The Information Arcade at the University of Iowa Copyright 1994 CAUSE. From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 1994. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: jrudy@CAUSE.colorado.edu THE INFORMATION ARCADE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA by Anita K. Lowry ABSTRACT: A collaborative effort of the University Libraries, the Office of Information Technology, and the academic faculty, the Information Arcade is an ambitious facility designed to support the use of electronic resources in research, teaching, and independent learning. The project's planning and development process included a formal commitment to ongoing cooperation and communication among the partners in the effort. When the Information Arcade in the main library at the University of Iowa opened its doors in August 1992, it marked the culmination of nearly two years of planning for an ambitious new library facility designed to support the use of electronic resources in teaching, learning, and research across the curriculum of a research university. In the words of University Librarian Sheila Creth, "The goal of the center is to bring new information technologies into the teaching and research process of the University of Iowa campus, using the library as the primary focus in order to link traditional print materials to the electronic information sources."[1] The original name of the center was to be the Interactive Information Learning Center--not nearly as colorful as "Information Arcade," but indicative of the emphasis on teaching and independent learning in the conception of the Arcade. THE BEGINNING Established with a three-year, $752,432 grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust and supplemented by additional funds from the University and a gift of equipment from Apple Computer, Inc., the Information Arcade is a cooperative effort of the University Libraries, the Office of Information Technology (OIT), and the academic faculty. Over fifty people, drawn equally from these three groups, were involved in the planning process, which was designed not only to draw on the diverse expertise of faculty and staff from around the campus but also to ensure that the major stakeholders in the project would be represented and committed to it from the start. Two advisory bodies, the Steering Committee and the Advisory Council, were established at the beginning of the grant period. The Information Arcade Steering Committee comprises the University Librarian, the director of the Office of Information Technology (OIT), Libraries' director of Information Systems and Technology, the director of the Weeg Computing Center, and a member of the academic faculty. This is the group that provides guidance on long-term goals and major policy issues. The Information Arcade Advisory Council is a much larger group, with fifteen members drawn almost equally from the Libraries, OIT, and the academic faculty, as well as a representative from University Video Services. The purpose of this group is to contribute a variety of perspectives and expertise to discussions of issues and policies and to facilitate communication with their colleagues. In addition, during the planning period prior to the opening of the Arcade, special task forces on space utilization, databases, instructional software, tool software, and operations, along with a technical advisory committee, were formed to develop the initial specifications for the Arcade's infrastructure, resources, and operations. These groups drew their members from the Libraries, OIT, the faculty, and other relevant units on campus and did an extraordinary amount of work in a relatively short time. They have since been discharged, their duties now being the responsibility of the Arcade management and its advisory bodies. These groups all served, and in the case of the Steering Committee and Advisory Council continue to serve, important political as well as practical aims in reinforcing a collaborative ethos and in strengthening the institutional position of the Information Arcade. A BLUEPRINT FOR COLLABORATION What is the blueprint for collaboration that made the Information Arcade a reality? The University Libraries: * manages and staffs the Arcade; * selects, purchases, installs, and supports electronic information sources and software; * helps faculty and students to use these resources and to integrate traditional and electronic resources into their research and teaching; * installs and provides technical support for equipment located in the Arcade. The Office of Information Technology: * manages the Arcade server (located at Weeg Computing Center) and network; * provides and installs on the Arcade server copies of the "core collection" of software from the Instructional Technology Centers; * assists in the selection of hardware and software; * repairs equipment; * develops multimedia and instructional software for faculty. The academic faculty: * uses Arcade resources for research and teaching; * develops courseware, multimedia databases, and other computer-based instructional materials; * helps to evaluate courses and methodologies; * advises in the selection of information sources and software. The full-time staff of the Information Arcade consists of the head, who reports to the Libraries' director of Information Systems and Technology, and the library systems analyst. "Front-line" information and instructional services are provided by six half-time graduate assistants and a number of undergraduate and graduate student lab monitors. Many different units of the OIT participate in the ongoing planning and support for the Information Arcade, including the Distributed Systems Group, the Network Services Group, and the Instructional Technology Centers Group. Two other units, Second Look Computing (the multimedia development group) and the Instructional Software Development Group, play essential roles in the integration