LibraryLinks Fall 2007/Spring2008
Greetings from the Director
By John M. Meador, Jr., Director of University Libraries
This issue of LibraryLinks coincides with my fifth anniversary as Director of Libraries at Binghamton University (BU). It has been a dynamic five years focused upon transforming our library organization and services to facilitate rapid adoption of the new technologies emerging from a rapidly changing information environment. Fortunately, I have been aided and abetted in this endeavor not only by a superb existing staff that was ready for change, but also by thirteen new library faculty members who were enticed away from some of our nation’s best universities. My message has been simple: the “ Premier Public University in the Northeast” demands a learner-centered library system providing a variety of customizable state-of-the-art approaches to information discovery and delivery that only can be provided by empowered individuals and collaborative teams working within an organizational culture of creativity. Thanks to the leadership, enthusiasm and willing experimentation of all our library staff, this goal is being realized. I am pleased to summarize many achievements of the past five years, followed by their documented results:
Library Physical Facilities were enhanced with new carpeting and improved lighting in the Bartle and Science Libraries. Service points were consolidated with a view toward providing “one-stop” service within a few steps of the main entrance. Additionally, all library facilities now support wireless networking and provide laptops for checkout.
- Library Annex @ Conklin (our storage facility of 350,000 volumes) is now open to the University community from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Monday – Friday, and also is providing a “scan on demand” service that digitizes and delivers e-mail or fax copies of stored journal articles.
- Downtown Center Library opened on August 20, 2007, and had a gate count of 12,359 individuals entering this facility during the month of November 2007.
- Information Commons sites were created in the Bartle, Science and Downtown Center libraries. I introduced this concept of a computer-enhanced, collaborative research environment to our campus and partnered the Libraries with Computing Services to make it a reality.
- Bernard F. Huppé Reading Room in Special Collections was dedicated in October 2006 to provide scholars an appropriate environment for working with primary research materials. This room’s naming was supported by a significant endowment for our Special Collections.
Bartle Library Hours were increased yearly, without additional funding, by reassigning several vacated positions to overnight/weekend hours. During the fall and spring semesters, Bartle Library is now open Sundays from noon continuously until midnight on Fridays, and noon until midnight on Saturdays. (Incidentally, this permits overnight processing of interlibrary loan requests as well as book shelving.) Additionally, Bartle Library is kept open during the December holiday break to provide graduate students with access to their carrels and to support researchers working between semesters.
Library Collections continue to expand both in print and digital formats. Significant electronic databases have been made available in the past four years, including the full-text of over 2000 Elsevier journals from their ScienceDirect database; over 300,000 art images in ARTstor; digital facsimiles of all English language books printed before 1700 via Early English Books Online (EEBO); all available digitized journal backfiles available from JSTOR; over 300 full-text journals distributed by Project Muse; and many more as described in the Fall 2006 issue of LibraryLinks (see http://library.lib.binghamton.edu/librarylinks/). Our most recent addition is the Naxos Music Library, a database of over 250,000 music tracks, including the most comprehensive collection of classical music available online as well as a sampling of contemporary jazz, world music (including a specific collection of Chinese music), folk music, pop and rock.
Special Collections acquired significant additions to our Link archives; papers of poets Molly Peacock and Maria Mazziotti Gillan; a collection of Civil War Era Diaries on Women’s Rights; over 6,000 cinema books donated by bibliophile Allan Rogg; the locally significant Greta Lake Papers and the Broome County Nuclear Weapons Reduction Committee (BCNWRC)/Broome County Peace Action (BCPA) Papers; Binghamton General Hospital Papers; Broome County Medical Society Library and Records; Grace Burkholder Collection; John Copoulos Asian Print Collection; Dr. Frank Dyer Papers; Dr. Frank Gilroy Papers; Lois Root Collection of Popular Music; Papers of the Tri-Town Business and Professional Women (BPW); Wilson Memorial Hospital Papers; several sets of rare Italian volumes provided by Professor Sticca; and a rare collection of Italian books and records from Professor Luciano Pizziconi, one of Italy’s leading poets.
Search Engines replaced the card catalog long ago but until Google and Amazon appeared, local library search engines remained nondescript and limited in scope. BU Libraries have taken a leadership role within SUNY, and even the nation, by providing users with multiple search engines (metaLINK; Grokker; Encore) offering a variety of cutting edge search options (federated; faceted) and choice of result displays (chronological; relevance; categorized; visualized). In the instance of Grokker (useful for those with visual learning styles), only Binghamton and Stanford Universities have implemented this tool. Also, we are the only SUNY institution to offer Encore as a search interface for our online catalog.
Other Service Enhancements
- Self-Checkout machines were installed in both the Bartle and Science libraries.
- Chat reference service is being provided using real-time “Meebo Us,” Instant Messaging, and text messages.
- Electronic Reserves were launched (available independently and/or imbedded into Blackboard).
- Laptop check-out is available in all three libraries.
- Revised and branded library web pages were created in response to usability studies.
- Our Library PR Committee coined and “branded” our library-wide services with the phrase: Binghamton University Libraries: Connect. Discover. Create.
- A Digital Initiatives unit was created to begin digitizing local collections (e.g., Link).
- BU Libraries rejoined RLG (Research Libraries Group) in April 2005.
- We initiated semi-annual “Scholarly Research Fairs” for graduate students.
- Six library blogs have been launched by library staff. See http://library.lib.binghamton.edu/mt/index.html.
Responses to these enhancements
- According to national statistics reported at January’s meeting of the American Library Association by Dr. Rush Miller, U. of Pittsburgh Library Director, gate counts decreased 71% and reference questions decreased 84% from 1991 to 2005 among all academic libraries. Conversely, Bartle Library broke its all-time attendance record. Read about it on page one.
- BU Libraries were cited in Government Technology (April 2005) as one of only 107 academic libraries that are blogging.
- BU Libraries ranked #1 in overall interlibrary loan lending to other New York libraries in the Nylink network for fiscal year 2005-2006. Cornell was second!
- The student newspaper, Pipe Dream, graded BU Libraries with an “A” for service to students (May 11, 2005).
- BU Libraries received the Special Service Award from the South Central Regional Library Council in October 2006.
- Donations to our Honor with Books program increased from 23 ($920) in 2003-04 to 93 ($5,580) in 2006-07.
- BU Libraries won the Honorable Mention award at the American Library Association’s 2006 Best of Show competition for public relations material.
- In the spring of 2006, BU’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning invited undergraduates to participate in the Student Opinion Survey (SOS). The SOS is administered every three years and gathers data on students’ impressions of the university, academic environment and experiences, facilities, services, and college outcomes. Based upon responses to their Survey, Institutional Research staff concluded: “Students at BU are, on average, highly satisfied with library resources and library services.”
