ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award

Oberlin College Library Application

Institutional Background

Oberlin College, located in Oberlin, Ohio, combines a highly selective liberal arts college with an outstanding undergraduate professional school of music. Oberlin enrolls a diverse student body of approximately 2,900, representing virtually all states and many foreign countries.

The Oberlin College Library consists of a main library and branch libraries for music, art, and science as well as an on-campus storage facility. Collections total approximately 1.25 million cataloged volumes or 2 million total items. The total staff is 52 FTE, including 18.4 FTE professionals and 33.6 FTE paraprofessional or administrative assistant staff. The library employs students for over 52,689 hours annually.

A Tradition of Excellence and Leadership

The Oberlin College Library actively strives for excellence in all aspects of its operations and services and has a history of leadership in academic libraries and librarianship generally. That history can be traced to 1887, the year Azariah Smith Root (class of 1884) was appointed as the first professional librarian. A pioneer in library instruction, Root built Oberlin's library into one of the preeminent college libraries in America, while also serving the profession in numerous ways, including as president of ALA and as a founding member of ALA's College Library Section, the precursor to ACRL. In more recent years Oberlin has contributed two ACRL presidents (Eileen Thornton and William A. Moffett) and has played a central role in the founding and development of the Oberlin Group of Liberal Arts College Libraries. Library staff today remain committed to leadership, and many have served as elected officers and in appointed positions in professional and scholarly organizations.

The library's mission statement, which was developed through a process coordinated by a staff committee, is as follows:

The Oberlin College community is strongly committed to excellence in teaching, learning, artistry, and research. The library actively responds to this commitment by providing resources and services that support and enhance the broad and rigorous programs of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Conservatory of Music.

An integral part of the college's academic life, the library builds and maintains extensive, carefully selected, and well organized collections that are essential for the success of the curriculum; it provides wide and effective access to networked scholarly resources; and it works in cooperation with faculty to develop in Oberlin College students competence in using the library and other information sources. To enable faculty and students to take full advantage of library resources, the library maintains a highly qualified staff that is responsive to individual needs and exceptionally dedicated to service and teaching.

The library's mission is closely linked to the college's mission, as summarized in the "Statement of Goals and Objectives for Oberlin College."

Members of the library staff are delighted that Oberlin has been nominated for the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. We submit the following summary of the library's accomplishments, which is organized according to the criteria established for the excellence award. We believe the library's commitment to excellence is evident in the breadth and quality of the activities described. Taken as a whole, they are indicative of an outstanding library and staff.

Creativity and Innovation in Meeting the Needs of the Campus Community

Excellent Staff in a Service Oriented Work Environment

Objective: Recruit and develop an excellent library staff that is strongly service oriented, works well together as a team, and responds effectively to a rapidly changing technological environment.

Library Actions:

Created guidelines for the appointment of professional librarians that insure wide staff participation in search processes and that focus on recruiting staff who have both excellent skills and abilities in their specialties as well as a commitment to teamwork and service.
Developed a peer review evaluation and promotion system for the library professional staff that encourages excellent job performance, teamwork, service, and professional growth.
Established work groups for various areas of public and technical services that encourage cooperation across departmental lines and provide a mechanism for effective communication among library staff.
Developed extensive internal library Web pages that are used as a central means of communication among staff and to document and make available internal policies and procedures.
Created a staff development committee that coordinates various staff development activities, including support for conference travel for all staff and in-house workshops.

Outcomes:

During the library's recent self-study, both faculty and student survey respondents indicated exceptionally high levels of satisfaction with library public services, and they singled out the staff as a whole for special praise. Response categories on the survey were "very satisfied," "satisfied," "dissatisfied," "very dissatisfied," and "neutral," Among those who responded other than "neutral," the combined percentages for "very satisfied" and "satisfied" and for "dissatisfied" and "very dissatisfied" were as follows:

Library Self-Study Results
Faculty	vs/s	d/vd	Students	vs/s	d/vd
Reference	100%	0%	Reference	98%	2%
Instruction	100%	0%	Instruction	94%	6%
Interlibrary loan	97%	3%	Interlibrary loan	96%	4%
Circulation	98%	2%	Circulation	96%	4%
Reserve	90%	10%	Reserve	76%	24%

The following are a sampling of comments from the self-study:

"The professionalism and helpfulness of the staff is amazing."—[social sciences faculty member]
"The staff is excellent, wonderful, accessible, helpful, thoughtful…FANTASTIC. Reference librarians have been outstanding since I got here in 1996." [4th year social sciences major]
"They always help, make it look easy, and never make me feel embarrassed for asking."—[natural sciences faculty member]
"The reference desk has saved my life several times."—[4th year social sciences major]
"The entire staff is extremely knowledgeable and caring. There are few workplaces where employees care so much about the quality of their work."—[college staff member]
"We're lucky to have this library and this staff--three cheers." —[humanities faculty member]

Student Employment

Objective: Develop a culture of student employment that encourages good performance in jobs that are essential to the effective operation of the library, builds loyalty to the library among student workers, and fosters interest in the library profession.

Library Actions:

Initiated staff training programs in hiring, supervising, and evaluating student workers. Shared experience with student assistant training and extensive use of student staff in a workshop developed for the local ACRL chapter.
Created modest ladder in student assistant wages that rewards continuing employment in the library.
Routinely recognize excellence and long-standing service among student staff at an annual reception honoring graduating seniors. The reception is named in honor of Keyes Metcalf, Oberlin Class of 1911, who began his distinguished library career (which included serving as University Librarian at Harvard and as president of ALA) as a library student assistant at Oberlin.

Outcomes:

Overall student job performance is rated as very effective by supervisors.
Many student workers remain loyal to the library after graduation by joining the Friends of the Library or staying in touch with their former supervisors.
Many former student workers have become professional librarians [see section on alumni librarian engagement].

Resource Sharing

Objective: Enter statewide library cooperative resource-sharing arrangement in order to increase access to library resources for Oberlin students and faculty.

Library Actions:

Closely followed statewide plan to create the OhioLINK system that was initially established for state-funded university libraries in Ohio.
Coordinated initial meeting of a small group of private college library directors with the Executive Director of OhioLINK to express private college interest in joining the statewide system.
Used a creative reallocation of library budget resources to finance a new Innovative Interfaces integrated library system, which was required for OhioLINK participation.
Became the first private college library to join OhioLINK in September 1995; began patron-initiated book borrowing on the OhioLINK system in December 1995.

Outcomes:

The ease and rapidity of OhioLINK direct borrowing has transformed patron access to monographic collections statewide. In 1994-95, prior to joining OhioLINK, the library borrowed 3,476 books for Oberlin patrons. In 2000-01 the library provided 22,222 books for its users through the OhioLINK system alone, in addition to providing 1,774 books through traditional ILL channels.
97% of faculty and 96% of students who gave a response other than "neutral" indicated in the library's self-study survey that they were either "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with OhioLINK borrowing.

Full-Text Electronic Resources

Objective: Be an early adopter in providing wide access to full-text electronic resources, complementing the library's strong local print collections.

Library Actions:

Initiated access to the paralegal version of Lexis-Nexis in 1989.
Became a charter member of Project Muse in 1995 through an Oberlin Group licensing agreement.
Joined the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center when it was created in 1996.
Subscribed to a variety of other full-text resources through OhioLINK and Oberlin Group agreements.
Coordinated an Oberlin Group license for Institute of Physics journals (1999).
Began participating in JSTOR in 1999.
Subscribed to SPARC scientific communities as each project was established (MIT Cognet, Columbia Earthscape, BioOne). Provided seed money, in conjunction with the library's membership in SPARC, for BioOne development.
Initiated a project in 2000 to provide access, though full MARC cataloging, for scholarly journals that are freely available on the Internet.
Individually licensed American Psychological Association journals in 2000.

Outcomes:

The library currently provides access to over 9,000 electronic journals and an array of other full-text resources.
93% of faculty and 83% of students responding other than "neutral" indicated in the library's self-study survey that they were either "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with the library's electronic resources.

Technology Implementation

Objective: Use information technologies effectively and proactively in order to increase internal efficiencies, improve access to library resources, and support instruction.

