Re your "More on electronic reserves"
Gail McMillan
gailmac at vt.edu
Thu Sep 5 01:53:18 EDT 1996
It was great to see Bill Crosbie's notes because these are exactly the
things we implemented here atUniversity Libraries, Virginia Tech. Please
review our site , VT Online Class Materials at http://reserve.lib.vt.edu
The service was designed so the library would be the central source for
students to find all their online class materials. We offer faculty three
options:
1) When they have created online class materials but want to use
their departments' servers, for example, we ask them to register the URL
with the library
2) When faculty don't have access to a department server, the
library gives them space on its ereserve server so faculty can create a
course Web homepage and add/delete course materials as they wish
3) The library will handle files of class materials for the
faculty and all they have to do is send us the files of class materials via
the Internet. We create a generic homepage for each class, listing and
linking the files of class materials.
We encourage the faculty to create web-compatible files and especially
recommend PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) files. The faculty do ALL
the file creation; the library does NOT create or convert any files for the
faculty.
No matter which option the faculty use, all of the class names and numbers
are listed together. Another list has all the faculty names, again, no
matter which option they chose. We offer the students both browse and
search capabilities so they can easily find the class or the faculty
member.
We started our ereserve service spring semester 1995 with 8 faculty
teaching 10 classes. Today we have 87 faculty with 156 classes with online
class materials.
Files on the library's ereserve server are limited by IP (Internet
Protocol) address to our university community and can include scanned
articles. At the end of each semester the files available through ereserve
are removed from public access.
I encourage you to visit our site at http://reserve.lib.vt.edu and if you
have questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
Gail Mc
>Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 08:30:20 -0700
>Reply-To: crosbie at AESOP.RUTGERS.EDU
>Originator: web4lib at library.berkeley.edu
>Sender:
>Precedence: bulk
>From: Bill Crosbie <crosbie at AESOP.RUTGERS.EDU>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
>Subject: More on electronic reserves
>X-Comment: Web4Lib Information - http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/
>
>{{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
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Gail McMillan Virginia Tech University Libraries
Director, Scholarly Communications Project
Head, Special Collections Department
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu
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