Difference between revisions of "Standard 5"

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==Introduction==
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==Standard 5 – Library and Information Resources==
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Library and information resources at the Evergreen State College support students as they learn how to reason and communicate about freely chosen inquiries whose outcomes remain to be discovered or created (Smith, Standard 2)—in short, as they learn the skills of research, information literacy and media production. All areas of these services balance the open-ended demands of free inquiry against the need for stability, security and efficiency in systems and services.  This balance constitutes the focus of how we evaluate our role in undergraduate education. Unlike traditional libraries, this work encompasses media production in all forms, across the curriculum. All areas of Library and information resources are shaped by the primary mission of teaching and of providing state-of-the-art facilities for programs and individual students.  Historically, the Library has been well funded because of how deliberately it has integrated teaching, services, facilities, and collections across the curriculum in response to the demands of open-ended inquiry.  In fact, the high level of funding represents the strong collaboration among library and media staff, faculty, and administration, all of whom work in concert to develop the library as a center for teaching and learning.
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===Standard 5.A – Purpose and Scope===
  
When the founding Dean of Library Services, James Holly, wrote his “Position Paper No. 1,” he assumed that the library would be generic, “By generic I include man’s [sic] recorded information, knowledge, folly, and wisdom in whatever from put down, whether in conventional print, art forms, magnetic tape, laser storage, etc. By generic, I also eliminate physical boundaries such as [a] specific building or portion limited and identified as ‘the library.’”  What Holly envisioned proved untenable because the college community expressed traditional longings for a bounded space.  The generic library also proved impractical in technical terms and in budgeting practices.  However, technology and community values have caught up with Holly’s founding vision. Today, laptops and networked data are ubiquitous, and most students expect to access information resources remotely.  The library and information services have responded quickly and flexibly to the changes in information technology. Most significantly, a major remodel connected previously disparate areas and created a more cohesive information technology wing, including media, library, and computer services. Reflecting these changes, this chapter considers information resources across several disparate administrative units: The Library, which includes Media Services (administratively part of the Academic Division); Academic Computing (administratively part of the Finance and Administration Division); and the Computer Applications Lab (administratively part of the Academic Division, with a historical role supporting the science curriculum).
 
  
Two broad roles define and distinguish Library and information resources at Evergreen. This chapter first describes and evaluates the teaching and instruction central to the mission of the Library and information resources in the context of Evergreen’s interdisciplinary, student-centered pedagogy.  Second, the chapter describes and assesses the collections, tools, and services developed in support of our educational roles.
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''The primary purpose for library and information resources is to support teaching, learning, and if applicable, research in ways consistent with, and supportive of, the institution’s mission and goals. Adequate library and information resources and services, at the appropriate level for degrees offered, are available to support the intellectual, cultural, and technical development of students enrolled in courses and programs wherever located and however delivered.''
  
==Teaching and Instruction==
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====Supporting the Academic Mission of the College====
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Library and information resources at The Evergreen State College support students as they learn to reason and communicate about freely chosen inquiries whose outcomes remain to be discovered or created (Smith, Standard 2). Library and information resources at Evergreen must therefore balance the open-ended demands of free inquiry with the need for stability, security, and efficiency in systems and services. Historically, the Library has been well funded when compared to many public baccalaureates, in recognition of the extraordinary demands of open-ended inquiry and independent study. All library and information resources are shaped by the primary mission of teaching and providing state-of-the-art facilities for academic programs and individual students in this interdisciplinary, liberal arts curriculum. Strong collaboration among library, computing and media staff, faculty, and administration assures the development of the library and information resources as centers for teaching and learning.
  
===Description of Teaching and Instructional Programs: An Overview===
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====The Founding Vision of the Library: Any Medium, Any Location====
  
Library and information resources instructs and teaches in multiple modes, from basic skills instruction to more complex, content-driven teaching by faculty and professionals in the curriculumIn fact, the teaching faculty contributes substantively and collaboratively to information services, collections and policies.  This dynamic collaboration between the faculty and Library and information resources has shaped our primary mission to support inquiry-based education. Each area of Library and information resources has developed structures to connect teaching and instruction closely to the faculty, the curriculum and the academic mission of the college.
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In 1969, when the founding dean of Library Services James Holly wrote his “Position Paper No. 1,” he proposed a model which he called the generic library, in some ways anticipating the concept of today's virtual library. “By generic I include man’s [sic] recorded information, knowledge, folly, and wisdom in whatever form put down, whether in conventional print, art forms, magnetic tape, laser storage, etc. By generic, I also eliminate physical boundaries such as [a] specific building or portion limited and identified as ‘the library.’” Holly's vision motivated many aspects of library, media, and computer services, but proved in many ways untenable due to technical and budgetary constraints and because the college community expressed traditional longings for a bounded space. Today, laptops and networked data are ubiquitous and most students expect remote access to information resources, regardless of medium. Technology, as well as community values, have caught up with Holly’s founding vision, and Evergreen's library and learning resources now include all media, distributed to almost any location. Display of networked and audiovisual information now brings information technology to almost any classroom on campus. Active involvement in new consortia has led to quick access to expanded collections and information resources from around the region. Academic programs and students off-campus have access to rich, academically sound journal holdings. A wide selection of digitized media applications and advanced media labs provide access to media production. Increasingly seamless access to media, computing, and traditional information resources benefits all students. At the same time, the physical library has expanded its role as a social and intellectual space and provides an increasingly hospitable center for learning and gatherings of all kinds. A $22-million remodel connected previously disparate areas and created a more cohesive information-technology wing, providing one central entrance for the Library, Media Services, the Computer Center, and the Computing and Communications offices.
  
====Faculty Librarians and the Library proper====
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====Functions and Facilities Covered in Standard 5====
  
In the case of the Library, Evergreen requires rotation between the librarians and the teaching faculty [Exhibit: Pedersen, etc. for full description].  To describe this rotation briefly, faculty librarians rotate out of the library to teach full-time on a regular basis and, in exchange, teaching faculty rotate into the library to serve as librarians providing reference, instruction and collection development.  Faculty who rotate into the library leave with updated skills for developing information literacy within their programs and teams across the curriculum. Library faculty develop their subject specialties and enhance their ability to work across pedagogical and disciplinary realms. Perpetual faculty-wide interactions in faculty governance and team-teaching reinforce the strong connections between the library faculty and the teaching faculty. Librarians know the faculty as colleagues and teaching faculty know the librarians (probably the only basis for widespread and effective library instruction in a curriculum without requirements). Teaching teams also spread best practices in library instruction as older teaching faculty introduce their new faculty teammates to their library colleagues and the teaching they offer.
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Reflecting these developments, Standard 5 considers information resources and services from several disparate administrative units: Library Services, including Media Services (administratively part of the Academic division); Academic Computing (administratively part of the Finance and Administration division); and the Computer Applications Lab (CAL) (administratively part of the academic division, with a historical role supporting the science curriculum). The phrase "library and information resources" in Standard 5 should be understood to refer to these units collectively, while comments about separate areas will use more specific language such as the Library, Media Services, the CAL, or Academic Computing. Occasional references to Computing and Communications will address technology infrastructure when relevant to instructional and academic support functions.
  
A loose liaison system links each librarian with a subset of the curriculum, based on subject expertise and personal alliances.  Faculty librarians provide a wide array of library and information technology related teaching. Teaching outside the library in the curriculum at large, library faculty develop teaching and subject expertise which increases their competence and creativity as they work to match library instruction with individual academic programs. One-time workshops designed to introduce sources particular to the research projects within an academic program represent the most common format. Librarians and teaching faculty design these workshops with the assumption that the skills imparted are embedded in the interests and needs of the program learning community. At a minimum, the faculty for the program usually 1) create a research assignment which informs and motivates the students’ work; 2) attend the workshop and take part, adding his or her expertise and/or questions; 3) provide the library liaison a syllabus and a copy of the assignment and a t of the topics students are considering and 4) ask the students to begin considering their topic before attending the workshop so that they are primed to begin actual research during the workshop. Librarians teach in staged series of workshops most frequently in the graduate programs, in the sciences, and in the off campus programs. Each year one or more library faculty affiliates deeply with a program, meeting weekly to create stepped learning conjoined with research assignments [Exhibit: Sara H. syllabi?]. For several years an information technology seminar linked library internship opportunities with a hands-on web technology workshop.  In that model, a small group of students explored contemporary questions in the world of rapid digitization and its social implications.  They paralleled that study with real library work and web production practice, including wikis and webpages designed to support library functions [Exhibits: IT wiki, Rare Books page; SAIL page?]. The seminar and workshop provided a venue for library faculty, staff and Academic Computing instructors to gather and consider both the past and future of information technologies [Exhibit: internship syllabi]. Each year one librarian also offers research methods through the evening and weekend curriculum. [Exhibit: Randy Stilson syllabi]
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The information resources offered and supported by the Library, Academic Computing, and the CAL represent facilities and functions commonly found in libraries and computer centers elsewhere in academia. The Media Services section of the Library requires some explanation, as its role and location in the institution are unique. Media Services provides not only the usual audiovisual support for instruction, but also extensive collections and facilities in support of media production by students across the curriculum. Media production labs, a large circulating collection of portable media equipment, and extensive instruction represent activities, facilities, and functions which will not be found within the library at most institutions. Some media arts, communications or education departments might provide some such services to students of their curriculum, but not the library, and certainly not for general use. In the context of an interdisciplinary college, and in the light of the original ideal of the generic library, these services are provided through the Library in order to assure cross-curricular access and opportunity for students from anywhere in the curriculum, whether those students are studying media or simply wish to communicate academic content using media beyond print.
  
Library support for the two major off-campus offerings, the Tacoma and the Reservation-Based, Community-Determined programs, focuses heavily on instruction. Students of these programs have limited access to the physical library, and must be directed to the many high quality resources made available to them on-line. Most years, librarians work closely with the Research Methods class at Tacoma, providing instruction on site several weeks per quarter. In Winter 2008, a librarian will offer a 2-credit research module linked to the broader interdisciplinary curriculum of the Tacoma campus.  Library instruction at the Reservation sites of the Reservation-Based Community-Determined programs has varied widely. Recently the program has focused on building library methods into the lower division bridge curriculum, which has not involved the library directly.  Rebuilding this connection should be a high priority, and a planned faculty rotation from the Reservation-Based program will be an opportunity to do so. See the supplemental discussion of new services for discussion of the many ways direct access to collections has been facilitated through new services to off-campus programs. [this will need to be a link to the specific paragraphs]  [Exhibit: NAS and Tacoma resource pages]
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====5.A.1 Sufficiency of Information Resources and Services====
  
Within the library, the Library Faculty see themselves primarily as teachers.  They tend to understand the services of the library in the context of teaching, rather than as service providers.  They take a proactive approach to the work, suggesting tools and strategies for designing library instruction, and finding the intellectual work in the world of research instruction.  They position themselves to work across administrative as well as curricular boundaries and sustain an important role in the crossroads of traditional research methods, contemporary information technology and the world of the curriculum and teaching faculty.
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''The institution’s information resources and services include sufficient holdings, equipment, and personnel in all of its libraries, instructional media and production centers, computer centers, networks, telecommunication facilities, and other repositories of information to accomplish the institution’s mission and goals.''
  
====Modes of Instruction in Media and Academic Computing====
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Throughout this study, library and information resources will be found to be strongly linked via face-to-face collaboration and consultation with faculty, staff, and students. These interconnections, within a flat organizational structure, assure constant feedback and redevelopment of services and facilities. Library funding generally compares very well with public institutions and correlates strongly to average funding for private liberal arts peers, peers with whom our use statistics compare favorably. An external assessment performed by Edutech described budgetary support for information technology as comparable to that of institutions with similar missions. There are no comparable institutions for studying the large activity of cross-curricular media services; however, advocacy from both the cross-curricular perspective of the Library and from the specific needs of the media faculty help ensure support. Rapid expansion in information technology access and aspirations have led to changes in personnel allocation and expertise and will continue to make increasing demands on a staff and faculty already stretched in many areas.
  
At the level of academic programs, all major computer and media labs provide group instruction covering particular applications or the tools of the relevant discipline. Media and Computing Staff teach workshops in different spaces and in different modes, depending on discipline and the technology. There are no constraints upon what facility may be used. In one quarter, a science program with a media component might have workshops in the Computer Center focusing on blogs; a math program might meet in the Computer Applications Lab; a history program might learn about video production in the Multimedia lab; and a library research workshop could convene in one of the general-purpose labs in the Computer Center. In this way, academic programs leverage staff expertise and facilities.
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For a description of facilities, see [[media: Major_Facilities_List.doc |Major Facilities]] and Areas 1 & 2 of the [[media:TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc | Edutech Information Environment Review]]. For holdings and equipment, see Standard 5.B.1. For personnel, see Standard 5.D.1. For evaluation of budgetary support, see Standard 5.D.6.
  
Teaching faculty must be able to easily identify and contact the appropriate staff member to coordinate ITL instruction which may also require significant logistical support: lab scheduling, equipment check-out, server space, password access, personnel scheduling and other details. In Academic Computing, staff members work with faculty in order to coordinate how programs will teach technology. For instance, the staff member helps set up file shares, web spaces, and schedules and teaches workshops.  The Media Services staff also play a central role in how faculty design and integrate media into their programs.  Like Computing Staff, they schedule all requests for media instruction, whether from programs or from individual students.  Media faculty meet regularly with Media Services staff so that they can develop facilities, plan for access, and foster how academic programs integrate media into the curriculum.
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====5.A.2 Sufficiency of Core Collection and Related Resources====
  
Students who work independently on media or computing projects or who decide to tackle media projects within non-media oriented programs find many forms of instructional support outside of academic programs.  Academic Computing offers regularly scheduled technology workshops, which are open to all.  In addition, Evergreen students can access Lynda.com, which tutors students in software applications and programming languages.  The Library recently subscribed to Safari Books Online, which supports the computer science curriculum, but which also answers the technical inquires of students across the curriculum.  A Computing wiki began last year and hosts approximately 2,000 pages of instructions and tutorials.  Increasingly, students, faculty and staff rely on the wiki to stay abreast of technologies hosted on campus.  Students may access most media production facilities once they have completed a proficiency training session. Media instructors run hundreds of these quick, skills-focused instructional sessions annually, serving thousands of students, ensuring proper use of the equipment, and providing supportive technical background for systems. Finally, the Evening and Weekend Studies curriculum provides a coherent, regular pathway for instruction in use of the more complex production facilities, allowing students to gain the skills needed to apply media production resources to their work.
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''The institution’s core collection and related information resources are sufficient to support the curriculum.''
  
