Sabina Robertson and Shirley Sullivan - The rediscovered agents of change: librarians working with academics to close the information gap

The rediscovered agents of change: librarians working with academics to close the information gap

Sabina Robertson and Shirley Sullivan

Part 1 by Shirley Sullivan

Introduction

There has been a merger of the Library with IT and multimedia education at the University of Melbourne, which has strengthened the already existing collaboration across these units. This paper, and the complementary paper by Sabina Robertson, will be discussing information provision to our customers in the light of this newly emerging entity.

Hybrid Library

A fundamental measure of the quality of an academic library is the richness of the scholarly resources that it makes available to its students and academic staff, regardless of format. The physical library will remain important as a locus for research, teaching and learning. It will continue to house both print and electronic resources, but also function increasingly as a conduit for content, i.e., a logical gateway to its own services and those of other libraries and information providers. The Information Division must continue to use technology to enhance information services for students and academic staff, to take advantage of new information formats, to support new instructional methodologies, and to improve access to all forms of information. In other words, provide a managed information environment, which meets user needs in an integrated and helpful way.

There are at least 5 issues involved in providing this service: content, co-operation, gateways, authentication, and statistics.

Content

Close liaison between the Library and academic departments should ensure that collection and access decisions are based on the academic programmes of the University. With the costs of information resources as they are, we cannot afford any that don't "pull their weight" - we must ensure that we are providing the best resources and services we possibly can within our financial constraints.

We use flyers, demonstrations, web page announcements and seminars to alert (and remind) academic staff and students about our resources. An information librarian co-ordinates our monthly database alerts to showcase new or neglected products. These are prepared by either the publisher or vendor of the product or by a Library staff member conversant with the database. We also ensure that new products entering the market are given a trial. Even though money is tight, and no new titles can be purchased without a corresponding cancellation, we need to make academic staff aware of their existence, so that they can compare the new contender against existing titles. This way we can be sure we are getting the most appropriate resources to meet the needs of the research and teaching staff.

To make decisions as easy as possible we provide evaluation forms on the web, linked to the URL and details of the product being trialed or promoted. There are two Library staff members keeping the web page for these activities up to date and relevant.

Cooperation

Librarians have always had some sort of teaching role in the University, though understated, but in the digital environment this role is becoming increasingly overt and important as we teach students information literacy skills (in the broadest sense) using interactive instructional programmes as well as more traditional means. This increasingly involves forging strategic alliances among academics, Library staff, IT staff and multimedia education staff so that the new Information Division becomes an integral part of teaching, learning and research activities. The Information Division has provided us with a collaborative framework for supporting innovation and creativity in our tackling of emerging technology and successful service delivery issues.

The Percy Baxter Collaborative Learning Centre, opened this year, is an example of this approach. Located in one of the larger Library sites, it is headed up by a former member of ITS. The Centre will form a key element in the Division, using web-based and other multimedia modules to provide students and academic staff with the skills to exploit the new information environment. Together, we teach students how to identify, use and evaluate information, regardless of format.

Gateways

One important way academic libraries add value to the research, learning and teaching activities in our universities is to provide quality controlled subject based gateways for academic staff and students. A subject gateway is a single, focal point on the web for providing access to information of all kinds for that discipline, including print as well as electronic resources. It provides access to Internet information such as electronic publications (including serials and monographs), databases, research projects world-wide, data sources, software, online teaching modules, conferences, teaching departments, research institutes, etc. It may also provide links to library catalogues and document delivery services, both commercial and library collection based.

As researchers rely increasingly on electronic resources, the role of librarians as highly skilled guides to the best available information is only likely to expand. Information needs to be organised and made readily available. Librarians are good at that.

Considerable Library effort is used to provide access through subject based gateways to a selection of resources which meet quality criteria. The gateways guide our customers quickly and effectively to information that is usable, relevant, authoritative and verifiable. Their value lies in the fact that they are selective and quality controlled. They have formal selection criteria and collection development policies, and effort is expended in ensuring regular content updates, link checking, etc. In other words, the gateways are managed in much the same way as the physical collections. In fact, in the digital environment, the selection role is even more critical than it is in the print world. The resources are also subject to a weeding policy much more stringent than that applying to physical resources. Like physical items, they are organised and described in a standard fashion, using standard metadata formats, formal classification schemes and controlled vocabularies and subject structures to ensure ease of use. Browsing access to the resources via a subject structure is an important feature in these gateways. Generally, most people prefer the search option when looking for specific information and the browse option when looking for a wider range of information.

