to databases on a trial basis. A recent JSTOR trial led to some confusion when a professor led a student to believe that the database was accessible after the trial had expired. The Library does not currently facilitate access to such resources by making it clear when and where to access them. A visible link on the website's "Search for Articles" page is a possible remedy.
Costs: Webmaster’s time for implementation.
Benefits: More exposure of materials being considered for purchase, with a possible increase of meaningful feedback on the resources' utility, and reduced confusion for faculty and students alike.
25. Online scheduling of Library Orientation classes Currently at Pecan a notebook behind the Reference desk contains the schedule. Instructors must speak directly with one of the two teaching librarians in order to make appointments for their classes. An online tool might be adapted to ease scheduling: perhaps STC's existing Outlook client, or else another powerful program such as Yahoo! Calendar, Google Calendar, or Calgoo.
Costs: Time for implementation and for publicizing the new service.
Benefits: For instructors, the convenience of making appointments at any time without having to wait for a call back; for teaching librarians, the ability to access their schedules remotely from home.
26. Social Software, specifically MySpace and Facebook, for promotion of the library as well as for helping us adapt to emerging models of social scholarship. A presence here would put some of our content into a forum that is wildly popular with STC students. One of our professional librarians is a MySpace enthusiast, and some of our student staff members are active there. The possible applications are numerous; RSS feeds generated by MySpace blog postings, for example, can be ported to other applications by easy-to-use tools. Though the use of MySpace as a public relations vehicle has spurred controversy in the library world just as it has in the education sector, this initiative would be a means of using technology to bring the library closer to its users.
Costs: Staff time.
Benefits: For users, another access point to their library. For Library Services, enhanced public exposure. For staff, an opportunity to turn some of their creative energy toward the library’s cause.
27. Planned, systematic rotation of computer equipment The library's lab computers, at such a time as they are replaced, could be rotated into staff work areas. It has been observed that the student lab computers at Pecan Library are far superior to what our Technical Services staff is now using. Such an equipment rotation protocol works successfully at UTPA's library.
Costs: Time for coordination between the library and IS&P staff in order to hammer out a policy.
Benefits: For library staff, better computers and increased certainty about planning of equipment deployment.
Library Emerging Technologies Team
We welcome your participation. If you'd like to take part as a member of the committee, or if you'd simply like to pass along an idea, feel free to contact any of the three librarians:
| Arnoldo Becho, Jr. (Chair) abecho (at) southtexascollege.edu 872-2627 |
Tamara Remhof tjremhof (at) southtexascollege.edu 872-3482 |
Bruce Jensen rbjensen (at) southtexascollege.edu 872-6420 |
STUDENT ADVISORS: |
David Laurent villian247 (at) sbcglobal.net |
Mark Flores sharky5652 (at) yahoo.com |
FACULTY and STAFF ADVISORS: |
Daniel DeLeón ddeleeon (at) southtexascollege.edu |
Prof. Robert Ho shusin2 (at) southtexascollege.edu |