Lessons Learned: Funding, Designing, and Building New Academic Libraries

Charlene Baldwin
Dean of the Library
Chapman University

Does the incredible quantity of offerings in electronic formats today mean the demise of print resources, and with it libraries as physical places? In the December 2002 Library Journal Architectural Issue, Bette-Lee Fox says, “Rumors to the contrary, the bucks for library capital improvement projects don’t seem to be stopping anywhere or any time soon.” (p. 42). An extraordinary 246 library building projects were completed in that reporting year, for a record cost of more than $1.2 billion.

This poster session is a graphical recounting of lessons learned with library building projects. It will present strategies, stories, and tips for successful planning, funding, planning, constructing, commissioning, and using new libraries with special focus on the new library at Chapman University.

Dissecting a Database: Leading Students to Discovery-Based Learning

Cinthya Ippoliti -University of California, Los Angeles
Cheryl Bartel-University of California, Los Angeles
Dominique Turnbow- University of California, Los Angeles

Dissecting a Database is a tool that was developed by the librarians in the Reference Division of the UCLA Biomedical Library to assist students in navigating new databases. This resource, and the subsequent in-class activity, arose out of a need to teach the constantly changing California Digital Library database interfaces. We use this tool as an in-class activity in many of our courses to foster student engagement and retention of general database concepts. Students are challenged with identifying key elements, which range from default search features to truncation symbols, across a variety of databases. The goal of this activity is to provide students with the tools to utilize any kind of database, rather than to focus on the specific features of each database they encounter. We have applied Dissecting a Database in various classes covering several different subject areas, including Organismic Biology, Ecology, and Evolution; Psychology; Public Health; and Nursing. The implementation of this tool supports discovery-based learning by encouraging students to use a resource they have never used before without any guidance on how to do so. The class is divided into groups of four to five students. Each group answers several questions about utilizing the resource. After time is up, one person from each group reports the group’s findings to the class. This encourages a full class discussion, led by the student and librarian together, about the most effective way to use the resources. Dissecting a Database is unique in that it is an incredibly flexible way to teach multiple resources to a class, and has successfully been implemented across diverse subject areas and information literacy levels. One of the nice things about Dissecting a Database is that assessment is built into the activity. The assessment process occurs when students are asked to report their findings to the class, allowing the librarian to appraise whether or not the groups have achieved the learning outcomes of the activity. If a student answers a question in a way that does not demonstrate he/she has attained mastery of the learning outcome, an educational opportunity arises for the entire class. The librarian is then able to demonstrate and/or discuss the issue with the class. If further assessment is desired, one can choose from a variety of techniques including the One Minute Paper, Muddiest Point, or 3-2-1 Cards.

The UCLA Information Literacy Initiative

Patti Schifter Caravello, UCLA Charles E.Young Research Library
Diane Mizrachi, UCLA College Library

This poster session will describe the various components of the Information Literacy Initiative (ILI) at UCLA. Information literacy is one of the cornerstones of public service in academic libraries. Throughout the evolution from “library orientation” to “bibliographic instruction” to “information literacy instruction,” a foundational philosophy has been that library users need to learn how to find and evaluate information effectively for college work and lifelong learning. The UCLA initiative is a relatively new, active, and ongoing project to put this philosophy into action.

Background: A 1999 survey by the UCLA Library http://www.library.ucla.edu/infocompetence/) documented deficiencies in UCLA students' understanding of resources and methods, and assessed the general level of information literacy as low. Information literacy was identified in the UCLA Library's strategic plan (2001) as an area of priority. The Information Literacy Initiative was launched in late 2001 to organize a response to this issue.

The UCLA Information Literacy Initiative has as its mission to help members of the UCLA community master conceptual and practical information literacy skills to enrich their educational, professional and personal lives, and enable them to become independent, lifelong learners. The goals of the Initiative are: 1) To improve information literacy skills at UCLA; 2) To assess information literacy skills at UCLA; 3) To increase awareness of information literacy concepts among members of the UCLA community, within the context of changing information needs and environments.

To implement the Initiative, participating UCLA librarians have organized into five interest groups. Teams working in each interest area have established a prioritized list of action items. Some interest areas share related objectives and teams often collaborate to accomplish their goals. The ILI Steering Committee, consisting of the ILI director, the chairs of each interest group and two information literacy librarians, ensures that the work of the interest groups is coordinated.