of new technologies into teaching by supporting faculty software development efforts on campus. In addition, the Information Arcade relies heavily on the user education courses taught by Second Look and on Second Look's expertise and advice on hardware and software for multimedia development. In order to clarify and facilitate certain key elements in the collaboration between the Libraries and OIT, during the past year the two organizations have drafted a memorandum of understanding, a "Blueprint for Collaboration for the Information Arcade." This constitutes the first formal document outlining the nature of the shared responsibility for the Arcade's technical infrastructure and affirming specific contributions of the Libraries and the Office of Information Technology to it. This document also established an Information Arcade Technical Advisory Team. The team is co-chaired by the head of the Information Arcade and the manager of the Distributed Systems Group and also includes the library systems analyst and a Weeg computer consultant. Meeting monthly, it brings together the people most directly involved in the planning and support for the Arcade's technical infrastructure and has proven invaluable in the identification and solution of problems and the implementation of improvements. And what happens after the grant-funded period is over? University Libraries has re-allocated a permanent professional line to the position of the head of the Arcade, made the library systems analyst a full-time Arcade staff member, and will continue to provide funds for facilities and electronic information sources. The Office of Information Technology will continue the technical support, cost-sharing, and other contributions that it currently provides. And as part of the original grant proposal, the University administration made major commitments to ongoing funding for the Information Arcade, including supporting the six graduate assistantships and the lab monitors, as well as providing substantial funds for upgrading equipment and for acquiring software and databases. BEYOND BIBLIOGRAPHIES Information technology has penetrated nearly every aspect of the modern research library, so what is unique about the Information Arcade? In a nutshell, the Information Arcade is without precedent in its emphasis on: * non-bibliographic electronic source materials in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, including electronic texts, image and multimedia databases, numeric data, and courseware; * the analysis, manipulation, and creation of information in electronic formats, using information access and management tools, software for analysis and simulation, and programs for multimedia authoring and for collaborative work; * the integration of computer-based resources and techniques into the undergraduate and graduate curricula as well as into library instruction; * the provision of expert, in-depth information and instructional services to support computer-aided teaching, learning, and research. To date, the application of information technologies in libraries has been directed primarily towards the creation, management, and access of bibliographic records, whether in the library's online public access catalog or in the collection of bibliographies and indexes on CD-ROM or in facilitating access to remote library catalogs via the Internet. But in recent years there has been an explosion in the creation and publication of primary source materials in electronic formats. Initially this occurred in the sciences and social sciences with the development of numeric databases--like censuses, or voting records, or economic time series data--and special databases, like chemical structure databases. But the humanities have now gotten into the act, as a number of scholarly electronic text projects have made major primary source text databases and sophisticated and user-friendly text analysis software available to scholars in the humanities. To give just a few examples: * the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae database: thousands of ancient and classical Greek texts; * the American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language database: approximately 2,000 literary, philosophical, religious, political, and scientific works from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries; * the Past Masters series of British and European philosophical texts; * the WordCruncher Disk: _Complete Works of Shakespeare_, the King James and New Revised versions of the Bible, selected texts from the Library of America series of American authors, and a large number of historical documents relating to American constitutional history. And, increasingly, primary source image databases and multimedia databases are being developed to give scholars and students ready access to rare or difficult-to-locate visual documents. For example, the _Images of the French Revolution_ laserdisk database of eighteenth century prints, paintings, and similar materials from the collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris provides fully indexed and cataloged access to the contemporary iconography of this period in French history. The _Videodisc Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century_ reproduces over eighty hours of clips of news footage from the turn of the century to the present--a veritable gold mine of sources for students in history, political science, literature and the arts, journalism and mass communications, education, the history of science, and interdisciplinary cultural studies. And it is worth noting that the materials in the _Video Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century_ are all licensed for re-use so that students and faculty may use it to create their own video compilations on videotape or in digital multimedia programs, so long as it is for non-commercial, educational purposes. With the increasing importance and