Librarians understand customers' needs and can make informed judgments about the quality of Internet sites. We are, therefore, able to filter the vast amount of information on the web so that only the relevant and authoritative information is provided on these gateway sites. Many of our students are ill equipped to assess the quality of the information resources they retrieve through their own efforts, and academic staff and students are equally short of the time necessary to search for and evaluate information resources. This creates some degree of conflict, as we try to save the time (and sanity) of the teaching staff by providing evaluated resources on our gateways yet also try not to neglect an important teaching area ourselves: teaching students to asses the quality of the resources they find on the web.

Lesley Huxley, in an article in Cultivate Interactive, July 2000, (http://www.cultivate-int.org/) reports on the results of a number of European surveys dating back to 1996. These show that users are more at ease with finding their way around in gateways and using the services they have to offer than is the case with the "rest" of the Internet. Users were found to appreciate quality resources: the evaluation and categorisation of resources given by the subject gateways are of great importance to them.

Agrigate (http://www.agrigate.edu.au/) is an Australian agricultural research gateway for quality agricultural sites, principally Australian, but also overseas sites. It was one of the first Australian Internet gateways. Melbourne is the lead institution in a partnership between the libraries of the universities of Adelaide, Melbourne and Queensland and CSIRO. Funding comes from the institutions and from Australian Research Council grants. Library staff and agricultural researchers select resources, using publicly available criteria. These resources are enriched with metadata and are reviewed at regular intervals to ensure their ongoing quality and currency.

Buddy

Buddy is a form of broad gateway in that it is the interface to all our electronic resources, designed in an effort to provide convenient, reliable access to required information resources from the desktop. The resources are selected to meet the learning, teaching and research needs of the staff and students in particular subjects or areas, and evaluated against the usual set of criteria. They include our expensive commercial electronic databases as well as high quality, freely available Internet resources. They are listed both alphabetically by title and also under subject headings related to the faculty structures we support. It is also possible to search for resources by keyword and format. Liaison/branch librarians, called Buddy profilers, maintain the pages, keeping them up to date, and building the Library's virtual collection by adding descriptors and linking the titles to relevant subject disciplines.

To assist information librarians in choosing appropriate web sites for Buddy I have a web site on the Library's Intranet where I alert Library staff to free web sites/resources of potential relevance to their academic staff and students. These I glean from all sorts of places, like newsletters, the Scout Report, etc, and conference papers. An online request form has been developed by information and collection management staff in consultation with the Buddy programmer and me so that the information contained becomes the basis of the Buddy record. This speeds up the processes of making the resources available on the interface for our customers.

The use of Buddy as the connection to electronic resources ensures that our customers don't get frustrated using outdated URLs, for example. This ties in with the need for our users to authenticate themselves in order to gain access to our commercial databases.

Authorisation and authentication

Our goal in user authentication and authorisation is to let our own staff and students access information from anywhere at anytime without making the process too difficult for the Library, the information provider or, most importantly, our customers, while complying with the legal requirement of the publisher that the resource is secured against unauthorised access. Some of our most important (and expensive) databases are only available via IP recognition. This denies access to staff and students using a commercial ISP so, after consultation with ITS staff, the Library has purchased a licence for EZProxy. EZProxy (http://www.usefulutilities.com/ezproxy/) is an easy to set up and easy to maintain software tool for providing our staff and students with remote access to web-based licensed databases. Our Buddy programmer has channelled these databases through our EZProxy server to enable access from off the IP range, while still ensuring that users must authenticate themselves. This has been a "great leap forward" in access provision to our customers. While this will lead to some additional telecommunications charges for the Library, it should not be an impossible burden, as the Library is by no means one of the heaviest users of the Internet on campus.

Statistics

Another useful aspect of using Buddy as the access point to all our electronic resources is the ability to retrieve usage statistics. These are not super sophisticated, being basically only hit counters, but they do indicate level of popularity, and value for money. The Buddy Group is currently working on provision of more sophisticated statistics.