Library Actions:

Installed initial automated circulation system in 1979, partially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Installed initial acquisitions and serials control system (InnovAcq) in 1984.
With the support of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Culpeper Foundation, installed initial OPAC and second-generation circulation system (Geac 9000) in 1987.
Converted to the Innovative Interfaces integrated library system in 1994. Implemented III WebPAC in 1997.
Reorganized main library staff in 1994 to take advantage of more efficient workflows made possible by the library's new integrated library system.
Developed an extensive CD-ROM network in the early 1990s to provide campus network access to the library's most heavily used databases. Shifted to Web database access primarily through OhioLINK when the consortium implemented a sophisticated reference database environment in 1999.
Took leadership role on campus in Web page development, initiating extensive library Web pages beginning in 1995.
Created an electronic reserve system using cost-effective ERes electronic reserve software. Recently initiated an innovative system of outsourcing digitization of reserve materials to a commercial firm, enabling a large number of courses to be added to the electronic reserve system.
Installed ILLiad system for Web management of non-OhioLINK interlibrary loan requests and transactions in 2001.
Played a campus leadership role in the development of technology classrooms.

Outcomes:

NSF grant report in early 1980s demonstrated markedly improved patron access to resources through the library's automated circulation system
The library's online system is heavily used and the Web version of the system provides seamless access to rich full-text resources, particularly electronic journals.
1994 reorganization reduced overall staffing levels and also freed public services staff for information literacy initiatives.
Over 160 reference databases are accessible in Web format through both the library's Web pages and the OPAC. Most database citations link directly to full-text resources, when they are available. The shift to OhioLINK database access substantially reduced local costs, allowing the library to reallocate funds to expand electronic resources.
The library's public Web pages serve as a central point for conducting library research, as a convenient mechanism for several library services, as a rich source of information about the library, and increasingly as a guide to the research process.
The ERes system now provides all reserve materials for over 120 courses, approximately 50% of those that use reserve. Access is available through the campus network around-the-clock. The system has reduced student frustrations with reserve due primarily to a system of heavy fines that was necessitated by poor return rates. Response from faculty and students has been enthusiastic. A newly installed version of the ERes software, which allows tracking of usage, recorded over 26,000 course page hits between September 1 and December 6, 2001.
The library has processed 1,860 requests through the ILLiad interlibrary loan system since it was installed in March 2001; user response has been positive.
The library's audiovisual department has installed a total of 13 technology classrooms equipped with sophisticated data presentation systems. Faculty satisfaction with these classrooms is high, as is demand for additional facilities. The department recently assumed responsibility for nine additional technology classrooms in the college's new science complex. Campus planning calls for a total of over 30 technology classrooms within the next three years.

Collection Preservation

Objective: Develop an effective and comprehensive collection preservation program to insure maximum long-term use of the library's collections.

Library Actions:

Created a half-time preservation librarian position through internal reallocation.
With donor funding, established in 1982 a fully equipped preservation mending lab staffed primarily by carefully trained student assistants who repair damaged and deteriorating volumes from the circulating collections.
Established a part-time conservator position supported through gifts and later funded from the library's regular operating budget.
Created programs to monitor environmental conditions in all library buildings and to educate library staff and users about collection preservation issues.
Received a $150,000 multi-year grant for collection preservation from the Charles M. Culpeper Foundation in 1994 to expand preservation programs through larger-scale deacidification and reformatting projects.
Leveraged grant funding to raise major gifts for a collection preservation endowment of over $250,000 in order to continue grant programs.

Outcomes:

Since the preservation lab was created, over 32,000 volumes from the circulating collections have received preservation treatment and made available for long-term use.
Approximately 2,500 items from the library's special collections, including many valuable rare books, have received skilled conservation treatment in a cost-effective manner.
A total of 14,436 volumes were deacidified or reformatted under the Culpeper preservation grant.
Endowment income supports ongoing conservation and preservation treatment of highest priority items.

Quality, Cost-effective Bibliographic Access to Resources

Objective: Provide excellent and cost-effective bibliographic access to the library's collections, utilizing cooperative arrangements whenever possible.

Library Actions:

Became a founding member of OCLC in 1967.
Planned and implemented in the early 1980s a large scale retrospective conversion process using well trained student workers under a professional cataloger's supervision.
Used grant and individual donor funding in the 1990s to hire a temporary catalog librarian to coordinate a project to convert catalog records for musical scores to machine-readable form, again using student assistants for much of the work.
Employ highly trained paraprofessional catalogers to enhance OCLC records under the general supervision of a small number of professional catalogers.
In 1993 began Marcive tape loading of catalog records for currently received government documents.
Participated in a recent Five Colleges of Ohio project to create machine-readable cataloging records for historical government documents.
Initiated in 2001 a project to convert East Asian language catalog records to machine-readable form.
Used cooperative cataloging arrangements to provide full MARC cataloging for electronic journals.

