Polk Library News
September 2004 - Issue 26

From the Director: Listening to Students and Faculty Pat Wilkinson, wilkinso@uwosh.edu

Last spring, Polk Library and 208 other academic libraries asked their patrons for assessments about the quality of library services on their respective campuses. In short, the university community (1,054 responders) told Polk Library: “You are doing well; we need you to do better.”

The LibQUAL survey, conducted by the Association of Research Libraries, asked students and faculty to evaluate print and electronic collections, library services and Polk Library as a place. It asked respondents to rank (on a scale of 1 – 9) their minimum expectations, their maximum expectations and their perception of current library performance.

Overall, the library compared well to academic libraries nationally. Its overall rank was higher than the average for all colleges and universities. The library's overall rank was in the top third of the 12 UW main libraries that participated in the survey. There were many bright spots in the survey results and comments. Our users expressed satisfaction with the library staff's service attitude and with specific library services. Two services that garnered a high degree of satisfaction were library instruction and interlibrary loan/document delivery.

One particular concern to students was “library as a place.” Comparatively, this was the library's lowest ranking among UW System schools, and the library received many negative comments in this area. Numerous comments mentioned lack of group study areas, lack of quiet study areas, shabby décor and poor lighting.

Faculty expressed the most concern about the print and electronic collections available for teaching and research. This concern is focused on a very real problem faced by higher education and academic libraries nationally -- the crisis in academic publishing. In spite of this legitimate concern, UW Oshkosh faculty expressed higher expectations and a relatively greater satisfaction with the library in this general area than the average in UW System.

The survey provided the staff of Polk Library with a significant amount of important information that will help us better serve the campus community. In the next year, you will see the library try to address many of these concerns. You will see several changes immediately. A second “quiet study” area in the library was created, and the library also created its first group study room. Also, the library used the information gathered from the survey (and a follow-up survey) to redesign its web site (http://www.uwosh.edu/library/). The new library homepage tries to address a basic concern expressed by students, “I do not know where to start looking for information!”

In a continuing effort to provide students and faculty with the learning, teaching and research material that they need, the library is reorganizing its collection development efforts. In June the library welcomed Ron Hardy to the staff as the Head of Information Resources. Ron, along with Cynthia Huebschen, will be working to analyze our collections more carefully and work more closely with faculty in trying to build both print and electronic collections that best meet campus needs. (See Ron's article.)

The full results of the survey are posted on the library's web site, http://www.uwosh.edu/library/about.html, for those who want to look more closely at the findings.

Meet Polk Library's Head of Information Resources Ron Hardy, hardyr@uwosh.edu

The first question people ask me when I tell them my title is: “what does that mean?” Information Resources means different things to different people, but here at Polk Library it encompasses collection development and management, both within the library (books, journal subscriptions, etc.) and outside of the library (networked databases, shared collections, etc.).

Before coming to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I spent four years as the Collection Development Librarian at Central College in Pella, Iowa . At Central College much of my work was focused on communication with faculty regarding the library's collections, and collaboration with faculty on implementing new services at the library for our students. I strongly believe that the library and the faculty should be working in tandem to provide our students with the best resources to support their studies, and to ensure that the library resources reflect what is happening in the classroom. This can not happen without good communication.

The most appealing draws for me about Polk Library and UW Oshkosh are the number and variety of resources that we have available here and the level of collaboration between our institution and the other UW System libraries. Universal Borrowing provides any book in the System to our campus in 3-4 days, Interlibrary Loan provides journal articles to our campus in 2-5 days (with exceptions, of course!), and the library has access to over 15 thousand journals online to support its 1500 subscriptions in print! Between the strong print collections in the building, over 100 databases, thousands of full text journals online, and a quick turnaround from Universal Borrowing and ILL, Polk Library has got the information UW Oshkosh needs. (If we don't, let me know.)

This year I will be involved with a number of activities that you may or may not notice, including:

• Rewriting our collection development policies to reflect the 21st century information environment;
• Assessing our collection strengths and weaknesses by department and format type;
• Assessing our acquisitions budget allocations based on format and departments;
• Working with the librarian liaisons to departments to ensure that the library is aware of faculty information needs and providing the services faculty and librarians need for collection development;
• Standardizing program evaluation documents for departmental program reviews;
• Working with others in the library to implement cross-linking software between databases and ‘federated searching' tools (allowing searchers to search multiple databases at the same time);
• Working with other UW Libraries on developing shared collections.

I look forward to working with everyone on campus. Please stop in and say hello!

Polk Library Website – The Right Time for Redesign Sarah Neises, neises@uwosh.edu

We use our website to give access on campus and off to our broad range of over 100 search tools, our library catalog and over 15,000 periodicals (print and online). Managing this complex information environment and making it understandable to faculty as well as students is a daunting task.

In response to two surveys of users, as well as to trends in the ways users find information, we began to think about our website redesign. Our goal was to give you fewer clicks to get to the information you want. We also wanted to eliminate library jargon as much as possible and move the website verbiage toward more natural language. In our previous website you saw the word “database” to describe our electronic resources. Students in particular never understood what a database was. Is it something they create using Microsoft Access? We moved to the words “search tool” to describe our databases, hoping it would be more intuitive for students to understand.

