Over the next two years, Cornell University Library (CUL) will position itself for the introductory decade of the 21st century. In an age characterized by burgeoning digital technology, CUL will provide its faculty, students, and staff with expanded access to an increasingly rich array of electronic information resources. The result will be a superior library service offering a knowledge base suited to supporting the mission of a world-class university. To achieve this goal, the library has designed an ambitious strategic plan.
Cornell University Library Goals
| We will enhance our learning and research environment by harnessing the power of new electronic resources for knowledge discovery and archiving, building on our outstanding traditional collections. |
In the six months since July 2000, CUL has significantly increased access to electronic materials, especially to electronic journals and books. The 1,100 journals from Elsevier and the 600 journals from Kluwer have been added, as well as journals from Wiley and IEEE. A further 1,000 historical full text journals are now available with our recent acquisition of the Bell and Howell American Periodicals Series Online, and we have now begun a subscription to all of the additional journals available through Project Muse. Approximately 1,000 e-books have been purchased from netLibrary, and we now have access to ca. 5,000 science monographs online from ITKnowledge. We expect records for most of these, along with records for the ca. 96,000 items from Early English Books Online, to be loaded into the catalog in the near future.
As one example of selection methods, Mann Library selectors have determined journals needed to support the University's genomics initiative, and have made those priorities for electronic access.
The Law Library has developed a form, setting out evaluation criteria for print and electronic subscriptions in order to fulfill its goal of achievinge cost savings by identifying print titles that can be cancelled, supplemented, or replaced by electronic resources.
ILR librarians continually consult with faculty, graduate students, practitioners in the field, colleagues (for example, members of the Committee of Industrial Relations Librarians), and publishers to maintain awareness of new electronic resources appropriate for addition to our collection.
Don Schnedeker compiled a review of database access 1998/99 in peer academic business libraries
and distributed a survey to assess 1999/00 database access in academic business libraries.
This has been accomplished. In the 2000/01 materials budget, $335,000 was reallocated into the database line. A further $165,000 will be reallocated in 2001/02--for a total reallocation of $500,000.
In addition, CTS reallocated staff resources (specifically the jobs of Ed Zieba and Joel Govostes) to expand the ability to process electronic resources.
26% of Catherwood Library's materials budget is currently spent on electronic resources; we anticipate this percentage will continue to rise in the future as new electronic resources emerge and/or as materials formerly available only in print evolve into electronic formats. As continuing subscriptions come up for renewal, we constantly evaluate the evolution of suitable formats and actively seek electronic resources wherever feasible.
A3. Collaborate with consortia, such as the North East Regional Library Consortium (NERL), to make possible joint licensing agreements for cost containment and to achieve economies of scale.
Several new license agreements were set up through NERL during the past six months, including the Kluwer journals; CIS Congressional Index; the Congressional Staff, Federal Staff and Judicial Staff directories; and an advanced version of Books in Print. CUL has purchased netLibrary materials through a consortium with Columbia, Dartmouth and Middlebury. There are also encouraging prospects that NYLINK will provide CUL with opportunities for consortial purchases in the near future. CUL continues to participate in licensing agreements through the Pi2 (Partners in Information and Innovation) consortium.
The Law Library has joined NELLCO, a regional consortium of large research law libraries [www.nellco.org] and is using it for several joint subscriptions, meetings, and networking.
CUL negotiated an agreement with Bell and Howell that allows access to Cornell image files in exchange for a valued Bell and Howell networked resource, resulting in great cost savings to the Library and increased electronic resources for its patrons.
A4. Rank in the top ten of ARL libraries by 2002 in total dollars expended on electronic materials.
We are hopeful that the $500,000 reallocation (IA2 above) will place us in the top ten ARL libraries for expenditures on electronic materials.
At Catherwood Library, there is an ongoing cooperative effort between the Collection Development Librarian and Reference staff to review electronic resources and select those most appropriate for our needs; discussion takes place among department/unit heads when major purchases are under consideration.
Don Schnedeker authored a forthcoming article in the Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship: "Benchmarking database access in academic business libraries."