Like the library faculty, Media staff teach in a variety of ways—full-time, part-time, intensive, general, sustained, intermittent, specialized, individually, collaboratively. Many of the media staff are artists, professionals, and faculty in their own right, who have MFA’s in their fields. They teach photography, electronic music, web design, and digital imaging as adjuncts in Evening & Weekend Studies and in Extended Education. And their contributions to the curriculum are substantial and sustained, some of them having taught for over 20 years.  Not only does their work support the Expressive Arts, it also provides access and instruction to students who don’t consider themselves artists but who are nevertheless engaged in technologies that constitute the visual aesthetics of science, history, political science, psychology, and visual narrative.   Media staff who are adjuncts sometimes teach full time, as visiting artists. In general, Media staff are central to the success of media-based programs and are viewed as colleagues by the Expressive Arts faculty, whose programs they support, and as gurus by the faculty who are less media-literate. These working relationships form the backbone of Media Services.  Photo, Electronic Media and Media Loan staff supervise 4 to 8 student interns who are critical to the effective functioning of labs and services. These students typically not only gain high level skills in technical production, but also develop instructional, collaborative and administrative skills associated with working closely with students and technical staff.  Finally, all Media staff sponsor many individual contracts which provide opportunities for students who have identified intensive individual inquiries which are not supported in the curriculum at large.
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Broad institutional support for cross-curricular library and information services has historically generated sufficient institutional budgetary support for core collections and facilities. During the study period, inflation and budget cuts reduced base budgets for local monograph collections. Non-state resources bridged some of the gap without building the base budget permanently. Consortial agreements created opportunities for cost-effective collective purchases of serials and for efficient resource sharing, resulting in better support for the intensive work by individual students.  
  
====Faculty institutes====
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Collection Development, see 5.B.1 and 5.B.5
  
Faculty institutes create valuable connections among faculty, library, media and academic computing instructors.   Every summer, the Dean of Faculty Development asks faculty to propose institutes that will familiarize participants in new technologies. The Dean funds the proposals that generate the most enrollment, which means that the faculty and staff drive this avenue for development.  Recent ITL institutes have focused on teaching statistics with Excel or on using online collaborative tools in foster learning communities.  Faculty are also paid for self-directed work that focuses on their programs.  In these instances, faculty evaluate technology, practice using it, and plan how to incorporate applications into their programs.
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====5.A.3 Education Program Drives Resources and Services====
  
===Analysis & Assessment of Teaching & Instructional Programs===
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''Information resources and services are determined by the nature of the institution’s educational programs and the locations where programs are offered.''
  
The strong focus on teaching throughout Library and information resources suggests the following questions: 1) In a college without requirements, does information technology instruction reach enough students to assure that the vast majority of graduates develop their skills broadly in support of their inquiries? 2) Which students are taught?  Do students receive their information technology instruction in an array of disciplinary and developmentally varied situations or is it happening only in pockets of the curriculum?  3) Is it working?  Have students acquired information technology literacy skills?
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Strong connections to the curriculum inform all library and information services. A distinctive library rotation system connects the library and teaching faculty in the shared project of curriculum and program planning. Teaching alliances between media services professionals and media faculty determine the character of media services. A strong liaison system connects Academic Computing instructors and services with teaching faculty. Meanwhile, a very experienced staff with substantial managerial responsibilities manages day-to-day library services while implementing services in response to the new opportunities advancing information technology affords. (See Standard 5.B.2 - Teaching and Instruction).
  
====How many students are taught?====
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Information technology planning and governance are discussed in Area 5 (Planning and Governance) of the [[media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc|Edutech Information Environment Review]].
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The study notes that planning is collaborative and responsive to academic needs, and could be strengthened through a stronger role for the Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH).
  
Within recent years about 75% of the total FTE attends program-based library instruction workshops. [Exhibit: workshop statistics]. In media services, from 2000 to 2007, a total of more than 1500 workshops were offered to approximately 156 programs. The number of workshops given and students reached in 2005 and 2006 were each more than double the numbers provided in 2000.  Workshops have increased along with new technologies, especially in Media Loan and in the new Multimedia and DIS labs.
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===Standard 5.B – Information Resources and Services===
  
Academic Computing instructors provide academic program-based training sessions and workshops throughout the academic year.
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''Information resources and services are sufficient in quality, depth, diversity, and currency to support the institution’s curricular offerings.''
  
{| class="wikitable"
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==== 5.B.1 Equipment and Materials to Support the Educational Program====
|+ '''Computer Lab Workshops for Academic Programs''' (cells represent academic programs/# of students)
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! Computer Labs !! 2004-05 !! 2005-06 !! 2006-07
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''Equipment and materials are selected, acquired, organized, and maintained to support the educational program.''
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| Computer Center || 221/4423 || 171/3418 || 253/4880
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|-
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| Computer Applications Lab || 50/1368 || 50/1248 || 52/1344
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|}
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Up until 2007, Academic Computing offered 30 to 40 general computer skills workshops per year in the Computer Center, attended by approximately 350 students.  Professional staff focused these workshops on general technical skill building, independent of academic programs. Fewer students were attending these workshops, presumably because more students consider themselves technically literate.  In response to waning attendance, Academic Computing redesigned the workshops as student-centered support sessions to which students bring their questions or projects.  This student-centered structure should more effectively meet the specific demands of students. Computing will evaluate the success of this reinvented structure.
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=====Collection Development Procedures & Methods=====
  
====Which Students?====
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The Library faculty develops collections to support Evergreen's changeable interdisciplinary curriculum without the usual benefit of departmental allocation or structures. The librarians build collections and vendor profiles on the basis of their work as both library and teaching faculty (see 5.B.2), work which involves full-time teaching, faculty governance, extensive collegial engagement with the teaching faculty, and affiliation with planning units. The curriculum committee is the faculty as a whole, and develops the curriculum in curricular planning units, curriculum retreats, and governance groups. The Library faculty's overall knowledge of the curriculum is strengthened by teaching faculty who rotate into the Library and lavish their attention on areas of the collection related to their disciplinary expertise. Finally, librarians honor most requests from individuals for additions to the collection, working from the fact that free inquiry and individual research are central to the Library’s mission.
  
The number of teaching contacts across Library and information resources shows how many students are taught, but not which students. In end-of-program reviews from 2001-2006, The Office of Institutional Research asked faculty, “Did your students use technology to present work, conduct research (including library research), or solve problems?  If yes, How?”  Not surprisingly, faculty answered, “library/internet research skills were the most commonly used, followed by some form of presentation technology. .”  [Exhibit: http://www.evergreen.edu/institutionalresearch/pdf/assessment/epr/EPRsummary2006technology.pdf.]
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In the past, the Library has struggled to satisfy incidental research demands outside the boundaries defined by the core, repeating curriculum. The substantial part of the curriculum which varies from year to year, the significant amount of work by independent contract students (almost 1,300 independent study contracts in 2006-07), and the opportunity for intensive individual projects within full-time, multi-quarter programs have all driven demand for specialized materials outside the core collection. Resource sharing and large, shared purchases, all made efficient because of networking technology, have eradicated this problem, although budget cuts and inflation create some difficulties keeping the core collection current. The budget for core monograph purchases has been supplemented with allocations from non-state resources in order to help bridge this gap. See 5.B.5 below.
  
The supplemental material in Appendix I  provides a closer analysis of how planning units employed and taught information technologies.  To summarize, library research appears widely but selectively across the curriculum.  Significantly different technologies predominate in different parts of the curriculum and no standard set of applications comes into play, not even in Core programs. Analogously, computer and media staff provide instruction that they design to suit the particular inquiry at hand.  The program reports show that media, library, and computing staff coordinate successfully with faculty, but only in those instances when faculty build such instruction into their planning.  CTL and SI faculty report the least use of library research in their programs and have the fewest number of programs served by library workshops.  Thus, the end of program reviews may be used as tools for identifying possible opportunities for greater service.  This analysis should not presume that  more information technology instruction is necessary;  the faculty of those areas may have logical and legitimate reasons to place their emphases elsewhere .  However, placing some effort  in determining whether more Library and information resources instruction and support should be focused in those areas would be advisable in the immediate future..
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=====Media Services=====
  
====Information Technology Literacy====
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Close work with the curriculum and faculty also informs the development of media facilities and services. Media staff attend the Expressive Arts  planning unit meetings, in particular the Moving Image subgroup. Budgetary processes for equipment purchase and operating costs include multiple avenues for consideration of educational program needs. Through the planning units, needs are communicated to the academic budget planners. Through the Library, cross-curricular media demands are communicated to the academic budget planners. Through the ITCH, cross-unit needs are coordinated and passed up to the campus-wide budget process. These three avenues help ensure that the budget process addresses both broad and specific curricular demands for media.
  
=====Media/IT Literacy across the Curriculum: Where are we now?=====
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Some stresses develop. Like the Library, Media Services serves the entire academic community, from programs to individuals. And, like the Library, Media Services strains under the pressure of answering the needs of independent study, as well as a fluid curriculum. Students working on independent media productions compete with Expressive Arts programs for scarce resources, from equipment to laboratories to teaching staff. In order to balance these competing demands, Media Services requires students and faculty to submit media request forms, which are reviewed by the Media Services manager and the head of Instruction Media, who allocate resources, both human and technological. Independent contract forms include a question about the need for special equipment or facilities, which serves as a safety net for screening intensive media use. In these ways Media Services assures that students embarking on media studies do so with appropriate support. The Expressive Arts planning unit also instituted a Student Originated Studies (SOS) group contract in media to assure that students have consistent access to facilities and instructional support as they pursue their independent projects.
  
Since its inception in the context of Holly’s generic library, Media Services has followed its mission to support media literacy and instruction across the curriculum.  Over the last ten years,  media services have changed dramatically as the personal computer has become the platform for entry-level media production and consumption.  One measure of this change has materialized in how media staff have served programs through formal workshops since Fall of 2000.  The scheduling data shows that almost 90% of formal program-based workshops serve Expressive Arts faculty. While this scheduling data does not cover equipment proficiency workshops or one-on-one instruction, it’s nevertheless clear that media staff focus their formal instruction on Expressive Arts programs, with an emphasis on advanced production applications, which are the exclusive provenance of expressive arts faculty. Media services further supports these advanced applications with labs, which were enhanced and expanded during the remodel.  One effect of this specialization is that entry-level students have migrated to Academic Computing where the staff instructs them in basic skills. In fact, during Fall and Winter of 2006/07, 68% of the faculty who requested workshops in Computer Center were from planning units other than Expressive arts, and many of these workshops included media instruction (Photoshop, Imovie, etc.).
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=====Information Technology Equipment & Facilities=====
  
The Computer Applications Lab also shows a trend toward more broadly used applicationsAlthough the CAL has traditionally focused on the science curriculum in ES and SI, these users have begun to share their space with those who have less specialized demands.  Roughly 60%-70% of the classes in the CAL now work with statistical or numeric analysis, primarily Excel but also including Graphical Analysis, R, and SPSS. Ninety percent of CAL users prepare presentations, most often with Powerpoint, Word, Illustrator, and Excel. Approximately 60% of the programs meeting in the CAL still use analytical tools, including (in order of usage) ArcGIS, Mathematica, and Stella, which were once the focal point of all CAL applications.  Science faculty have shifted their emphasis to on-site analysis, using advanced applications in specialized scientific labs in ways that parallel the shift in Expressive Arts toward advanced applicationsMeanwhile, the CAL and the Computer Center remain a haven for students who seek more basic forms of support and instruction in media and computing.
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The [[Media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc| Edutech Information Environment Review]] includes equipment in its discussion of technological facilities in Area 1 of the report. The report states, "Computing, networking and information technology facilities at Evergreen are extensive and impressive. In most cases, Evergreen facilities are at or near standards for similar institutions, and in some cases surpass them. However, these standards are a moving target, and there are areas in which the college will probably have to make upgrades in the near future." The report lauded the computer labs, classroom technology, and access to computers. Recommended improvements were to extend wireless to the entire campus and permanently fund a replacement cycle for equipment.
  
Increasingly, Academic Computing has embraced its role in teaching workshops for entry-level programs. In fact, Academic Computing and the library  have worked to complement each other in the mission to teach students about college information resources and technologies. While Academic Computing has expanded its instructional support to teach students about entry level and basic media production, Media Services has continued to serve both specialized and entry-level students in labs designed and staffed accordingly.
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====5.B.2 Teaching and Instruction====
  
=====Critical Approaches to Media=====
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''Library and information resources and services contribute to developing the ability of students, faculty, and staff to use the resources independently and effectively.''
  