It has been interesting to keep an eye on the top 15 or so databases each month. Despite the supposed penchant of undergraduates for full text databases, the research abstracting and indexing tools are up there in the heavily used categories, over a broad range of disciplines. Web of Science usage statistics show a steady movement up the ladder from number 14 or so when we first acquired the database to number 5 in the top ranking titles at the last viewing. The figures from ISI show usage of this database doubled in the first 9 months of access.

Promotion of the Library

Academic libraries are now required to demonstrate our value to our institutions, particularly in an atmosphere where even quite senior university staff appear to believe that "everything is free on the web". We need to be more articulate and draw attention to the ways we do indeed add value to our institutions. One means we are using to counter this erroneous impression and demonstrate our value is to take advantage of the opportunities offered by a number of our vendors to place our logo or some identifying text on the webpage our staff and students reach upon authentication. We have added our logo or text to many of our databases and are continuing to negotiate with other vendors to do the same thing with their databases.

We are working towards integrating Buddy resources into our webpac in order to provide a one-stop shop for our customers for all our resources, whatever the format. An added benefit to putting our electronic resources into our webpac may prove to be knowledge on the part of our customers that we are providing these resources, as they are used to viewing the catalogue as a guide to the resources we provide for them.

Conclusion

What I hope I have achieved in this paper to give a brief outline of the activities involved in providing our information librarians with the infrastructure on which they can build their publicity and teaching roles. Jointly all the teams within the Division work together to provide our customers with resources they need and the tools they require to use them effectively.

Part 2 by Sabina Robertson

Introduction

Working in a university environment is exciting and stimulating. No, I am not taking any artificial stimulants. Information technology has changed the patterns of scholarly communication - from print to electronic, provided desktop access to a rich resource of abstracting databases, electronic journal and book sources, and web access to a wealth of state, national and international government agencies' documents and information.

Mediated free access to information at time and point of need is embraced wholeheartedly by academics and students. These changes in scholarly communication and the use made of the web is transforming the way in which students retrieve their information and academics deliver their subjects. The shift is challenging many librarians' long held beliefs and notions that their academics and students rely on and need information professionals to access and retrieve required information. Librarians are no longer the sole source of information access.

While some librarians are wary of these changes, and are reluctant to sever ties with some of the traditional library based services, others see information technology as a source for developing new services and links with academics and students. For example, networked and web based databases make it easier for academic librarians to provide faculty based services. Working beyond the library walls encourages librarians to establish personal links with faculty staff. This fosters new working relationships.

Through scanning the literature, it is clear that the academic sector is operating in a volatile environment. At one time the universities may have seemed immune to changes that were taking place in the corporate and government sectors. However, local, national and international forces are contributing to massive organisational shifts in universities. Factors contributing to such changes are: federal government funding, introduction of fee paying students, local and international, establishment of international university consortia, multinational corporations entering the higher education market, and the pervasive attraction of the Internet.

Libraries are just one of many university departments undergoing profound changes in organisational structures, service and resource delivery. Senior administrators see the synergies of merging library and IT departments as a way, not only of reducing costs, but also of providing a coherent infrastructure support to the university community. These mergers have enjoyed a great deal of press coverage. In the United States, for example, consortia of librarians and IT professionals have formed (Tompkins, Perry, & Lippincott, 1998). While the reported dialogues among the different professional groups reveal a range of views and priorities, there is an underlying commitment to provide strong network infrastructure, resource delivery and information support to their academic communities. Evidence of such commitment is the development of the following types of consortia and collaborative partnerships:

As it is difficult to give a comprehensive overview of overseas and national trends, I will provide examples of the different types of collaborative partnerships that are emerging.

The UK experience

In the UK many academic libraries are working on collaborative projects with IT services and academic departments. An example of IT professionals and library staff working on collaborative projects is the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib). The programme, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK Higher Education Funding Council, is responsible for several major developments.

Another major development in the UK is the concept of a hybrid library, which has excited the interest of several academic consortia. From scanning the briefs it is clear that each of the projects had quite different aims and purposes for developing a hybrid library that would bring together a range of technologies and sources in the context of a working library.

