Policies : Annual Report FY2006-2007

University of Hawai‘i-West O‘ahu Library and Academic Computing Annual Report FY2006-2007

Introduction
Personnel
Public Services
Online Resources
Reference Services
Audiovisual Services
Technical Services
Collection Activities
Academic Computing
Future Challenges
Appendix A: Services, Collections, Equipment
Appendix B: Notable Staff Activities
Appendix C: Academic Computing Resources and Activities

Introduction

The UH West O‘ahu Library is housed within the Leeward Community College (LCC) Library building. We serve students, faculty, and staff in Pearl City, distributed education sites on the Maui and Kaua‘i community college campuses and West Hawai‘i Center, and several Hawai‘i Interactive Television System (HITS) sites. We also serve other distributed education students taking online classes in a wide variety of formats. The library is a member of the University of Hawai‘i Voyager Consortium as well as the Hawai‘i Library Consortium.

Our primary service groups are the students, faculty, and staff of UH West O‘ahu. There were 37 full-time faculty, 24 lecturers, and 30 staff in the fall of 2006. The fall 2006 student headcount was 866 for an increase of 0.9% over the previous fall semester. Student full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment was 476. Entering student enrollment for fall 2006 was 337.

Fall 2006 student enrollment highlights:

The student data presented above is from the 2006 MAPS "Fall Enrollment Report."

The library acquires, organizes, maintains, and retrieves recorded information, both print and non-print, in fields pertinent to the programs of UH West O‘ahu. In addition it offers effective and timely access to information in electronic databases (commercial, non-commercial, and government) and library catalogs throughout the world. The library is the home of academic support for the campus and also provides audiovisual and academic computing services to the UHWO community.

The library is staffed by 2.00 FTE librarians, 1.00 FTE library technician, and student assistants, and is open 59 hours per week when school is in session. There are some 27,400 books and 1,333 videos in the collections. In addition there are approximately 32,000 full-text books available online through the Ebrary collection. The library subscribes to 44 print serials and has full-text access to another 15,000 serials online through the Hawai‘i Library Consortium EBSCOhost databases joint purchase plan, LexisNexis, and other databases. Altogether, there are 27,000+ unique (unduplicated title count) resources available online. A comprehensive list of collections and services may be found in Appendix A.

Academic Computing is staffed by 2.00 FTE Information Technology Specialists and student assistants, and provides software and hardware support for faculty computing at UH West O‘ahu while managing a computer lab with 18 stations in UHWO Room D105. The lab is equipped with multimedia computers, laser printers, a scanner, and local area network and Internet access for student, faculty, and staff use. In addition there is an Instructional Media Lab for course and classroom material development in UHWO Room D104 with color printing and Real media (.rm) streaming video production and reformatting capabilities. Academic Computing provides faculty with WebCT course development and support and also manages three academic Web servers.

All library staff provide reference and research assistance as a first priority. The library provides public service in the following areas: traditional reference transactions; circulation and reserve; bibliographic and information literacy instruction; online searching; support for distributed learning as well as distance education sites on the Maui and Kaua‘i community college campuses and West Hawai‘i Center; HITS sites; interlibrary loan; library resource and information web pages; audiovisual services; and some computing support. Student assistants handle virtually all simple circulation and reserve transactions and supply answers to simple directional questions. All other questions are directed to the librarian on duty.

Collection development, online research, and outreach services are coordinated by Ms. Jones who also provides bibliographic and information literacy instruction. Ms. Hasegawa is responsible for circulation and reserve, copy cataloging, interlibrary loan, UH Manoa audiovisual borrowing, and paperwork related to purchases of materials of all kinds. Mr. Sawa provides computer support and audiovisual services while Ms. Maeno provides WebCT course management support, training, and academic computer support. Mr. Flower provides bibliographic and information literacy instruction as well as overall direction for library and computing services. Ms. Jones resigned effective June 30, 2007 to take a position with the City and County of Honolulu Municipal Library, Records Management and Bookstore. We wish her well in her new endeavor. Notable staff activities may be found in Appendix B.