A4b. Review our methods for gathering information and reporting on the use of electronic materials; establish that these methods are consistent with those of peer institutions.
Christian Boissonnas has begun to evaluate CUL's need with regard to output measures, including particularly, measures of the use of electronic information. Christian is representing Cornell in the Association of Research Libraries e-Metrics project. Goal of this project is to determine how to develop statistics and performance measures that address the delivery of networked information resources and services.
Suzanne Cohen and Philip Davis authored a forthcoming article in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science: "The Effect of the Web on Undergraduate Citation Behavior 1996-1999."
D-LIT successfully negotiated a gift from Sun Microsystems, increasing digital library storage and computing capacity by nearly ten-fold.
An E-Book Working Group has been formed, to monitor, experiment with and make recommendations on providing access to the rapidly developing genre of e-books.
CUGIR team members at Mann have made regular presentations at the New York State GIS Conference and the Northeast Arc/Info Users Group meetings.
The Law Library has created several digital products, including the IALL (International Association of Law Libraries) Web site, the ASIL (American Society of International Law) newsletter, the ILO (International Labor Organization), ICJ (International Court of Justice), and PCA (Permanent Court of Arbitration) mirror sites; the Foreign Law on the Internet Guide; and the InSITE database of selected law-related Web sites. The Law Library Web site [www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/] is used for teaching students and helping faculty research.
The Law Library has created several Web sites for faculty projects, e.g., the Feminism Web site for Prof. Fineman [www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/feminism], and the Death Penalty Web site [www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/newdeath].
The Catherwood Library Web site is home to an Electronic Archive of materials which encompass aspects of the employer-employee relationship. Access to key government documents, public policy position papers, and statistics is offered free of charge [http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/e_archive/default.html?page=home].
Catherwood Library Reference staff have created Web-based information on specific topics and for Outreach programs.
In cooperation with the Cornell Physics Department, The Physical Sciences Library provided the American Physical Society with early runs of Physical Review to be digitized for their Physical Review OnLine Archive (PROLA).
A more complete and technologically stable access to Cornell's Making of America digital collection has been developed, along with enhanced search capabilities. As a result, worldwide use of this collection has grown dramatically.
The Fantastic in Art and Fiction was chosen as a Yahoo! Pick of the Week (6/26/00) and the resulting exposure increased its visibility. The site features over 300 ghoulish illustrations and explores the roles of angels, demons, monsters, witches, and other gruesome ephemera in classical art and literature [http://rmc2.library.cornell.edu/fantastic/].
The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA), a representative electronic collection of agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and middle to late twentieth century, was brought up on-line through the cooperation of staff in D-LIT and Mann Library [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/chla/].
The Utopia database, containing images of European Renaissance art, was moved to a Luna Insight software platform, dramatically enhancing its accessibility and usability [http://insight.library.cornell.edu/insightbrowser2/launcher.asp].
RMC and CIDC are participants in the Global Performing Arts Consortium (GloPAC) which is committed to creating interactive, multimedia and multilingual tools for the exploration of the world's performing arts. In cooperation with Professor Karen Brazell, curator Ann Ferguson has been working on the development of a global performing arts database which includes images, sound and video clips with detailed descriptions. She and Professor Brazell traveled to Russia to identify Russian performing arts archives for inclusion in GloPAC. Ann has also supervised the digitization and description of items from the Bernard F. Burgunder Collection of George Bernard Shaw and other theatre material in the Rare Books Collection into the prototype database.
In collaboration with Sallah Hassan, Professor of Africana Studies, and the Africana Research Center, CIDC has provided the technical infrastructure and staffing to bring up the Contemporary African Artists Database, designed to document and disseminate contemporary African art, as well as promote networking between African artists and art institutions. The bio-bibliographic information is stored on a Cornell University Library Macintosh server; artists' images are stored on a Cornell Institute for Digital Collections image server [http://rmc2.library.cornell.edu/contemporaryafricanart/options.htm].
B2. Convert materials at Cornell and elsewhere to digital form.
CUL has received a three-year "Saving America's Treasures" grant to convert to digital form (and conserve) ca. 10,000 abolitionist pamphlets.