availability of electronic primary source materials, today's scholars and students must learn not only how to identify and locate, but also how to analyze, manipulate, evaluate, and even create a wide variety of sources in printed and electronic formats. The true electronic library of the future is one that facilitates not only information retrieval, but also information analysis, enabling its users to bring computer-based tools and methodologies to bear on the data at hand; it also provides means for them to incorporate digital information directly into research documents and teaching tools of their own. Accordingly, the resources of the Information Arcade include: * electronic source materials, with an emphasis on scholarly electronic texts and image and multimedia databases; * text analysis software (for example, WordCruncher, TACT, TALLY, Micro-OCP); * information access and management programs (for example, Internet navigation tools like Mosaic to help people make better use of the resources available on the Internet, EndNote Plus, FileMaker Pro); * scanning, OCR, and sound and image-capture and manipulation software (for example, Ofoto, Photoshop, TypeReader, Premiere, SoundEdit Pro, Morph); * hypertext and multimedia authoring and presentation software (for example, HyperCard, SuperCard, Storyspace, Persuasion, Producer Pro, interText [developed at UI by Second Look]); * graphics and desktop publishing applications (for example, PageMaker, SuperPaint). TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE INFORMATION ARCADE In a world in which computer-based interactive learning is changing the ways that teachers teach and students learn, the educational applications of electronic resources figure prominently in the mission of the Arcade. Information Arcade collections include high-level instructional software and courseware designed for use in the classroom and for individual and independent learning. For example, the Arcade recently acquired a CD-ROM titled _Think for Yourself_, which contains many large data sets of statistics on the environment, health, economics, and demography from a variety of U.S. and international sources; it is designed as a teaching tool, bringing together many different kinds of data and providing a menu-driven graphing program and over ten hours of self-paced tutorials to teach students how to select, analyze, and evaluate numeric data. The instructional software in our collections also serves to show faculty what kinds of programs exist and gives them ideas about materials they could develop for their own teaching purposes. The centerpiece of the Arcade's educational facilities is the electronic classroom, though one-on-one consultations and small-group instructional sessions take place throughout the Arcade. Librarians, Information Arcade graduate assistants, faculty, and professional staff from other parts of the University all teach here. Information Arcade lab monitors and graduate assistants (GAs) provide "front-line" reference and instructional assistance to patrons in the Arcade during all the hours it is open. The GAs hold half-time graduate assistantships comparable to a teaching or research assistantship and are chosen for their subject knowledge in different disciplines and their communication and service skills as well as for their technical expertise. The competition for these positions is keen, and they represent a creative solution to the staffing challenges presented by a high-tech facility in which students, faculty, and staff with varying levels of computer literacy work with sophisticated equipment, software, and source materials. In addition, librarians from throughout the Libraries give demonstrations and teach "hands-on" classes on OASIS (the Libraries' online system), the Internet, information retrieval, and electronic source materials and tools; some of the special sessions scheduled during the 1993/94 academic year covered electronic texts in the humanities, electronic source materials in the social sciences, and electronic resources in history, classics, music history, mass communications, and education. Librarians and Arcade graduate assistants provide in-depth, one-on-one consultations for students and faculty who are using or creating electronic resources for research and teaching. Librarians also work in teams with Information Arcade graduate assistants to develop new electronic information sources and teaching tools. For example: * a librarian in special collections prepared a multimedia presentation, incorporating both digital images and sounds, on Old English manuscripts and modern artists' books from the Libraries' collections; * a reference librarian combined text and images from the _1492: An Ongoing Voyage_ exhibit at the Library of Congress (retrieved via ftp over the Internet) with additional images, sound, and text that she digitized and wrote in order to create a sophisticated hypermedia program on the diversity of peoples in the Americas; * the bibliographer for European history is developing a multimedia instructional module on the political geography of Renaissance western Europe for an undergraduate history course; and * librarians are participating in the design and development of the University Libraries' new Gopher server. In order to encourage and facilitate the integration of electronic resources and interactive methods into the curriculum, the Information Arcade also promotes the use of its facilities, including the electronic classroom, for academic courses and special class assignments that take advantage of these new resources and methods. Faculty in many disciplines teach classes in the electronic classroom of the Information Arcade. In the words of a professor who teaches a course on problem-solving: ... "the Information Arcade classroom has turned out to be ideal for this class. Nearly every class day makes use of the classroom's special facilities in one way or another. Some days, the instructor's workstation and the screen projector are used to provide multimedia lecture support. On other days, these same facilities enable me to show techniques for using the computer in helping to solve problems, with the students following along on their own individual workstations. Or, the students may work independently on applying class principles using their workstations while the TA and I are available for tutoring and trouble-shooting as needed. ... Although the course is still undergoing considerable development and evolution, it already seems clear that it has the potential for being a model of how technology can help in teaching general intellectual skills."