The poster session will show the structure of the initiative, indicate the activities of the various interest groups, provide the names and email addresses of ILI participants, and provide Web addresses for further information.

Grant Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: How the Library at California State University, Northridge Obtained its Five-Year, $1.6 million U.S. Dept. of Education Title V Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program Grant

Katherine Strober Dabbour, California State University, Northridge
Karin Durán, California State University, Northridge

In this time of budget cuts and burgeoning enrollments, academic libraries in California must look for outside sources of funding to meet the information needs of an increasingly diverse student population. Last year, the Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) was awarded a major federal grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Title V Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program. An institution of higher education is designated “Hispanic-Serving” when its undergraduate enrollment reaches 25% Latino (CSUN’s was 30% in fall 2002). Entitled, “Improving student success through strengthening library collections, archives, and information competence,” its 5-year, $1.6 million grant is being used to augment the Library’s materials budget and hire/re-assign personnel. The focus of the Oviatt Library’s HSI grant is on expanding its collection of books, media, databases, and primary archival collections related to Latino history and culture. In addition, its teacher curriculum collection, which is used by a growing population of Latino public school students through its teacher credentialing program is also benefiting from the grant. Furthermore, HSI grant awardees must demonstrate that their funded activities benefit the academic quality, student services and outcomes, fiscal stability, or management of their institutions. The focus of the CSUN Library’s HSI grant is on making the case that by increasing library use and instruction, it will increase the information literacy skills of its Latino and other student populations, thus contributing positively to both academic quality and student outcomes. Attendees will learn about the Title V HSI program, their own institution’s potential eligibility, and the objectives of CSUN’s grant activities related to archives, collection development, information literacy, and assessment. In addition; the author of the proposal, a librarian with no previous grant writing experience, will offer tips for writing and managing successful grant proposals.

Business Vocabulary: Building a Foundation for Critical Thinking

Linda Heichman, California State University, Fullerton

This poster session will highlight the importance of an accurate knowledge
of business terminology. Business Terminology represents a key building
block toward a sound understanding of business principles. A set of
hour-long workshops were developed to familiarize incoming business
students with the importance of business vocabulary and to introduce
specific resources so that students would be able to accurately define
terms within several business disciplines.

Three key areas were developed for the workshop curriculum: relevance in
academic and professional settings, sources used to define specific terms,
and differences in terminology across business disciplines. The goal of the
workshop is to provide a solid foundation in the importance of business
terminology and the tools used to define business language. This foundation
could then be used in several ways: to promote critical thinking at an
earlier stage in the student's development, to improve oral and written
communication, research, interviewing and interpersonal skills, or to
facilitate career planning.

These efforts represent the beginning phase of a research study, which will
be developed to measure the effect of a more thorough understanding of
business terminology at the initial stage of the business student's
academic career. Phase I of the project entails conducting the workshops.
Phase II will involve conducting a survey to evaluate the workshop
participants' perceptions of the material presented. Phase III will involve
assessing students' term projects and research papers to determine if
increased knowledge in the language of business will promote the
development of critical thinking.

Does a sound understanding of business vocabulary assist the student in
developing critical thinking skills? If less time is spent on deciphering
complex concepts, does critical thinking skill develop at an earlier point
in the student's academic career? Does comprehension of business
terminology help the student gain more ground on the information literacy
continuum?

Evolution Of The Online Tutorial: NetTrail Redux

Ann Hubble, University of California, Santa Cruz
Christine Caldwell, University of California, Santa Cruz

The original "NetTrail: the UCSC Computer Literacy Course" was released in 1997 during the first nationwide wave of library developed interactive web-based tutorials. This poster will look at key issues of a major NetTrail re-design project. Goals for this update were to improve usability, make the experience more active for the user, and update the content to reflect recent changes to our databases and resources. Some content was used from similar "open source" sites, but a lot of rewriting, rethinking and in some cases reprogramming had to be done despite the open source material that could be repurposed. Nettrail remains an optional resource that instructors can use in a variety of ways including using only selected modules as appropriate or assigning it as extra credit.

