CAUSE/EFFECT

This article was published in CAUSE/EFFECT journal, Volume 21 Number 4 1998. The copyright is shared by EDUCAUSE and the author. See http://www.educause.edu/copyright for additional copyright information.

Electronic Reserve Library: Moving from Paper to the Web
by Angela Vanessa Proctor and Dawn Ventress Kight

The John B. Cade Library at Southern University Agricultural and Mechanical College faced a staggering amount of pedestrian traffic in its daily efforts to provide students and faculty with access to its educational resources. The overwhelming demand on the library's reserve department not only strained the workforce but also rapidly depleted costly supplies, such as paper and toner, and contributed to high maintenance costs for the library photocopy machines. That demand was further strained by the University's distance learning courses, which required students not physically located at the campus to access the library's reserve materials. To remedy the situation, the library implemented the Electronic Reserve Library (ERL), a Web-based system designed to convert the collection's printed material to a readable electronic format.

Learning environment

Southern University--one of the largest predominantly black universities in the nation--offers four-year, graduate, professional, and doctoral degree programs. The institution is located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with 550 faculty members and an enrollment of more than 10,000 students, 2,000 of whom are pursuing graduate degrees. The University offers thirty-nine specialties for bachelor's degrees, twenty-five for master's, two doctoral, and three associate degrees. There are two other campuses of SU, in New Orleans and Shreveport.

The John B. Cade Library is an integral part of each student's education, with a comprehensive collection of resources that exceed one million items. The materials include books, recordings, cassettes, microfilm, videos, government documents, and different types of computer software that represent a wealth of instructional tools.

Southern University has a mandatory policy for every course: a current syllabus must be on file in the library for students to review prior to the beginning of each semester. The theory is that by providing students access to these materials, they will have an understanding of what is included in the course selection. In addition to the syllabus, faculty also place selected readings, lecture notes, old examinations, chapters from books, or perhaps the book itself on reserve at the library for students to review or photocopy.

Project background

In the spring of 1997, the library administration realized that the traditional reserve service, which is a part of the circulation department, was facing a problem detrimental to everyday operations. The process of checking out reserve materials had become unwieldy, creating problems for both library staff and students.

The library's borrowing procedure perpetuated the problems. Only two copies of a given item were held at the reserve desk. Students could only check materials out for a limited amount of time, usually two hours. The items could only be renewed if no other students were waiting to use them. If individuals overlooked or forgot the two-hour loan period they were assessed a fine.

With the limited number of copies on reserve, the library was faced with a constant lack of resources for the students. In turn, students would get frustrated waiting in lines at one of the four library copiers, then having to pay for photocopies at ten cents a page. Because some articles were at least twenty to twenty-five pages long, it could be a costly and time-consuming endeavor.

Compounding the problem was the need for students not physically located at the University to travel from remote areas to the Baton Rouge campus to obtain reserve materials. The bottom line was that Southern University needed to find a better way to provide services to the students.

Seeking the solution

The Library Systems and Technology Office had already implemented some Web-based projects and had previously looked at the possibility of digitizing some documents and pictures in its special collections, such as its historical archives and The Camille Shade African American Collection.

The System and Technology Office wrote a proposal to obtain Title III funding from the U.S. Department of Education, which was approved and begun in October of 1997.

Facing staff shortages, the technology office decided to purchase a base document imaging system instead of developing its own system. Staff developed specifications for a system that would be flexible, reliable, and cost effective, and then determined that the best method to access documents placed in electronic format would be the Web.

The library spent several months searching for a document management system that would meet its guidelines. After reviewing a host of products in the marketplace, a decision was made to purchase Fortis, a 32-bit client/server software suite by Westbrook Technologies (Branford, Connecticut), through a local value-added reseller, Uniserv, Inc.

The main reason for the purchase was Fortis' Web-enabled component, called Fortis PowerWeb. The complete package met all of the University's basic requirements, with the ability to customize and integrate future software applications. Fortis provided SU with one product to scan, index, and Web-enable documents for easy retrieval. It runs on a Windows NT server. Documents can be accessed through PowerWeb using Netscape or Internet Explorer. Once at the library's Web site, users simply download a plug-in browser to view documents.

Students can now access any document placed on reserve from any computer-whether on campus, at home, or in an office-with access to the Internet. Users locate materials by searching for document type such as lecture notes, course syllabi, examinations, and selective readings. Once that is determined, the material can be located by department, instructor, course number, course title, or title of document.

Solution in progress

ERL has greatly assisted in improving the quality of education for Southern University students. Providing twenty-four-hour access to needed information from remote or on-campus locations has removed the temporal barrier associated with the library's hours of operation. Students are especially pleased that they can print the information at no charge at the library or at home. There is no longer a need to wait in long lines at the photocopier.

University faculty are also enjoying this new service. They have access to the ERL, which allows them to send their reserve materials to the library electronically. Under the prior process, educators had to physically come to the library and bring all the materials they wanted placed on hold.

Before ERL was put into production, the library chose four departments to test the system and participate in a pilot project. Those departments were Computer Science, English, Mathematics, and Public Administration. A random survey was conducted at the end of the pilot project to obtain feedback from the students. The library was very pleased with its findings. A few of the questions and responses from the survey are below.

 
QUESTION RESPONSE ITEMS PERCENT
Did you use ERL this semester? YES 100
  NO 0
How did you find out about ERL? INSTRUCTOR 65
  FRIEND 20
  LIBRARY 15
ERL is understandable and friendly. STRONGLY AGREE 60
  AGREE 20
  NEUTRAL 20
  STRONGLY DISAGREE 0
ERL is convenient. STRONGLY AGREE 70
  AGREE 20
  NEUTRAL 5
  STRONGLY DISAGREE 5
Would you like to see ERL used for other courses? YES 85
  NO 0
  NO RESPONSE 15

Future outlook

With such positive responses from both faculty and students, the library intends to expand its ERL offerings to the campus community. The staff will focus on digitizing other non-copyrighted collections in the library that can be made available over the Web.

The trend of online education is becoming increasingly popular at universities around the world. In its goal to be a pioneer in such Web-based education, the Systems and Technology Office also plans to use this document management system to assist professors in preparing materials for the Internet to supplement courses taught online via the Web.

The University also intends to store images of its more fragile historical documents, which are now kept in an air-conditioned acid-free environment. That collection includes the first student newspapers, yearbooks, and letters and other documents from past SU presidents.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Kathryn Jordan, Mrs. Inez Hunte, and Ms. Rosena Moton, Southern University Title III Office; Mike Lee and Russell White of Uniserv, Inc.; Emma Bradford Perry, Dean of Libraries; and Beth Fisher, Westbrook Technologies, for their contributions to this article and the work they did to make the project a success.

Angela Vanessa Proctor ([email protected]) is Assistant Director of the Electronic Reserve Library at Southern University. Dawn Ventress Kight ([email protected]) is Manager of the Library Systems & Technology Office and Project Director at Southern University.

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