Environmental Scan – PAC – Fall 2004

Professional Forum PAC members White Paper

LMT Retreat – Spring 2004

Following are the four questions PAC agreed to discuss, with the answers following each question.

1) What are the major trends, developments, and events that you see giving us opportunities or signaling changes in your areas of responsibility, regarding:  a) customers, b) technology, c) staff, d) information creation and delivery, and e) place?

a)     Customers

Our customer base is becoming broader and more diverse. 

·        Technology, staff, information creation and delivery, and place will all affect our customers.  Problematic as these features may be, our customers come to the library for the technology we offer, the liberal food and drink policy, and to meet each other. 

·        The learning communities that our customers are forming in residence halls will also affect how we deliver services.  We are competing for customers with for-profit education, such as the University of Phoenix.

b)     Technology

The library is behind on keeping up with the technology that our customers are using; we are not on par with the technology that they use. 

·        We need to implement library services for mobile computing, such as wireless access, PDAs, and tablet PCs.  However, vendors do not think about needs such as these, which is problematic. 

·        To keep up with our students’ technology needs, we may need a shorter public computer replacement cycle.  

·        While our technical specialists must handle some aspects of our technology, we need fewer boundaries between program areas in order to progress technologically.  Loosening those boundaries as well as sharing information between program areas might allow us to move forward more easily. 

·        We also need to keep up with technology issues behind the scenes, such as proper management of broken links in our Web presence.

c)      Staff

We need more staff in order to innovate. 

·        A more diverse staff that is “customer” oriented, go getters and risk takers

·        With our current staff, we are struggling to keep up with current needs, and it is difficult to find time to experiment with innovative services. 

·        We also need more professional development, but what is the best way to deliver it?  Older librarians were originally trained to be book-based when they went to school, and had to learn to be electronic-based.  The opposite is true for newer librarians. 

·        Many librarians are nearing retirement age.  The profession needs to recruit, because there are fewer new librarians graduating than there are older librarians retiring.  Also, new library and information science graduates may be attracted to other workplaces than libraries because they pay better.

·        All staff need to be allowed to explore and create projects that may advance library services

·        More open communication between program areas.

d)     Information Creation and Delivery

How will we look at information delivery when the whole campus is wireless? 

·        We need to think about delivering information through many channels, online and otherwise, to accommodate different learning styles, searching styles, and information needs.

·        Navigating through a new website

·        Educate faculty about the issues we deal with in trying to get the resources they need. For example:  MIT's "Scholarly Communication" webpage, which has links to information about issues related to scholarly publishing: http://libraries.mit.edu/about/journals/index.html  Also on the website is a link where faculty can learn what they can do to help (“Faculty Assistance Sought…”)

o       Following a similar model, maybe we could create a one-stop "collection development" webpage, which also has our policies for buying books, journals, databases, etc. Hopefully, this could help demystify what we do, and why.

·        Incorporate and develop informative webpages with a look that makes the navigation easy to find/locate requested information.

e)     Place

The library seems to be known as “the place” on campus for computing, working in groups, and socializing. 

·        Issues with the satellite libraries such as technology and staffing are arising. 

·        Our customers will perceive our physical place to be easier to use, if it is easier to find needed information on our website (our virtual place)

·        Our “place” is rapidly expanding, with the arrival of 24/5 hours and satellite libraries. 

2) Which institutions are providing models for best practices in your area?  What are they doing?     

·        University of Michigan, http://www.lsa.umich.edu/honors/prospects/index.htm.

provides an honors college for freshmen to live in the same area of a residence hall in a learning community type of environment.   Also has an interesting "Research and Learning assistance" page we should look http://www.lib.umich.edu/rts/rlearning.html particularly the Digital Dissertation Workshops

·        California State University Monterey Bay, http://csumb.edu/ and California State

      University Channel Islands, http://www.csuci.edu/ are brand new universities

      that are starting from scratch in developing new models of learning.

·        MIT, http://libraries.mit.edu/ emphasizes the importance of digital sources, and their librarians work closely with the faculty on projects such as course page development. 

·        University of Arizona, http://www.library.arizona.edu/ includes only electronic government documents and Information Commons

·        Welch Medical Library, http://www.welch.jhu.edu/about/index.html at Johns Hopkins University has librarians that are very forward thinking.  They have almost the same stature as teaching faculty, and they serve as consultants to other libraries.

• University of Virginia, http://lib.virginia.edu Check out their "The Library Video" created by students for students.

• USC, http://www.usc.edu/academics/libraries_computing/library_list. has a variety of "satellite" libraries called "information centers" (Education & Social Work) 

• Middlebury College, http://www.middlebury.edu/lis/lis_merger.htm.  Middlebury College's libraries and IT departments merged in 2002, to combine their diverse staff talents in the common goal of providing tools and resources to support teaching and learning.  They form dynamic cross-functional teams.

5) What are the most exciting things we, as an organization, could do in the next three to five years?

• We need to get faculty interested in what we are doing.  If we cannot do that, it will make everything much harder to accomplish. 

• We need to work more closely with faculty on content, which needs to be done as a collaborative effort between program areas.  The increase in entrance requirements may provide some exciting opportunities for us. 

• We need to address problems with the university’s image, such as the view of UTA as a commuter school (although that is changing) and the view of UTA as a “stepping stone” to get to Austin or other schools. 

• We need to work on delivering information and help in a variety of formats for on-campus and off-campus users. 

• We need to collaborate on projects between other universities, other areas of UTA, and other Metroplex libraries. 

• We also need to replace furniture in the library to make it look less dated and create a more relaxing atmosphere. 

• Discard and replace outdated staff furniture with new ergonomic pieces.  There are areas in the libraries using desks that are older than they are, and furniture that is not ergonomic. The desks we have were never intended for use with PC’s because nobody had PC’s back then. 

• The new UTA president has suggested a research triangle between, UTA, UT Southwestern Medical Center, and UT Dallas.  This will create possible collaboration with other librarians/archivists.

• Since student fees are too high already, we need to come up with ways to work against this, such as selling our services. 

• We need a new building entirely or a second Central Library building on the other side of campus. 

• We should reconsider the satellite library concept; should they be traditional branches, or just offices with computers in them?  What do our satellite library customers need; what should we provide them? 

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• The Libraries seem to be turning into a computer lab rather than a place to do research, which should change the way we think about ourselves.  Whatever we can do, technology will have a big role in it.

6) Are we poised to take advantage of opportunities, make necessary shifts in directions, and to do these exciting things?  If not, what do we need to do to be better poised?

·        Communication needs to be addressed both internal (between units) and external (campus and beyond).

·        We are not ready for everything that we would like to do, but we need the atmosphere in place to try new things, where risk taking is encouraged. 

·        We need more time, the ability to go to conferences for new ideas, and library staff members as well as faculty members need to agree to do these things.