A Celebration of the Book: Or Promoting the Human(ities) Side of the Job

Robin Imhof, Reference Librarian, University of the Pacific Library
Kathy Ray, Assistant Dean, University of the Pacific Library

Fittingly, the slogan of University of the Pacific’s Humanities Center is “Promoting Human Ties” and in that spirit our library, in partnership with the Center, held an event we called "A Celebration of the Book." Similar to Stanford University’s annual event, the purpose was to showcase the works of our Humanities faculty authors, editors, translators and chapter contributors.

A special feature of the event was the book and author displays created by students under the direction of an art professor. Some of these students interacted with the faculty author to create a display, for which they earned academic credit. The displays were then moved from the reception site to the library where they reached a wider audience.

Since it was an opportunity for faculty members to be honored for their scholarly efforts in a public way, the feedback from the event has been overwhelmingly positive. Many remarked that this was the first time they had a chance to see the published work of colleagues from other disciplines.

This collaborative effort between the University Library, Humanities Center, Art Department and Pacific students took advantage of the diverse talents and creativity of our university community. The result was an overall positive impression of the library for our efforts to recognize and honor faculty scholarship as well as foster stronger ties with other academic departments.

Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping

Pamela Jackson , San Jose State University

Librarians are committed to providing creative and cutting edge instruction in online learning environments. We recognize the need for innovative ways to stimulate student learning in a digital age in which instruction is not always linked to the physical classroom or library buildings.

Online information competence tutorials, such as Plagiarism: The Crime of Intellectual Kidnapping [http://130.65.109.143/plagiarism/index.htm], provide an avenue for students to learn important information competence skills at their own pace outside of traditional class time and classrooms. Online tutorials are one successful way to provide a common foundation of knowledge among students, and may afford librarians the opportunity to make the most of their physical time with students in the classroom during what is usually a one-shot, one-hour library instruction session.

Campuses nationwide have become increasingly aware of plagiarism problems in academic communities, leading to a need for strengthened tools that teach students to avoid plagiarism. This poster session will explore the process of creating this interactive tutorial about plagiarism, including the library's role in teaching about plagiarism, creating an online tutorial of this nature, and writing effective pre- and post-tests to measure student learning. An analysis of student quiz data from both the pre- and post-tests will be included, along with responses from teaching faculty on their perceived effectiveness of the tutorial.

About the Tutorial: This interactive, online tutorial teaches students about plagiarism, paraphrasing, and citing sources. It includes a pre-quiz, assessing what students already know, and graded quiz at the end, testing the students' understanding of plagiarism and their ability to avoid it. Students register to take the tutorial and scores can be provided to instructors. Working with an amazing group of staff and students, including a graphic artist and programmer, we successfully launched the tutorial on the first day of the fall 2003 semester.

This tutorial is rapidly gaining popularity among the teaching faculty here at San José State and at other colleges, as well as junior high and high schools, throughout the United States and Canada. In response to the growing number of requests from outside institutions, we are working to make this tutorial available for download and adaptation.

Building a Better Mousetrap: Using the Scoping Feature in an OPAC to
Improve Public Access and Reference Service

Cynthia Jahns,
Head, Maps Unit, University Library
University of California, Santa Cruz

Scoping allows patrons to limit their search, at the outset, to a subset of
the library's catalog. The subset could be a location, a material type, or
a combination of the two.

In 2002, UC Santa Cruz decided to implement this feature to improve patron
access to certain unique collections. The Library's Electronic Information
Resources and Services Team held open discussions to choose which four
collections were the best candidates for scoping. The four collections
chosen were Maps & Atlases, Film & Video, Online Resources, and Periodicals
& Journals. This poster focuses on the Maps & Atlases subset,
http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/search~S4, and answers these questions: Why select the Library's map collection for scoping? Why is scoping better than limiting for the Map Collection? What technical criteria were used to create the Maps & Atlases subset?