Rusbridge, the Programme Director, Electronic Libraries Programme, provides a detailed analysis of these projects and the academic institutions' interpretation of a hybrid library (Rusbridge, 1998). The project leaders, name of project and web addresses are as follows:

One of the key issues to emerge from the reports was the importance of library and IT staff in supporting not only the creation of a digital library, but providing the "human face" to the digital service. In Sloan's assessment:

Another development funded by JISC is the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) (JISC, 1999). In the UK, there are several major networks serving the needs of higher education, schools, public and health network libraries, and museums, archives and galleries. Key objectives of the DNER are to co-ordinate access to electronic resources across all areas so that people, at all stages of learning, have access to quality assured information sources on the Internet and to stimulate use of high quality digital resources within the academic community (JISC, 1999).

The United States experience

In the United States advances in information technology are also providing the impetus for change in services and resource delivery. The University of Iowa is an example of an academic institution offering new learning and teaching environments for academics and students and, as a result, changing the academic-librarian dynamic. The opening of an Information Arcade was a catalyst in transforming delivery and design of curricula. Library staff working in the Information Arcade discovered that there was a need to provide a reliable, institutionally supported Web server that would allow electronic publishing of academically oriented projects. In 1998, the Arcade staff launched "Bailiwick" which according to Hughes is

Another initiative of University of Iowa is the "Teaching With Innovative Style and Technology" (TWIST) project. The program is designed to train librarians and academics in technology and assist those who wish to incorporate new technologies and information resources into their programs (Hughes et al., 1999, p.407). An outcome of the project has been role change for librarians. Formerly their role, as seen by the academics, was peripheral, being confined to instruction on the use of the library catalogue and providing orientation tours. The intensity of the TWIST collaboration has demonstrated the skills and knowledge that librarians bring to the process of developing web-based subject programs. Hughes states that:

Australian experience

In Australia, merging of library and IT departments still creates a great deal of interest. The impetus, as with our UK and US counterparts, is for the library to take a proactive role in forming collaborative partnerships with academics. Queensland University of Technology, University of Queensland and Monash University are examples of libraries providing innovative services and exploiting web based technology to better serve the information needs of their communities. The development of cyberlibraries and portals, and delivery of web based research skills tutorials, are demonstrations of the use of technology to reach student and academic communities at their point and time of need. As with our overseas colleagues, Australian academic librarians are moving into areas that may have previously been regarded as the domain of IT and web specialists. Such change brings tension, not only from within our profession but also in the IT sphere.

University of Melbourne experience

The University of Melbourne is an example of a university undergoing tremendous change. The Vice Chancellor sees the rapid changes in technology and development of national and international academic consortia as opportunities for innovative teaching and research programs. The ambitious Strategic Plan Perspective 2000 illustrates the Vice Chancellor's commitment to a "superb campus based institution" (University of Melbourne, 2000, p.40). Strategies to support such a vision include:

Positioning the Library to meet the Agenda

Catalysts for changing the Library's traditional delivery of services and resources were the empowering and transforming features of information technology, the Vice Chancellor's determination and the commitment of the Vice Principal (Information) to meet the goals set in the Melbourne Agenda.

The Library is now a part of a large Information Division which includes Information Technology Services (ITS), Multimedia Education Unit (MEU), the Library and Audio Visual Services. The new structure is designed to "respond flexibly to service delivery and to be at the forefront of emerging technologies". The Information Division's organisational structure, released in mid 2000, has six major program areas: IT Strategies and Developments, Information Resources Access, Teaching, Learning & Research Support, Corporate Information Systems & IT Infrastructure, Business Management Unit and Client Services.

New services

The focus of the Teaching, Learning and Research Department is to provide services to academic departments and their students to support courseware production, training and development, collaborative learning and research. Staff working in the new team will be drawn from the Library, ITS and MEU. Responsibilities of the team will include:

Even before the new structure is in place, Information Division staff are already involved in a number of collaborative ventures which are transforming the delivery of services and resources and, as a result, changing the role, and the academics' perception, of librarians.