The library was open 59 hours a week while classes were in session this year. Library hours during the fall 2006 and spring 2007 semesters were as follows:

Key public service activities include reference, circulation and reserve, provision of AV equipment and resources, delivery of online electronic resources, writing pages for Web-based access to resources, and bibliographic and information literacy instruction. Table 1 below presents comparative summary statistics for our main public service activities over the past three years.

Both Circulation and Reserve use were up from last year. Neither number is a surprise as the library was closed for three months for renovations during FY2005-2006. Library fines and fees collected for late or lost items totaled $1,666 during FY2006-2007. This compares to $1,080 collected during FY2005-2006. Library fines and fees are used to replace lost, missing, or damaged items. They also may be used to acquire new titles or services.

Bibliographic instruction and information literacy classes are presented in response to instructor requests. They generally fall into two categories—general introductions to library information resources and how to use them, and introductions to online searching of remote databases for specific class topics. We held ten of these class sessions during FY2006-2007 which were attended by a total of 192 students. These classes generally emphasized finding and using material in the EBSCOhost and LexisNexis databases as well as class-specific resources.

The UH West O‘ahu Library is a member of the Hawai‘i Library Consortium. The Consortium, led by the Hawai‘i State Library, includes the UH system libraries, the Department of Education, and private education institutions. Beginning on July 1, 2002, the Consortium banded together for a state-wide purchase of EBSCOhost databases. While our costs were virtually the same under this joint purchase (with some adjustment for inflation), we have had access to more online databases than ever before.

As the table above makes clear, the library is heavily invested in online resources. In order to make access to our materials and information about the library as simple to find as possible, we have purchased the easy to remember domain name, uhwolibrary.com, which links users to our Web-based research and library information pages, information about the Computer Lab, campus wireless networks, and the MyUH portal. This page was accessed 7,715 times during FY2006-2007. Our experience is that students don't forget this web address once they've heard it. These hits represent foregone phone calls and e-mails about library hours, services, and resources, leaving staff more time to work on more difficult research problems.

The library has a Web page for library research resources at http://socrates.uhwo.hawaii.edu/library/explore.htm. There were 1,860 hits on it from the two library public access computers as well as 83,613 hits on this page from all non-library locations. When library and all otyher locations are combined, there were 85,473 hits during the fiscal year. These figures are inline with our expectations that there will be fewer and fewer library visitors each year as more and more material becomes available online. Another reason for the relatively small number of hits from the library's public access computers is that students frequently bring their own laptops to the library. They link directly to our resources without using our public access computers.

Links to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Oxford Reference Online may be found on our "Find it Fast" page at: http://socrates.uhwo.hawaii.edu/library/finditfast.html. Complete descriptions of these and all our other databases may be found at: http://socrates.uhwo.hawaii.edu/library/otherdatabases.html.

Some of the indicators of use above are disturbing, most notably the substantial decline in the use of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. We may be witnessing our first instance of Gresham's Law (bad money drives out good) applied to information-- bad information drives out good. While this is purely speculative, students may be using sites like the Wikipedia which don't require user authentication rather than going to more authorative sites that have "better" information but require more work to access. On the other hand, the IESBS and the two Oxford databases showed substantial increases in use and they also require authentication. This may be explained by the fact that there is no well-known free online competition to them as is the case with Britannica and the Wikipedia.

Several new databases and two online services were added to our subscription lists during FY2006-2007.