Outcomes:

As a result of the general retrospective conversion project in the early 1980s, over 275,000 catalog records were created for the library's online system at costs substantially below those reported in the literature by other libraries; more than 20,000 original records were added to the OCLC database during the project.
Approximately 17,000 MARC records for musical scores were created for the online system through the scores recon project; 1,222 titles were original OCLC records.
MARC records for over 9,000 electronic journals and over 750 free Internet sites have been added to the library's online catalog,
The library's online system currently contains 971,750 bibliographic records and more than 99% of the library's catalog records have been converted to machine-readable form.
Oberlin is one of the few libraries in the U.S. authorized by OCLC to enhance MARC cataloging both for books and for musical scores and recordings.
Oberlin was the first college library to be recognized as an independent participant in all major national Project for Cooperative Cataloging initiatives: BibCo (the monographic record component of the PCC), NACO (Name Authority Cooperative Program), and SACO (Subject Authority Cooperative Program).
Since 1995, Oberlin has proposed approximately forty new subject headings that have been approved by the Library of Congress.
As a member of the Five Colleges of Ohio, received the 2000 Bernardine Abbott Hoduski Founders Award of the Government Documents Roundtable in recognition of the historical government documents cataloging project.

Leadership in developing exemplary programs that other libraries can emulate

Leadership and Cooperation on Information Literacy

Objective: Increase the extent to which information literacy is incorporated into the curricula of the Five Colleges of Ohio (College of Wooster, Denison University, Kenyon College, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan University).

Library Actions:

Played a leadership role in a successful Fives Colleges of Ohio information literacy grant application to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The consortial grant program provides curriculum development incentives (in the form of summer stipends or course release) for faculty to work in collaboration with librarians to incorporate information literacy into the curriculum, focusing in particular on the course sequence for the major in individual disciplines.

Outcomes:

Thirty-six curriculum development projects involving nearly fifty faculty and over thirty librarians from the Five College have been initiated in the first two years of the grant. All projects involve substantive course revision that incorporates information literacy into the fabric of course content. Approximately one-fourth of the projects take a coordinated approach to information literacy for individual disciplines.
Overall evaluation results for completed projects have been positive. Projects are evaluated by participating faculty and librarians as well as students who take the revised courses.
The grant's emphasis on curriculum development incentives and faculty-librarian collaboration represents a national model for approaching information literacy in the liberal arts context.
Two faculty-librarian teams have presented their work at major disciplinary conferences, and the project director has highlighted the grant program in a keynote address at the ACRL Ohio Immersion Information Literacy Institute.

Recruiting to Librarianship, Diversifying the Profession

Objective: To establish a model undergraduate program designed to attract students from diverse backgrounds to the library profession; to increase the diversity of the library staff.

Library Actions:

Received a two-year national leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in the category of education and training. The purpose of the grant is to establish undergraduate internships for Oberlin students from diverse cultural backgrounds to increase their knowledge of and interest in libraries and the library profession. The grant also supports a recent Oberlin graduate for a full-time diversity internship position in each year of the program. The first year of the grant project will be completed in January 2002. See: http://www.oberlin.edu/library/IMLS/.

Outcomes:

Successfully recruited six undergraduate interns to the program in its first year.
The first intern class completed a comprehensive introduction to librarianship that was team-taught by 19 members of the library staff.
Successfully hired a full-time diversity intern.
Three participants in the program have expressed strong interest in a career in librarianship.

Friends of the Library

Objective: To develop a Friends of the Library organization that provides significant, visible support for the library, that contributes to the intellectual life of the college by sponsoring programs related to books and libraries, and that encourages major gifts to the library.

Library Actions:

Inaugurated Friends of the Oberlin College Library in 1991. The initial membership campaign included a challenge from a major donor to match the total of all membership contributions made during the opening membership drive.
Worked with a core group of interested alumni, faculty, and area residents to develop a participatory organizational structure for the Friends, including a governing board and committees for membership, programming, and acquisitions.
Initiated student memberships in the Friends and related programming.