The Music Library has created 1,340 digital files from 206 bibliographic titles for their reserve listening facilities.
The Library's January 5, 2001 report to the Digital Library Federation provides, for the first time, a comprehensive, Library-wide overview of its digital collections and activities [http://www.library.cornell.edu/staffweb/diglibfedrpt.html]. This will be updated every six months for CUL's semi-annual report to the Federation.
B2b. Define criteria to identify Cornell collections suitable for digital conversion and inventory collections that meet those criteria.
Recent conservation study of the Catherwood Library Rare Book Collection by the Department of Preservation & Conservation identified a substantial number of items in this collection that should be digitized as well as physically duplicated through microfilming or photocopying. The Kheel Center, where the collection is housed, is considering offering this material for digitizing with due consideration given to copyright.
B2c. Prioritize materials for conversion.
B3. Determine the relative priorities of acquiring digital resources and converting traditional materials to digital form.
B4. Work with faculty and publishers to become a provider of choice for electronic publication in specific academic areas (e.g., Project Euclid, which will deliver economical access to the journals of small and independent mathematics publishers) to ensure better access at lower cost.
Through its Electronic Archive, Catherwood Library selects specialized materials for digital format, preservation, and making available materials that would not otherwise be widely available. Examples include: Glass Ceiling Commission report, US Department of Labor's "Report on the Youth Labor Force 2000," and "A Nation of Opportunity: Building America's 21st Century Workforce." The Catherwood Library is developing and producing specialized web-based guides such as Deb Joseph's "Guide to E-Commerce" [http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/reference/guides/ecommerce/].
The Physical Sciences Library has worked with the American Physical Society to provide a mirror site of their journals and to provide access to APS journals to the Cornell community through that site.
Project Euclid is Cornell's principle electronic publishing initiative. Its mission is to advance affordable scholarly communication in the field of theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. The end result should be the creation of a vibrant online information community that is based on a healthy balance of commercial enterprises, scholarly societies, and independent publishers. Project Euclid's goal is to help independent publishers in making the transition to the online environment in a way that will help them stay competitive with the large commercial journals. Euclid will comply with the Open Archive Initiative. This cooperative venture between the Cornell University Library and Duke University Press is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [http://euclid.library.cornell.edu/project/].
A proposal seeking funding for collaborative digital projects between CUL and the Cornell University Press was submitted in the fall. These projects would seek to digitize the Press' backlist, collaborate in an e-journal publishing venture, publish new monograph offerings concurrently in paper and electronic form, develop resource portals for certain subject areas as well as a multi-media electronic version of a History of New York State textbook, and establish a grey literature portal and archive for scholarly material produced at Cornell.
D-LIT staff is participating in the creation of CTHEORY Multimedia, a new media site for electronic art projects and new media theory, in collaboration with Timothy Murray, Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video at Cornell.
B5. Implement methods to maintain and ensure access to digital collections for the long term.
CUL has received an IMLS grant to fund a plan for maintaining the Library's substantial digital image collections for the long term. A committee has been created to write guidelines for CUL on the preservation of digital materials.
CUL submitted a proposal and received funding from the Mellon Foundation for a digital preservation planning project for electronic journals in agriculture (Project Harvest).
The Kheel Center is overseeing appraisal of the School Industrial and Labor Relations records and plans to update the records retention schedule.
RMC hired Nancy McGovern, a highly qualified archival consultant who had done extensive work as an electronic records manager, to compile a report on electronic student records systems. During the summer and fall of 2000, she visited Cornell for an extended period, interviewing relevant staff in the Cornell University Archives, the Registrar's Office, and Cornell Information Technologies. Her report provides generalizable recommendations, addresses records management and archival considerations, provides pros and cons for preservation options, and identifies potential research issues for student records. The report is intended to serve as a base and provide a context for Cornell and other universities to consider their electronic student records systems and to establish an appropriate preservation strategy.
B5b. Collaborate with CIT and other partners on strategies to create and manage repositories with long-term integrity.
The Law Library is collaborating with HeinOnline [heinonline.org] and CIT to convert all historical law reviews, and produce both page images, for authenticity, and the OCR full text [http://heinonline.org/HeinContent/About.html].