Percy Baxter Collaborative Learning Centre

The Percy Baxter Collaborative Learning Centre (The Centre), an example of an Information Commons, opened in May 2000. It provides a whole range of learning spaces from fifty six individual PC or Macintosh workstations fitted out with a range of Microsoft Office and other software, including Internet access, through to a room for collaborative project work and two training rooms. In addition to the basic suite of software, some workstations have QuickTime Pro, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, scanners, zip drives and CD burners. The training rooms have created new opportunities for the Information Division staff to become involved in a range of training programs for students and academic staff. The following uses made of the Centre and training rooms indicate the future possibilities of changes in the working relationship between academics and Information Division staff:

Influenced by developments in services offered by one of our Universitas 21 partners, Toronto University, and trends in other overseas university libraries, the lnformation Division commenced planning for the Percy Baxter Collaborative Learning Centre, Baillieu Library, in late 1999. The project signalled to the University that the Information Division was serious about providing a major collaborative learning space for academics and students. The project brought together librarians, IT professionals, and multimedia professionals to work out the design and purpose of the Centre. The experience of working with colleagues from formerly separate areas was enlightening. As observed by several authors, librarians and IT professionals have quite different perspectives. (Bernbom, Lippincott, & Eaton, 1999; Biddiscombe, 1999; Lippincott, 1998; Mulvaney, 1997; Tompkins et al., 1998). The goodwill, high expectations of the new Centre, and perhaps the tight timeline, ensured that any fundamental differences in service delivery perspectives did not derail the process.

The appointment of permanent staff, two from Information Technology Services and one from the Library, further illustrates the Division's commitment to blending staff skills, expertise and knowledge from previously discrete work areas into cohesive work teams.

The Centre has already attracted a large group of devotees. It is busy, vibrant, and an attractive place for students and academics to develop their skills in a whole range of software applications for their research projects or assignments. The Centre is the first of several sites to be developed on the Parkville campus.

Collaborative Multimedia Projects: Researching History & the Postgraduate Library

In response to the Vice Chancellor's vision for faculties to develop multimedia learning programs, more academic staff are now involved in developing web-based courses. There is ongoing discussion as to how the courses cater for different learning styles and encourage students to develop information literacy skills. While the involvement of librarians in several multimedia projects is a welcome sign, it has not yet reached a critical mass. It is the Division's expectation that, by the end of 2001, it will become an accepted practice that librarians across all discipline areas will be involved in collaborative partnerships with academics, as is the experience at the University of Iowa (Hughes et al., 1999).

Two current examples of Library staff working in partnership with academics in developing web-based courses are the Researching History project and The Postgraduate Library.

The Researching History project has been an invaluable learning and transforming experience for the project team. Working in a different context, the academics witnessed the skills and knowledge that the History Subject Liaison Librarian brought to the project. The librarian was working outside the traditional library environment and worked in partnership with the academics and multimedia specialists in developing curriculum tools for a subject-based online learning package.

Researching History (http://www5.meu.unimelb.edu.au/research_history/sitemap.htm) is currently being trialled in 1st year subject, Towards 21st Century, with an enrollment of one hundred and forty students. The web-based module is designed to teach students how to develop a bibliography for a history research essay. The five modules in the tutorial cover: planning a search, identifying sources, locating material, evaluating material and documenting sources. Within each module there are interactive exercises which test the student's skills. On completion of the tutorial students will have gained a thorough understanding of the research process and worked towards developing a bibliography for their research essay.

The Postgraduate Library is a collaborative venture with the Information Division, the Department of Criminology, the Economics and Commerce Faculty and the School of Graduate Studies. Unlike the Researching History project, it is not part of an assessable subject. The Project brief was based on experiences of a senior academic working with postgraduates undertaking research in the Department of Criminology, and the Subject Liaison Librarians' and Research Consultant's experiences in delivering information literacy classes to postgraduate students. In the Project brief the senior lecturer wrote:

The site is a subject web based pathway for postgraduate students undertaking research in the disciplines of Criminology and Economics and Commerce. Features of The Postgraduate Library include:

Working on the Project was stimulating and at times frustrating, but the experience reinforced the importance of diversity of team membership. Each professional brought skills, strengths and different perspectives that could not be matched if the team were composed solely of librarians.

Librarians working in Faculty: another way of linking with academics

My appointment to the position of Research Consultant at the School of Graduate Studies (The School) was initially a pilot project. The position was created in response to the need for the Information Division to target its services and resources to the postgraduate and research communities.