Outcomes:

Current membership in the Friends of the Library is 670; members include current Oberlin students, recent graduates, faculty, and alumni from all areas of the United States and several foreign countries. Over $42,000 was received in direct membership contributions in 2000-01.
In its 11-year history, the Friends have allocated more than $240,000 for special purchases that have included expensive reference sets, support for new curricular areas, primary resource materials to support teaching and research, and rare books and other items for special collections.
The Friends have brought prominent authors to speak at their annual dinner (recent speakers have included Margaret Atwood, Edward O. Wilson, Taylor Branch, and Nicholson Baker); other regular programs include book talks by Oberlin faculty authors, participatory readings by members, and presentations on book arts and book culture.
The Friends recently established a $500 research award to recognize outstanding research projects by Oberlin students. The first award was given in the fall of 2001.
The Friends also recently established an annual $2,500 scholarship for an Oberlin graduate to attend library school.
The library has received substantial major gifts for current use, endowments, and capital needs.

Alumni Librarian Engagement

Objective: To engage the large number of Oberlin alumni (over 600) who work in librarianship, building good public relations, increasing alumni librarian support of the library (particularly through the Friends of the Library), and drawing on them to assist in the library's ongoing goal of interesting Oberlin students in librarianship as a career.

Library Actions:

Planned and carried out a highly successful conference of Oberlin alumni librarians in 1999. The 65 participants, who came from throughout the U.S. and two foreign countries, represented all types of libraries and library positions as well as Oberlin classes ranging from 1933 to 2000. For many it was their first visit to campus since graduation.
Coordinated a careers in librarianship session for Oberlin students in conjunction with the conference that featured a panel of alumni librarians
Enlisted selected alumni librarians to host IMLS interns in their libraries for January term.
Routinely host alumni receptions at ALA annual and midwinter conferences.

Outcomes:

The alumni librarian conference received enthusiastic evaluations and feedback from participants, one calling it "the most satisfying professional meeting" she had ever attended.
Nine Oberlin alumni librarians volunteered to host one of the library's IMLS diversity interns for their off-campus January term projects.
A significant number of alumni librarians, including some who could not attend the conference, became members of the Friends of the Library.

Diversity Initiative

Objective: Address as an ongoing commitment a variety of issues related to diversity in order to improve library resources and services for an increasingly diverse user population.

Library Actions:

Established Library Diversity Committee in 1995.
Set goals for addressing diversity issues in four main areas: staffing, workplace environment, collections, and services.
Facilitated open staff discussions about diversity and the library.
Organized in-house workshops on issues of diversity. Guest speakers and facilitators included ARL's Kriza Jennings and Mark Winston, Professor of Library and Information Sciences at Rutgers.
Initiated a brown-bag lunch series that encourages staff to share cross cultural experiences and ideas about diversity in an informal setting.
Evaluated library collections in several subjects related to diversity concerns.

Outcomes:

Increased significantly the diversity of the library's student workforce.
Staff reported in evaluations that the workshops on "Diversity in Libraries" and "Creating and Maintaining a Diverse Student Workforce" had broadened their views on diversity.
The library currently has an average of four programs for staff on diversity topics each year.
Oberlin is one of a small number of college libraries that has an active diversity program. See Mark D. Winston and Haipeng Li, "Managing Diversity in Liberal Arts College Libraries," College and Research Libraries (May 2000), 205-215.
Library staff have made presentations on diversity at several different professional conferences (ALA Diversity Fair, two separate diversity in academic libraries conferences, Academic Library Association of Ohio annual conference).
The library has made significant additions to its collections in the areas of African American, Asian American, Hispanic, Native American, and gay and lesbian studies.

Substantial and Productive Relationships with Classroom Faculty and Students

Collection Development

Objective: To develop, in close cooperation with teaching faculty, strong library collections that are responsive to the curriculum and that sustain faculty research and artistic performance in carefully defined ways.

Library Actions:

Created a liaison system, coordinated by a collection development librarian, in which a librarian is assigned to each academic department to provide ongoing dialogue with faculty about their needs and to encourage balanced faculty participation in materials selection.
Initiated in the early 1990s a process to create, in collaboration with faculty, a series of detailed collection development policy statements for all subject areas covered in the curriculum. All policy statements were revised in the late 1990s to take into account the library's membership in OhioLINK and greatly expanded access to electronic resources. Relevant policies are routinely discussed with new faculty. See: http://www.oberlin.edu/library/colldev/policies/Default.html.
Developed in the mid-1990s, again in collaboration with faculty, a series of monographic approval plans that cover most areas of the curriculum.
Negotiated with the college administration two three-year plans for the library materials budget (covering 1997-2000 and 2000-2003) that maintain overall purchasing power and allows multi-year planning.