The Catherwood Library is working through ILR Technology Services toward this end.
CUL continues to participate in planning discussions with CIT regarding this issue.
Project Euclid, the proposed CUL/CUP projects, and the CTHEORY Multimedia project are all efforts at transforming the nature of scholarly communication, often in collaboration with scholars, by harnessing the ever changing technological landscape to facilitate scholarly exchange of information.
In the School of Industrial &Labor Relations, this is facilitated through the Catherwood Library's faculty liaison program. Department heads, institute directors, and other key individuals in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations receive a visit from someone at the Catherwood Library once each semester to gather information about fothcoming initiatives and to review issues such as changing intellectual property rights in the electronic environment.
CUL's Professional Development Committee hosted an open forum with live teleconferencing on the issue of UCITA legislation.
The CTHEORY Multimedia agreement includes a clause on copyright and as a collaborative effort that combines the complementary strengths of its partners, it is a model of cost-containment in an e-journal publishing venture.
C3. Partner with faculty to create alternative models of scholarly communication so that their involvement can positively shape the new system for the benefit of both libraries and scholars.
The Law Library held a Faculty Luncheon in December 2000 on "Electronic Publication of Legal Scholarship," to inform faculty of the Social Science Research Network/Legal Scholarship Network (SSRN/LSA)working papers series [http://www.ssrn.com/lsn/index.html], as well as the Legal Electronic Document Archive (LEDA) initiative at Cornell's Legal Information Institute. The Law Library will soon offer a new service to faculty, and coordinate law faculty contributions, to help them disseminate their scholarship both on LSA and LEDA. The Law Library will create metadata for the abstracts and full-texts of the articles.
CTHEORY Multimedia explicitly partners with a member of the Cornell Faculty; Project Euclid called on Cornell editors of journals in mathematics to participate in a focus group early on in its planning phase, and continues to seek the advice of certain math faculty (e.g., Keith Dennis); the proposed CUL/CUP projects will call on certain Cornell faculty to carry out its various components.
C4. Develop and implement a program for the Library to serve as the online repository for gray literature produced by the Cornell faculty.
One of the CUL/CUP projects (e-Cayuga) centers on digitizing scholarly non-book literature produced at Cornell.
C5. Develop and implement a pilot project for the Library to capture and archive the informal or unpublished exchange of information in digital form on specified subjects.
The Catherwood Library works with faculty and colleagues to identify materials suitable for inclusion in its Electronic Archive [http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/e_archive/default.html?page=home]. The New York City Office of Collective Bargaining Agreements are now available in the Electronic Archive [http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/e_archive/nysgov_reports/default.html?page=nyc_ocb%2Fnyc_ocb].
The Web guides on the Catherwood Library Web site are examples of originally created subject-specific resources.
CUL staff have reviewed and contributed their expert advice on Digital Library Federation licensing agreements.
CIDC's Peter Hirtle has been designated as CUL's Intellectual Property Rights Officer.
D2. Create professional development programs to inform staff about copyright issues; ensure that knowledge of intellectual property rights is shared within CUL.
The Professional Development Committee hosted a satellite teleconference on UCITA. Scott Wicks and Ed Zieba attended the ARL Advanced Licensing workshop. Jeff Piestrak participated in the ALA online copyright workshop.
D3. Obtain information from peer institutions about their efforts to provide information on intellectual property issues to their communities.
D4. Encourage staff to negotiate with copyright owners.
D4b. Work with copyright owners to obtain permission to digitize needed information currently covered by copyright.
The Kheel Center is in the process of mounting a thumbnail+ catalog of its photographs on the Web for users to order in hard copy or as a digital image. As a first step in this activity, it is attempting to get copyright clearance for 1,000 selected photographs.
| We will improve and expand the Library's technology infrastructure for patrons who are becoming ever more sophisticated in the use of electronic tools for scholarship. Information professionals who are keeping pace with the service needs of their clientele will meet the challenge of increasing expectations for access, connectivity, ease of use, and support. |
The Sun Microsystem computing gift results in a ten-times increase in computing power; CUL provides the systems staff, technical support, and public service librarians necessary for patrons to fully exploit that power.
