DAVIDSON, N.C., Nov. 25 (AScribe Newswire) -- Davidson student Courtney Ward was in a long-distance academic bind, but the world-wide reach of modern library science rescued her.
Ward, a junior psychology major studying this semester at John Cabot University in Rome, was doing research for a paper about the effect of religious involvement on the drug and alcohol use, and overall behavior, of teenagers.
She was able to log on to the Davidson College library catalogue from Rome, where she located a reference to an article in a professional journal that seemed perfect. But it was Sunday already, and her professor needed to see a draft of the paper on Tuesday. She had no idea how to obtain a copy of the journal so quickly. She e-mailed an immediate "Help!" plea to Davidson's interlibrary loan staff 3,000 miles away. Within twenty-four hours a staffer had obtained the journal from another library and posted it as a PDF file that Ward read and printed out in Rome.
Davidson and other libraries around the nation are increasingly adopting scanning and database equipment and software that gives college community members outside the library walls almost the same access to sources as people who come in through the front door. "I call it the Domino's Pizza idea of library service," said Leland Park, director of Davidson's E.H. Little Library, "We deliver!"
Interlibrary loan is a service that libraries use to share materials, typically via mail or fax. Recent innovations at the library have digitized the delivery of journal articles. Requests for materials are sent to libraries electronically, and a scanned image of the article is delivered. Davidson Interlibrary Loan staff then post the article to the library web site and send an automatic email notification to the requester. What was formerly a laborious paper based process is streamlined and totally digital. "The new system saves us a lot of time, and saves a lot of trees," said Jean Coates, head of interlibrary loan at Davidson.
The new system was a big help last year to Peter Krentz, Grey Professor of Classics, who was in Athens as a visiting scholar at the American School of Classical Studies. Krentz needed to see twenty pages of a von Scala's Studien des Polybios, published in 1890. He couldn't find the book anywhere in Athens, so he e-mailed Joe Gutekanst, Davidson's interlibrary loan specialist. Gutekanst identified a library that had the book and had them scan the pages in question and send the file to Davidson. He then posted it to Davidson's Web server and notified Krentz of its availability within three days. " It used to take twice as long to get a photocopy even if you were in the country," said Krentz. "Mailing something to Greece would have taken another week or so. The speed of access and availability of material now is remarkable!"
Gutekanst remarked, " It's great to have the technology be of such service to people, and it's far cheaper because we have no costs for photocopying or mailing."
Gutekanst said he completed about 12,000 electronic transfers last year to Davidson people off campus and to other libraries that requested material via interlibrary loan.
Each semester Reference Librarian Sharon Byrd notifies students headed abroad and professors going on leave or sabbatical about the service. She reminds them that they can access the college's on-line catalogue, and offers them access to databases which describe articles in journals that Davidson may not carry in its collection. They include several from SilverPlatter (Art Abstracts, Business Abstracts, Education Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, Social Sciences Abstracts, Biological Abstracts, EconLit, MLA, PAIS, Religion Index, PsycInfo, Philosopher's Index), the NCLive group of databases, America: History & Life, Historical Abstracts, and Contemporary Women's Issues.
She said about thirty students this year requested the passwords and usernames necessary to access those resources.
Davidson's "delivery" service gives advantage to on-campus users of material as well. The library now scans and posts almost all material that professors put on reserve for their students. In the old days, students sometimes scrambled to check out the few available copies of reserved material. Now all of them can access it at once from any computer with Internet access on or off campus.
Items on reserve for a given class are only accessible to students enrolled in that class. No special passwords are needed. Once students log in using their standard campus user ID and password, the course reserves system checks the class roll before allowing access to the articles.
The music library in Sloan Music Center also offers delivery service of its audio resources. Librarian Stephen Mantz digitizes music that professors assign to their students into "electronic sound reserves" that students can hear via RealAudio software on a computer, rather than vying for the limited number of headphones and listening stations in his facility. Some files are songs that last just a minute or two, whereas movements from symphonies or some selections from India for the "World Music" class can be twenty minutes or longer. Last year Mantz created over 800 sound files that students accessed more than 23,000 times.
"On the day before a test, the usage can be quite high," he noted. "And after 1 a.m. is an especially busy time for those cramming at the last minute!"
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts
college for 1,600 students. Since its establishment in 1837,
the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is
consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in
the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Davidson
is engaged in "Let Learning Be Cherished," a $250 million
campaign in support of student financial assistance,
academic resources, and community life.
|
|
|
AScribe Newswire distributes news from nonprofit and public sector organizations. We provide direct, immediate access to mainstream national media for 600 colleges, universities, medical centers, public-policy groups and other leading nonprofit organizations.
AScribe transmits news releases directly to newsroom computer systems and desktops of major media organizations via a supremely trusted channel - The Associated Press. We also feed news to major news retrieval database services, online publications and to developers of web sites and Intranets.
And AScribe does it at a cost all organizations, large and small, can afford, a fraction of what corporate newswires charge. Click here to see how we do it