Although Library and information resources sets out to fuse its teaching with program content, students are nevertheless free to access any media application or information technology beyond or without considering program content.  Likewise, many programs focus entirely on skill building, without any formal attempt to link these practices to the curriculum. And in other areas of the curriculum, such as CTL, critical media and information studies are taught in a theoretical mode, without recourse to technology—the thing itself—and thus without any basis for collaboration with Library and information resources. The point is that, when skills are valorized over content—and when theory subsumes practice-- students neglect critical reflection on how technology impacts the message, the creators, the audience, or society. However, the generic library model—the founding principles of Library and information resources at Evergreen—has emphasized and counterbalanced the tendency among faculty and students to isolate skills from content.  Early on, a rotating faculty member who helped link instruction with critical media studies and with multidisciplinary programs directed Media Services.  In many ways, the Library adopted and adapted the strategies of Media Services staff, who forged close working relationships with faculty. Today, Library and information resources still struggle  to build collaborative working relationships across areas and across the curriculum, relationships founded on a common interest in the critical study of media and information.  To this end, the Library and Media Services have played a role in ITCH and have worked with Academic Computing in the remodel of our physical spaces and relationships, both of which have fostered intellectual cooperation and growth.
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=====Defining Information Technology Literacy=====
  
=====Teaching Information Technology Literacy (ITL) Across the Curriculum=====
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Standard 2 links the five foci and six expectations of an Evergreen education to the idea of reflexive thinking. "Reflexive thinking begins with a question, an interrogation of the world, and an encounter with the other. As such it involves the student in the whole process of substantive learning about subjects, disciplines and methods that is the standard domain of learning. But reflexivity is the capacity that a learner has to think about the situation and conditions that underlie her own personal and collective experience of thinking and knowing." (See [[Standard_2#Reflexive_Thinking | reflexive thinking]]). This work is engaged and supported through the broad and deep resources of the collections and instruction within the library and information resources.
  
During the first half of the self-study period, the Legislature mandated Information Technology Literacy (ITL) as a central focus for colleges and universities in the State. The  ITL movement  presented nothing surprising to the Evergreen Library, which has been engaged in these ideas and goals since the founding of the college. However, the legislative mandate created interest in evaluating our work. As used in this study, the term ITL encompasses every aspect of information technology, including digitized library research, but also includes concepts found in the literatures of media literacy, visual studies, and communications. In order to assure that students have the skills to communicate about their open inquiries, Library and information resources takes a broad role in the curriculum. Two of the “Six Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate” fall under this broad mission for students to achieve independence, creativity, and critical acumen. Expectation Two states that our graduates will communicate creatively and effectively;  Expectation Four, that our graduates apply qualitative, quantitative, and creative modes of inquiry appropriately to practical and theoretical problems across the disciplines. When students at Evergreen learn about media and information technologies, they also are immersed in disciplinary content that promotes their ability to "access, analyze, evaluate and create messages across a variety of contexts."  Not only should literate students read and write astutely, they also should access, view, critique and produce digital media and information that is clear, eloquent and complete.  In this way, digital scholarship merges seamlessly with individual and formal educational goals. [Footnote Sonia Livingstone article; Wyatt's definition; Caryn's position paper from the gen ed. process Nov. 27, 2000].
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The professional literature and practice of librarianship defines information literacy as a reflective process. To be clear, a '''reflective''' process considers, evaluates, synthesizes, and in general, engages information discovered through research. In contrast, a '''reflexive''' process goes on to consider one's own learning and knowledge as influenced through exposure to the information under consideration. According to Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes, in their article entitled [[Media: educom_review.pdf|'Information Literacy as a Liberal Art']], information literacy should "be conceived more broadly as a new liberal art that extends from knowing how to use computers and access information to critical reflection on the nature of information itself, its technical infrastructure, and its social, cultural and end even philosophical context and impact..."
  
Library and information resources supports ITL, including media literacy, as an agenda for students across programs, disciplines and media.  Library and information resources collaborates with teaching teams as they instruct students in media and students who create films, multimedia or musical works for programs or for independent study.  These are the challenges of the "freely chosen inquiry," –challenges that cannot all be met at all times.  However, the location of Media Services administratively and physically within the library is meant to insure that media studies and media production are supported appropriately both within the programs that media faculty teach and elsewhere in the freely chosen inquiries of students.
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The information literacy curriculum includes:
  
Academic computing also provides access to—and instruction in-- information technologies through a balance of specialized and open computing facilities.. With the migration of many media applications to commonly available personal computer platforms, instruction and facilities to support media publishing have spread to academic computing and even to the library.
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* Tool literacy - The ability to use print and electronic resources including software and online resources.
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* Resource literacy - The ability to understand the form, format, location, and methods for accessing information resources.
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* Social-structural literacy - Knowledge of how information is socially situated and produced, including understanding the scholarly publishing process.
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* Research literacy - The ability to understand and use information technology tools to carry out research, including the use of discipline-related software and online resources.
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* Publishing literacy - The ability to produce a text or multimedia report of research results.
  
=====Does Library Instruction Result in ITL Gains?=====
 
  
The Library, consistent with college-wide practices,  rejects requirements and embraces students who engage in open inquiry and independent judgment and who evince the ineffable quality of critical acumen.  In this context, we support a fluid curriculum and respond to changes that drive the needs and expectations of an innovative teaching faculty.  Because the Library shapes teaching according to individual students, a fluid curriculum, and highly diverse pedagogy,  standard or standardized assessment methods do  not  apply.  Instead, the Library commits to the intensive and never ending task of recreating learning goals, student-by-student, program-by-program. Context is everything, which obviates the role of abstract standards and measures.
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=====ITL in the Context of Holly's Generic Library=====
  
On the other hand, the Library engages in qualitative assessment—a descriptive characterization of ITL teaching and learning .  Under the leadership of the Office of Institutional Research, the librarians designed a project that assessed students as they worked through real research inquiries.  The study documented the techniques and processes—and to some extent, the thinking—of students as they collaborated intensively on research questions. Although the group involved was statistically insignificant, it did produce an interesting snapshot.  For instance, the students were stronger in their grasp of content than they were in their command of library research tools for their specific inquiries.  In other words, a question about history might not lead them to Historical Abstracts. They were also strong in their ability to develop their research questions and to evaluate and synthesize the results. And they flourished in the task of collaborating about their work. What these results suggest is that “Faculty may want to assess their students’ abilities to obtain information and offer tutorials or refer students to the Library when deficiencies are detected.
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Information literacy at Evergreen is itself a reflexive practice, in addition to being central to the process of reflexive thinking in the broader context of undergraduate education at Evergreen. That is, the student uses library and information resources to put herself in relation to information and thinking from a variety of sources and further, reflects about herself and her learning as she researches and learns. Within the context of library and information resources as understood and managed at Evergreen, this literacy includes not just print scholarship, but media and computing, to become not just information literacy but Information Technology Literacy (ITL). Reflection upon information includes reflection upon the nature and role of the tools themselves. Reflexive thinking includes the relation of the user to the information and the tools.  
  
Beyond the immediate results, this qualitative assessment suggested that students benefit greatly when they collaborate.  Certainly, this observation is corroborated by the gains that students make when they work together in skill building instead of in canned computer workshops outside of programs.  Additionally,  peer groups are widely used across the curriculum as a way to encourage students to develop research topics and individual projects. Given the results of the qualitative assessment and given the widely practiced use of peer groups, library faculty should seek ways to implement collaborative research activities when they link their instruction to programs. This model of cooperation would build on the more isolated collaborations that take place, as a matter of course, between librarians and students at the reference desk. An enlarged vision of this basic transaction—discussion, exploration, and brainstorming—will enhance the relevance and effectiveness of library teaching and workshops. .  [Exhibit: [http://www.evergreen.edu/institutionalresearch/pdf/assessment/informationliteracy.pdf http://www.evergreen.edu/institutionalresearch/pdf/assessment/informationliteracy.pdf]]
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Thus, in order to assure that students have the skills to communicate about their open inquiries and the resources to support deeply reflexive thinking, library and information resources take a broad role in the curriculum. Two of the “Six Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate” relate directly to commitment by the library and information resources to help students achieve intellectual independence, creativity, and critical acumen. Expectation Two states that our graduates will communicate creatively and effectively; Expectation Four, that our graduates apply qualitative, quantitative, and creative modes of inquiry appropriately to practical and theoretical problems across the disciplines. Not only should literate students read and write astutely, they also should access, view, critique, and produce media and writing that is eloquent and complete. In this way, digital scholarship merges seamlessly with individual and formal educational goals, just as print scholarship has in the past.
  
=====Survey Evidence=====
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=====Cross-Curricular Media Instruction=====
  
The 2006 Evergreen Student Experience Survey asked "To what extent have your Evergreen experiences contributed to your growth in ... the following computer-related fields...?"  For the category 'Studying or Doing Research via the Internet or other online sources":
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Library and information resources support ITL as an agenda for students across programs, disciplines, and media. Library and information resources staff and faculty collaborate with teaching teams as they instruct students in media and students who create films, multimedia, or musical works for programs or for independent study. These are the challenges of the "freely chosen inquiry," challenges that cannot all be met at all times. However, the location of Media Services administratively and physically within Library Services is meant to ensure that media studies and media production are supported appropriately both within the programs that media faculty teach and elsewhere in the inquiries of students. The spread of entry-level media applications into the general-use computer labs increases access to media production across the curriculum.
  
* 30.5% of Olympia campus students reported at least some contribution;
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Although library and information resources instructors work to fuse teaching with program content, students are nevertheless able to access any media application or information technology beyond or without considering program content. Likewise, many programs focus entirely on technical skill building, without any formal attempt to link these practices to disciplinary content. And in other areas of the curriculum, such as the Culture, Text, and Language planning unit, critical media and information studies are often taught in a theoretical mode, without hands-on media production—the thing itself. The point is that when skills are valorized over content, or when theory ignores practice, students neglect concrete critical reflection on how technology impacts the message, the creators, the audience, or society. However, Holly's generic library model, the founding principle for library and information resources at Evergreen, has emphasized and counterbalanced the tendency to isolate skills from content. Students who read texts expect to write as well; why should they view media and not expect to create it? Early on, a rotating faculty member who helped link instruction with critical media studies and with interdisciplinary programs directed Media Services. Library and information resources continue to struggle to advocate for the critical study of media and information technology across the curriculum.
* 47.5% reported quite a bit or a lot, for a total of 77.5%.  
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* More than 84% of Tacoma students reported at least some, of which 50% reported quite a bit.
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* More than 93% of reservation-based students reported at least some contribution; 86.2% reporting quite a bit or a lot.
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These statistics correlate well with the end-of-program review and instructional data cited earlier.  Considering just how many students express self-confidence in their research skills, and as the internet provides so many increasingly powerful tools for personal research, it is heartening to see that a good majority of students recognize that they developed greater (and one hopes more scholarly) research skills as part of their education at Evergreen.
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Academic computing also provides access to and instruction in information technologies through a balance of specialized and open computing facilities. With the migration of many media applications to commonly available personal computer platforms, instruction and facilities to support entry-level media production have spread to academic computing and even to the Library proper.
  
The ESES 2006 also asked about "Using the computer for artistic expression (e.g. music, other audio, still images, animation, video, etc.":
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Library and information resources faculty and staff instruct and teach in multiple modes, from basic skills instruction to more complex, content-driven teaching by faculty and professionals in the curriculum. In addition, the teaching faculty contribute substantively and collaboratively to planning and implementing information services, collections, and policies. This dynamic collaboration between the teaching faculty and the library and information resources has shaped the primary mission to support inquiry-based education. Each area within library and information resources has developed structures to connect teaching and instruction closely to the faculty, the curriculum, and the academic mission of the college. Utilization, satisfaction, and curricular surveys demonstrate the breadth and effectiveness of this work (See Planning and Evaluation 5.E).
  
* Just over 42% reported Evergreen contributed "Some", "Quite a Bit" or "A Lot".
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=====Faculty Librarians and Library Teaching=====
  
* Fully 36.8% said "Not at All"
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Evergreen requires rotation between the librarians and the teaching faculty. Briefly stated, faculty librarians rotate out of the Library to teach full time on a regular basis and, in exchange, teaching faculty rotate into the Library to serve as librarians providing reference, instruction, and collection development. (See [[media:Learning_Communities_and_the_Academic_Library.pdf | Pedersen]] pp. 41-44 for more discussion of this system). Faculty who rotate into the Library leave with updated skills for developing information literacy within their programs and teams across the curriculum. Library faculty develop their subject specialties and enhance their ability to work across pedagogical and disciplinary realms. Perpetual faculty-wide interactions in faculty governance and team-teaching reinforce the strong connections between the library faculty and the teaching faculty. Librarians know the faculty as colleagues and teaching faculty know the librarians (probably the only basis for widespread and effective library instruction in a curriculum without requirements). Teaching teams also spread effective library instruction practices as experienced teaching faculty introduce their new faculty teammates to their library colleagues and the teaching they offer. Most new faculty also bring updated information technology skills and experience to share with their colleagues.
  
* and 20.9% said "Very Little."
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A loose liaison system links each librarian with a subset of the curriculum, based on subject expertise, planning unit affiliation, and personal alliances. Faculty librarians provide a wide array of library and information technology-related teaching. One-time workshops designed to engage sources particular to the research projects within an academic program represent the most common format. Librarians and teaching faculty design these workshops with the assumption that the skills imparted are embedded in the interests and needs of the program learning community. At a minimum, the faculty for the program usually 1) create a research assignment which informs and motivates the students’ work; 2) attend the research workshop and participate, adding their expertise and/or questions; 3) provide the library liaison with a syllabus and a copy of the assignment and a list of the topics students are considering; and 4) ask the students to begin considering their topic before attending the workshop so they are primed to begin actual research during the workshop.  
  