Implementing the Voyager LMS and upgrading to Voyager 2000 serve to improve access to the Library's collection (digital and otherwise) for its patrons.
Staff, public, and circulation workstations have been upgraded Library-wide in anticipation of the Voyager implementation and for other uses, resulting in an improved, more efficient technological environment for CUL staff and patrons.
RMC began a two-year project to convert its finding aids to digital form using EAD. Converting archival finding aids to EAD requires the establishment of local encoding practices and then the development of cost effective ways of converting existing materials into EAD based on these practices. During 2000, RMC staff worked on local encoding practices, with the establishment of a draft EAD template for RMC guides. Despite persistent staffing problems, over 50 guides were converted. In addition, links have been created in 32 records in the catalog to finding aids that already exist for manuscript and archival collections.
Kheel Center staff are currently converting summary guides and bibliographies to digital form. The Center is seeking to hire a Technical Processes Archivist with EAD background to prepare our detailed finding aids for the Web. Three members of the Kheel Center staff have attended the SAA EAD workshop.
The Law Library has created new content on its Web site [www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library] under "Finding the Law," and is also creating a variety of Research Guides, integrating print and electronic publications.
A2. Add tables of contents to records for monographs in the online public catalog.
This is on hold until CUL resumes the batch export of current cataloging records.
A3. Eliminate the remaining nonworking cataloging backlogs so that complete records are available to the public in the online catalog.
As anticipated, since the implementation of Voyager at the end of June 2000, the non-working backlog in Central Technical Services has been growing. CTS anticipates that this backlog will be eliminated again (i.e., restored to the size of a working backlog, defined as 40,000 titles) from six months to a year after the catalogers now detailed to work on the Voyager serials pattern project can be redeployed to cataloging.
A4. Reduce significantly the number of catalog records that remain to be converted to machine-readable form so that users have increasingly only one stop to make—the online catalog—when searching for library holdings.
A total of 530,000 records, representing 13.8% of the Library's titles housed almost entirely in Olin Library and the Rare and Manuscripts Collections, remain to be converted and barcoded at a cost of $2.75 million. An additional 60,000 titles in the Harris classification need to be reclassified and recataloged. Plans for converting records in LC classification F are complete, and a proposal for partial funding to support this has been approved by the South Central Regional Library Center. See http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/recon.
RMC has converted 6,372 records this year, 3,775 of these since July. All titles in the Anti-Slavery collection are expected to be online by June 2001. In August 2000, RMC received $20,000 in Regional Automation Grant funds from the South Central Regional Library Center to support the conversion 4,539 catalog records representing natural history holdings and the rarest of the medical holdings in the History of Science Collection.
RMC also launched a project to convert the Library's Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts cataloging to machine-readable form and to add the records to the RLIN AMC file and to Voyager.
The Law Library has completed 99.5% of its recon effort.
A5. Develop methods, including metadata (i.e, systems for identifying the structure of digitized documents to facilitate finding information within those documents), to improve the visibility and accessibility of library materials in all formats.
Significant work has been done by the Documentation Committee to introduce users to changes and upgrades in digital services. As part of this effort, much work has been invested in the Gateway Help page.
Open Text and Michigan middleware have been implemented for the Making of America (MOA) and the Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) digital collections, improving their ease of access and searching.
CUL is collaborating with Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. on development of the ENCompass digital library architecture and management product.
CUL has begun implementing electronic reserves using the Endeavor image server client.
CUL has implemented a system for the use of electronic music reserves.
The Creation Station project has enabled the use of multi-media tools and computing for select classroom projects on campus.
Selectors in Olin, Kroch, and Uris Libraries have established a program to meet annually with every new faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences to review their research and teaching needs in relation to the Library's current information and service programs.
Reference staff in Olin, Kroch, and Uris Libraries have added important new digital tools for interacting with users. "Live Help" (a synchronous digital reference service) has already logged more than 550 transactions this year. Dramatic increases in the use of online instructional offerings (primarily webliographies and digital tutorials), as well as traditional in-person instructional sessions, have also resulted in the continuing growth of other types of digital reference services, such interactions by e-mail.
