Association of College & Research Libraries - New England Chapter Newsletter

CONTENTS

ACRL/NEC Fall Conference
ACRL/NEC Pre-Conference
Call for Petition Candidates for ACRL/NEC Offices
President's Letter: Legislative Advocacy
Workspace Design for Preservation
Electronic Classrooms
Business Databases on the Web
Business Web Page Design
Women's Studies SIG Fall Program
New Members Needed for Continuing Ed Committee
ACRL/NEC Board Minutes Synopsis, May 29, 1998
A word of thanks

To complement this year’s Fall Conference theme on reorganization in libraries, the ACRL/New England Chapter will offer a pre-conference on Thursday, November 19, 1998. "Introduction to Facilitation Skills" will address the growing need in our organizations for a greater number of staff to be skilled as facilitators, helping others solve problems and make decisions, especially within groups. This participative approach requires knowledge about how to develop and lead a team/group/committee and how to use group process to run an effective meeting. This pre-conference will be presented by Maureen Sullivan and Shelley Phipps, both well-known in academic libraries for their consulting and training work with ARL/OLMS and for their outstanding facilitation skills.

Registration for this full-day learning opportunity will be limited; materials with further information will be mailed in October.

The nominating committee will present a slate of candidates for the spring election in a special ballot mailing in early 1999.

Members may also nominate candidates. Article II (Nominations and Elections), Section 2, of the By-laws provides that "any member of the chapter may present a petition signed by not fewer than ten chapter members proposing additional nominations. Such nominations shall be included on the official ballot." Petitions should be mailed to nominating committee chair Jane Hedberg, Serials Librarian and Preservation Administrator, Wellesley College Library, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481-8275.

Petitions must be received by December 1, 1998, in order to obtain biographical information from petition candidates for the ballot. Biographical information will be included in the special ballot mailing.

Questions should be directed to Jane Hedberg at jhedberg@wellesley.edu.

Academic librarians have not traditionally been particularly active in advocating for library issues in the political arena. All that is changing,though. With the explosion in electronic publishing, copyright issues are front and center! Internet2 will be funded and shaped through federal legislation. A major shift to electronic publication of government information has turned up the volume on the chorus calling for overhaul of Title 44 of the U.S. Code, which governs the Depository Library Program. The legislative outcome of these and other issues will have a significant impact on academic library collections and services in the future.

ACRL has taken up the challenge of enlisting broad participation of academic librarians in legislative advocacy. ACRL/NEC vice-president Laura Walters and I attended a highly informative and inspiring ACRL Advocacy Preconference in Washington, D. C. in June: "From Ivory Towers to Halls of Power." The aim was to prepare conference participants to talk with Senators or Representatives or their aides about legislative issues of importance to libraries. Advance homework included reading several issue briefs. Conference presenters provided us with updates on the movement of key bills in Congress. Other presenters with experience in the legislative process gave tips on ways to prepare for a legislative visit as well as approaches to take or avoid. Keeping discussion very brief and very focused was the most repeated advice. Thus armed, conference attendees visited as many of their own legislators as they could. Laura and I spoke with one of Senator John Kerry's staff members in Washington and subsequently have met with Representative Barney Frank in Massachusetts.

Our visits were well received and not nearly as daunting as we had anticipated! Conference presenters had emphasized the weight that a letter or visit from a constituent carries--and how few of us from libraries visit or write. Real stories about libraries and their users are powerful, we were told. Laura and I provided our legislators with information about how particular parts of pending bills would affect our ability to serve our library constituents, and, in turn, learned about other concerns that have been raised in Congress about provisions in certain bills. We expect to continue following the progress of key pieces of legislation and to communicate with our legislators, as appropriate. ACRL staffer Michael Godow is sending us legislative bulletins on Congressional actions, so that we can respond in a timely fashion.

If you are interested in learning about legislative issues that will affect academic libraries, visit the ACRL Legislative Policy Web Site at http://www.ala.org/acrl/legalis.html. You will find background information on legislative issues and links to other sites. While ALA sends out numerous legislative alerts to the library community, Michael Godow is winnowing out those of interest to academic libraries and posting them to ACRL's Legnet listserv. If you would be interested in receiving these alerts, please write me at sweetda@bu.edu. You can be added to the Legnet listserv, or if there is enough interest, we can start a New England listserv for this purpose. Now is a good time to start making ourselves heard in the "Halls of Power."