Evergreen students are more likely to learn about word processing than any other computer application. No single type of application is found in large numbers, but rather many types have small representation.
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Librarians teach workshops on research most frequently in the graduate programs, the sciences, and the off-campus programs. The teaching models for these more extended situations vary according to the library faculty involved and the role in the curriculum, and they evolve significantly year to year. Each year, library faculty affiliate deeply with a few such programs, meeting weekly to create stepped learning conjoined with research assignments. For documents exemplifying this teaching, see [[media:Forensics_week-by-week.doc | Forensics Syllabus]] and [[media:Chemistry_Health_Professions_Project_Description.doc | Chemistry Health Professions Project]]. During several academic years, an information technology seminar linked library internship opportunities with a hands-on Web technology workshop. In that model, a small group of students explored contemporary questions in the world of rapid digitization and its social implications. They paralleled that study with real library work and Web production practice, including wikis and Web pages designed to support library functions. The seminar and workshop have provided a venue for library faculty, staff, and Academic Computing instructors to gather and consider both the past and future of information technologies. See the syllabi for the programs Still Looking ([[media: stilllooking_fall.pdf|fall]], [[media: stilllooking_winter.pdf|winter]], [[media: stilllooking_spring.pdf|spring]]), Information Landscapes ([[media: infolandscapes_fall.pdf|fall]], [[media: infolandscapes_winter.pdf|winter]], [[media: infolandscapes_spring.pdf|spring]]), and Common Knowledge ([[media: commonknowledge_fall.pdf|fall]], [[media: commonknowledge_winter.pdf|winter]], [[media: commonknowledge_spring.pdf|spring]]). Each year, one librarian also offers research methods through the evening and weekend curriculum.
  
=====ITL Instruction:  Conclusions=====
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In-depth, extended library-related teaching within programs and service to off-campus and Evening and Weekend programs can be a challenge in the context of a reduced core of library faculty. During the self-study period, one faculty line was cut during budget reductions. This causes significant stress on the quality and quantity of instruction the area is able to provide.
  
Overall, Library and information resources and the teaching faculty assure that information technology infuses the curriculum. On the other hand, the faculty has not embraced a single set of information technology skills. Instead, they choose and adapt technologies according to the pedagogical and disciplinary requirements of their chosen inquiry.  In the immediate future, Library and information resources should invite the teaching faculty into a discussion about whether the campus has any broad consensus about ITL. Long ago, the college committed to writing across the curriculum and allocated significant institutional resources to encourage that work—without proscriptive limits or standards.  A wider discussion about ITL could produce a similar vision and a commensurate amount of institutional support.  In the long run, such a vision will shape our understanding of digital scholarship in the liberal arts.
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=====Library Faculty as Service Providers=====
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Library faculty see themselves primarily as teachers. They tend to understand the services of the Library in the context of teaching and learning, specifically teaching as it actually happens in the Evergreen curriculum. Thus, they do not tend to work from externally defined "best practices," nor do they function in a reactive mode. They take a proactive approach to the work, suggesting tools and strategies for designing library instruction and finding the intellectual work in the world of research instruction. They position themselves to work across administrative as well as curricular boundaries and sustain an important role in the crossroads of traditional research methods, contemporary information technology, and the world of the curriculum and their teaching colleagues.
  
==Information Collections and Services==
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=====Service and Teaching=====
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The faculty librarians have transformed the reference desk into a teaching space, which goes well beyond traditional service models. For this reason, there is generally a librarian at the desk during the hours the Library is open to the public. Each contact between a librarian and a patron represents an opportunity to teach and learn. In collections, Web page design, signage, collection organization, and creation of virtual services, the librarians ask not just what is easiest or matches the expectations of inexperienced users, but what can be taught through the new design, service, or collection. For example, broad aggregate databases have been purchased because they are cost effective, but the librarians also emphasize and teach comparatively complex digitized indexes, which refer students more deeply into the discipline-based literature of their inquiries. As discussed throughout this document, library and information resources are designed, planned, taught, and supported in the context of college-wide teaching and learning.
  
===Description of Information Collections & Services===
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=====Library Faculty and Off-Campus Programs=====
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Library support for the two major off-campus offerings, the Tacoma and the Reservation-Based Community-Determined programs, focuses heavily on instruction, with additional support from networked technology, including specialized Web pages for these programs. See [[Media: reservation_library.pdf|services for Reservation-Based students]] and [[Media: tacoma_library.pdf|services for Tacoma-based students]]. Students of these programs have limited access to the physical library and must be alerted to the many high-quality resources available to them online through the Library. End-of-program reports show very high engagement with information technology in these programs (See [[Media: End-of-program_Review_Results_for_2006-07_%E2%80%93_Information_Technology_Literacy_by_Planning_Unit.pdf |End-of-program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy by Planning Unit]]). Most years, librarians work closely with the Research Methods class at Tacoma, providing laboratory-based instruction on location several weeks per quarter. As of 2007-08, this work has taken on a more formalized structure and has developed into credit-generating research classes.
  
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Library instruction at the upper-division off-campus sites of the Reservation-Based Community-Determined programs has varied widely year-by-year. Recently, the program has focused on building library methods into the lower-division bridge curriculum, which has not involved the library faculty directly. Reservation-based programs report 100% teaching and use of library and Internet research in 2007; however, this work has not engaged the Library's holdings or services significantly. Rebuilding this connection should be a high priority, and a planned faculty rotation from a former director of the reservation-based program will be an opportunity to do so. Perusal of the [[Media: Achievements2.doc |Achievements]] list for the self-study period demonstrates that almost every development supports distant access to collections and services and thus the off-campus programs.
  
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=====Modes of Instruction in Media and Academic Computing=====
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In all major computer and media labs, staff instructors provide group instruction designed to support the needs of specific academic programs, covering particular applications and tools relevant to the disciplines involved. Media and computing instructors teach workshops in different spaces and in different modes, depending on the discipline and the technology. There are no constraints upon which facilities may be used. In one quarter, a science program might have workshops in the Computer Center focusing on blogs, a math workshop using Excel in the Computer Applications Lab, a session on video documentation for field research in the Multimedia Lab, and a library research workshop in one of the Computer Center's general-purpose labs. In this way, academic programs leverage staff expertise and facilities as needed.
  
The academic community views the Library as a center for teaching, which means that our collections and resources reflect the curriculum. In fact, all of our services are defined by the fluidity of interdisciplinary and individual study. The Library Dean strengthens the ties between academics and Library and Media Services by meeting weekly with the Provost, Associate Vice President for Academic Budget and Planning and the Academic Dean of Budget. Every other week, the Director of Computing & Communications and the Manager of Academic Computing also join the Academic Deans meeting.
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Teaching faculty must be able to easily identify and contact the appropriate staff member to coordinate computer instruction, which may require significant logistical support such as lab scheduling, equipment checkout, server space, password access, personnel scheduling, and other details. In Academic Computing, program liaisons work with faculty to coordinate how programs will teach technology. For instance, the staff liaison helps set up file shares and Web spaces and schedules and teaches workshops. In Media Services, the head of instructional media provides a central location for faculty and students requesting instructional support in media to connect with appropriate media instructors and to schedule facilities and instruction. The Media Services staff work with faculty to design and integrate media into their programs. Media Services staff meet regularly with media faculty in the Expressive Arts planning unit so they can develop facilities, plan for access, and foster integration of media into academic programs.
  
=====Collection Development=====
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Students who work independently on media or computing projects or who decide to tackle media projects within non-media oriented programs also receive many forms of instructional support. Academic Computing offers regularly scheduled technology workshops, which are open to all. In addition, Evergreen students can access Lynda.com, which tutors students in software applications and programming languages. The Library recently subscribed to Safari Books Online, which supports the computer science curriculum and addresses technical inquiries from students across the curriculum. Academic Computing began a computing wiki in 2006-07 which hosts approximately 2,000 pages of instructions and tutorials and which continues to expand. Increasingly, students, faculty, and staff rely on the Academic Computing wiki to stay abreast of technologies hosted on campus.
  
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Any student may access most media-production facilities and check out portable media equipment once they have completed relevant hands-on training sessions called proficiencies. Media instructors run hundreds of these quick, skills-focused instructional sessions annually, which serve thousands of students, ensure proper use of the equipment, and provide supportive technical background for systems. The number of formal instructional sessions provided to programs has doubled since 2000, suggesting the rapidly expanding use and breadth of college-supported media technology. Finally, the Evening and Weekend Studies curriculum provides a coherent, regular pathway for learning more complex media-production processes.
  
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Like the library faculty, media instructors teach in a variety of modes: full-time, part-time, introductory, intensive, general, sustained, intermittent, specialized, individual, within programs, or collaboratively in small groups. Many of the media staff are artists, professionals, and faculty in their own right, with Master of Fine Arts degrees in their fields. They teach photography, electronic music, Web design, and digital imaging as adjuncts in Evening and Weekend Studies and in Extended Education. Media staff who teach as adjunct faculty are often called to teach full time as visiting artists. Their contributions to the part- and full-time curriculum are substantial and sustained, some of them having taught for more than twenty years. Their work supports the Expressive Arts. It assures access and instruction for students who do not consider themselves artists but who want to engage in technologies that constitute important developing communication media and also define the visual aesthetics of science, history, political science, psychology, and other narratives. Additionally, Photo, Electronic Media, and Media Loan staff annually teach as field supervisors for up to eight student interns who are critical to the effective functioning of labs and services. These students typically not only gain high-level technical production skills, but also develop instructional, collaborative, and administrative experience by working closely with students, faculty, and technical staff. Finally, all media staff sponsor many individual contracts, which provide opportunities for students who have identified intensive individual inquiries that are not supported in the curriculum at large. In general, media staff are central to the success of media-based programs and are viewed as colleagues by the Expressive Arts faculty, whose programs they support. These working relationships form the backbone of Media Services.
  
Without the benefit of departmental allocations, the library faculty develops collections to support the changeable and interdisciplinary curriculum.  The librarians build collections on the basis of their own teaching, governance, and affiliation with planning units. [Exhibit: list of librarian and staff dtf assignments]. The faculty at large develops the curriculum in planning units and at retreats, an ongoing process that is not subject to managerial or committee review. Because they participate actively  in curriculum planning, the librarians know how to build relevant collections. This process is strengthened by faculty who rotate into the library and lavish their attention on areas of the collection related to their disciplinary expertise. Finally, librarians honor most initial requests for additions to the collection, working from the assumption that free inquiry and individual research are central to the library’s mission
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=====Faculty Institutes=====
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As described thus far, library and information resources instructors regularly work with, instruct, and support the teaching faculty through individual collaboration. In addition, they design and teach several faculty institutes each summer. Faculty institutes create valuable connections among faculty, library, media, and academic computing instructors. Recent information technology institutes have focused on specific applications such as teaching statistics with Excel, using online collaborative tools to foster learning communities, or creating program Web pages. Some years, substantive discussions of information technology literacy as opposed to hands-on training have been offered. During institutes, faculty are often afforded paid time for self-directed work that focuses on their program planning. In these instances, faculty evaluate technology, practice using it, and plan how to incorporate applications into their programs.
  
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====5.B.3 Availability of Policies====
  
The library has struggled to satisfy research demands that lie outside the boundaries defined by the evolving curriculum and independent student research, especially requests for more specialized materials. Recently, most books can be supplied through the SUMMIT system, which includes over 30 academic librarians from Oregon and Washington, all available within two or three days.  Many of the more specialized materials are also now supplied by periodicals databases, which have expanded eight to nine times over the self-study period.  Although parts of aggregated periodicals databases are often less than appropriate for academic research, specific titles and collections have been added thoughtfully, within the framework of the academic mission. Consortial purchases have reduced per-title costs dramatically and most consortial collection development is done with academic libraries. Finally, ILLiad, the on-line interlibrary loan system, brings journal articles to the mailboxes and email accounts of students within days (or even hours) of ordering. There are almost no discernable limits to accessing published information for any researcher except those who need to present within 24 hours. Nevertheless, Orbis-Cascade, the umbrella consortium which administers SUMMIT, is exploring collaborative collection development to ensure both the depth of the shared collections and the appropriate coverage of local collections. Ideally, students and faculty should be able to quickly find monographs  to answer their widest and deepest inquiries.  
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''Policies, regulations, and procedures for systematic development and management of information resources, in all formats, are documented, updated, and made available to the institution’s constituents.''
  
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The Web provides a venue for all policies, regulations, and procedures for all information resources and services.
  
 
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See [[Supporting_Documentation_for_Standard_Five#Policies,_regulations,_and_procedures_for_the_development and_management_of_library_and_information_resources,_including_collection_development_and_weeding|Required Exhibit 2: Policies, Regulations, and Procedures for the Development and Management of Library and Information Resources]]
=====Support for Freely Chosen Intensive Media Production=====
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====5.B.4 Participatory Planning====
  
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''Opportunities are provided for faculty, staff, and students to participate in the planning and development of the library and information resources and services.''
  
Like the Library, Media Services serves the entire academic community, from programs to individuals. And, like the library, Media Services strains under the pressure of answering the needs of freely chosen independent study. Students working on independent media productions compete with Expressive Arts programs over scarce resources, from equipment to laboratories to teaching staff. In order to balance these competing demands, Media Services requires students and faculty to submit Media Request Forms, which are reviewed by the Media Services Manager and the Head of Instruction Media, who allocate resources, both human and technological. Individual Contract forms include a checkmark for special equipment or facilities, and the academic deans who review the forms use this as a safety net for screening intensive media use.  In these ways Media Services assures that students who embark on media studies do so with the appropriate support.  The Expressive Arts planning unit also instituted a Student Originated Studies (SOS) group contract in media in order to assure more consistently that students have  access to facilities and instructional support as they pursue their independent projects.  
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Faculty, staff, and students participate in the planning and development of library information resources and services. The college community values face-to-face communication and formal procedures for consultation are minimal. All learning and information resources staff and faculty receive and welcome direct requests and suggestions. As an example, good hiring represents an important decision determining how library and information services evolve and prosper. Hiring processes are broadly consultative. Committees with representation from different work units interview and recommend for all staff positions. Students, staff, and faculty representatives join in hiring committees for any major positions, especially those of administrators and faculty. These hiring processes routinely include public presentations by the candidates, which are announced to the entire college community to allow input from staff, faculty, and students.
  