The Management Library has developed a Faculty Outreach Program, with the goal of reaching every faculty member in the Johnson School, in an effort to develop more effective partnerships in support of enhanced research, curriculum development, and instructional programs. The Library also has updated and added to its instruction program of "Business Information Workshops."
The Law Library is using a combination of formal (two credit courses, one is the Legal Research part of Legal Methods, taught to 180 students, and the other is Advanced Legal Research, a seminar limited to 16 students) and informal teaching sessions, social gatherings (open houses in the Law Library Reading Room), faculty workshops, librarian liaison assignments with individual faculty and law reviews, to reach out and promote new library information sources. The Law Library also teaches legal research seminars to a number of substantive law school classes, such as Immigration, European Union Law, Ethics, International Arbitration, etc.
The location of the Catherwood Library within the School of Industrial and Labor Relations positions it well for frequent and continuous interaction with the School's faculty, staff, and students.
RMC continued to offer instruction to classes using rare and/or manuscript materials.
B2. Continue to increase and enhance digital document delivery services.
A program for digital document delivery of articles located in the Annex has been put in place. Planning on a pilot project to extend this service beyond the Annex will begin in the spring.
The Law Library is using the RLG Ariel scanning equipment with an increasing number of partner libraries.
Catherwood and Mann libraries are implementing a beta type experiment starting in Spring 2001 to deliver documents electronically to Extension offices around the state
Catherwood Library plans to implement electronic document delivery through ILR:Access within the next year.
B3. Progress toward making services (e.g., shared reference) available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Paul Constantine is a key member of the Cooperative Digital Reference Project, which is being led by LC, and which, if successful, will eventually provide online reference services internationally 24/7.
B4. Partner with other information service providers on campus; for example, create a CUL/CIT task force to work on instructional technology support services, which would (a) review and evaluate users' needs for instruction; (b) educate users to locate, retrieve, and evaluate new resources; and (c) collaborate with faculty in developing electronic course materials.
The CUL/CIT Task Force on Faculty Support for Teaching and Learning wrote a report on the types of support that will be needed for a range of instructional activities. The group was then asked to do a summary inventory of the campus services that are currently available in this area. The CIT portion of that work was completed, and Kathy Chiang is now working to finish the Library portion.
B5. Implement a more sophisticated and powerful library management system to take full advantage of dramatic improvements such as Web-based screen displays, image-serving capabilities, self check-out, e-reserves, media booking, serials claiming and check-in, and electronic data interchange.
The implementation of Voyager '99 and upgrade to Voyager 2000 effectively achieve these goals.
Uris Library implemented Electronic Reserves using Endeavor's Image Server for the start of the Spring 2001 making the full text of journal articles, book chapters, course syllabi, and problem sets available through the course reserve option in the Cornell University Library on-line catalog.
B6. Collaborate effectively in our partnership with Sun Microsystems, the Sun Center of Excellence for Digital Libraries, to establish an enhanced level of innovation in the design and implementation of new library services.
B7. Improve the metrics of electronic resources and service; participate in the ARL project on usage measures for electronic resources.
Christian Boissonnas is representing Cornell in the Association of Research Libraries e-Metrics project. The goal of this project is to determine how to develop statistics and performance measures that address the delivery of networked information resources and services. Christian has recently assembled a detailed CUL response to an initial draft of proposed statistics and measures.
In addition to new Sun computing resources, CUL has upgraded its staff workstations in preparation for the Voyager implementation and has developed a contractual process for updating its Facility Management Agreement with CIT.
The Law Library has established an active Technology Team, which pulls staff from the cataloging and reference departments, since the Law Library does not have its own technology staff.
The Management Library purchased a CD-ROM server to network CD-ROM products.
Major headway has been made in many different areas in the Library: Between the Sun equipment grant, Voyager implementation, workstation upgrades, creation station implementation, and new music library, CUL has made substantial progress.
C1b. Create a plan for maintaining that level, which assumes an ongoing assessment of the infrastructure through a combination of user input and self-evaluation.
