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Home  News from the Field
NEWS FROM THE FIELD
C&RL News, May 2000
Vol. 61 No. 5
by Mary Ellen Davis
Elsevier and Endeavor join forces
Endeavor Information Systems Inc. and Elsevier Science Inc. surprised the library market by announcing that Endeavor will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Elsevier. The union of the two companies will integrate bibliographic and full-text material including library holdings, library journal collections, reference books, and other full-text content. Endeavor’s Voyager library management system will serve as a platform for uniting library collections with scientific content in Elsevier Science’s primary and secondary publications and databases.
When asked why a successful company would choose to be sold to Elsevier, Endeavor CEO Jane Burke replied, “When I look at what’s happening overall in information and look at what end users are thinking and seeing, they have this expectation that they can find anything with one search. What I’ve been feeling for the past year or so as I’ve talked to our customers is that I’ve seen them increasingly spending their effort and money on licensing content. It seems as if we are on the point of real shift. Electronic content is changing the nature of libraries’ collections.”
Burke added that the library’s collection is no longer what you have in a print package; it is a combination of print and licensed material. She continued, “I think that it will give Endeavor the opportunity to build a unified delivery system faster and more efficiently.”
Burke was asked by C&RL News why Endeavor would sell itself rather than just align itself with Elsevier. She replied that there are two answers. “The first is that ‘These transactions benefit our customers and our shareholders.’ The other answer is that we’ve all seen ‘partnerships’ and our experience here is that partnerships take a while to get going and we wanted to be in a situation where we could get accurate information very quickly.”
Burke asserted that Endeavor’s new status as a wholly owned subsidiary would not change Endeavor’s operations. She said the pricing, the operation, the offices, and the staff would stay the same. When asked if Endeavor’s communication patterns might be influenced by its new parent company, she said, “Endeavor has a reputation for being very open with people and I don’t see that changing.”
Burke said that Endeavor will still be able to partner with other content providers and explained that Endeavor has been partnering with Cornell University to build a digital library architecture that is supposed to search four types of metadata formats simul-tanenously. Burke said that Cornell will have the product ready by the end of the summer and that it will be available for purchase by end of the year.
Community College Focus Group: Comments from the
2000 ALA Midwinter Meeting
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Demonstrating dedication to their profession, 12 members of ACRL’s Community and Junior College Libraries Section (CJCLS) agreed to meet very early Saturday, January 15, 2000, (as part of a focus group sponsored by the ACRL Board of Directors) during the ALA Midwinter Meeting to discuss their membership in ACRL and what concerns them most as community college librarians.
Past ACRL President William Miller generously agreed to facilitate the active discussion and the participants eloquently spoke of their concerns. While the discussion began with looking at why community college librarians join ACRL, certain issues and matters were clearly uppermost in the members’ minds. Professional development and advocacy within higher education appeared to be strong concerns, as well as collaboration with other community college associations.
Below are a few of the comments made during the discussion.
Membership
“I joined ACRL after attending a National Conference. The ACRL National Conference is more focused and relevant to my work.”
“Initially, I joined for the journals. I wanted my own copy.”
“CJCLS was the only group I could find specifically for community college librarians. It’s important for community college librarians to network with each other and to keep in touch with librarians at four-year schools.”
“The Immersion program [ACRL Institute for Information Literacy (IIL) Immersion Programs] attracted me to ACRL.”
“Many of my colleagues don’t belong to ACRL because of limited travel funds within community colleges and a lot of competition with other conferences, such as League of Innovation.”
Programs and activities
“I’d like to see more workshops and not just in conjunction with conferences. Regional conferences would be great, especially on hot topics like accreditation.”
“A speakers bureau with preplanned workshops would be helpful.”
“The Immersion program is great—run with it!”
“ACRL needs to continue collaborating with other organizations and state associations. These collaborations could develop into joint programs for developing the management and administrative skills of community college librarians, as well as making administrators more aware of libraries and getting librarians on accreditation teams and in administrative positions on campus.”
“Community colleges don’t have a hierarchy that allows community college librarians to learn administration until they are thrown into it.”
“With IPEDS no longer requiring libraries to report their statistics, the ACRL 1998 Academic Library Trends and Statistics is even more important. And I love being able to set up my own peer group with the CD-ROM.”
ACRL would like to thank all of the focus group participants and William Miller for their time and ideas. The comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated and will be used to improve ACRL services and activities.—Melissa Cast, ACRL, e-mail: mcast@ala.org
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netLibrary partners with EBSCO Publishing
A distribution alliance between netLibrary and EBSCO Publishing will enable the partners to sell e-books to public libraries, junior colleges, and community college libraries. As part of the agreement, EBSCO’s database search tool, EBSCOhost, will be linked to the netLibrary Web site. This will enable individuals to obtain search results from both sites with a single search query.
“EBSCO Publishing has developed highly effective info-commerce channels; netLibrary offers a product that can flow efficiently through those channels,” said netLibrary Executive Vice President of Sales Rich Rosy. “We are excited to be working with EBSCO to introduce tailored collections of e-books to a wide variety of library customers.”
New Web site helps find used/rare/out-of-print books
A new company focused on meeting the needs of academic librarians for used, rare, out-of-print, and antiquarian books has opened at 21northmain.com. The site includes inventories of more than 2,500 used-book dealers nationwide for a total online inventory of more than 10 million items. The site has been tested at the University of Minnesota, University of Illinois, Cornell University, Yale University, Emory University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Dartmouth College.
According to Karen Schmidt, associate university librarian for collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “The 21 North Main's system brings together bookstores and librarians in a way that hasn't happened in the past. It's like a used-book marketplace, getting everybody’s wares out there in a much more visible and efficient way. We can get our ‘want’ list out there and continue to develop relationships with book dealers who have specializations.”