Improving our Foundation: A Retrospective Analysis of Library Instruction

Kristin Johnson, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico
Wendy Diamond, Meriam Library, California State University, Chico

The researchers initiated a project during the Fall 2003 semester, in which sections of two pre-selected courses were interviewed as a follow-up to library instruction sessions that occurred earlier in the semester. While the primary goal of the project was to improve on an existing foundation for library instruction, more discrete goals included: gaining qualitative insight that may improve the quality of library instruction; reinforcing the previous instruction session's learning objectives; comparing student perceptions of library instruction immediately after the session with perceptions in the context of having completed an assignment; soliciting feedback that will enhance librarian collaboration with faculty; and augmenting and improving our contemporaneous library evaluation form (which measures only short term "satisfaction" and not learning outcomes)
Background: Immediately after most library instruction session conduced at CSU Chico, librarians administer a short evaluation questionnaire designed to elicit student satisfaction with the session. The evaluation utilizes Likert Scale style questions and the questionnaire form is compatible with the Scantron system used by the Testing Office. Sets of evaluations are sent the Testing Office at the end of each semester, and the cumulative results give the librarian a general sense of the overall satisfaction level of students with their sessions. Because they are administered immediately after the library instruction sessions, these questionnaires have one main disadvantage; the librarian gains no insight into what the student actually learned or how they may have applied the information gained from the session toward completing a project of paper.

The researchers investigated a different type of assessment/evaluation of library instruction through a Retrospective (“Retro”) Interviewing Project for Library Instruction (“Retros”). The librarian that conducted the original library instruction session acted as an observer and recorder at the back of the room. The partner-librarian (who did not conduct the original library instruction session) led a group interview with the class consisting of a series of questions. The main purpose was to elicit student commentary that would reveal perceptions, opinions, concerns, and experiences about the effectiveness of the library instruction sessions in helping them with their projects. A broader, more complex outcome was to discover whether students attained long-term learning outcomes for future course assignments and/or have improved their general information literacy. So, in addition to the questionnaire distributed to the class on the day of the actual instruction session, the researchers, by using Retros, hoped to gain a more qualitative assessment of the value of their library sessions.

This “Retro” project is based on a project originally developed and implemented at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. The original creators of the project have solicited librarians from across the county to become involved in similar projects, with the intention of merging the data for analysis. Data garnered from our Retros was analyzed during the Spring 2004 semester to determine modifications to the library instruction sessions and to strengthen partnerships with teaching faculty. This poster session will outline the procedures for conducing a “Retro” and highlight some of our most useful findings.

When Teaching is Effective-Everybody Wins!

Alice Kawakami, UCLA College Library
David Gilbert, University of California, Los Angeles
Stephanie Brasley, University of California, Los Angeles
Alice Kawakami, University of California, Los Angeles
Eleanor Mitchell, University of California, Los Angeles

Information literacy instruction has become the goal of library programs in
the new digital environment. Many librarians are still challenged by how to
make the transition from bibliographic instruction to information literacy
instruction. What are the practices, and attitudes that would demonstrate
the change from the teacher-perspective to the learner-perspective; from a
content focus to a learner focus, from a tool-based to a concept-based,
from librarian-controlled to collaboration, from a library focus to an
information focus, transferable and flexible rather than discrete skills,
from a single contact with students to a sequence of contacts, and from a
focus on improving the quality of instruction to improving learning?

Librarians are given the charge, though not always the skills nor
philosophical foundations that are needed to make the transition occur. How
do librarians breach the gap between static lectures and active learning?
How are they to incorporate critical thinking and instructional technology?

As part of the UCLA information literacy initiative, an instructional
development interest group was formed to facilitate the development of an
instructional climate that is more user-centered, and one that seeks a more
holistic approach to what used to be called library instruction. In this
new environment librarians are challenged to think creatively about
opportunities and venues in which to work with students and faculty to
improve student research and critical thinking skills. We believe these
approaches will help students be more effective in their learning, will
better support faculty teaching goals and will satisfy and energize
librarians.

The Instructional Development Group of the UCLA Information Literacy
Initiative developed a shared understanding of good teaching practice for
librarians, supported this through a variety of programs and resources
intended to build skill, expertise and confidence. In this poster session,
the group will highlight the activities and programs that have been most
successful in forwarding this transition in the past two years.