Outcomes:

Faculty and students express high levels of satisfaction with the library's collections. Combined percentages for "very satisfied" and "satisfied" faculty responses in the library's self-study survey were 99% for the book collection, 95% for the periodicals collection, 96% for scores, and 97% for sound recordings. Combined percentages for "very satisfied" and "satisfied" student responses were 94% for the book collection, 88% for the periodicals collection, 89% for scores, and 92% for sound recordings.
Informal feedback from faculty indicates high satisfaction with the efficient and effective manner in which the approval plans allow the library to acquire routine purchases.

Information Literacy at Oberlin

Objective: To improve student's library and information research skills by increasing the extent to which information literacy is incorporated into Oberlin's curriculum, focusing in particular on the major course sequence, and to increase the extent to which course related instruction assists students in completing specific assignments.

Library Actions:

Facilitated in 1996 a General Faculty Library Committee report entitled Information Literacy and the Oberlin Education that encouraged faculty departments to integrate information literacy into both introductory and advanced courses.
Taught a nine-session workshop on information literacy for faculty during the college's 1997 January term. The workshop, which was planned by faculty members of the library committee in collaboration with library staff, was attended by over one-third of the Oberlin faculty.
Offered workshops in subsequent years both for the faculty as a whole and for individual faculty departments.
Began accepting proposals in early 2000 from faculty for curriculum development awards to work in collaboration with library staff under the Five Colleges of Ohio Mellon Foundation Information Literacy Grant. Hired temporary reference librarian to provide released time for librarians working on grant projects. Conducted workshop for faculty to share experience with a pilot project and publicize the grant.

Outcomes:

Faculty participants, in their evaluation of the 1997 workshop, indicated that it improved their ability to use electronic resources and also increased their understanding of the importance of information literacy.
Course related instruction sessions increased by 50% following the 1997 workshop.
Faculty-librarian teams have initiated a total of nine curriculum development projects under the Five Colleges of Ohio Mellon Foundation Information Literacy Grant. All projects involve substantial course revision that makes information literacy a significant portion of course content. Three projects will reach all majors in the disciplines covered. For project descriptions, see: http://www.denison.edu/ohio5/grant/development/proposals.htm.

Public Relations

Objective: Establish effective public relations activities that complement the Friends of the Library program in order to make the campus community aware of library collections, programs, and services.

Library Actions:

Established Library Perspectives newsletter in 1991 and the MuddSlinger newsletter in 1999. Both are mailed to faculty and staff and made available to students. Library Perspectives summarizes major library developments and activities of the Friends of the Library. MuddSlinger (the title is word play on the name of the main library building) announces more specific hot topics, such as new electronic resources
Initiate active programs of displays and exhibitions that highlight the library's collections and that publicize and complement guest speakers. Hold regular exhibits of student art work.
Coordinate an endowed lectureship with two other departments on campus that enables the library to bring distinguished lecturers to speak on topics related to the history of printing and the cultural role of books and information.
Maintain a comments-and-questions bulletin board located prominently at the entrance to the main library in order to help insure the responsiveness of the library system. Questions are answered by the library director or appropriate staff members.

Outcomes:

Informal feedback on the library's newsletters has been uniformly positive.
The library bulletin board is popular and is actively read. Lively debates often spring up on the board in response to questions. Students and other library users frequently compliment library staff.
Events sponsored by the library are well attended by faculty, staff, students, and the community.

Other examples that reflect the purpose and philosophy of the award

International Library Cooperation

Objective: Expand contacts and collaboration with libraries at institutions in Asia that are affiliated with Oberlin through the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, to the mutual benefit of Oberlin's library and the Asian libraries.

Library Actions:

Co-sponsored (in partnership with the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, the Oberlin College President's Office, and the Office of the Dean of the College) with Yunnan University in Kunming, China, an international conference on academic libraries that was held at Yunnan in June 2001. Over 125 librarians, administrators, educators, and information professionals from China, India, Indonesia, and the United States attended the conference. Seven Oberlin library staff members presented papers.

Outcomes:

Programs to exchange library materials with Yunnan University and with other Shansi-affiliated libraries in India, Indonesia and Japan are being developed. Exchanges will strengthen Oberlin's East Asian Studies and South Asian Studies collections.

Cooperative service agreements with these libraries (involving interlibrary loan, document delivery, and reference) are also being explored.

A librarian from Lady Doak College in Madurai, India was in residency in Oberlin during the fall 2001 semester.