More on electronic reserves

[Bill Crosbie]

{{I had accidentally sent this to the original poster instead of to the group}}

At 06:01 PM 9/3/96 -0700, you wrote:
>As an aside, I know of a prof here who has created his own reserve
>system using Adobe Acrobat.  He requires his students to install
>the Acrobat reader on their workstations as part of his course.
>While this no doubt is happening, I'd prefer to see a system
>linked to an OPAC, or at least maintained by the library.
>

I'm curious about this too.  We are starting an electronic reserves project
at Rutgers.  Part of the problem has been in getting the tools we need to
work (thankfully Acrobat Capture is affordable now!), part of the problem
has been the issues of copyright and ensuring we make a good faith effort in
protecting that right, and part of the problem has been in getting faculty
to contribute materials for 'in semester' use.

Part of the problem that we have been addressing is what is the library's
role when anyone can become a publisher?  Adobe Acrobat Pro (The pdf
generator) is very affordable and it stands to reason that there are many
professors who are willing and able to set up their own reserve system.
Where do we draw the line on what the library's role is in this model?
Should the library be the point of production?  Should the library provide
the sole e-reserve server and maintain that system?  Or should the library
simply provide a common gateway with links to materials throughout the
campus and beyond?  

I would say that the library should provide a common gateway to those
materials, but that the materials can be produced and stored anywhere
throughout the university (or beyond the university...)  There must be a
mechanism to allow professors to register his/her URL in a database
maintained by the library, preferably via a web form (the OPAC if it permits
this functionality, although a simple flat file with Perl scripts will do.)

This has several advantages to producing them in house and  serving them off
of a library server.  The obvious advantage is production time.  If a
professor can 'print' a document to produce a pdf  (Acrobat replaces the
standard print driver.  Producing Acrobat readable files is as simple as
choosing File->Print from your menu) why should s/he be expected to e-mail
it to a library to perform the same function?  Let them print it and upload
it to a server or serve it off of their desktop from their office.

Another advantage is this obviates the need for staff to produce e-reserve
materials for faculty that are comfortable doing themselves.  This frees
these people up to evangelize for e-reserves with other faculty and give
them individualized attention and assistance in production.

A less obvious advantage would be reducing latency time between production
and availability.  If e-reserve requests are queued and processed at the
same time daily, or every Wednesday, or only when the moon is full and Venus
is rising in the east, there is a lag between when the document should be
available and when it is actually available.  Allowing the user to register
the URL makes it immediately available.  If someone places a reserve
material on a server and registers the URL at 11:00:00 A.M.  the material
will be available at 11:00:01 A.M.  It is not too much of a jump to envision
a 'post' and 'remove' field in the form to indicate when a piece would
become available and when it would no longer be shown.  With some creative
programming, the amount of human intervention (read staff time and cost) can
be greatly reduced.

The final advantage has to do with providing new forms of digital
information.  For example, a professor at Rutgers wanted to make information
available using a new plug-in from Microsoft(tm).  He was unable to do so
because the computer center was unwilling to reconfigure the web server to
handle the new data type.  He went to his 3rd party provider who was happy
to make the change for him.  The end result, he was able to serve his
information.  Translating this to the library is not difficult - it allows
the users to experiment with new methods of presenting information to their
constituents and to go beyond arbitrary limitations.

Please note - I am NOT saying that libraries don't have a role to play in
e-reserves.  The library web site should be the gateway for registering
information and it should be the first place that students think to look to
find their reserve materials.  This has always been a traditional role of
the library - to make information accessible.  I do think that we need to
try to be as inclusive as possible in reaching that goal.

I also believe that libraries will have a big role in ensuring the security
of copyrighted materials that are put into digital format for reserves.  I
would welcome any ideas on how to make sure we comply with the, at best
amorphous and at worst draconian, proposals for dealing with digital copyright.
--------------  _-o  -------------------------------------------------
               `\<,      /                 Bill Crosbie
               0/ 0     /  \e/             Microcomputer Analyst
 __o              __o  /    I              Chang Science Library   
`\<,             `\<, /    `\\,            Rutgers University  
O/ O             O/ O/     O/ O            v: (908) 932-0305 x 114  
                    /                      f: (908) 932-0311            
                   /                       crosbie at aesop.rutgers.edu  
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