--Doris Ann Sweet
Boston University

"From Workbench to Conservation Laboratory: Planning Space for Book Repair and Conservation" drew fifty participants to the May 7th meeting of the Preservation/Conservation Interest Group at Harvard University. The Gutman Conference Center, Harvard Graduate School of Education, hosted the morning panel on space design. Leslie Reicher (Brandeis University), Jim Reid-Cunningham (Harvard Graduate School of Design), and Nancy Schrock (Harvard College Library) described their experiences designing workspace for their conservation programs. Topics included ergonomics, the choice between upgrading gradually or adopting a new design, selecting equipment, and designing workbenches and storage units.

During the afternoon, participants had an opportunity to tour conservation facilities at Tozzer Library, Leob Library, and Widener Library. ACRL/NE members were among the first to view Harvard College Library's new 3,400 sq. ft. state-of-the-art collections conservation laboratory in Widener Library.

--Nancy Schrock
Harvard University

Cheryl LaGuardia, Harvard University, opened the one-day conference on electronic classrooms held at Yale University. Her presentation, "A Rocky Romance With Electronic Classrooms," offered six concepts to keep in mind when planning: 1) Why: the noble versus the reality; 2) Who: will plan it, teach in it, learn in it, and keep it running; 3) When: will it be constructed, updated, and available; 4) Where: will it be located; 5) What: will be or needs to be taught in it; 6) How: will needs be served or help contacted? Other guidelines included: let form follow function; visit electronic classrooms with others from your institution; make it "simple" by answering a long list of overlooked questions about hardware, furniture, equipment, space, policies, etc. Questions and comments from the audience added more helpful recommendations.

Florence Doksansky and Anne Cerstvik Nolan from Brown University described a classroom with a total budget of $625,000, which included a major renovation and a microfilm area. They covered podium design, touch panel control, flexibility with set-up, zoned HVAC, and policy priorities.

James Estrada, Fairfield University, spoke about a multipurpose room designed for library instruction and faculty training. The big expense for Fairfield, at $17,000, was HVAC. Air-conditioning, control hardware, and fiber-optic security were described. Estrada also provided a helpful list of technical considerations, such as installing an uninterrupted power supply for the systems, multiple circuits, dimmable lighting, and locally adjustable HVAC.

Linda Zieper, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, described the trials and tribulations of a classroom shared by an open lab computer center and the library instruction program. Although the classroom was monitored when not in use for library instruction, problems with desktop configurations, bookmarks, and clearing the room before classes were rampant. Solutions included stricter policies, training of assistants, and careful scheduling.

Following lunch, a panel of speakers beginning with Keith Gresham, University of Colorado at Boulder, shared experiences and insights. Gresham addressed concept-based library instruction as a means of connecting the abstract to the practical. Five non-linear stages of online exploration were described. The electronic hands-on classroom was shown to be the ideal place for these connections to occur, enabling learning through "failure" and exploration to take place.

Katherine Holmes, Lesley College, described multiple intelligences in the electronic classroom. Using Howard Gardner's "frames of mind" and Daniel Goldman's "emotional intelligence" theories, Holmes defined eight intelligences which affect the ways in which people learn best and suggested we teach to as many of these as possible. After her presentation, we brainstormed for ideas on how to apply this knowledge to provide appropriate learning situations for all.

Kenneth Gibson, SUNY Stony Brook Health Sciences Center, addressed the effects of an electronic classroom on instructional styles and service. Students moved between the demo and hands-on rooms for each class, which averaged one to two hours in length. The layout of the classroom, including rows of computers interspersed with display monitors, created an environment prone to several problems. Plans for a second classroom will include "a room with a view," projection capabilities, ADA equipment, and a center isle.

Tours of Yale University electronic classrooms presented by library staff concluded the day. Overall, the conference reinforced and repeated several key points. 1) Have a firm use policy in place before opening an electronic classroom. 2) Include a strong technical support arrangement (if it doesn’t work, what is the point?). 3) Be careful to include conceptual learning when teaching skills. 4) And, as Cheryl LaGuardia put it, "one of the longest roads is back," so plan carefully!

For more information and outlines of many of the presentations, please visit the program website at http://www.library.yale.edu/instruction/nebic/.

--Corinne Ebbs
Westfield State College

On Thursday, May 21, twenty business librarians met in the Library Seminar Room of the Snell Library at Northeastern University to hear representatives from major business publishers discuss the web-based versions of their company's products. Participants were able to view in-depth demonstrations of each product and ask questions about content, scope, searching capabilities, and pricing structure for academic institutions.