=====Service Desks and Facilities=====
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More broadly, collaborative work with teaching faculty and other clients drives the design and planning for almost all instructional and technical support. Face-to-face planning and direct engagement with teaching faculty in a program-by-program context defines the work of library and information resources across all units (see Participatory Planning 5.E.1).
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====5.B.5 Networks Extend Information Resources====
  
Faculty librarians have transformed the reference desk into a teaching space, which goes well beyond traditional service models. For this reason, there is generally a librarian at the desk during all hours that the library is open to the public. From this position, librarians are prepared to teach patrons how to develop and pursue their research topics. Each contact between a librarian and a patron represents an opportunity to teach and learn.  In collections, web page design, signage, collection organization, and creation of virtual services, the librarians ask what can be taught through the new design, service or collection.  For example, broad aggregate databases have been purchased because they are cost-effective, but the librarians also emphasize and teach comparatively expensive digitized indexes which refer students more deeply into the discipline-based literature of their inquiries.  
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''Computing and communications services are used to extend the boundaries in obtaining information and data from other sources, including regional, national, and international networks.''
  
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Consortial arrangements in the Orbis Cascade regional system offer Summit, a resource-sharing system that makes it possible to satisfy almost any book and most media requests generated by the individualistic interests of students working on independent projects. The Summit system includes thirty-five academic libraries from Oregon and Washington and delivers resources within two or three days. Students also use many highly specialized materials from periodicals databases, which have expanded the number of journal subscriptions Evergreen holds eight to nine times over the self-study period. This enhancement is largely due to the Cooperative Library Project (CLP), a state-funded resource-sharing project among the four-year Washington state baccalaureates.
  
Government Documents, Periodicals, the Sound and Image Library (SAIL), Circulation, Media Loan, Photo Services, including Photoland (Instructional Photo), and Electronic media all have public services desks which provide access to collection and/or allow patrons to schedule lab space, reserve equipment, and ask for technical help. From anywhere on campus, faculty can phone EM for assistance in using classroom technologies. For a complete list of information desks see Appendix III.
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Consortial purchases have reduced per-title costs dramatically and have strengthened areas of the curriculum not necessarily the focus of a core liberal arts collection. For example, psychology, education, and business were heavily emphasized in the most recent round of shared purchasing by CLP. Finally, ILLiad, the interlibrary loan system, brings journal articles to the students' mailboxes and e-mail accounts within a few days. There are almost no discernible limits to accessing published information for any researcher except those who need to present within twenty-four hours. Effective campus networks supported by Computing and Communication's technical support staff make this possible. College-wide steps that have made efficient resource sharing and online information possible have included implementing the Banner student records system and establishing e-mail as the official student communications medium.
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===Standard 5.C – Facilities and Access===
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''The institution provides adequate facilities for library and information resources, equipment, and personnel. These resources, including collections, are readily available for use by the institution’s students, faculty, and staff on the primary campus and where required off-campus.''
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====5.C.1 Availability of Information Resource Facilities====
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''Library and information resources are readily accessible to all students and faculty. These resources and services are sufficient in quality, level, breadth, quantity, and currency to meet the requirements of the educational program.''
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For a description of facilities, see [[Media: Major_Faciities_List.doc |Major Facilities]] and Areas 1 and 2 of the [[Media:TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc|Edutech Information Environment Review]].
 +
 
 +
The [[media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc|Edutech Information Environment Review]] specifically considered networking, telecommunications, and other information technology relevant to accessibility. The campus network was lauded as "solid and reliable." The network itself is described technically in Area 1 of the report. Expansion of wireless access from 75% to the entire campus was recommended; this work is proceeding and has the budgetary support to continue into the future. Most classrooms have been networked with display capability, spreading library and information technology access to large portions of the curriculum. This changes the presumptions of the faculty and students and greatly increases the frequency with which social software, digitized presentations, and other multi-media information technology is incorporated in programs. The Edutech report also recommended establishing at least one dedicated teleconferencing space for general use, which is planned within the [[media: CNM.doc|Center for Creative and Applied Media (CCAM)]]. According to Edutech, "student access to computers at Evergreen does not seem to be a problem."
  
 
=====The Information Technology Wing=====
 
=====The Information Technology Wing=====
  
 +
'''LIR Facilities and Services Visibly Interconnect'''
  
 +
With the generic library as a foundation and the interdisciplinary curriculum as the context, merged collections and services build upon an alternative past. Library and information resources thus collaborate actively across academic and administrative departmental boundaries. The major remodel, implementing a newly consolidated Information Technology Wing, substantially strengthened opportunities for connecting services, facilities, and staff. One central, broad entrance now provides access to the Library, the Computer Center, Media Loan and the stairs to Electronic Media, Photo Services and Computing and Communications. See [[media: Consultant%27s_Site_Visit_Report_2004.doc | Consultant Pre-Remodel Report]] for an assessment of facility requirements produced before the project. For further detail, extensive documents describing the project are available in the documents room.
  
Library and information resources has devoted significant energy to networking across departmental boundaries.  With the generic library as a foundation and the interdisciplinary curriculum as the context, merged collections and services build upon an alternative past. The major remodel planned and implemented during the self-study period substantially strengthened opportunities for networking services, facilities and staff. One central, broad entrance provides access to the Library, the Computer Center, Media Loan and the stairs to Electronic Media, Photo Services and Computing and Communications.  A large staircase which hides this entrance from the view of individuals entering the building is being removed in the current, second phase of the library building remodel.
+
'''More Teaching and Study Spaces'''
  
 +
The ideal of collaborative learning shaped the remodel. Shared study spaces predominate, whether open area study tables, grouped lounge furniture, pod-shaped arrangements in labs, or small group study and media viewing rooms. Wireless access allows informal group work around personal or library-owned laptops. Additional laboratory spaces provide easier scheduling for program work and more computers for individuals when classes do not use the labs. Limited quiet study areas provide an alternative for the solitary scholar; at the same time, small group work is facilitated and encouraged. Overall, the Information Technology Wing has shed barren hallways and utilitarian desks in favor of lounge areas and comfortable study spaces. Overstuffed couches and chairs, large tables, task lighting, and more room for collections all contribute to the conviviality that informs shared inquiry.
  
The remodel was shaped by a communal commitment to teaching and interdisciplinary study.  Collaborative study spaces predominate, whether open area study tables, grouped lounge furniture, pod-shaped arrangements in labs or small group study and media viewing rooms. Wireless access (almost ubiquitous on campus now) allows informal group work around personal or library-owned laptops.  Additional laboratory spaces provide easier scheduling for program work and more computers for individuals when classes do not use the labs. Limited quiet study areas provide an alternative for the solitary scholar, but group work is the norm and encouraged.
+
'''Hospitable Spaces and Blended Access'''
  
+
Art exhibitions invite patrons into lounge and study areas and help define the Library as a public space. The new basement lounge, affectionately dubbed the "Library Underground," hosts frequent campus gatherings and public readings, although flooding (a new issue since the remodel) disrupted the area several times in 2006-07. Groups from across campus meet, study, and teach in library spaces, which are open to all and where food and drink have always been allowed. The Sound and Image Library (SAIL) media collections are prominently located in the reference area, where SAIL staff work closely with the reference librarians. The newly established Assisted Technology Lab (ATL) conjoins the SAIL and has become a vital meeting place for students to work and show their art and media productions. Again, SAIL and reference staff provide service and technical support for ATL patrons. As the physical reference collection continues to shrink, reference, the SAIL, the ATL, and Circulation will continue forming a more blended and prominent shared public presence.
  
Art exhibitions invite patrons into lounge and study areas and help define the library as a public space.  The new basement lounge, affectionately dubbed the Library Underground, hosts frequent campus gatherings and public readings, although flooding (a new issue since the remodel) has seriously disrupted the area.  Groups from across campus meet and teach in library spaces, which are open to all.. The media collections are prominently located in the reference area, where SAIL staff work closely with the reference librarians.  Contiguous with SAIL is the Assisted Technology Lab, an emerging resource that has become a vital meeting place for students to work but also to show their art and media productions.  Again, SAIL and reference staff provide service and technical support for ATL patrons.  As the physical reference collection continues to shrink, reference, SAIL, the ATL, and circulation will merge to form a more cohesive unit with a prominent public presence.  Overall, the Information Technology Wing has shed  barren hallways and utilitarian desks in favor of lounge areas and comfortable study spaces. Wireless connections, our collection of laptop computers, overstuffed couches and chairs, large tables, task lighting, and spacious collections all contribute to the spirit of conviviality that informs the work of shared inquiry. 
+
=====More General Access Lab Facilities=====
  
 +
Rapid developments in networked information technology have blurred between general and specialized technology labs. The main computer center includes many specialized scientific software packages such as ArcGIS and Mathematica, while common graphic manipulation software, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, appear in the CAL. Similarly, the Computer Center supports high-level statistics applications such as R, as well as digital music editing. The library computers provide basic Office applications and general Web access in addition to library-specific searches, but specific library computers also provide GIS, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, assistive/adaptive technology, and scanning applications, while the SAIL provides multiple stations for basic media dubbing, transfer, and editing. Switching to a single user domain and sign-on means simpler, more consistent access to networked resources across campus. The Digital Imaging and Multimedia facilities provide applications for advanced media production, but are open to all students. Some specialty labs have self-contained resources, such as large format printers or applications requiring more sophisticated hardware. However, the primary distinction among labs is the level of expertise and specialized knowledge of the staff. Students benefit when they know the specialized character of a lab means there will be more skilled assistance.
  
The remodel also brought the Writing and the Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning Centers into the main floor of the library, physically centralizing many academic teaching and learning support functions. This physical relationship has the potential to become an instructional and intellectual connection as well.
+
====5.C.2 Cooperative Agreements====
  
=====Blending Lab Facilities=====
+
''In cases of cooperative arrangements with other library and information resources, formal documented agreements are established. These cooperative relationships and externally provided information sources complement rather than substitute for the institution’s own adequate and accessible core collection and services.''
  
 +
Despite greatly expanded information access through Summit and shared purchasing agreements, the Library continues strong support for the core collection within budgetary constraints created by budget cuts and inflation. Over time, Summit circulation data will provide specific reports on areas of the collection where students and faculty consistently or repeatedly demonstrate the need for more depth. Additionally, the Orbis Cascade Alliance is working on shared collection development guidelines to help design complementary collections.
  
 +
See [[Standard_5#Collection_Development_Procedures_.26_Methods | Collection Development Procedures and Methods]].
  
As specialized labs have evolved over the self-study period, Academic Computing and Media Services have blended facilities. Historically, Academic Computing focused on the physical computer center and on-site teaching and technology training for students and faculty, usually covering specific skills such as Word. The specialty labs (CAL, MML, DIS, ACC) focused on more specialized, content-specific software and hardware.  The specialized labs, with supporting instruction, assist students as they produce media, engage in collaborative critiques, and embark on specialized projects.
+
See [[Supporting_Documentation_for_Standard_Five#Formal.2C_written_agreements_with_other_libraries |Required Exhibit 11 Formal Agreements with Other Libraries]].
  
+
===Standard 5.D – Personnel and Management===
  
Today, students often come to higher education having already developed an array of computer skills.  They often extend their skills through individual or ad hoc methods such as on-line tutorials and peer instruction, and working with personal computers. Distinctions among library, media, computerized information technology-- not to mention between academic and personal applications--disappear as the average laptop or workstation runs applications that once required specialized and expensive hardware and software. Accordingly, the distinctions between general and specialized technology labs have blurred.  The main computer center includes many specialized scientific software packages such as ArcGIS and Mathematica, while standard graphic manipulation software, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, appear in the CAL. Similarly, the Computer Center supports high-level statistics applications such as R as well as digital music editing.  The library computers provide basic Office applications and general web access in addition to library-specific searches, but specific library computers also provide GIS, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, assistive/adaptive technology and scanning applications.  Additionally, Academic Computing has changed access to networked facilities to reduce distinctions for students working across lab spaces. One user domain and single sign-on mean simpler, more consistent access to networked resources across campus.
+
''Personnel are adequate in number and in areas of expertise to provide services in the development and use of library and information resources.''
  
Some specialty labs have self-contained resources, such as large format printers and applications requiring more sophisticated hardware. However, the primary distinction among labs is the level of expertise and specialized knowledge of the staff.  Students benefit when they know who to ask for help, no matter what facility they are using. 
+
====5.D.1 Sufficiency of Staffing====
  
=====Planning=====
+
''The institution employs a sufficient number of library and information resources staff to provide assistance to users of the library and to students at other learning resources sites.''
  
The Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH) provides the most formal mechanism for collaboration around technology across the various parts of the college. Evergreen supports three ITCH groups: Academic, Administrative, and Core. The Academic ITCH meets at least once a month and includes professional staff from each of the primary technology labs, faculty, and interested students. The Academic ITCH coordinates general academic IT initiatives, helps develop general academic computing policy, and guides strategic planning. Professional staff members in each of the primary technology areas have developed strong connections to discipline-specific slices of the curriculum, faculty and academic administration. As ITCH develops, the members will explore ways to communicate and plan in cross-disciplinary and cross-divisional programs. ITCH provides one of the necessary cross-curricular and cross-division contexts for developing information technology across administratively distinct areas.
+
The chart below suggests that library and information resources staffing is similar to that of comparable public institutions, falling between the averages of peer public liberal arts colleges (COPLAC) and the larger regional universities in the state (WA Regionals in the table below). Note that Evergreen (TESC) and other public college library staffing averages are significantly below the staffing for groups made up largely of private Ivies, DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practices), CTCL (Colleges That Change Lives), and CIEL (Consortium of Innovative Environments for Learning).  
  