We highlight our most important electronic services: finding books & videos, electronic reserves, and finding articles. We sought to provide the ability to search right from the front page for books & videos – no second level pages to navigate, no search limits to place before searching for a video. We wanted to make it as easy as possible to answer one of our most popular questions: “Does Polk get this journal?” We now have a search box on the front page that will search both our print holdings and our electronic journal holdings.

For students, we created a single link on our front page to Academic Search Elite, one of our most popular general search tools. We wanted to give the novice searcher a simple way to find some satisfying results. In the “Find Articles” section of the front page, however, we link directly below to links for students and faculty to find the best search tools in their academic areas to do a more thorough search. In the subject divided list of resources, we've highlighted the “best bets” of search tools in each academic area, and then recommended other useful search tools.

For faculty, we created an “Especially for Faculty” section that highlights specific faculty-oriented services and search tools. Faculty also may find it useful that we placed a drop-down menu on our front page that is an alphabetical list of our search tools A-Z. No need to click to a second level page to get to your known favorites, like the “Oxford English Dictionary”, “NewspaperArchive.com”, etc. Also note that on the “Especially for Faculty” page, we highlight library policies that may affect faculty: statements on privacy, copyright guidelines for audiovisual materials and more.

We put a Google search box on our front page, along with some librarian's tips for using it effectively and for evaluating the resources you find using it. Google is an important search tool that is very familiar to students and faculty alike, and we wanted to highlight it in addition to our licensed library search tools.

You will see more changes on the library website as we prepare to implement a new meta-searching solution that will allow users to search across many library search tools at the same time, instead of searching each one individually. Look for that to be rolled out in Spring 2005.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions about the new website design, please contact Sarah Neises (neises@uwosh.edu).

Murder in the Stacks - A Shakespearean Murder Mystery Renée Sengele, sengele@uwosh.edu

A chilling scream echoed through the Putney Room at Polk Library, halting all conversation at the "Evening of Shakespeare" reception. Professor William Stratford-Avon, the world-renowned and much-disliked visiting professor of Shakespearean Studies, had been found murdered in the reference room, bludgeoned to death with an unabridged dictionary. Who was responsible for this horrible deed? Was it Dr. Gertrude Mab, who still holds a bitter grudge against Stratford-Avon for allegedly plagiarizing her doctoral research? Or perhaps Benedict Bolingbroke, a reference librarian who has absolutely had it with Stratford-Avon sending his students to the library with unclear research instructions pointing to resources the library doesn't own? Or Henry Mercutio, an undergraduate student in Stratford-Avon's seminar class, who faces academic probation because of the professor's unclear and unfair grading methods? But wait...30 minutes later, Henry is found dead, too, and poison is found in his water bottle.

On Friday, September 10, approximately 35 students attended the second annual Polk Library Murder Mystery. In teams of five to six people, they followed clues throughout the building to discover the identity of the murderer. Along the way they learned about library locations (including the bound periodicals and audiovisual collection) and online library resources (such as the catalog and electronic reserves). Library staff, posing as suspects in the crime, were also available around the building for assistance. Once the teams had gathered all the clues, they returned to the Putney Room to discuss what they had found and determine the murderer. Prizes were awarded to the teams who found all their clues and came up with the correct answer. (Special thanks to Pizza Hut, Subway, Family Video, Domino's Pizza, and Papa John's for their prize donations!)

In the end, the students determined that Dr. Miranda Macbeth was guilty of the horrible murders. Macbeth, the temporary chair of the Shakespearean Studies department, was instrumental in bringing Dr. Stratford-Avon to campus. However, she soon found that Stratford-Avon had actively campaigned for -- and won -- the permanent chair position she had sought for so long. Macbeth then confessed that Henry had witnessed the crime and she tried to cover her tracks. She was no match, though, for a group of information-savvy students who tracked down the evidence against her. University Police came and made the arrest, and justice was served.

Dr. Miranda Macbeth, murder mystery suspect, talks with students at the second annual Polk Library Murder Mystery.

Department of Justice Rescinds Order to Destroy Documents Mike Watkins, watkins@uwosh.edu

Upon the request of the Department of Justice, the Government Printing Office (GPO) sent out an electronic letter on July 20 to the participating libraries in the Federal Depository Library Program ordering them to destroy five documents that were distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program. The five documents ordered to be destroyed were deemed by the agency to be for “internal use only”. All the documents dealt with the laws and procedures relating to forfeiture of assets obtained through criminal activity. Polk Library received four of the five documents and destroyed them about a week after the order was issued.

Federal depository libraries, including Polk Library's Government Documents Division have received requests to destroy documents in the past. Shortly after September 11, libraries were ordered to destroy a CD-ROM which identified the source waters for municipal water systems throughout the country.