Defining Academic Priorities in a Joint-Use Library: A Work in Progress

Susan L. Kendall, Reference Librarian and Government Publications Coordinator
Christina A. Peterson, Health Professions and Distance Learning Librarian
San Jose State University

After five years of intense planning, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library opened its doors on August 1, 2003 to San Jose State University students and faculty and the San Jose community. The eight-story building is a collaboration of SJSU and San Jose Public Library and is the largest all-new library west of the Mississippi, with 475,000 square feet of learning space. One mission of the new Library’s vision is to provide lifelong learning opportunities for students, their families, and members of the community. In order to ensure a successful first year, over 50 collaborative working groups from both libraries met to develop services and policies. All of these groups focused on the merged services and activities. While many services and departments were merged, the concept of academic identity has remained an ongoing theme within the planning process. Early on, SJSU librarians, staff, and administrators held open meetings to develop a list of academic priorities for the new Library. Faculty, administration, and staff were concerned that the philosophical foundation of the academic library role be maintained. The priorities remain the backbone of continuing activities to articulate and benchmark those aspects of library service that define our academic identity.

This process has been successful to date because library faculty leaders were able to obtain administration and collegial buy-in. In turn, library administration presented the academic priorities list to the University’s Library Board for their approval. This ensured support from classroom faculty colleagues. This poster session will review the academic priority benchmarking process in terms of resources required, leadership, and timeline.

What's ETS got to do with it? Building an Assessment Instrument to Measure
Information Literacy

Lynn Lampert, Coordinator of Instruction and Information Literacy California State University, Northridge Suellen Cox, Head, Instruction and Information Services California State University, Fullerton

ETS (Educational Testing Service), the California State University System
(charter client) and six other colleges and universities are currently
working to develop a scenario-based, problem-based, web-based assessment
instrument to measure the Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
skills of second and fourth year students. This National Higher Education
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Initiative intends to create
a tool that will help educators identify skill deficiencies and address
ways to help students achieve proficiencies in information and
communication technologies. This poster will outline the development
process, define ICT proficiency and how it relates to information literacy,
and discuss areas of focus as well as the overall purpose of the proposed
assessment instrument for individuals, higher education institutions and
beyond.

Constructing a Mentoring Foundation

Janet Martorana, Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Eunice Schroeder, UCSB Libraries
University of California, Santa Barbara
Lucia Snowhill, UCSB Libraries
University of California, Santa Barbara
Andrea L. Duda, UCSB Libraries
University of California, Santa Barbara

During the 2001/02 academic year, University of California, Santa Barbara librarians explored mentoring issues, and in this context,
professional development concerns, through a series of forums entitled You and Your Career: A Series on Mentoring and Professional Development. Each forum featured invited speakers and provided an opportunity for librarians and interested staff members to discuss how careers in librarianship progress in today's complex and changing environment. The series was intended for those relatively new to the profession as well as those at mid-career and beyond, and for those with formal management and administrative responsibilities as well as those without. To accommodate this varied audience, the series was planned around the theme of mentoring, from both sides of the relationship: what is effective mentoring, and how can it be channeled to enhance career and professional development? The series primarily emphasized informal rather than formal mentoring relationships, with topics ranging from the role and potential benefits of mentoring to career assessment, strategies for the formal review process, participation in professional associations, and cultivation of leadership skills. The goal was to promote a culture of mentorship as a foundation upon which librarians can shape their own professional growth.

The poster illustrates the components needed for a library to organize and offer such a program, including the purpose of the series,
issues that were covered, and how each session was structured for content and included speakers to appeal to both new and experienced librarians.

The New Face In Town: Resource-Sharing and Co-management at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library

Toby Matoush, San Jose State University, Reference Librarian Susan Kendall, San Jose State University, Reference Librarian Joan Bowlby, San Jose Public Library Joyce Osland, San Jose State University, Department of Organization and
Management
Marlene Turner, San Jose State University, Department of Organization and
Management
Christine Struckman, San Jose State University, Department of Organization
and Management