===Analysis & Assessment of Information Services and Collections===
+
{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1"| class="wikitable"
  
=====Library Use & Satisfaction Rates=====
+
|+'''Staffing Comparisons'''
  
Although Library and information resources provides a wide array of services, the question still remains whether the services are effectiveInstitutional Research routinely surveys alumni and students about campus resources. Over time, responses regarding the Library and Computer Center have been strikingly positive. Students reported the Library and Computer Center among the most highly used services or facilities, with high user satisfaction levels as well. Library use rates were 99% in 1998; 97% in 2002; 97% for on campus users and 94.2% for off campus students in 2004User satisfaction rates were 75.5% somewhat or very satisfied in 1998 and 85% somewhat or very satisfied in 2002. The student experience survey (ESES) of 2006 reports that 95% of respondents use the libraryComputer Center users were 94% of respondents in 1998, 96% in 2002 and 92% for on campus students and 93.4% for off campus students in 2004. In the 2006 student experience survey, 88.5% of students reported using the computer center.
+
Library       ||  Professionals/FTE  || Total Staff/FTE 
 +
|-
 +
|  TESC  ||  1.93  || 7.
 +
|-
 +
|  DEEP  ||  4.65  ||  16.32
 +
|-
 +
|  CTCL  ||  4.79 ||  14.71 
 +
|-
 +
|  CIEL  ||  5.51  ||  13.43  
 +
|-
 +
|  COPLAC  ||  2.67  || 8.55 
 +
|-
 +
|  WA Regionals  || 1.41 ||  5.62 
 +
|}
  
Despite the radically changing information environment, the physical library has experienced only a slight reduction in use: 4% from 1998 to 2006. The Computer Center also has enjoyed heavy use over time, with some reduction in 2006 as more and more students use their own laptops on campus; the survey that year showed that 91% of students have their own computers. Satisfaction rates for the Library and Computer Center remain the highest for any services on campus.
+
Source: IPEDS 2006 (See [[Media: DEEP_2006.xls | DEEP 2006]]; [[Media: CTCL_2006.xls | CTCL 2006]];[[Media:CIEL_2006.xls | CIEL 2006]]; [[Media: COPLAC_2006.xls | COPLAC 2006]]; [[Media: WA_state_public_2006.xls | WA State Public 2006]])
  
Starting in 2006, the ESES included questions about using library resources online and found that 85.2% of respondents use online library resources.  Internal records also suggest phenomenal growth in online use of library resources.  In 2000, when the library subscribed to three aggregate databases (Proquest, Ebscohost and JSTOR), users conducted 80,000 searches. In 2006, with approximately 30 subscription databases, there were more than 262,677 searches. Careful review of variations of use from year to year reveals the direct impact a fluid curriculum has on database use.  For example, Modern Language Association International Bibliography statistics are quite erratic; one major project in a large academic program explains a five-fold increase of use in one year. As JSTOR has developed into a more deeply and broadly multi-interdisciplinary tool, use statistics show a shift away from heavy dependence on the less scholarly aggregates.  Extensive lobbying by faculty and librarians encourages this shift toward use of scholarly resources such as JSTOR.
+
(N.B. The staff count for Evergreen has been halved since approximately 50% of Library and Media Services staffing is devoted to Media Services production, instruction, and equipment check-out. At other institutions, these services, if they are offered at all, reside in academic departments such as media arts or education.
  
=====Media Services User Surveys=====
+
The [[Media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc |Edutech Information Environment Review]] discusses staffing in Area 3. The report shows staffing to be average when compared to similar institutions in terms of size, mission, and culture.
  
ESES also surveyed students about their use of Media Services, which showed 48% use of Media Loan and 89.6% somewhat or very satisfied.  This data has been supplemented by Media Services staff member, Lin Crowley, who surveyed campus members about their use of Media Services for a Masters in Public Administration project. Ms. Crowley designed her project to include not only use statistics but also user satisfaction, in an attempt to elicit requests for additional services. Crowley’s respondents reported an average satisfaction level for each service ranging from 3.07 to 3.62 (out of 4), which indicated that those users who used current services are generally fairly satisfied with each of the services that they use.
+
Because library use at Evergreen compares favorably to more heavily staffed private liberal arts colleges and because all areas sustain a substantial instructional role, there are areas of strain. The rapid expansion of technology-driven services and collections also creates stresses, despite reallocation of staff as media and technologies shift. Following are the primary areas of concern:
  
Despite the fact that the respondents to Crowley’s survey were largely active Media Services users, many respondents were uninformed about some services.  Although students supported investment in new digital technologies, most of these students were also unaware of new or planned digital facilities.  One clear conclusion of the survey is that visibility and access could be better for some media services.  For instance, some respondents suggested ways to improve access, whether through longer hours, more workshops or more facilities. The survey project director recommended that future follow-up surveys be conducted to compare whether the reasons people use each service change and to evaluate the satisfaction levels for each type of services by patron types. [Exhibit: Crowley, Lin. Media Service Survey]
+
* Support for rapidly expanded classroom technology, an additional demand on top of general institutional growth
 +
* Staffing for greater focus on curriculum planning and engagement with faculty in Academic Computing
 +
* Staffing to support expanding electronic library resource collections (ordering, contracts, management, evaluation, etc.)
 +
* Weakened presence of faculty librarians due to the loss of one line in budget cuts during the self-study period
  
=====Comparing Use Statistics With Other Libraries=====
 
  
In 2002, the Library entered SUMMIT, a consortium of 4-year public colleges and universities across Washington and Oregon, which allows students to make on-line requests, and have items mailed quickly to Evergreen. Of the five institutions in Washington which added the service at the same time, Evergreen had the fastest take-off.  Evergreen patrons borrowed 9,723 during the first year, more than any other library, even though Evergreen is by far the smallest institution in the consortium.  At ten times Evergreen’s size, the University of Washington borrowed just under 7,000 items during that first year.  It took a year for the University of Washington  to surpass Evergreen, while other institutions had not done so even in 2006.  Although one might assume that small collection size drives this higher demand, the fact is that Evergreen students also use their local collection at higher rates than their peers in the SUMMIT consortium.
+
====5.D.2 Staff Qualifications====
  
[[Image:Summit copy.gif]]
+
''Library and information resources staff include qualified professional and technical support staff, with required specific competencies, whose responsibilities are clearly defined.''
  
The Evergreen community adapted quickly to SUMMIT because Library and information resources communicated effectively about the service, offering instructional support across the main campus and its satellites. The Circulation staff willingly bore the burden of this task from the outset. Lower early use rates at other institutions may be the result of staff deliberately implementing the service at a more measured pace. On the other hand, Evergreen implemented SUMMIT at full force, bravely and successfully assuming the institutional impact of this significant change.
+
The balance of librarians to other library staff is weighted toward non-professionals when compared to other liberal arts college libraries. Further, as librarians rotate into the full-time curriculum, they temporarily leave behind reference work, management, administration, and collection development. Any sustained work, such as Web-page development, is interrupted by these regular absences. Further, full-time teaching faculty rotate into the Library as neophytes who need training and who present widely disparate skills, abilities, and ambitions. Beyond the system of rotation, with its concomitant duties, librarians are contractually obligated to participate in college governance and curriculum planning, not to mention their own scholarly projects and sabbaticals. Librarians have nine-month contracts and several are absent during the summer sessions when the Library is minimally staffed. These organizational facts mean that Evergreen has no managerial class of librarians. Instead, the team of faculty librarians share management with staff. Paraprofessionals head almost all departments, including Circulation, Government Publications, Periodicals, Technical Services, and Acquisitions. Their year-round presence and regular workdays provide consistency for development of services, maintenance of collections, public service, and supervision of classified staff and student workers. In this collaborative environment, staff often lead the way in adopting new services. The tremendous commitment by the staff grounds the Library and makes it an ideal teaching environment.  
  
In 2004, liberal arts college use statistics were compared with those of small masters level universities (Carnegie Class Masters I), with surprising results.
+
Most library faculty carry both subject and library master's credentials in order to support their teaching as well as their role as professional librarians (see [[Supporting_Documentation_for_Standard_Five#Vitae_of_professional_library_staff | CVs of professional library staff]]).  
  
At the first level of use, the walk into the library, Evergreen’s average gate count per FTE was 1.8, Masters universities were at 1.4 and Liberal arts colleges averaged 2.77. At the next level, the patron checks out a book.  At the third level, the patron identifies materials from libraries beyond his own and requests an interlibrary loan (ILL).  Because SUMMIT statistics are counted as either circulations or interlibrary loans, depending on how individual library report, these latter two categories of use must be combined.   The comparisons speak to Evergreen Library’s dynamic patronage: students borrow (via ILL and circulation) an average of 36 items, while the masters level institutions borrow only 1.55, and the liberal arts colleges nationally borrow an average of 34.
+
As is the case with librarians, many media staff and instructors carry additional graduate training. Graduate degrees noted by staff other than librarians include three MPAs, two MFAs, an MA in art history, an MEd and EdS, an MSE (technical engineering), an MS in chemistry, and an MS in computer information systems. The library faculty, whose roles require substantial attention to teaching and governance outside the Library, must depend upon library staff as managers of major services and functions within the Library. Highly experienced staff with significant levels of responsibility keep the Library not just open, but anticipating and embracing change and new opportunities for service (see 5.B.2 Modes of Instruction in Media and Academic Computing for a discussion of media instructors as artists and teaching faculty).
  
The same dramatic distinction between liberal arts colleges and universities appears in the SUMMIT consortium, which covers the full gamut of colleges and universities in Oregon and Washington. Following is a chart which ranks the top half of the 31 libraries in the region based upon their rates of use of SUMMIT, and shows Evergreen high on the list of the higher ranked liberal arts colleges, all well above usage rates at more comprehensive institutions.
+
In the realm of technical support, the Edutech report recommended assigning "staff responsibilities more specifically." More specific responsibilities and positions have been implemented in Technical Support Services. In the smaller units that provide distributed service and instruction such as the CAL, Academic Computing, and Media Services, this stricter delineation of support functions is not as clearly appropriate. Instead, it is often valuable for staff to be well versed on all or most aspects of the instruction or service required and in direct communication with the student, staff, or faculty who needs help. For example, the liaison system in Academic Computing assumes that in most cases a faculty member will receive all aspects of support from one liaison, or that the liaison will coordinate the support and instruction required.
  
{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1"
+
All staff and faculty have engaged new skills as the information technology evolves. Multiple reclassifications have assured that staff job descriptions and pay scales match new expectations for technological expertise. Staff have also shifted the location of their work partially or entirely as budget cuts and new programs such as Summit and ILLiad have relocated the areas of greatest stress. Increased emphasis on technology in many positions has led to reclassifications and increases in salaries for some staff, resulting in compression of salaries for some managers. A campus-wide study of exempt salaries is expected to address this issue.
| Library
+
 
| # Items borrowed
+
====5.D.3 Professional Growth====
| FTE
+
 
| Items/FTE
+
''The institution provides opportunities for professional growth for library and information resources professional staff.''
 +
 
 +
The library faculty are fully funded for professional activities through the central faculty professional development funds and policies, as well as through faculty institutes.
 +
 
 +
See [[Media: facultyfundingopportunities.pdf|Faculty Development at Evergreen]]
 +
 
 +
See [[Media: professionalleave_policy.pdf|Professional Leave (Faculty Handbook 6.100)]]
 +
 
 +
See [[Media: professionaltravel_policy.pdf|Professional Travel (Faculty Handbook 6.200)]]
 +
 
 +
See [[Media: facultydevelopment_policy.pdf|Faculty Development (Faculty Handbook 6.300)]]
 +
 
 +
The remaining library and media services staff may request up to $500 annually from a pool of $2,500. Additional funding has been requested to bring the maximum benefit up to $750 in order to be consistent with the rest of academics, but this funding has not been granted thus far. Non-state funds from the Friends of the Library have been allocated for retreats and other staff meetings in order to compensate for some of this differential access to professional development funds.
 +
 
 +
Computing and Communications allocates more than $40,000 per year to support attendance of technical staff at technical conferences and trainings. This allows staff to expand their skills with current technology, increase their knowledge of new and advancing technology, and connect with peers from other institutions and experts in specific technologies. These training opportunities are critical to the team’s ability to support teaching and learning and to provide management of the college’s administrative systems (see [[Media:CC Training spreadsheet.xls | CC Training Spreadsheet]]).
 +
 
 +
====5.D.4 Organizational Structure====
 +
 
 +
''Library and information resources and services are organized to support the accomplishment of institutional mission and goals. Organizational arrangements recognize the need for service linkage among complementary resource bases (e.g., libraries, computing facilities, instructional media and telecommunication centers).''
 +
 
 +
The fundamental organizing principle of library and information resources at Evergreen is that an interdisciplinary curriculum demands integrated services. Beyond that, the founding vision aspired to provide all media, in any location. Contemporary networked technology and the expectations of students now create a climate in which barriers between different information can and must be dissolved. For all these reasons, blended resources, facilities, and services predominate throughout Standard 5.
 +
 
 +
See [[Standard_5#The_Founding_Vision_of_the_Library:_Any_Medium.2C_Any_Location|The Founding Vision: Any Medium, Any Location]].
 +
 
 +
See [[Standard_5#The_Information_Technology_Wing|The Information Technology Wing]].
 +
 
 +
=====Shared Technology Creates the Need for More Shared Work=====
 +
 
 +
Media applications, which were once physically limited to Media Services, are now located, maintained, taught, and used throughout the facilities administered by Academic Computing and, to a degree, the Library. Similarly, library resources, which were once physically limited to the Library building, are now found anywhere within reach of the Web. Public computers, once found only in the Computer Center, are everywhere, as are privately-owned laptops. These shifts have accelerated during the past ten years and have changed the instructional roles of the areas and their relationship to the curriculum. Undoubtedly, library and information resources will continue to distribute their budgets, facilities, and staff to continue expanding access to information technology in academic programs and for individual students.
 +
 
 +
As technologies have changed, so have the relationships among the Library, Media Services, and Computing, which now share in the communal project of interconnecting, teaching, and supporting our information and technological resources. At this juncture, there seems little point in redesigning the administrative structures that oversee these areas because new relationships and responsibilities have evolved organically, based on need, demand, and interest, and will continue to do so. In order to ensure that these effective working relationships continue to develop, reinforcing connections such as joint staffing, deliberately planning together, and continuing involvement across the areas when hiring for new staff and particularly administrators must be emphasized.
 +
 