The order to destroy the five documents on asset forfeiture received criticism from many in the library community. The American Library Association made an organized effort to get the order rescinded. They maintained that the information in these documents was freely available elsewhere in the published statutes and regulations of the federal government. Many were perplexed that legal material of this nature was subject to withdrawal and looked at the order as an attempt to censor or withhold information from the public.

Under current rules promulgated in response to September 11, “sensitive” but unclassified information can be withheld from the public in the interest of national security. This new categorization has not been well received by those in the library community. This appears to be the first time this rule was invoked in relation to information distributed through the Depository Library Program since the withdrawal and destruction of the Source Water CD-ROM.

On July 30, the Department of Justice rescinded the order to destroy the documents, maintaining that the information in the documents was not “sensitive” enough to be withheld. In response, the Government Printing Office will attempt to provide replacement copies of the five documents to all libraries within the Federal Depository Library system that have already destroyed the copies that they held.

PsycARTICLES - Full Text Access to Psychology Journals Cynthia Huebschen, huebschc@uwosh.edu

In August 2004, Polk Library added access to the PsycARTICLES database, published by the American Psychological Association, as an add-on to the index PsycINFO. PsychARTICLES is described by the APA as “a database of full-text articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber.” The database presently offers 53 journals, with coverage as far back as 1985. Among the journals included are:

• American Psychologist
• Developmental Psychology
• Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science
• Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention
• Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology
• Dreaming
• Emotion
• European Psychologist
• History of Psychology
• Journal of Abnormal Psychology
• Journal of Comparative Psychology
• five parts of the Journal of Experimental Psychology
• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• Journal of Psychophysiology
• Psychological Assessment
• Psychological Review
• Psychology and Aging
• Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
• Psychology of Men and Masculinity

When users search in PsycINFO, any references that are available in full text in PsycARTICLES will include a link to that database. In some cases, articles from other journals may be available in full text from one of the vendor EBSCO's other databases, such as Academic Search Elite; in that event, a link will also be offered to that full text. With the agreement of the Psychology Department faculty, Polk Library switched our PsycINFO subscription to EBSCO in Summer 2004 to take better advantage of the full text links, and so that all the UWs would be using a consistent interface for their access.

The APA notes that inclusion of the electronic journal's text in PsycARTICLES is “about one week behind the mailing of the print.” Articles are offered in HTML and PDF format. According to the APA, “Each article in the journal is in PsycARTICLES, as well as errata and letters to the editor. Tables of contents, ads, and administrative material (editorial boards, instructions to authors, and so forth) will be added in the future.”

A Very Special Patron Roberta Stuemke, stuemke@uwosh.edu

The Access Services staff are always ready to help patrons with special needs, and on the morning of Thursday, August 19, we all pitched in to help a very special patron! Molly, a black-ticked mixed-breed hound, decided to attend a class in the Polk Computer Lab. She followed the other students into the building and down the hall into the lab, only to be brought back to the Circulation Desk – after all, she didn't have a TitanCard or a computer password!

Mary started making phone calls, trying to determine where this beautifully behaved dog belonged. Meanwhile, Eric, Crystal, Jeanne and I worked together to rig a leash, take Molly out to the Elmwood courtyard, and keep her company until someone came for her. She was quite hungry, so some snacks were found, and many pictures were taken. Finally, after information from the rabies tag on her collar was used to identify Molly's people, it was arranged for someone from the Oshkosh animal shelter to come pick the friendly dog up and hold her until the owner could come for her.

We later learned that Molly's owner didn't want to keep her, and signed her over to the shelter to be put up for adoption. The very good news is that she went to a new home the week of 8/29/04.

New Service: Item Retrieval Jeanne Foley, foley@uwosh.edu

Polk Library now offers faculty and academic staff the opportunity to place an online request for items available on the shelf. During open library hours the items are retrieved within 1-3 hours, depending on staff availability. When the items are available for check out, an email notification is sent.  You can make a retrieval request using the "Request an Item" feature of the Polk Library online catalog. This new service begins as a one-year trial for the 2004-05 academic year.

Congratulations to the Taste of Oshkosh Drawing Winners!

Congratulations to Michael Neculescu, Sara Rusch, and Kyle McConnell, winners in the Polk Library Taste of Oshkosh drawing! Michael won a $20 gift certificate from University Books and More, Sara received a $10 Titan Dollar certificate for Reeve Union, and Kyle won three books: a dictionary, a thesaurus, and The Real Freshman Handbook. Special thanks to University Books and More for their contributions!

Spotlight on Reference Renée Sengele, sengele@uwosh.edu

Animals and the Law: A Sourcebook
Ref KF 390.5 .A5 C87 2001

Staff Highlights

• The Government Information Roundtable of the Wisconsin Library Association held their annual conference, Government Information Day, at the University Of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library on June 4. This year's conference was entitled Clearing the Haze from the Statistical Maze. Thirty-eight government information specialists from all types of libraries and government agencies attended the conference. Michael Watkins, Head of Government Documents, is currently the chair of the Government Information Roundtable.

• Jeanne Foley, Head of Access Services, attended a library conference in Madison July 27-28 on electronic solutions.