The Law Library is creating a Technology Plan, and has held joint planning meetings with the CUL and Law School IT department managers to resolve some of its dual support issues.
C2. Substantially increase connectivity throughout the Library and consider the advantages of universal access via wireless technology, as well as providing full access to multimedia information.
The Law Library is working with the Law School on wireless networking.
The Engineering Library provides wireless access to patrons through project Nomad. In addition, Engineering librarians are using wireless technology in their daily work.
Sarah Thomas and Thomas Hickerson have participated with CIT in planning a cooperative implementation of wireless technology on campus.
C3. Assign each cluster of libraries the responsibility to (a) develop a plan to increase connectivity in its libraries and (b) recommend a budget to achieve a level of cutting-edge technology.
C4. Significantly increase the number of staff responsible for programming and systems development and support.
CTS hired a new Information Technology Librarian, Adam Chandler.
D-LIT added five new staff this past year (4 new hires, 1 reassignment within the Library).
D-LIT's Desktop Services has developed a systematic process for communicating and training Network Administrators that has effectively resulted in an increase in the quality and consistency of IT support Library-wide.
D2. Ensure that all staff attain appropriate levels of proficiency in the selection, acquisition, organization, and use of electronic resources.
D-LIT and other CUL staff have undergone appropriate trainings to keep up-to-date with technology that the Library employs. Staff attendance has been supported in a large number of Voyager, Sun, Oracle, and NT trainings.
D3. Review and adjust procedures to ensure that all staff are supportive participants in the Library's digital programs.
The Library has committed one-time resources to support the purchases of Early English Books Online and Elsevier on line journals ($100,000 in total). The Library received a sizable Sun equipment grant to provide server and related support for digital library initiatives. Annual endowment income has been allocated to provide support for the Library's distributed learning program and for electronic resources ($75,000 in total). Resources to support electronic publishing and scholarly communication efforts are currently being sought.
| We will move to satisfy the heightened expectations of our patrons for convenient and ubiquitous access, at the same time that we reach out to enlarge our sphere of service to new communities. |
At Mann, Angi Faiks now devotes approximately 25% of her time to serving the needs of Cooperative Extension users. For the AgMaps project, Mann is surveying the geospatial data needs of educators in Cooperative Extension.
RMC developed an online Sexuality Research Guide to assist both novice and experienced online researchers navigate the range of research materials related to sexuality that are available online (at our own sites and elsewhere) and in our traditional collections. This is available to our core community, our extended community, and reaches out to new categories of users.
A2. Involve staff from all functional areas in working with key user groups to increase the use of digital resources and services and to plan for future services.
A3. Create a program for the regular assessment of user needs in order to, among other things, plan for the digital information needs of future users; select an outside consultant to assist in this project.
The University Librarian held a forum with students in November. Two more will be scheduled during the 2001 spring semester.
As part of the CUL master planning effort, the Computer-Assisted Survey Team of the School of Industrial & Labor Relations held sixteen focus groups with undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff to hear their opinions about trends in teaching, research and learning, particularly as they have implications for library services, staffing and space. The University Librarian and members of the Library Management Team also met with deans and senior university administrators to learn about learn about the strategic directions of their units and changes they anticipate in instruction and research.
Pat Schafer and Christian Boissonnas are facilitating CUL's participation in the Association of Research Libraries' LIBQUAL+ project. LIBQUAL+ is a research and development project to define and measure library service quality across institutions and to create useful
quality-assessment tools for libraries. The current LibQUAL+ instrument surveys library
users' perceptions of their libraries' service quality and identifies gaps between desired and perceived levels of service. The survey will be conducted during the spring 2001 semester.
A4. Design and create a program that will provide library services for distance learning; consider the potential for providing library services for other institutions planning to offer distance learning programs.
A task force chaired by Gordon Law has written a well researched plan for providing library support to the University's rapidly developing distributed learning effort. A Library Office of Distributed Learning is being created; a search committee, chaired by Katie Margolis, has created a short list of candidates for the position of Coordinator of Distributed Learning.
