Carnegie Mellon Libraries: What's New Archive

What's New Backfiles [January-June 2007]

June 2007

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March 2007

SPEAKER: Fei Yu

ABSTRACT In the late 1990s, Gap theories and the LibQual model began to be widely accepted by research libraries in the U.S. Since then, library service evaluation and user satisfaction issues have been discussed in various aspects of both the research and professional literatures of library and information science. Although, like LibQual, the research presented here is concerned with the evaluation of library services from users' perspectives, it integrates other perspectives proposed in recent years by library researchers. Specifically, this research investigates the interrelationship of material and emotional satisfaction with users' satisfactions at the micro and macro levels. In addition, this study seeks to clarify factors or attributes of library services that contribute to users' satisfaction. Finally, the study examines how users' emotional and material satisfaction contribute to overall user satisfaction and user behavior, including library use behavior in the short term (subsequent information seeking) and the long term (library use loyalty).After a brief introduction of the research questions and methodology, Fei will explain why and how the research findings provide library professionals greater understanding of how users perceive their library use and how user satisfaction is formed and influenced. She will also elaborate what practical advice this study provides librarians in terms of what else they can or should do to improve library use. For instance, it is important to recognize users' emotional experience in their library use because it determines their subsequent library use behavior and service use loyalty. At the end of this presentation, Fei will introduce her current work on usability testing in the eiNetwork, a practical application of her dissertation research. BIO Fei Yu is the ILS Applications Specialist at the eiNetwork (www.einetwork.net). The eiNetwork is the Regional Asset that provides Information Infrastructure (e.g., Internet access, online catalog maintenance, and assistive technology) to more than 80 public library locations in Allegheny County. Fei has an MLIS from Wuhan University, People's Republic of China. In 2001, she relocated her doctoral study to the University of Pittsburgh with a four-year academic scholarship. In 2002, she was awarded Sheila Suen Lai Scholarship of Library and Information Science from CALA (Chinese American Librarian Association) for her academic excellence. Fei completed her PhD in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh in August 2006. Her research interests have been focused on the evaluation of information services and systems, information seeking behavior, and human-information interaction. Her doctoral dissertation is about the evaluation of library services from users' perspectives. This research investigates college students' perceptions and attitudes towards library resources and services via a Web survey. This study gives library professionals an improved understanding of how users perceive their library use and how they achieve satisfaction in terms of its formation, antecedent, and consequent impact; it also provides librarians with practical advice on what else they can or should do to improve library or general information use. Fei is currently doing usability testing in the eiNetwork on the public library online catalog, federated search engine, digital signatures, and CybraryN. She is dedicated to applying the testing results to the redesign of information access through county-wide websites. DIGITAL LIBRARIES COLLOQUIUM series: http://www.sis.pitt.edu/academics/colloquia/DL.html

 

 

Febuary 2007

SPEAKER: Lewis Lancaster (Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, University of California)

ABSTRACT  The digital library development has been dominated by the need to input content and to catalogue that content. Another important function of the library has been marginalized thus far in the construction of digital libraries. That function is the one that has been managed by the Reference Room. Admirably suited to the codex environment, the Reference Room has yet to find its place in the new technology. The strategies that have been developed over time for the codex are not always applicable for the digital library. In the digital world, there is no need for a set of reference works that are merely pointing toward data that is housed in other published works. It should be possible for the new referencing to operate directly within the data itself. The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) with support from the Luce Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has been creating a search approach based on the four “Ws…i.e. Where, When, Who, What.” These simple entry vocabulary words should allow users to access directly a variety of resources that address all four “Ws.” In researching this issues, ECAI has dealt with the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), construction of digital gazetteers with historical place names and heritage typology, creating standards for biographical data as well as methods for looking at the network of relationships between individuals, automatic search for named time periods appearing in material that does not use calendar numerals, and metadata for events. A first attempt at searching through the use of the four “Ws” will be demonstrated along with a description of the complexities of the processes that go directly to data sources, complexity that can be seen in the attributed tables that lie behind the searches. SPEAKER BIO  Professor Lewis Lancaster served on the faculty of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California for 33 years. He held a Distinquished Professor Chair and served the university as chairman of the department, director of the Center for Korean Studies, director of the Group in Buddhist Studies Doctoral Program, and chair of the Academic Senate Teaching Committee. Lancaster is continuing his directorship of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative in the International and Area Studies division of the university. After retiring from Berkeley, he held the post of president at the University of the West until 2006.



January 2007

SPEAKER: Denise Troll Covey (Carnegie Mellon University Libraries)

ABSTRACT  Carnegie Mellon University Libraries conducted interviews with a stratified random sample of campus faculty to better understand their scholarly practices and concerns, to identify factors that influence their behavior, and to enable the Libraries to target education, tools and services.  The interview data, analyzed by college, faculty track, rank on the track, gender, and age, reveal how faculty disseminate their work, how they keep current in their field, and why – without pay – they serve on editorial boards and referee articles. More importantly, they reveal faculty levels of understanding and appreciation of copyright and the open access movement. The presentation focuses on some outcomes of the study, including: Influence of copyright transfer terms on faculty selection of publishers; Faculty understanding of their copyright transfer agreements; What faculty are likely to do if their rights are not clear; Current self-archiving practices and barriers and incentives to faculty negotiating the right to self-archive; Faculty concerns about open access: Factors likely to influence faculty choices or to provoke their resistance.The presentation concludes with a brief description of the University Libraries’ collaboration with the provost and university legal counsel to address the more compelling findings. SPEAKER BIO  Denise Troll Covey, Principal Librarian for Special Projects, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, is responsible for conducting research to inform library administration, strategic planning, and advocacy of important legislative initiatives. She keeps abreast of technological developments, their social implications, and the laws, policies, practices, and standards relevant to digital libraries. Her current projects are responding to the Copyright Office’s notice of inquiry about possible amendments to section 108 of the copyright law, and leading the Libraries’ collaboration with university legal counsel to develop a program for faculty and graduate students on authors’ rights. Her previous research focused on the public response to the Copyright Office’s notice of inquiry regarding orphan works and efforts to increase the success and lower the cost of acquiring copyright permission to digitize and provide open access to books. Ms. Covey serves on the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Standards Development. She was a Distinguished Fellow in the Digital Library Federation in 2000-2001. MORE - About the Digital Libraries Colloquium series, http://www.sis.pitt.edu/updates/colloquia/DL.html

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