MEMORANDUM

TO: William Louthan, Provost
FROM: Theresa Byrd, Director of Libraries
DATE: November 22, 1999
SUBJECT: REPORT FOR THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE - BOARD OF TRUSTEES

NEWS FROM THE LIBRARIES

On November 1, The Five Colleges of Ohio Consortium submitted a three-year information literacy grant proposal for $475,000 to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This grant will strengthen the teaching of information literacy in the curriculum by increasing students’ skills and capabilities in using library and information resources. Our approach, which includes both consortial activities and initiatives at the campus level, focuses on building partnerships between librarians and faculty members and integrating information literacy into courses across the curriculum. The curriculum component will emphasize the development of skills through the complete course sequence for the major. The grant includes released time funding for librarians and curriculum development stipends for faculty. The Mellon Board will probably notify the Consortium about its approval or disapproval of the grant in January 2000.

The Five Colleges of Ohio Consortium recently submitted a request to the AT&T Learning Network Teaching and Technology Grants Program for a one-year extension to complete our online tutorial. The online tutorial is designed to support the collaborative development of web-based, interactive modules to improve the information literacy of students at member institutions. The tutorial is scheduled for piloting during fall 2000 with full completion in January 2001. The Five Colleges’ Information Literacy Committee and reference librarians on the local campuses continue to work on this tutorial. AT&T awarded the Five Colleges $50,000 for the online tutorial in December 1998.

This fall 92 students attended 8 library workshop offered by the reference librarians. The librarians offered the following workshops: "Introduction to Research in the OWU Libraries," "Advanced Research Techniques," "Power Searching on the Web," "Getting the Most From Fulltext Databases," and "How to Cite Electronic Sources Correctly."

This fall the OWU libraries joined the other Five Colleges’ libraries and OhioLINK in using Yankee Book Peddler’s approval plan and GOBI (Global Online Bibliographic Information) database, which is a sophisticated acquisitions and collection management support system. YBP is a promising way to purchase books faster and with excellent discounts.

The OWU libraries, in August, purchased a subscription to ChoiceReviews.online, an electronic database of book reviews from Choice Magazine. Library departmental liaisons will use this resource to evaluate potential book purchases for the library. In addition to the library staff, 10 faculty members have asked for passwords to access this database. If this database is popular with the test faculty, the library will purchase a site license so that the entire faculty can access this resource.

e-Books. As members of OhioLINK, the OWU libraries are now able to provide faculty and students with the opportunity to experiment with e-Books, which are in a prototype stage. OhioLINK provides access to 971 electronic books through netLibrary. Faculty and students can access netLibrary’s e-Books through the OhioLINK catalog.

Members of the library staff attended the Academic Library Association of Ohio’s annual conference on November 12 at the Fawcett Center in Columbus, Ohio.

The Friends of the Library assisted with the purchase of 22 chairs for the OPAC and webstations in Beeghly Library. The chairs arrived during the Thanksgiving break and will be a pleasant surprise for students when they return to campus.