An Alumni Access Committee has been created, which Scott Wicks is chairing; this committee has undertaken a survey of key alumni to help gauge the market for library services.
RMC has continued to provide programs for alumni, K-12, and the general public, including gallery talks for the Icelandic and Vote! exhibitions, classroom presentations, and tours.
The Icelandic exhibition included a very popular interactive CD which was available on iMacs in the Kroch gallery, in Olin and in Uris Libraries.
The Law Library taught a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) program during the Law Alumni Reunion in June 2000, on "Legal Research, the Internet, and Distance Learning." in collaboration with LII.
RMC provides information about Cornell alumni for genealogical and scholarly research. Files relating to alumni become open upon the death of the individual. RMC completed a project to add box locations for alumni folders to the information in the Alumni Records database, facilitating the retrieval of information.
RMC also hosts a very popular "show-and-tell" session each year at Reunion, along with several other sessions targeted at alumni.
B2. Investigate the potential for offering fee-based services to the general public.
Catherwood Library already offers a service called ILR: Access, which along with Hostline at the Nestle Library, might serve as a model for this goal.
CUL is an active participant in the SAFIRE Group, an advisory group composed of directors of large research libraries using Endeavor's Voyager.
C2. Share responsibilities for the archiving of digital material.
In the fall of 2000, RMC contracted to work cooperatively with Columbia University and the Digital Scriptorium to digitize Cornell's Petrarch manuscripts with funding provided by the Italian government in honor of the 700th anniversary of Petrarch birth in 2004.
C3. Share responsibilities for 24/7 services.
Paul Constantine is a key member of the Cooperative Digital Reference Project, which is being led by LC, and which, if successful, will eventually provide online reference services internationally 24/7.
C4. Participate actively in the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI).
CUL has agreed to make its metadata available and has kept its RLG Cultural Materials Initiative database active and up-to-date. The Library actively participates in DLF by contributing semi-annual comprehensive reports on its digital collections and activities, lending its staff's expertise and advice on licensing agreements and best practice guides, and participating in DLF-sponsored surveys.
The University Librarian is a member of the Digital Library Federation Steering Committee.
Sarah Thomas presented "The Long and Winding Road: Retrospective Digitization in the Cornell University Library" at the Forum Retrodigitalisierung, in Munich, Germany, November 29, 2000.
Karen Calhoun presented a paper on "CORC at Cornell" at IFLA in Jerusalem; and a paper on "Access to Full Text Journals in Aggregator Databases" at the Central New York Library Resources Council in Syracuse.
Sarah Thomas, Karen Calhoun, and Carl Lagoze presented papers at the LC Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control in the New Millenium.
Ross Atkinson gave a paper on "Cornell as an Example of a Technologically Integrated Library in the US" at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The Law Library held two open houses for faculty and students in the Reading Room, faculty workshops, and teaching sessions to students.
EMPSL librarians presented programs at several meetings including the Upstate New York Science Librarians meeting (John Saylor) and IFLA (Jean Poland).
Tim Lynch and Zsuzsa Koltay made presentations at Academic Assembly to publicize and inform CUL staff about ENCompass development and Project Euclid, respectively.
Brenda Marston organized and chaired a session at this year's SAA meeting that brought people together to examine effective responses to novice online users of archives. She presented the results of the development of Cornell's online Sexuality Research Guide.
D-LIT staff have been heavily involved in communicating CUL's digital activities to a larger national and international audience, including:
Peter Hirtle: NINCH; School for Scanning, Seattle; Museums and the Web Conferences; Leadership Conference on Access to Special Collections; Interdisciplinary Conference on the Impact of Technological Change on the Creation, Dissemination, and Protection of Intellectual Property.
Zsuzsa Koltay: Joint Math Meetings; SLA PAM Math Roundtable; Panelist on Scholarly Communication, Yale.
David Ruddy: Joint Math Meetings; Society of American Archivists; MAC/MARAC Regional Archives Conference.
Tom Hickerson: Digital Library Federation; Japan ERC; Educause 2000; CNI; Society of American Archivists.
Tim Lynch: Voyager Users Group Meeting
6/19/01 jwg, jdl