2017 Library Committee Notes
At its meeting on 29 March 2017, the Library Committee:
1. Addressed faculty concerns: encouraging students to use the library and academic commons, and continuing to develop print collections, especially in the humanities.
Student athletes visit the library for required study periods, keeping records of their time and activities. History seminar students are using archival sources on Averett history, and have transcribed the Schoolfield oral history tapes: Schoolfield, Virginia — Life in a Mill Village, 1903-1951, by Dr. David Hoffman and Dr. Jack I. Hayes, 1984. Study groups make use of white boards and flexible seating, and art students exhibit their work in the commons.
Librarians welcome small class sessions (5-14 students) and offer tours for larger groups. (Please schedule class visits at aclib@averett.edu or 434-791-5692, and archival research with Dr. Patrick Wasley). Though only course instructors can require library research, librarians are happy to assist in planning resource-based assignments.
Liaison librarians welcome book orders from any professor, in any format. In a small academic library, faculty selection focused on curriculum content may be preferable to generic collection development. If faculty book requests increase, funds can be reallocated or endowment income used. The library has endowment income on hand for summer book orders.
2. Reviewed a preliminary draft of the library web guides revision (LibGuides v2 beta).
LibGuides v2 migration is schedule for Fall 2017. By December 31, the library will migrate the current WorldCat Local interface (library catalog) to OCLC Discovery -- a device-sensitive interface with clean displays and improved retrieval algorithms.
3. Discussed an initiative to map research databases and other library sources to syllabi for selected courses in each discipline.
This assessment will facilitate curriculum-based resource selection, budgeting and organization at a level of specificity not previous addressed by the library. It may also serve to enhance faculty awareness of library resources supporting each academic program, and opportunities to acquire or promote key resources for students.
4. Discussed a related AU strategic planning initiative to map open access textbooks to course syllabi.
This project is strictly advisory and intended to inform faculty of textbooks that are available for free in the University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library and OpenStax at the University of Texas. Committee members noted potential drawbacks: access and readability, loss of commercial publisher test banks, limited choice of textbooks, content that may also grow stale as OA textbook authors retire. The chief advantage can be significant savings for students, leading to better compliance with required readings.
Faculty are encouraged to place textbooks on course reserves at the library. (Please bring books to Linda Lemery at the Blount Library Information Desk. They will be processed as personal copies and not cataloged.)
Open educational resources are not limited to textbooks. Of 145 AU library research databases, 24, including government sources, are open access, and several others are proprietary interfaces that require no license to retrieve citations and limited full text (ACS web editions, BioOne, Scitable, Science, Springer, and Wiley -- email citations to ill@averett.edu). The library added the Directory of Open Access Journals to Averett's OCLC Knowledge Base, facilitating discovery of open journals among "Averett University" holdings in WorldCat.
5. As its final agenda item, the committee discussed planning, led by the Danville Public Library, for a Dan River literary festival, tentatively scheduled for March 2018 in coordination with the annual Storytelling Festival at the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. Other proposed venues include the public library, Averett library, local restaurants and cultural organizations. Dr. Wuest has offered to lead a Thursday evening creative writing workshop at Blount Library