The first speakers of the morning, Ethel Salonen and David Alexson from Disclosure, demonstrated Global Access and Piranha. Global Access provides World Wide Web access to real-time and historical company financial data from over 5 million U.S. and international company documents. Insider analytics, research reports, price-earning ratios, database reports, company tearsheets and articles for both domestic and international corporations are also available. Global Access can be searched by multiple fields, and reports allow for full-text searching. Piranha is a windows based analytical software that works in conjunction with Global Access to assist the user in creating custom research reports and recommendation letters. Sophisticated computations such as peer analysis, regression analysis, competitive analysis and time-series analysis can also be performed. Libraries can customize access to these databases. More information can be obtained at www.disclosure.com/dga or by calling 1-800-754-9690.

Next, Morrissey Perfitti spoke about Dow Jones Interactive. Traditionally an on-line service, Dow Jones News made a decision a few years ago to invest in new technology with the introduction of their experimental product, Wall Street Interactive. When they had over 100,000 subscribers, DJ News moved to the web. Dow Jones Interactive consists of five databases: The Publications Library, Business Newsstand, Custom Clips, Company and Industry Center, and Historical Market Data Center. The Publications Library, the most popular of the five and the "bread and butter" of the service, is a searchable archive of over 5,000 sources including newspapers, newswires, magazines, trade publications, and television transcripts. Business Newsstand provides full-text content of the top name business publications (unfortunately, Wall Street Journal is not available to the academic community) and Company and Industry Center accesses detailed financial and market research reports. All the databases have a consistent and easy to understand screen and can handle simple and complex queries. Information for the academic market can be obtained by contacting Patrick Moriarity at 978-922-5074.

The third speaker, Kimberly Ommerbohn from Moody's Investors Service, presented Moody's Company Data Direct, available through Moody's Financial Information Services (FIS) Online. This service essentially provides a World Wide Web interface to the Moody's Manuals. Currently, the service contains data for 10,000 U.S. public companies. All companies in the Industrial, OTC Industrial, and OTC Unlisted Manuals are included, as are a large number of companies from the Bank and Finance, Utility, and Transportation Manuals. (In the future, more companies, including those in the International Manual, will be added.) The user may select the parts of the company report he or she wants to view, which may then be downloaded or printed through the web browser. In addition, an automated feature allows the user to save financial tables directly to a spreadsheet. Through an "Advanced Search" feature, a number of detailed fields, such as SIC code, state, city, stock exchange, and financial fields, can be searched simultaneously. Finally, the "Search EDGAR" feature links the user to real-time EDGAR filings. Moody's Company Data Direct is available to academic institutions at a flat rate for one concurrent user. Two-week trials are available (call Kimberly at 800-342-5647 ext. 0448).

Last, but not least, Carol Polen, a product developer from Standard & Poor's, demonstrated Standard & Poor's Net Advantage. Net Advantage combines nine of S&P's business reference titles into one Web-based product. Publications included are the Bond Guide, Corporation Records, Dividend Record, Earnings Guide, Register of Corporations and Executives, Stock Reports, Industry Surveys, Stock Guide, and the Outlook. An "Easy Search" feature allows the user to search for information by company name or ticker symbol, while a "Detailed Search" allows searching by any field. There are two views to Net Advantage: "Publication View" allows the user to search for information by specific S&P publication, while "Information View" leads the user to search for information by type, for example, industry information. Net Advantage has been tailored for the library research market. Thirty different combination packages are available at highly discounted rates, based on number of users, to encourage libraries to offer campus-wide access to the product. A demo site with full functionality is available at www.NetAdvantage.standardpoor.com/demo.

--Andree Rathemacher
University of Rhode Island

--Carol West
New Hampshire College

Business Web Page Design Business Librarians Interest Group Fall Program The Planning Committee of the Business Librarians Interest Group is organizing a fall program entitled, "Business Web Page Design." It is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, November 12, with the location yet to be determined. for more information, contact Carol West at westca@nhc.edu or 603-668-2211, ext.2159.

While this issue of the newsletter was in preparation, the Women’s Studies Interest Group was scheduled to visit the American Textile History Museum in Lowell on October 2nd for their fall program. Clare Sheridan, Librarian for Books, Manuscripts and Images, will be discussing the collections and the research going on there and will be giving a behind-the-scenes look at the images, manuscripts, and books in the collection pertaining to the life and work of the Lowell mill women. A summary of the program will appear in the next newsletter.