SocINDEX with Full Text (through EBSCOhost) is the world's most comprehensive and highest quality sociology research database. The database features more than 1,660,000 records with subject headings from a 19,300 term sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts and expert lexicographers. This product also contains informative abstracts for more than 750 "core" coverage journals dating as far back as 1895. In addition, this file provides data mined from more than 575 "priority" coverage journals as well as from more than 2,800 "selective" coverage journals. Further, extensive indexing for books/monographs, conference papers, and other non-periodical content sources is included. SocINDEX with Full Text offers comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. These include abortion, criminology & criminal justice, demography, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage & family, political sociology, religion, rural & urban sociology, social development, social psychology, social structure, social work, socio-cultural anthropology, sociological history, sociological research, sociological theory, substance abuse & other addictions, violence and many others.

PsycARTICLES (through EBSCOhost), from the American Psychological Association (APA), is a definitive source of full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology. The database contains more than 45,000 articles from 57 journals - 46 published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and 11 from allied organizations. It includes all journal articles, letters to the editor and errata from each journal. Coverage spans 1985 to present.

Education Full Text brings you comprehensive coverage of an international range of English-language periodicals, monographs and yearbooks. Full text of articles cover to cover, from hundreds of journals, makes this a one-stop source for research. Education Abstracts Full Text contains abstracting and indexing coverage for over 475 periodicals included in Education Index as well as the full text of over 150 periodicals.

Access World News is the most comprehensive collection of full-text newspapers available. Access World News provides extensive coverage at every level—local, state, regional, national, and international. This fully searchable Web-based resource features the vast majority of the top U.S. newspapers by circulation, along with hundreds of hard-to-find local and regional titles, most of which are unavailable elsewhere. Additionally, Access World News offers hundreds of international news sources from scores of countries on six continents, translated into English when written in other languages. Access World News includes the Honolulu Advertiser from January 1999 to the present.

The Wall Street Journal database provides fulltext coverage of The Wall Street Journal, the world's leading financial newspaper through ProQuest. Coverage dates back to 1984 and is updated daily. Each issue is indexed thoroughly, so researchers can easily access not only top news stories but also detailed information on the arts, sports, business, and popular culture. Even such items as editorials, editorial cartoons, and letters to the editor from well-known people are indexed. For each article cited in the database, an abstract of up to 75 words helps the researcher know if the complete text will meet his or her needs.

For 85 years, Barron's has been the source that America's business and financial leaders turn to every week for authoritative market analyses and insights on companies, industries, sectors, the economy and financial markets in the U.S. and around the world. Barron's delivers comprehensive statistics on the preceding week's trading and financial activities that are unmatched by any other publication, and its feature stories and columns look ahead at what's likely to happen to companies and to the market.

In January of 2007 we added AnthroSource, the premier online resource serving the research, teaching, and professional needs of anthropologists. Developed by the American Anthropological Association (AAA), AnthroSource brings 100 years of anthropological material online to scholars and the public. It includes current issues for 15 of the AAA's most critical peer-reviewed publications, including American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

During the spring 2007 semester we entered into a contract for the Ebrary Academic Complete Electronic Book Database. Academic Complete is a highly interactive electronic book database from Ebrary that covers all academic subject areas. The collection currently includes more than 32,000 book titles from more than 220 of the world’s leading academic, scientific, technical, medical, and professional publishers. Coverage includes business, marketing, and economics; computers and information technology; education; engineering and technology; health, biomedical, and clinical sciences; the humanities; life and physical sciences; and, the social and behavioral sciences. Ebrary may be searched as a standalone database and through the UH Voyager catalog. In Voyager there is a cataloging record for each Ebrary title with a link into the database from the cataloging record. We spent the spring 2007 semester preparing for a summer 2007 rollout.

