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Spring 2002
vol. 8 no. 1
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 From the Director
By Tom Wilding
Over the last decade, we have seen our ability to distribute information increase dramatically.
Typical library customers can do much of their research from their homes, offices, laboratories, or
even when they are traveling, since journals, books, and reference tools are now available through
the campus network. The Internet provides a wonderful information resource for those who know
how to use it well. The result of all this is that many of our customers may rarely if ever be physically
present in our libraries.
The UTA Libraries have been decentralized for a long time. We have two branch libraries –
Architecture and Fine Arts and Science and Engineering – and as in most decentralized systems,
these branches enjoy a special relationship with their communities. These communities are smaller,
have specialized needs that can be met by people with specialized expertise, and because of the
repeat business that they get, they can develop closer personal relationships with their customers.
They are more likely to be able to say to a student, “Oh, Abdul, remember the issue of that journal
you were looking for yesterday? Well it turned up, and I saved it for you.” Our Special Collections,
located on the sixth floor of the Central Library, operates much like a branch library as well. With forty
thousand people per week, the Central Library is more impersonal than our branch libraries.
But branch libraries are expensive. They require the duplication of staff and service points, and
sometimes even the duplication of expensive reference works and other resources. The digital environment
that is beginning to define our library, allows us, however, to re-think the distribution of library services.
The Electronic Business Library has been open for several years now and is a popular service point
located in the College of Business Administration. Ruthie Brock, Carol Byrne, and Nancy Wesley hold
regularly scheduled office hours there, and COBA students and faculty can consult with them onsite to
get research assistance or to learn how to use resources. What started as an experiment in providing
satellite library services has now become a very successful ongoing service.
As the UTA campus at Riverbend in Fort Worth developed, we developed a small electronic to
support it. We are positioned to provide staffing there as the program grows, but in the meantime the
community there has access to the full offerings of the UTA Libraries Online. The potential for
developing other satellite libraries exists, and this will in the future allow us to reap the benefits of being
better integrated into the learning communities around campus, without the burdens of managing full
scale physical libraries.
Other librarians have established physical presences in their communities. Both the School of Nursing
and the School of Social Work, to name two, have provided places for librarians to be more accessible
to their communities. As more and more services permeate the campus, and more and mores information
resources are available through the network, it becomes less and less possible to define the library by its
buildings!
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