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LibQual+ Survey
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From April 4-27, 2005, the Brown University Library is conducting a web-based survey of faculty and students
to measure the quality of the Library’s service. LibQUAL+ is part of a suite of services offered by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to help libraries assess and improve services to users. The survey itself is based on the SERVQUAL instrument, a popular tool for assessing service quality in the private sector, and was modified for the library setting through extensive research conducted at the Texas A&M University Libraries (supported in part by a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education). A total of 234 institutions, including some of the largest research libraries in North America, are participating in the spring 2005 LibQUAL+ survey.
On April 4, email messages were sent to all teaching faculty, all graduate and medical students, and all undergraduate students, inviting them to partici pate in the LibQUAL+ survey. This email included a link to the survey form on the web. More information about the LibQUAL+ survey is available at the LibQUAL+ web site from the Association of Research Libraries.
For further information contact Raynna Bowlby in the Office of the University Librarian at Raynna_Bowlby@brown.edu. -
Library Collections Annex Opens!
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This is the official opening day of the Library Collections Annex, the newest part of the Brown University Library system. Located at 10 Park Lane in Providence RI, about 4 miles from campus, the Annex is a high density storage facility with a capacity of 1.7 million volumes. Its opening marks a decade-long planning process, three years of development, and nearly a year of construction and renovation. A staff of four have been on the site this week, being trained and preparing the space, and the first shipment of materials previously stored at Harvard Depository have already arrived to be processed. It will take until mid-May for the move of all 250,000 volumes from Harvard Depository to be delivered and shelved. At that time, materials from campus libraries will begin to be shipped.
See the Annex web site.
For further information contact: annex@brown.edu -
Library Forum on Open Access Publishing
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Tuesday, March 29th 2 – 4 p.m.
Smith-Buonnano Hall, Room 106
Featured speaker: John Saylor,
Director of Collection Development, National Science Digital Library
Director of Cornell University Engineering Library
John M. Saylor is the Principal Investigator for the NSF funded (2002-2004) and IMLS funded (2004-2006) K-MODDL project. He has been the Director of the Engineering Library at Cornell University since 1988. He has been involved in many digital library efforts including the National Science Foundation (NSF) Synthesis Coalition from 1990-1995 and was co-Principal Investigator of Cornell University’s portion of the core integration grant from NSF to build the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) from 2000 through September 2002.
Open Access presents a paradigm shift in scholarly research and publishing. Open access is putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature on the internet, available free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. It is considered by some to be the answer to scholarly publishing issues like access and cost!
At the Library Forum on March 29th, Mr. Saylor will report on the findings of Cornell’s Task Force on Open Access Publishing, which he chaired. As reported on the Cornell web site (see link below) “Alternative publishing models that would offer free and unimpeded access to scholarship promise both a more affordable system for academic institutions and their libraries and a more democratic one for readers and authors”. The Cornell task force examined the Open Access “promise” and concluded that both traditional subscription publications and open access publishing will coexist for the foreseeable future. http://hdl.handle.net/1813/190
No doubt, you have noticed the recent announcements about Open Access from the National Institutes of Health, regarding “a new policy designed to accelerate the public’s access to published articles resulting from NIH-funded research. The policy…calls on scientists to release to the public manuscripts from research supported by NIH as soon as possible, and within 12 months of final publication. These peer-reviewed, NIH-funded research publications will be available in a Web-based archive to be managed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a component of NIH. The online archive will increase the public’s access to health-related publications at a time when demand for such information is on a steady rise”.
An additional up-to-date overview of Open Access, see: SPARC Open Access Newsletter
John Saylor’s powerpoint is available at: http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/University_Library/disgroups/oasc.html
For further information contact Raynna_Bowlby@brown.edu