The Women’s Studies Interest Group anticipates holding a joint spring program with the Business Librarians Interest Group on the subject of women in management. If you would like more information about the Women’s Studies Interest Group, have an idea for a future program, or would like to receive e-mail advance notice about upcoming events, please contact the co-chairs:

Christina Bellinger at cb1@hopper.unh.edu
Sarah Mitchell at smitchel@mit.edu
Chris Smith at jchris@bu.edu

The Continuing Education Committee is seeking new members. The committee plans programs and other continuing education activities. Examples of programs sponsored by the committee in the past year include: "Distance Education: Every Library’s Future" (held at Bentley), "Reference and the World Wide Web" (held at Northeastern University), and "Managing Difficult Patrons" (held at Northeastern University and to be repeated at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic). Usually the committee meets a few times a year, but conducts most of its business by email. If you are interested, contact Margaret Manion, Lydon Library, UMASS Lowell, 84 University Avenue, Lowell MA (phone 978-934-3211; fax 978-934-3014) or email to Margaret_Manion@uml.edu.

New president Doris Ann Sweet welcomed the new officers and appointed members. Position handbooks were exchanged and the minutes of the March 13, 1998, meeting were approved. Past past-president Jane Hedberg reported that response from participants who attended the recent ACRL Leadership Institute was very positive, and the Institute may be developed as a pre-conference program for the national conference in Detroit. Past-president Christina Bellinger thanked last year’s board members for supplying her with information for the annual report and gave special thanks to Jane Hedberg for her work as past-president.

Doris Ann distributed the budget for the fall and spring conferences, both showing a small deficit, possibly due to the absence of funds solicited from vendors for conference expenses and increased costs for media presentation. She urged everyone to keep close watch on budgets. Debbie Wilcox, Treasurer, reminded board members that she prepared a report on vendor donations two years ago and urged that program committees continue to solicit funds from vendors.

Doris Ann reported that she and Laura Walters, vice-president and president-elect, will attend the June 24-25 ACRL pre-conference titled "Advocacy Training for Academic Librarians: From Ivory Towers to Halls of Power."

Doris Ann solicited ideas on the board’s interest in having an ACRL/NEC presence at the national conference. Laurie Sabol will contact the programming committee to suggest having the NEBIC electronic classroom presentation repeated in Detroit next spring. Doris Ann also noted that the ACRL Chapters Relations Task Force Report is available at: www.ala.org/acrl/chapttf.html. The board of ACRL discussed this report and seems to favor its adoption. The final vote will be held at the June 27 meeting. NEC board members should watch for a possible change in chapter reimbursement recommended in this report.

Laura Walters reported on plans for the fall conference, which will focus on reorganization and libraries, with Maureen Sullivan as keynote speaker. The board also agreed to sponsor a pre-conference workshop with separate registration at which Maureen Sullivan will give an OMS type program on facilitation.

Deborah Wilcox distributed the treasurer’s report for 7/97-98 (year to date). There is currently $8,196.36 in the checking account with $9,361.57 in nine month CDs. The annual report for the entire fiscal year will be distributed at the next board meeting.

A motion was made that ACRL/NEC continue to sponsor the non-ARL New England salary survey and offer a $500 honorarium to Herb Carson of the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island for his work on this survey. Both motions passed unanimously. Suggestions were made to advertise the survey in the newsletter and place an executive summary or an introduction to the report on the membership Web site.

The board spent significant time discussing the overlapping role of the Publicity Committee with that of the Membership, Publications and Newsletter, and Webmaster responsibilities. Although many special interest groups are currently doing much of their own publicity, the work of this group has greatly increased over recent years. Since the development of the ACRL/NEC Web site, the role and responsibilities of Publicity Committee have become less clear. It was suggested that the Publicity, Publications and Newsletter, and Membership standing committees, and the chapter Webmaster might work as a team to accomplish this interrelated work.

The board also discussed the role of listservs for publicizing the work and events of ACRL/NEC. Discussion followed on issues related to listserv maintenance. The board agreed that an ACRL/NEC listserv should be created and referred the matter to the Publicity Committee. After discussion, the Publicity Committee was also charged with developing draft standards for submission of information to the Web site.

Finally, the board wondered whether the newsletter should be available on the Web site. This led to the question of whether to continue the print version of the newsletter (if it is placed on the Web) or to move to Web format only. There is no ACRL mandate to provide a print newsletter; the ACRL/NEC bylaws require the board to publish a newsletter. Discussion was postponed until Maggie Bartley, newsletter editor, can gather more information.

Reports were received from each of the standing committees, special interest groups, and members-at-large.

--Judy Montgomery
Bowdoin College

A word of thanks...
to Connie Roberts and Dipa Roy for many years of chairing the
Membership Committee and for the care and tending of the
membership database. The chapter is grateful for their commitment
and hard work.

Newsletter Editor:
Maggie Bartley (mbartley@wellesley.edu)
Wellesley College Library
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481-8275
781-283-3594

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