Comments sought on draft “Objectives for Information Literacy”
Hearings are being held to review a new document, tentatively entitled “Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction by Librarians in Academic Institutions,” which is being developed to replace the 1989 “Model Statement of Objectives for Academic Bibliographic Instruction.” The first draft of the new document will be available no later than May 15 at the IS Web site. Go to http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/is/ and follow the “Instruction Objectives” link. Paper copies of the document are available by contacting Carla List (address below).
The hearing will be held at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago and is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, July 9, 8:30–9:30 a.m.
The ACRL Instruction Section Model Statement of Objectives Task Force that created the document worked with the ACRL’s “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” (http://www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html). The “Standards” provide performance indicators and outcomes; the new “Objectives” aim to help librarians achieve the outcomes.
Please review the “Objectives” and bring your comments and questions to the hearing in Chicago or send them to the Task Force Chair, Carla List: e-mail carla.list@plattsburgh.edu or snail-mail Feinberg Library, 2 Draper Ave., Plattsburgh SUNY, Plattsburgh, NY 12901-2697.
Penn Library and Oxford University Press launch digital books project
The University of Pennsylvania Library and Oxford University Press (OUP) are joining forces to develop and publish digital books on the Web.
Penn will mount every new OUP title in all fields of history for the next five years. Penn expects the Digital Books Project to total between 1,500 and 2,000 books in that time frame. Access to the full text of project materials is restricted to the Penn community.
According to Edward Barry, president of Oxford University Press, restricting the site will allow OUP to make its publications available electronically, while it works with Penn to study the market impact and scholarly uses of online texts—a key goal for both parties. The project is funded by a $218,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation The public may view sample books at http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/oup-public.
ACRL “Excellence in Academic Libraries”
winners hold celebrations
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The North Carolina State University (NCSU)Libraries staged a festive celebration on March 21, 2000, in honor of its selection as the first recipient of ACRL’s Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in the university category. Nearly 200 individuals enjoyed an elegant luncheon before the official ceremony began. Among those attending were library staff members, current and retired library administrators, university administrators and faculty, members of the Friends of the Library Board of Directors, state legislators, and special guests. Each guest received a gold-plated commemorative bookmark from the libraries and a red button supplied by ACRL that read, “NCSU Libraries: Best of the Best.”
ACRL presenters with representatives from the NCSU
Libraries, NC State’s chancellor and provost,
North Carolina legislators, and author Kaye Gibbons.
Larry L. Hardesty, president of ACRL, formally presented the handsome crystal award to NC State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and Provost Kermit L. Hall. Hall expressed his admiration for Susan Nutter’s outstanding leadership as library director before announcing the library’s latest ARL ranking, a rise to 35 out of 111 academic research libraries.
Following the award presentation, Donald Satisky, vice president for international sales and marketing for Blackwell’s Book Services, Inc., delivered a $3,000 check to Jinnie Y. Davis, assistant director for Scholarly Communication and External Relations. Davis was representing Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Susan K. Nutter, who was unable to attend the ceremony because of surgery.
Friends of the Library’s Author-in-Residence, internationally acclaimed writer Kaye Gibbons, lovingly described her many years of association with the NCSU Libraries. She worked there during her undergraduate days at the university, and she recalled vividly her first encounter with newly hired library director Susan Nutter from MIT. She claimed she just sauntered right into Nutter’s office one day and said, “I understand you’re from ‘up there’ and you’re going to have this place full of computers and I want it smelling like books.”
Gibbons added she wanted the library to always smell like books, which Nutter promised to do. From this initial encounter, the Author-in-Residence program blossomed, with Kaye Gibbons providing unstinting support, talks, and donations to an institution she cherishes.
Altogether, it was an occasion that encompassed the entire university and accomplished the Excellence in Academic Libraries Award program’s goal of achieving campus recognition of award-winning libraries. Publicity about the award resulted in an editorial in the Raleigh newspaper praising the NCSU Libraries’ achievements while noting the need to sustain its momentum.—Terrell A. Crow, e-mail: terry_crow@ncsu.edu, and Jinnie Y. Daivs, NCSU Libraries, e-mail: jinnie_davis@ncsu.edu
College of DuPage and Wellesley College Libraries
Ed. note: The College of DuPage Library, winner in the community college category, will hold a reception on May 10 at 5:30 p.m., hosted by the Board of Trustees. Althea Jenkins, executive director of ACRL, will present the plaque, and a representative of Blackwell’s Book Services will present the check.
Wellesley College Library, winner in the college category, plans a ceremony on the steps of the Margaret Clapp Library with an outdoor reception to follow on Monday, May 15 from 4:00-6:00 p.m. Speakers at the ceremony will include Wellesley College President Diana Chapman Walsh, and Dean of the College Lee Cuba.
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Indiana University Libraries lead project to digitize American fiction
Indiana University (IU) Libraries will lead a three-year cooperative project among Big Ten universities to digitize nearly 3,000 works of 19th-century America fiction. The resulting collection of electronic texts will be freely available on the Web. Compiled by Lyle Wright in his 1957 bibliography, American Fiction 1851–1875, the works include novels, romances, short stories, tall tales, and allegories, by authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and Herman Melville.
IU staff will convert 800,000 microfilm page images to text files using optical character recognition software and create a searchable database of the texts. Participating libraries will edit, encode, and proofread the text files.
The nine libraries working on this project are members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. Participating libraries are: Indiana, Michigan State, and Ohio State Universities, and the Universities of Illinois at Chicago, of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, of Iowa, of Michigan, of Minnesota, and of Wisconsin-Madison.
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