 +
The [[Media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc | Edutech Information Environment Review]] suggested that the existing distributed structures were valuable, but  recommended greatly enhancing the role and formal responsibilities of the ITCH to assure better planning in consonance with the mission of the college. See 5.E for fuller discussion of this recommendation. Edutech did not capture the centrality of the teaching role in major portions of the information resources environment at Evergreen. It is teaching and its development that assures the most important connections between the academic mission of the college, the educational program, and IT services of all kinds. While the Library and Media Services collaborate as a matter of course with Academic Computing, the real challenge remains: How to more thoroughly engage the teaching faculty across the curriculum in defining the role of information technology in the academic careers of our students.
 +
 
 +
====5.D.5 Engagement in Curriculum Development====
 +
 
 +
''The institution consults library and information resources staff in curriculum development.''
 +
 
 +
See [[Standard_5#Collection_Development_Procedures_.26_Methods | Collection Development Procedures & Methods 5.B.1]]
 +
 
 +
====5.D.6 Library and Information Resources Budgets====
 +
 
 +
''The institution provides sufficient financial support for library and information resources and services, and for their maintenance and security.''
 +
 
 +
Similar to staffing levels noted above, the Library is well funded compared to other regional public baccalaureates in the state (WA State Public in the table below) and peer public liberal arts libraries nationally (COPLAC in the table below). This comparatively rich funding reflects a historical recognition of the demands of open inquiry and independent research and the centrality of library research in a liberal arts education. Both funding and use rates closely match those of the private liberal arts libraries which predominate the DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practices), CTCL (Colleges That Change Lives) and CIEL (Consortium of Innovative Environments for Learning) peer groups. Thus, the general funding level for the Evergreen Library compares closely to that of institutions with similar missions, services, and roles within their institutions. For further discussion of the role of libraries in liberal arts colleges, see [[Standard_5#Comparing_Use_Statistics_With_Other_Libraries | Comparing Use Statistics With Other Libraries (5.E)]]. On the other hand, the library budget reported below includes Media Services (approximately 50% of library staffing falls into this category). Most libraries do not include any of the functions provided by Media Services at Evergreen. Instead, these functions, including media instruction, media-production facilities, media production to support college activities, and portable media production equipment check-out, if offered at all, would be part of an academic department such as education or media arts. If Media Services costs and services were not considered, then budgets are close to those of other public institutions, while use statistics are comparable to private liberal arts institutions.
 +
 
 +
{| class="wikitable"
 +
! Library
 +
! FTE
 +
! Circulation+ILL/FTE
 +
! Expenditures/FTE
 
|-
 
|-
| Reed
+
| '''Evergreen'''
 +
| '''4153'''
 +
| '''31'''
 +
| '''$782'''
 +
|-
 +
| DEEP Colleges
 +
| 2046
 +
| 18
 +
| $829
 +
|-
 +
| CTCL
 +
| 1506
 +
| 23
 +
| $859
 +
|-
 +
| COPLAC
 +
| 3742
 +
| 16
 +
| $464
 +
|-
 +
| CIEL
 +
| 7042
 +
| 25
 +
| $794
 +
|-
 +
| WA State Public
 +
| 11,415
 +
| 15
 +
| $373
 +
|}
 +
 
 +
Source: IPEDS 2006 (See [[Media: DEEP_2006.xls | DEEP 2006]]; [[Media: CTCL_2006.xls | CTCL 2006]];[[Media:CIEL_2006.xls | CIEL 2006]]; [[Media: COPLAC_2006.xls | COPLAC 2006]]; [[Media: WA_state_public_2006.xls | WA State Public 2006]])
 +
 
 +
As budget cuts have reduced both staffing and collections, diversified revenue sources have become a high priority for library administration. Generous biennial infusions from the central academic budget have withered since earlier study periods. Indirect funds from activity grants to the faculty, major gifts from donors, book sales, and fines for lost or destroyed books have all increased to make up important non-state sources for collection development. The development of facilities and programming have been supported through major donors, with the library dean and the campus fundraisers focusing significant attention on these efforts.
 +
 
 +
The [[Media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc| Edutech Information Environment Review]] discusses budgets in Area 4 and compares Evergreen to similar schools on the basis of physical environment, enrollment numbers, education goals and aspirations, residential nature, tuition, and governance structure. The review determined that Evergreen devotes considerable resources to IT and is consistent with its peers. In 2005, Evergreen’s expenditure on IT—expressed as a percentage of total institutional expenditures—was 6.7%. This percentage aligns with the 6.7% reported by Computing in a 2006 survey of public four-year colleges. The average for all institutions was 6.5%. Generally, IT is funded comparably to institutions with similar missions and culture. The report recommended that budget processes should be addressed that take into account the heavy demands upon replacement, operation, and maintenance as IT becomes ubiquitous in the classroom, as well as in labs.
 +
 
 +
See [[Supporting_Documentation_for_Standard_Five#Comprehensive_budget.28s.29_for_library_and_information_resources |Comprehensive Budget (Required Exhibit 9)]]
 +
 
 +
===Standard 5.E – Planning and Evaluation===
 +
 
 +
''Library and information resources planning activities support teaching and learning functions by facilitating the research and scholarship of students and faculty. Related evaluation processes regularly assess the quality, accessibility, and use of libraries and other information resource repositories and their services to determine the level of effectiveness in support of the educational program.''
 +
 
 +
====Evaluating Information Services and Collections====
 +
 
 +
Assessments of Evergreen's library and information resources confirm support for the academic mission of the college as a public liberal arts college that expects a substantial number of students to engage in self-selected independent inquiry. Utilization patterns among Evergreen students correlate closely to the intensive use found among liberal arts colleges as opposed to lower use rates found among more comprehensive institutions.
 +
 
 +
'''Comparing Use Statistics With Other Libraries'''
 +
 
 +
In 2002, Washington's four-year public baccalaureate institutions implemented the Cascade resource-sharing consortium. This start-up provided an amazing new service and an opportunity to assess how rapidly a major new service might be implemented. Evergreen patrons borrowed 9,723 items during the first year, more than any other library, even though Evergreen was by far the smallest institution in the consortium at that time. Although ten times bigger than Evergreen, the University of Washington borrowed just under 7,000 items during the first year. The quick acceptance of Cascade testified to the efficient connection between the Library, library instruction, and the teaching faculty and curriculum at large.
 +
 
 +
Cascade became Orbis Cascade as the Washington and Oregon academic consortia merged. The new resource-sharing service, entitled Summit, provides ongoing comparative statistics. To continue comparison with the original members of Cascade, in 2006, Evergreen borrowed 4.52 items per FTE; almost four times the next heaviest user at 1.15 items borrowed per student. Although one might assume that small collection size drives this higher demand, the fact is that the Evergreen collection circulates at a high rate per student as well, according to federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data.
 +
 
 +
IPEDS data for 2006 also provide the opportunity to compare use statistics of liberal arts colleges with Evergreen and with small master's-level universities (Carnegie Class Master's I), where strong distinctions appear again. When both circulation and interlibrary loan are counted, Evergreen circulates 31 items per FTE, liberal arts colleges nationally average 24 items per FTE, and the Master's I institutions circulate 8.34 per FTE.
 +
 
 +
The same dramatic distinction between liberal arts colleges and comprehensive institutions appears in the Summit consortium, which covers a full array of colleges and universities in Oregon and Washington. The following table lists the heaviest users from the member libraries, based upon their rates of use per FTE in 2006. Evergreen places high on the list, among the most highly ranked liberal arts colleges, which placed well above usage rates at more comprehensive institutions.
 +
 
 +
{| class="wikitable" cellspacing="0"  border="1"
 +
! Library
 +
! Number of Items Borrowed
 +
! FTE
 +
! Items/FTE
 +
|-
 +
| Reed College
 
| 20,480
 
| 20,480
 
| 1,268
 
| 1,268
 
| 16.15
 
| 16.15
 
|-
 
|-
| G. Fox U.
+
| George Fox University
 
| 14,427
 
| 14,427
 
| 2,392
 
| 2,392
 
| 6.03
 
| 6.03
 
|-
 
|-
| Marylhurst
+
| Marylhurst University
 
| 4,548
 
| 4,548
 
| 852
 
| 852
 
| 5.34
 
| 5.34
 
|-
 
|-
| Lewis/Clark
+
| Lewis & Clark College
 
| 14,386
 
| 14,386
 
| 2,953
 
| 2,953
 
| 4.87
 
| 4.87
 
|-
 
|-
| TESC
+
| '''The Evergreen State College'''
 
| '''16,118'''
 
| '''16,118'''
 
| '''  4,200'''
 
| '''  4,200'''
| 3.84
+
| '''3.84'''
 
|-
 
|-
| Whitman
+
| Whitman College
 
| 6,672
 
| 6,672
 
| 1,803
 
| 1,803
 
| 3.70
 
| 3.70
 
|-
 
|-
| Willamet
+
| Willamette University
 
| 9,164
 
| 9,164
 
| 2,511
 
| 2,511
 
| 3.65
 
| 3.65
 
|-
 
|-
| UPS
+
| University of Puget Sound
 
| 7,570
 
| 7,570
 
| 2,742
 
| 2,742
 
| 2.76
 
| 2.76
 
|-
 
|-
| Seattle Pacific
+
| Seattle Pacific University
 
| 8,589
 
| 8,589
 
| 3,466
 
| 3,466
Line 275: Line 428:
 
| 2.30
 
| 2.30
 
|-
 
|-
| Western Ore.
+
| Western Oregon University
 
| 8,623
 
| 8,623
 
| 3,992
 
| 3,992
 
| 2.16
 
| 2.16
 
|-
 
|-
| U Portland
+
| University of Portland
 
| 6,764
 
| 6,764
 
| 3,211
 
| 3,211
 
| 2.11
 
| 2.11
 
|-
 
|-
| U Oregon
+
| University of Oregon
 
| 38,796
 
| 38,796
 
| 18,880
 
| 18,880
 
| 2.05
 
| 2.05
 
|-
 
|-
| E. Ore. U.
+
| Eastern Oregon University
 
| 4,620
 
| 4,620
 
| 2,306
 
| 2,306
 
| 2.00
 
| 2.00
 
|-
 
|-
| Pacific U.
+
| Pacific University
 
| 4,232
 
| 4,232
 
| 2,341
 
| 2,341
Line 301: Line 454:
 
|}
 
|}
  
Looking at national data, the following table compares the averages of various commonly used Evergreen peer groups:
+
(Source: [[Media: summit_statistics.xls|Summit Borrowing Statistics FY06]])
  
{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1"
+
Thus it is clear that, as of 2006, Evergreen library utilization mirrors the practices of liberal arts colleges. High-use rates also seem to reflect an academic emphasis on major student projects. For instance, at Reed College, which requires a senior thesis, the college library circulates or borrows 120 items per student. On the other hand, looking ahead, ''academic library use patterns are in a period of dramatic change.'' In 2007, the University of Washington implemented WorldCat Local, which provides immediate click-though prompts, leading the user from local catalog to Summit to some journal databases, periodical holdings, and interlibrary loan if appropriate. Summit use at the University of Washington doubled since implementation and interlibrary loan has also increased steeply. A large increase in borrowing at the University of Washington drives lending rates throughout the Summit system, but even more important, it suggests that discovery tools will dramatically increase usage without change in the library instructional program or academic practices. The Orbis Cascade consortium will soon be implementing WorldCat as the shared Summit catalog and many libraries in the consortium will undoubtedly implement WorldCat Local as their local library catalog as well.
| Library
+
| FTE
+
| Gate Count/FTE
+
| Circulation+ILL/FTE
+
|-
+
| '''TESC'''
+
| '''3987'''
+
| '''1.81'''
+
| '''36'''
+
|-
+
| DEEP Colleges
+
| 1903
+
| 2.85
+
| 36
+
|-
+
| CTCL
+
| 1555
+
| 4.20
+
| 39
+
|-
+
| COPLAC
+
| 4097
+
| 2.03
+
| 25
+
|-
+
| CIEL
+
| 7383
+
| 1.20
+
| 19
+
|-
+
| Washington Comprehensives
+
| 10575
+
| 1.74
+
| 18
+
|}
+
  
Evergreen students use their library in ways that reflect a strong commitment to the practices of liberal arts colleges.  Colleges that significantly surpass Evergreen’s use rates often engage in particular academic practices which require extensive research, in particular,  the senior thesis project.  For instance, Reed College shows 120 items per student and New College of Florida, 89.
+
'''Library and Computer Center Use & Satisfaction Rates'''
  
=====Comparing IT Facilities with Other Institutions=====
+
The data above demonstrate that library and information resources are comparatively well utilized. While high rates of use suggest something about effectiveness, surveys of popularity (frequency of use and satisfaction with use) provide further affirmation. Institutional Research routinely surveys alumni and students about campus resources. A summary of campus resource utilization (See [[Media: Alumni_Surveys_2002-2006_-_Campus_Utilization_Statistics.pdf | Alumni Surveys 2002-2006 - Campus Resource Utilization]]) shows that during the six-year period, the Library and the computing facilities have been the top two most used campus facilities, trading off for first place. Alumni who were somewhat or very satisfied with the services have reported in at between 87% and 92% during the period surveyed.
  