During FY2006-2007 we also added a subscription to LinkSource, a vendor-neutral, OpenURL link resolver with item-level linking between our online services, including e-journal sites, fulltext and secondary research databases, and the Voyager catalog. With LinkSource, users can connect from the citations in one database service to the fulltext in another, maximizing the use of our fulltext collections. Linksource's key benefits include:

• connecting patrons to fulltext content quickly and efficiently
• maximizing the use of our collections and improving return on library dollar investment
• saving money by reducing interlibrary loan and document delivery charges

LinkSource was used 2,754 times by students, faculty, and staff during FY2006-2007, the first year of our subscription. You are using LinkSource when you click on the links in our EBSCOhost databases that look like this:

During the fall 2006 semester the faculty approved the use of the Turnitin plagiarism prevention and detection service at UH West O'ahu. Following Turnitin's planning and implementation guidelines, we spent the fall of 2006 preparing for a spring 2007 rollout. Support web sites were designed and eight Turnitin training sessions were offered during FY2006-2007. Twenty three faculty completed Turnitin training. The program was rolled out for the first time during the spring 2007 semester. A description of the Turnitin implementation for students may be found at http://socrates.uhwo.hawaii.edu/library/turnitin/turnitinstudentinformation.html. The faculty Turnitin page is at http://socrates.uhwo.hawaii.edu/library/turnitin/turnitinfacultyinformation.html.

Lastly, Eric Flower worked with the Assessment Office on the upgrade of the Accuplacer Math/Statistics test during the spring and early summer of 2007.

For many years we have kept a measure of public service activity called the "Reference / Information Service Transactions per FTE Position Count." It is an aggregate measure of staff activity collected for the annual variance reports. It includes requests for information of all kinds--reference queries, responses to phone calls and e-mails for information, directional questions in the library, etc. Transactions per FTE staff for the past three years are presented below. The decline during FY2005-2006 was due to the library building being closed for three months for renovations.

As noted in previous annual reports, we continue to advance the notion of offering more and more non-mediated library services to individuals. For instance, "Find it Fast," prominently displayed at the top center of our research page, has links to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Oxford Reference Online, Webster's Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences. These titles answer many of the kinds of questions usually asked of a reference librarian. In addition, there is plenty of evidence that library users are going to Internet search engines like Google to meet more and more of their information needs. As students, faculty, and staff do more for themselves after initial training or redirection from web links, they place fewer demands in numerical terms on the library staff. The information requests students and staff now present tend to be more difficult and take longer to answer than in the past.

The UH West O‘ahu Research Helper is an online program extending library services to students, faculty, and staff who do not visit the library. It offers e-mail help to those performing research in the library catalog, EBSCOhost, LexisNexis, or any of the other databases available through the library. The Research Helper web page is at: http://socrates.uhwo.hawaii.edu/library/researchhelper.html. Research Helper use (queries, document supply, help with databases, etc.) is presented below:

Audiovisual Services were limited to routine restocking of supplies and maintenance and replacement of broken equipment. We replaced a few failed VCRs and DVD players, but in general there was little to report in this area. The biggest area of need relates to the way budget allocations for the acquisition of videos has changed. Funds typically allocated to the library for video purchases (around $3,000 - $5,000 per year) were moved to the division budgets. The effect has been a substantial decrease in video orders as the divisions used the funds in other ways. The videos we are ordering now with division funds have narrow audiences and there is little opportunity to build a well-rounded collection with the funds allocated as they are.

The purpose of technical services is to acquire, organize, and make library materials available to the library community. Technical services activites include acquisitions or purchasing of library materials, cataloging of the materials acquired, and serials management (maintenance of subscriptions, receipt and claims, and shelving) among other things. The library buys its serials through EBSCO and its books and bibliographic records from Brodart. The LCC Library provides automation services in support of the Voyager online library system. Each year we reexamine this cost. For FY2006-2007 this was set at $1,000 for which the UH West O‘ahu Library received about 50 hours of direct service. Outsourcing the automation librarian duties to LCC has saved a substantial amount of money over the years. UH System Libraries Voyager consortium fees last year were $7,971 and $8,370 this year. The FY2007-2008 fee will increase about 5% over the current charge.

Table 3 below outlines major acquisitions in FY2006-2007 and compares them to previous years.

