Cornell University Library
Annual Report 1998-1999
Objectives for 1999-2000

Highlights of the past year

goal 1: Provide outstanding service to the university in support of Cornell's information needs by integrating traditional and digital resources and services.

• Plans for the reorganization of the Africana Library will enable this cramped facility to add five years of collection growth.
• The Engineering Library, with funding from FABIT, the Engineering College, and the Library, established a popular computer lab within the skin of the library, creating a modern teaching and learning space complete with wireless access to electronic resources.
• The Fine Arts Library, working with faculty from the Department of Architecture, is developing proposals for the restoration of the space under Sibley Dome, one of the most dramatic interior spaces on campus.
• The Industrial and Labor Relations Catherwood Library prepared for the renovation of its original library, which, when completed and connected effectively to its new building, will provide significantly more convenient and comfortable user access.
• The Management Library's move, at the beginning of the year, into its new quarters in Sage Hall, has been reflected in a dramatic increase in the use of the facility, both by faculty and students.
• The Mann Library Addition continued to materialize, with the installation of 38 miles of fiberoptic cable commencing in May. Plans to occupy the addition in spring of 2000 are accompanied by complex preparations, including the relocation of hundreds of thousands of volumes to the Library Annex this year.
• The Math Library took up expanded and refreshed quarters in Malott in June, with an upsurge in use of its vastly more accessible computers and collection.
• The Music Library departed Lincoln at the outset of its long-awaited expansion and renovation, temporarily dispersing a substantial portion of its collection to Olin Library and relocating the remaining reference and current periodical holdings to the space vacated by the Math Library in White Hall.
• The Clark Physical Sciences Library will undergo some modest refurbishment and reorganization to increase its functionality.

User Satisfaction and Needs
The COFHE senior survey ranks the Library first among 38 administrative services of the University, with the Hotel Library ranking the highest of any service measured in the University

The Gateway focus groups revealed a high degree of satisfaction with the Library.

A User Survey Design Committee has met throughout the year to plan a survey of the Cornell community. The purpose of the survey will be to identify the information needs of Cornellians and to determine how they meet these needs.

CreationStation An anonymous donor has funded the development of twelve CreationStations, powerful workstations for creating and incorporating multimedia materials into the curriculum. Employing user-centered design techniques, the Human-Computer Interaction Group, the Cornell University Library, faculty, and current and future students of Cornell will specify the characteristics of the CreationStations. The Library will test initial prototypes in Mann and Uris libraries.

The Library Annex entered its second year of existence, with a massive transfer of volumes from Olin Library and Mann Library dominating its activity. Using Ariel workstations, staff began an innovative service to scan article requests and deliver them electronically to the requestor's desktop.

Electronic Publishing

TEEAL The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library contains the full text of 125 agricultural journals on compact disk. Designed to support agricultural research in regions where there is an urgent need for increased food production, TEEAL will be made available to 108 of the lowest income food deficit countries.

Project Euclid The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Library a planning grant to investigate the development of an electronic publishing program to support the disciplines of mathematics and statistics. As part of this initiative, the Library will become a mirror site for the European Mathematical Society's electronic database EMIS and MATH, a European-based index to mathematical materials. The Library held a meeting in July of the executive directors of the American Mathematics Society, the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Clay Mathematics Institute. Other participants were representatives of the American Statistical Association, the scientific coordinator of the European Mathematical Society, and selected Cornell faculty.

Electronic Dissertations The Library is leading the development of a prototype program for electronic dissertations at Cornell. Active partners include the Graduate School and CIT. Over 125 dissertations are now available. The initial implementation will rely on voluntary submissions and will parallel print documents, rather than substitute for print.

The Cornell Legal Research Encyclopedia, created by the Law Library, is a comprehensive compilation of legal sources. This compilation is a topical and jurisdictional arrangement of all available formats, including print, microform, CD-ROM, Westlaw, Lexis and the Internet.