[2] "Literature and Culture in Twentieth Century America," taught by a UI English professor, is another particularly innovative course that makes heavy use of resources in the Information Arcade and throughout the Libraries. In this course, the students do not write term papers but instead create their own multimedia projects on some aspect of the Columbian World Exposition of 1893. This world's fair, held in Chicago, was a seminal event in the transformation of American mass consciousness about technology. It is noteworthy that in his evaluation of this course, the professor was particularly excited by the fact that students in this class, inspired by his large multimedia database on the Exposition and by their opportunity to contribute to it, did much more bibliographic and historical research in contemporary primary sources (for example, newspapers, magazines, exposition publications, eyewitness accounts) than is usually the case with undergraduates. In the words of one of his students: "The open-ended nature of the assignments is what excites me. We need to research information from virtually everywhere, employing all the resources available at the university: scanners, advanced software ..., electronic mail and Internet, and even real books! We have the opportunity--the responsibility--to add to a large, growing base of information in such a way to illuminate the previous data in a non-trivial way."[3] During academic year 1993/94, over forty academic courses met in the electronic classroom to take advantage of the unique electronic resources of the Information Arcade; some met there for every class session, while others met there occasionally. These classes all had assignments that made use of special software or other electronic information sources in the Arcade, and in several of them the students prepared their own hypertext or multimedia projects. Letters and evaluation forms received from the faculty bear eloquent testimony to the impact of the Information Arcade on teaching and learning. Thanks in large part to the Information Arcade, at the University of Iowa the library is seen as a major player in the campus efforts to enhance the quality of undergraduate education--a concern shared by institutions of higher education throughout the nation.[4] CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE There is much unfinished business in the Information Arcade. And there are real challenges here, some of which will sound familiar to managers of campus computing facilities and some of which arise from the particular situation and goals of the Arcade. * The diversity and dynamism of our collections of software and electronic information sources, which is one of the strengths of the Arcade, complicates our information management tasks and our efforts to provide ready access to our resources. Many of our programs and information sources are produced by small scholarly publishers, even individual scholars, and while they may be wonderful resources, they often pose special installation problems, cause configuration conflicts, won't run on our server and network, etc. * Staffing and service: We have set high standards for ourselves in terms of expertise and "user friendliness," but because of the breadth of our mandate it is increasingly difficult for staff to keep up with the burgeoning collection of software and resources available in the Arcade and over the Internet, not to mention the demands of a growing user population. So we are seeking to set clear priorities and guidelines for support, to develop formal and informal training programs for Arcade staff and librarians, and to involve ever greater numbers of librarians in Arcade service activities, especially for electronic source materials and courseware within their particular areas of language and subject expertise. * Promotion: At the same time, we must continue aggressively to promote our resources and services to faculty and students, especially to those not already familiar with electronic resources and teaching tools beyond the online public access catalog and CD-ROM periodical indexes. One measure of our success to date is the heavy demand for the electronic classroom, making it impossible to accommodate all requests. Fortunately, this has stimulated other units on campus to begin planning and creating additional electronic classroom facilities. * Remote access: At present, Information Arcade software and databases are accessible only in the Arcade, but we are anxious to be able to deliver resources over the network to other libraries, classrooms, computer labs, and faculty microcomputers. However, the technical and licensing issues involved in providing remote access, especially to the diverse CD-ROM and laserdisk materials, are formidable and will not be easily or cheaply resolved. * Evaluation: And finally, how do we evaluate the Information Arcade? We keep statistics to measure our usage, conduct informal user surveys, and collect anecdotal data, but it is very difficult to quantitatively and definitively answer questions about the impact of electronic resources and methods on research and teaching. A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS Based on the experiences of the Information Arcade, what