How does a library evolve and grow in the economically challenged 21st
century? What happens to the organizational culture of two libraries when
they are placed in the innovative environment of a merged public and
academic library which shares a space and collections and is managed by
librarians from two different library cultures? The King Library Merger
Research Project is a joint research project which aims to answer some of
these questions. The King Merger Research Project is studying the
innovative organizational culture of the newly opened Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. Library which is a joint library combining the collections and
staff of the former San Jose State University (SJSU) Clark Library and the
main branch of the San Jose Public Library system. The library opened in
August 2003 and is the largest library to be built at one point in time
west of the Mississippi. The researchers are studying the decision-making
practices, evolving social networks, resource-sharing practices, and
co-management structure of the merged or integrated library. Data is being
gathered in a variety of formats which include surveys, focus groups, and
interviews. Another aspect of the study involves an examination of how the
library is positioned in the merger literature. The research team is as
innovative as the new library and consists of SJSU librarians who are also
faculty, a librarian from the San Jose Public Library system, and three
faculty from the SJSU Department of Organization and Management. The
library is a revolutionary model of co-management with four of its
departments following a model of co-management. The library also shares a
rich array of both print and electronic resources which includes
approximately 1.5 million print volumes, over 180 electronic databases, and
a 475,000 square foot library which has eight floors, a large number of
public access computers and over 400 network ports. This poster session
will present preliminary data on how social networks within the library
have evolved with the merger, the changing organizational culture of the
two libraries as they share a space and collections, and how
decision-making has been used in the new library environment. It will also
look at resource-sharing and success factors of joint libraries as well as
how the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library is positioned in the business
merger literature. Researchers will attempt to answer the question of
whether this is the new face of the 21st century library and lessons
learned from the merger.

Web-Based Tutorials: A (Partial) Substitute for In-Library Instruction?

Ann Morgan
Cal Poly Pomona, University Library

This poster presentation will describe the development of an online, interactive tutorial for engineering students. The tutorial is being developed to address the increasing demand for library instruction from the engineering departments at Cal Poly Pomona. With approximately 4000 engineering students, Cal Poly Pomona has one of the largest engineering programs in California. Several departments have already incorporated information literacy into their introductory courses and other departments are interested in doing so. Traditionally this has been done through our Bibliographic Instruction program with in-Library instruction provided by the Engineering Librarian but it is becoming more and more difficult to meet the demand for in-library instruction. My Spring Quarter professional leave will be devoted to developing a web-based tutorial that I hope will be used in the 6-10 sections of ME100 (Mechanical Engineering) taught every Fall Quarter. The poster will address the goals and objectives of the project and describe progress to date.

Launching A Campus ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) Program

George Porter, Betsy Coles, Daniel Taylor
Caltech Library System, California Institute of Technology

Our poster session describes the development of Caltech’s ETD program from an initial commitment, through first voluntary participation and later mandatory stages, and including software and systems considerations, integration with technical services, and evolution of our extensive outreach and educational initiatives.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech) introduced a mandatory electronic thesis requirement for Ph.D.s effective 1 July 2002. The Caltech Library System (CLS) has worked with a succession of Deans of Graduate Studies to make mandatory electronic theses a reality without being an onerous burden for the students and the faculty. The initial commitment was made in 1999. Hardware and software decisions and development proceeded apace, leading to a voluntary submission phase beginning in June 2001.

Electronic thesis workshops were offered daily for a week four times a year. Additionally workshops were offered once or twice a week for the first month of the final term before the first Commencement (13 June 2003) following the implementation of the mandatory electronic thesis requirement. The workshops were developed and presented initially by a librarian and the digital library systems manager. The workshops focused on the Caltech Library System’s Electronic Theses website http://library.caltech.edu/etd/. The website provides a Word template and a TeX style file which implement the Caltech Ph.D. Theses Regulations mechanical requirements (margins, minimum font sizes, appendices). All science and engineering librarians were subsequently integrated into the instruction rotation, and also specialized presentations were focused on the needs of some graduate student communities.

PDF is the mandatory display format for Caltech’s electronic theses and dissertations. In addition, the library will happily accept source files from graduate students for deposit in a dark archive, to facilitate format migration in line with future emerging technologies. Justification for the PDF requirement is explained. How to create PDF through a variety of pathways is detailed.

In the electronic environment, long-standing policy requiring copyright permissions becomes more crucial due to the vastly increased visibility of the documents. This urgency is explained along with availability of extensive librarian support in tracking down proper contacts at different publishers. The graduate students’ intellectual property issues are examined, along with choices available for delaying widespread release if needed because of patent applications and/or publication plans.