Working in the School has given me the opportunity to examine the information needs and resource issues for postgraduate students and made me aware of technological barriers that impede a postgraduate student's seamless access to networked information, and the need for library staff to examine issues from a postgraduate perspective. Success of library services is dependent on collaboration among library, IT staff and academics. Such a revelation, though, is not new. The literature over the past several years confirms my experience (Herrington, 1998; Sloan, 1998; Walton, Day, & Edwards, 1996).

From the School's perspective, the Dean and senior mangers now see librarians as invaluable partners in supporting postgraduate students and supervisors with their research. This changed view would not have occurred without the Information Division changing its direction in delivery of services.

Based on the success of the pilot placement at the School, the Information Division has allocated funding for placing librarians part time in the Queensberry Street site, which houses Criminology, Social Work, Public Policy and Early Childhood Development. The funding also created opportunities for librarians in the Medical Sciences, Dentistry and Health Sciences Faculty to provide a co-ordinated information literacy program for postgraduates and a targeted program to visit academics on campus and in teaching hospitals.

Conclusion

Reading the literature, it seems to me that the libraries that are placing themselves strategically to meet the challenges and opportunities will not only survive but also flourish. While some library professionals may have difficulty in seeing the traditional library structures disappear and in working with new groups of colleagues from seemingly unrelated work areas, it is imperative that librarians seize new opportunities.

Working in collaborative teams with academics, IT staff and multimedia specialists is an option for many librarians. It makes sense. Given that academics are publishing course material on the web, are involved in building interactive web based modules, and are looking at different ways of presenting information, it seems that librarians need to adopt a flexible attitude as to how best they can support their academic colleagues.

Critically examining current services, and discarding those that are no longer relevant, is a difficult but necessary process. However, the sophistication of information networks has changed the way in which people use libraries.

In the paper I have provided many examples of libraries adapting to change. Many of the services are experimental. New partnerships have formed and are transforming working relationships. It is exciting times for librarians who act strategically and who work collaboratively with academic colleagues.

References

Bernbom, G., Lippincott, J., & Eaton, F. (1999). Working together: new collaborations among information professionals. CAUSE/EFFECT Journal, 22(2), 1999 Retrieved August 12, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cem9922.html.

Biddiscombe, R. (1999). Managing the new learning agenda in a converged service environment. Paper presented at the 1999 IATUL Conference: the Future of Libraries in Human Communication 17th May - 21st May, 1999, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece. Retrieved August 12, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://educate.lib.chalmers.se/IATUL/proceedcontents/cvol9.html

Herrington, V. J. (1998). Way beyond BI: a look to the future. The Journal of Academic Librarianship(September), 381 - 386.

Hughes, C. A., Soderdahl, P., & Zimmerman, K. (1999). Creating academic web space for academic staff: research and teaching initiatives at the University of Iowa Libraries. Paper presented at the Information online & on disc 99: Strategies for the next millennium. Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian Information Online & On Disc Conference and Exhibition, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre,19 - 21 January 1999, Sydney.

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Mulvaney, T. K. (1997). The TAPin electronic libraries project an experience at the University of Birmingham. Paper presented at the New services, roles and partnerships for the on-line learning environment. 2nd International Symposium on Networked Learner Support, 23 - 24 June 1997, Sheffield, England. Retrieved August 20, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://netways.shef.ac.uk/rbase/papers/mulvaney.htm

Sloan, B. (1998). Service perspectives for the digital library remote reference services. Library Trends, 47(1), 117 - 154.

Tait, D. (1999). Strategic/Project Grants 1999 Full Application: The Virtual Postgraduate Library: An Internet-based and Interactive Research Site (Grant Application ). Melbourne: University of Melbourne.

Tompkins, P., Perry, S., & Lippincott, J. K. (1998). New learning communities - collaboration, networking, and information literacy. Information Technology & Libraries, 17(2), 100 -106.

University of Melbourne. (2000). Strategic Plan Perspective 2000. Melbourne: University of Melbourne.

Walton, G., Day, J., & Edwards, C. (1996). Role changes for the academic librarian to support effectively the networked learner: implications of the IMPEL Project. Education for Information, 14, 343 - 350.