are some of the ingredients of a successful cooperative project that can be applied at other campuses? We have identified the following: * A shared vision of the project's mission and goals, jointly developed and clearly articulated by key personnel within both the library and the computing center. * Involvement of both organizations in all stages of the project: from conception to planning to implementation. * Documented agreements regarding the respective responsibilities for and contributions to the project, with specific commitments in terms of personnel, funds, and other resources. * Formal groups, made up of representatives of both organizations, that meet regularly to facilitate communication, planning, problem-solving, and cooperative activities: + small working groups or teams to manage critical areas of joint responsibility--including a top management team that addresses major issues relating to planning, policy, priorities, and budget; + a larger, advisory group with broader representation to foster widespread involvement in discussions and decision- making. * Flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing conditions within the library and computing organizations and within the larger institutional context. * Communication, communication, communication! Successful collaboration doesn't just happen, even with the best of intentions on the part of both the library and the computing center. It must be fostered, nurtured, and institutionalized with an eye on the complex and challenging future of information services. ******************************************************* SIDEBAR The Information Arcade Environment Located just inside the door of the Main Library and adjacent to the Information and Instructional Services Department (with its full complement of printed and electronic bibliographic and reference tools), the Information Arcade is approximately 6,000 square feet in size. The electronic classroom covers approximately 1,400 square feet. It is equipped with twenty-four Macintosh student stations and seating space for two students per station; the instructor's station has two computers, a Macintosh and an IBM, to which are attached CD-ROM drives, a laserdisk player, a VCR, a removable cartridge hard drive, and a read-write optical drive. Images from the instructor's computers and/or peripherals may be projected to the front of the classroom using a multiscan projector or an LCD panel (for example, in cases where simultaneous projection from both computer screens or from a computer screen and a laserdisk is desired); sound is projected via an amplifier and a system of built-in ceiling speakers. One wall of the classroom is floor-to-ceiling "privacy glass"; with the touch of a button the wall can be made opaque (to shut out distractions from the rest of the Arcade) or clear (to enable Arcade staff to monitor the room when classes are not using it). The information stations (Macintosh and IBM) located outside the classroom are used to access the Internet, CD-ROMs, laserdisks, and other local and remote information databases, as well as instructional software. There is also a cluster of eight multimedia stations designed to enable students and faculty to create their own multimedia presentations and programs; in addition to Macintosh microcomputers, these multimedia stations have various configurations of equipment- -scanners, audio tape and videotape players, CD-ROM and laserdisk players, removable mass storage drives--for the creation and manipulation of digital text, images, and sound. The small Course Preparation Lab is used mostly for consultations with faculty and by librarians and faculty using Arcade resources--though it is not meant to be a full- service multimedia or software development lab. The information desk is prominently located--that's where patrons come for all manner of assistance in using the resources of the Arcade--and it houses the growing collection of manuals, reference works, newsletters and journals, and other information sources. The offices of the head of the Arcade and of the graduate assistants and a good-sized equipment/work room complete the visible picture. The network infrastructure is invisible but just as crucial to our operations. All the Macintosh and IBM computers are on an Ethernet network; the Information Arcade file server, an IBM PS/2 Model 95, is located in the Weeg Computing Center across the street and managed by the Distributed Systems Group at Weeg. The current server software is Novell Netware 3.11; SoftTrack is the launch management/software metering software in use on the server. All the microcomputers in the Arcade have access not only to the resources on the server, but also to the campus network and to the wide world of the Internet. ******************************************************* Footnotes: 1 Quoted in "UI Libraries Receives Carver Grant," University of Iowa news release, May 1991. 2 Professor Gregg Oden, a letter to the author, March 12, 1993. 3 Chris Mortika quoted in an information sheet prepared by Professor Brooks Landon about his course, "Literature and Culture of the Twentieth Century," University of Iowa, February 1993. 4 Joanne Fritz, "Playground for the Mind," _Iowa Alumni Review_, Spring 1993, pp. 22-26. ******************************************************* Anita Lowry is Head of the Information Arcade at the University of Iowa. Previously she was Deputy Head of the Butler Reference Department and co-founder and Director of the Electronic Text Service in the Columbia University Libraries. She has a BA in comparative literature from Indiana University, an MLS from Columbia University, and an MA in cinema studies from New York University. Lowry is a member of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and currently serves on its Executive Council. ******************************************************* The Information Arcade at the University of Iowa