Digital Collections: Making it Happen

Hema Ramachandran, California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
Jim O'Donnell, Caltech
Ed Sponsler, Caltech

The Caltech Library System has been actively involved in digital projects since 2000 as part of the international Open Archives Initiative. The OAI (http://www.openarchives.org/) is an endeavor to establish standards for sharing scholarly information. The overarching objective for the Caltech Collection of Digital Archives (CODA) is to enhance scholarly communication at Caltech and make Caltech research more visible to the global scientific community. Our projects can be viewed at http://library.caltech.edu/digital/. Under the umbrella of CODA, our projects cover a wide spectrum: technical reports, conference proceedings, eBooks, an Oral Histories project, a campus journal and dissertations (ETD). Projects include both current materials, and retrospective conversions.

Caltech CODA runs on freely available electronic archiving software. The Caltech ETD collection runs on ETD-db software developed at Virginia Tech; all other collections run on EPrints software developed at the University of Southampton. Our poster will focus on the archives that use the Eprints software.

The main characteristics of our program is that we have not received any external grant funding or hired additional staff. This poster session will provide you with a blueprint for accomplishing this at you own institution. We will describe “nuts and bolts” strategies that worked for us, and pitfalls to avoid. You will have an opportunity to talk to and get advice from librarians on the front line and our senior systems analyst on launching your own digital program. We will cover the whole process: recruiting content, copyright, technical aspects, scanning documents, workflow issues, and staffing.

Working on these projects has been a positive experience for all involved. Librarians have especially benefited by forming closer liaisons and partnerships with faculty constituencies and enhancing their digital skills.

Baja California Librarian's Association (ABIBAC): Future Challenges

Raúl Rodriguez, Director de Centro de Informacion
CETYS University, Tijuana
Armando Robles
CETYS University, Mexicali

This poster session provides an introduction to the problems that face Baja California Librarians. This will include the status, structure and goals of different library associations at the state and national level and their various attempts at collaboration. It will also review the main results of the survey "An Evaluation of Baja California Libraries". The survey reflects a total of 107 libraries, of which 73% are public, 14% school (high school and junior college), 8% universities and 5% special libraries. The presenters will review the results of this survey in terms of collections, personnel, structure, processes and software.
Most importantly, the presenters will discuss their ideas about how to better share resources with colleagues in California with an eye toward possible future bilateral projects. This poster session will have as one of its outcomes a strengthening of the relations between CARL and Baja California librarians.

Rifling through RFID: Questions to consider for your library

Laura J. Smart
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been in the news as a possible threat to patron privacy a key philosophical foundation of librarianship. This poster provides a brief introduction to RFID tags and their advantages and disadvantages for libraries. Cal Poly Pomona University Library is currently reviewing the technology and has come up with a list of questions to ask RFID vendors and an evaluation checklist for reviewing implementations at other libraries.

Treasures of the California State University

Naomi O. Moy
University Library
California State University, Dominguez Hills

The California State University system consists of 23 campuses located throughout California. Each campus is very unique due to a variety of reasons, e.g., geography, local history, mission, founding faculty, etc. The variety and differences are often reflected in their unique collections of books, papers, images and realia.

The California State University Librarians South interest group of CARL knew of a number of these collections but believed that there were many more hidden treasures. Thus, the program committee decided in 2002 to present a program on the “Treasures of the California State University.” To identify collections, assist speakers, and create a brochure, committee members contacted archivists and special collections librarians throughout the CSU. We learned about an amazing array of collections covering the history of the CSU, world and local history and culture, politics, literature, and the performing arts. Although library collections predominated, some of the major collections were housed and administered by academic departments or independent units on campus. Holdings were available in the library’s OPAC, special collections catalogs, finding aids, on websites or sometimes not at all. To assist librarians in locating these “treasures,” a website was created and is hosted by the CSUL-South at http://www.carl-acrl.org/CSUL-South/. The website includes a link to each campus, descriptions of the collection, contact information and a general subject index.

Many of the archivists, special collections librarians, and curators provided brochures and flyers for the program. Posters were created from these materials to display representative items from the collections. These posters will be on display at the 10th CARL Conference.