Last year we noted that we would reexamine our commitment to archival copies of serials on microfilm. During FY2005-2006 we spent $9,231 on microfilm for titles like the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and 21 other microfilm titles. Our microfilm costs nearly doubled from FY2003-2004 to FY2005-2006. During FY2006-2007 we dropped microfilm subscriptions to 14 titles and replaced them with online access to the journals. The benefit here is that the funds saved from the microfilm purchses were applied to database subscriptions that provided access not only to the microfilm titles we dropped, but to other titles in the databases as well. Some purchases were straight replacements. We dropped the microfilm versions of the Wall Street Journal and Barron's and replaced them with online access. In other cases we dropped groups of microfilm titles on a particular topic like psychology and replaced them with entire databases like PsycARTICLES.

Table 4 below compares projected costs from last year's annual report to the actual costs incurred for major acquisitions and services during FY2006-2007.

Book purchases were more or less in line with expectations. Videos purchases are down due to decreased funding for them. (See the discussion under Audiovisual Services above.)

Microfilm purchases decreased because we cancelled microfilm subscriptions and replaced them with online access to the titles. The few print serial subscriptions we have now are the bare minimum. In most cases, the titles are not available online.

During FY2006-2007 we purchased a total of 68 computer systems at an average price of about $1,500. Those systems accounted for the lion's share of the computer equipment and software licenses.

Commercial database expenses rose significantly due to the large increase in database subscription outlined above in the section on online resources.

There will be significant increases in some of the categories in Table 5 during FY2007-2008. For instance, we will be acquiring and processing books and videos with Title III funds in the amount of some $15,000 - $20,000 above and beyond our usual allocation. On the other hand, our microfilm fees will drop significantly as we have dropped a good number of microfilm subscriptions.

Our computer hardware figures will drop somewhat as we won't be buying quite so many new computer systems while our software licenses will rise due to the increases in the number of faculty and their need for new software. Our commercial software fees will also rise as existing database costs rise and new ones are added. Our EBSCO fees will double during FY2007-2008 due to a change in the way the fees are allocated among the university campuses. Even with this increase, our EBSCO consortial purchase remains a bargain.

Ninety one totally online or WebCT-enhanced courses were offered during FY2006-2007. These 91 classes were offered by 34 faculty members, instructors, or lecturers. This is a significant increase from FY2005-2006 during which 70 online or WebCT-enhanced classes were offered by 25 faculty members, instructors, or lecturers. 46 of the 91 courses (51%) were courses that were offered online for the first time or were taught by faculty who hadn’t taught the course online before: 23 courses in fall 2006, 18 courses in spring 2007, and 5 courses in summer 2007 = 46 courses.

Thirteen training workshops were offered over the fall 2006 and spring 2007 semesters in support of these classes. Eleven of the workshops were on WebCT-related topics, one was on Impatica, and one was on the Basic Socrates Homepage. Impatica is a software tool used to convert narrated PowerPoint presentations into a format that can be streamed over the Web. Students can view course lectures using a web browser rather than RealPlayer. The workshop on the Socrates Homepage trains faculty members to maintain their homepages on our academic web server. The number of workshops offered decreased by one compared to the number of workshops offered in the previous fiscal year (14 workshops). Note that the first workshop scheduled for spring 2007, an overview of WebCT, was cancelled because there were no participants.

Mr. Sawa reformatted 18 videos for use in online courses during FY2006-2007. These videos were reformatted only after they had met the requirements of our TEACH Act compliance checklist. Further, they were made available in a controlled environment for a limited time as required by the TEACH Act.

Mr. Sawa also created a server for faculty to backup their data. Each faculty member was allotted two gigabytes of storage space for backing up their most important files. This server was announced to the faculty in December of 2006.

For a complete discussion of online course activity and support, see the "Faculty Development Summary FY2006-2007" by Linda Maeno in Appendix C, "Academic Computing Resources and Activities" below.

Information on Computer Lab use and Computer Lab printing are presented below.