The information technology consultant Edutech compared Evergreen’s budget for IT with peer institutions. Edutech compared Evergreen to similar schools on the basis of physical environment, enrollment numbers, education goals and aspirations, residential nature, tuition, and governance structure and determined that Evergreen devotes considerable resources to IT and is consistent with its peers in that regard . In 2005, Evergreen’s expenditure on IT—expressed as a percentage of total institutional expenditures—was 6.7%.  This percentage aligns with the 6.7% reported by Computing in a 2006 survey of public four-year colleges. The average for all institutions was 6.5%.
+
Starting in 2006, the [[media: Evergreen_Student_Experience_Survey_2006_%E2%80%93_Campus_Resources_Utilization_%E2%80%93_Olympia_Campus_Students.pdf | Evergreen Student Experience Survey (ESES)]] included questions about using library resources online and found that 85.2% of respondents use online library resources. Internal records also suggest phenomenal growth in online use of library resources. In 2000, when the Library subscribed to three aggregate journal databases (Proquest, Ebscohost and JSTOR), users conducted 80,000 searches. In 2007, among approximately 30 subscription databases, there were well over 250,000 searches. Careful review of variations of use from year to year reveals the direct impact a fluid curriculum has on database use. For example, Modern Language Association International Bibliography statistics are quite erratic; one major project in a large academic program explains a fivefold increase of use in one year. As JSTOR has developed into a more deeply and broadly multi-interdisciplinary tool, use statistics show a shift away from heavy dependence on the less scholarly aggregates. Extensive lobbying by faculty and librarians encourages this shift toward use of scholarly resources such as JSTOR. Use statistics for periodicals and databases drive selection and instruction planning. When use statistics are low for a database seen by the library faculty as critical to a discipline or of particularly high academic value, then library faculty focus instruction on that database whenever appropriate.
  
=====Responsiveness to Rapid Change in the Information Environment=====
+
'''Media Services User Surveys'''
  
Among the organizations included in Library and information resources, the Library is the largest and most embedded in professional traditions and may be the most invested in pre-existing structures and assumptions.  The question remains how well Library and information resources balances the competing demands of conservation, teaching, and technological adaptation and innovation. In fact, as librarians devote themselves to teaching, they may neglect other responsibilities, from management to collection development in the digital age. As librarians rotate into the full-time curriculum, they temporarily leave behind reference work, management, administration, and collection development.  Any sustained work, such as web-page development, is interrupted by these regular absences. On the other hand, full-time teaching faculty rotate into library as neophytes who need training and who present with widely disparate skills, abilities, and ambitions. Beyond the system of rotation—with its concomitant duties-- librarians are contractually obligated to participate in college governance, curriculum planning, not to mention their own scholarly projects and sabbaticals. Further, librarians have nine-month contracts and are often absent during the  summer sessions when the Library is minimally staffed.  These organizational facts  mean that Evergreen has no managerial class of librarians.  Instead, the team of faculty librarians  share management with staff. Paraprofessionals head almost all departments, including Government Publications, Periodicals, Technical Services, and Acquisitions.  Their year-round presence and regular workdays provide consistency for development of services, maintenance of collections, public service, and supervision of both classified staff and students workers. In this collaborative environment, staff often lead the way in adopting new services.  The tremendous commitment by the staff grounds the library and makes it an ideal teaching environment. The success of the Library’s  flat organization can be measured by the ways in which the group has responded to institutional and profession-wide challenges.  Appendix IV lists major changes in services, faculties and collections implemented during the study period—most responding to opportunities provided by technological developments.
+
Institutional Research and Assessment added Media Services to its alumni survey of campus resource utilization starting in 2004. Since then, Media Services has been listed as the fifth most utilized resource. Alumni reported being somewhat or very satisfied at a rate of 89% and 90% in the two survey years (see [[ Media: Alumni_Surveys_2002-2006_-_Campus_Utilization_Statistics.pdf | Alumni Surveys 2002-2006 - Campus Resource Utilization]]).
  
=====Conclusion: Assessing LIRN Collections and Services=====
+
The 2006 Evergreen Student Experience Survey (ESES)asked students about their use of Media Services, which showed 48% use of Media Loan (see [[Media: Evergreen_Student_Experience_Survey_2006_Campus_Resource_Utilization_Olympia.pdf|Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2006 - Campus Resource Utilization - Olympia]]). A survey designed and implemented by staff member Lin Crowley supplemented this data. Crowley’s respondents reported an average satisfaction level for each service ranging from 3.07 to 3.62 (out of 4), which indicated that those who used current services were generally fairly satisfied with each of the services they use.
  
Library and information resources has been deeply influenced by the organizational habits of the college, habits of collaboration, egalitarian ideals, fluidity, face-to-face interactions, non-departmentalization, and interdisciplinary inquiry. The result is a responsive, flexible, evolving set of services and resources. Library and information resources faculty and staff work across the digital divide, regardless of where services reside administratively, in order to fuse traditional library services, information services, computing, and media. Library and information resources assesses technology within the context of Evergreen’s particular curriculum and implements new applications incrementally in collaborative processes involving all three areas of service and the teaching faculty. As part of that work, Library and information resources has had the distinct historical advantage of presuming that information comes in all formats and that it is not only possible but advisable to break down as many barriers as possible to access information in all its forms. In this, Library and information resources is shaped by its founding vision, the generic library, an idea whose time is now.
+
Although respondents to Crowley’s survey were predominantly active Media Services users, many respondents were uninformed about some services. Respondents supported investment in new digital technologies, but most were unaware of new or planned digital facilities. One clear conclusion of the survey is that visibility and access could be better for some services. Suggested improvements often focused on access, whether longer hours, more workshops, or more facilities. The survey project director recommended that future follow-up surveys be conducted to compare whether the reasons people use each service change and to evaluate the satisfaction levels for each type of services by patron types. See [[Media : TESC_Media_Services_Assessment_Project.doc | Evergreen Media Services Assessment Project]]
  
==Future Plans, Goals & Challenges==
+
====Evaluation of Teaching and Instructional Programs: Information Technology Literacy====
  
 +
The strong focus on teaching throughout library and information resources suggests the following questions: 1) In a college without requirements, does information technology instruction reach enough students to assure that the vast majority of graduates develop skills  in support of their inquiries? 2) Which students are taught? Do students receive information technology instruction in an array of disciplinary and developmentally varied situations or is it happening only in pockets of the curriculum? 3) Is it working? Are students acquiring cross-curricular information technology, including media literacy?
  
 +
'''How many students are taught?'''
  
===Shared Technology Creates the Need for More Shared Work===
+
About 3,000 students attend program-based library instruction workshops annually. These statistics exclude most cases of repeated contacts with the same student and thus represent very broad coverage of the student body.
  
Today, commonly used media applications, once physically limited to Media Services, are now found throughout the facilities administered by Academic Computing and, to a degree, by the Library. Similarly, library resources, once physically limited to the library building, are found anywhere one can reach the web. Computers, once found only in the Computer Center, are everywhere. These shifts have accelerated over the past ten years and have changed the instructional roles of the areas and their relationship to the curriculum. Undoubtedly, Library and information resources will continue to distribute their resources in support of wider access for programs and individuals. As technologies have changed, so have the relationships among the Library, Media Services, and Computing, which now share in the communal project of networking our information and technological resources. At this juncture, there seems little point in redesigning the administrative structures that oversee these areas because new relationships and responsibilities have evolved organically, based on need, demand, and interest. While the Library and Media Services collaborate, as a matter of course, with Academic Computing, the real challenge remains: How to engage the teaching faculty in the intensive and ongoing technological changes that surround and inform our work.  
+
From 2000 to 2007, Media Services offered a total of more than 1,500 workshops to approximately 156 academic programs. This number does not include the thousands of quick proficiencies also provided by the area. The number of formal media workshops given and students reached in 2005 and 2006 were each more than double the numbers provided in 2000. Workshops have increased along with new technologies, especially in Media Loan and in the new Multimedia and Digital Imaging Studio (DIS) labs.
  
 +
Most instruction provided by Academic Computing and the Computer Applications Lab (CAL) serves specific academic programs. These sessions are represented in the following table:
  
===Cross Curricular Information Technology Literacy===
+
{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1"| class="wikitable"
+
Media Services has traditionally kept broad, cross-curricular, critical media literacy in the forefront of their work.  Media Services does this by administering and developing the information technology delivery systems across campus as well as through instruction.  At the same time, the locus of cross-curricular media instruction has spread, moving some media applications into Academic Computing and into the hands of students. While Media Services staff work heavily with Expressive Arts faculty, Academic Computing works more broadly across the curriculum with basic media and computing applications. As these shifts unfold, Library and information resources should facilitate cross-divisional conversations about information technology literacy, making a special effort to include faculty who focus their teaching on media and technology.  The goal of these conversations should be to thoughtfully engage everyone on campus who has a stake in how computing and media are taught. Library and information resources can foster collaboration by developing faculty institutes and faculty/staff summer working groups where participants can explore digital scholarship and best practices in the liberal arts..
+
  
 +
|+'''Computer Lab Workshops for Academic Programs''' (cells represent academic programs/number of students)
  
===Continue Blending More Functions within Library and information resources===
+
| Year                 || 2004-05  || 2005-06  || 2006-07
 
+
 
+
Library and information resources supports a surprisingly diverse infrastructure of technologies and media in the curriculum.  For greatest efficiency,  Library and information resources should considered more coordination across boundaries to provide technology support. For instance, students should be able to move more seamlessly between different areas, such as CAL, MML, and the Computer Center.  Certainly, the pathways between areas could be more clearly articulated by evaluating common services, including printing, building and maintaining image sets, server filespace, and common software.    By taking better advantage of the network infrastructure, students will experience less confusion, and IT staff who directly support the curriculum could dedicate more energy toward coordinating, developing and designing IT strategies with academic programs instead of maintaining redundant infrastructures.
+
Of course, such changes would require Academic Computing staff to work more intensively in curriculum planning, a change of focus by IT specialists who previously devoted themselves more to infrastructure. In support of these possibilities, Library and information resources should discuss models for integrating curricular support and instruction.
+
 
+
Library and information resources needs to develop a shared perspective on its public presence.  One possibility for representing the blended facilities and services is a central help desk for the information technology wing. Once the central staircase is removed, the shared entrance to the wing will become a prominent architectural feature and an opportunity to reshape the community’s understanding of what we collectively represent. A central help desk would provide basic information about facilities, services, and staff, and it would help facilitate how efficiently patrons move between the various floors of the wing.  Continued attention to the best use of the Library Underground should be part of this process; a large, flexible teaching and gathering space is developing there and appropriate equipment will be needed to support that vision.  Concurrently, assuring safe conditions for the adjacent Archives and Rare Books Collections is critical.
+
 
+
 
+
Construction of the Center for New Media will begin soon.  This project has distinct relevance to the changing roles of Media Services, the Library and Academic Computing within the evolving digital liberal arts. The CNM will comprise a collection of media production studios and equipment to complement and complete existing Media Services and Academic Computing media resources and provide the primary bridge between the campus media infrastructure and networked digital resources.  For a discussion of the CNM and related curricular projects see Appendix V.
+
 
+
===Library Instruction===
+
 
+
Because there are fewer librarians, the teaching rotations have taken their toll.  Specifically, the librarians can’t attend consistently to administration; they struggle to support all areas of the curriculum; and they have not been able to respond to proposed increases in hours for the reference desk.  Further, reference desk service has changed as the Internet creates patrons who access our resources from remote locations. Most immediately, virtual patrons do not  benefit from the teaching that takes place at the reference desk. As the physical reference desk diminishes in importance, faculty who rotate into the library are limited in their opportunities to learn about library resources through interactions with patrons. These trends, challenges, and problems should inform the reference group as they consider how to proceed in allocating team responsibilities with or without an increase in the number of library faculty.
+
 
+
The reference group should evaluate service to areas of the curriculum that report or demonstrate less involvement in the various forms of information and consider whether more or different instructional support would be appropriate or desirable. For instance, one of the science librarians retired, leaving one librarian to cover all SI programs.  Because this librarian teaches intensively in a few programs, many SI programs may be underserved.  Thus, the next library faculty hire should probably emphasize scientific expertise.
+
 
+
 
+
The process-based ITL assessment project revealed that library faculty should encourage peer groups among student researchers as a means for developing research skills and strategies.  The science librarian who does intensive, embedded instruction, works with students as they write bibliographies, which become the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of student research.  Some of the other librarians evaluate bibliographies as well.  This approach could be more broadly applied to programs across the curriculum, where students are required to research competently and to represent their work clearly in bibliographies, abstracts, research papers, essays and stories. Faculty librarians may want to explore evaluating research results more commonly as they develop their ties with programs and faculty in all disciplines. As librarians become more involved in each stage of research, including writing or production, they should be able to provide more consistent support to students.  Of course, such a proposal might prove unmanageable, albeit pedagogically sound, because there are already too few librarians to meet potential demand from the curriculum. On the other hand, the academic year cycle generates intensive demands for instruction in the fall, with a significant reduction in some areas of the curriculum in the winter and spring.  These quarters may provide opportunities for the kind of follow-through described here.
+
 
+
 
+
Academic Computing and the Library Faculty should explore connections with the Quantitative and Writing Centers.  The many overlapping values and concerns of these areas seem obvious.  In fact, the barriers that persist seem to reflect different philosophies of service—specifically, of public service—rather than intractably divergent views of teaching and learning.  For instance, students do a great deal of the teaching in the writing center, whereas faculty librarians consider teaching to be the center of their work.  Yet everyone agrees that student-centered instruction is one of the best modes of learning.
+
 
+
 
+
===Collections and Services===
+
 
+
The Library will continue to actively develop a new library front page and database search pages.  The library is currently engaged in discussions with the college web designers who may be willing to maintain the library front page without exerting too much control over content. The Orbis-Cascade consortium may develop a shared catalog front-page, which the library will consider as well.  Currently, the reference group is researching the commercial options for federated searching to replace Meta-find, which was found to be completely unacceptable as currently formulated.
+
 
+
+
 
+
The last self-study emphasized the library audio/visual collection.  Since then, one-time funds have frequently been infused, and the collection has grown significantly. SAIL staff and selectors have emphasized both new titles and replacement of older formats and worn copies.  The library anticipates circulating the collection through SUMMIT, which will increase wear.
+
 
+
[[Image:.wmz|384px]]
+
 
+
SAIL has demonstrated its continual need for supplemental funds, which provides a strong argument for a permanent increase in the budget allocation. Selectors should still have the flexibility to purchase various formats from their funds for print monographs, but a stable and larger allocation for the SAIL budget would lessen the need to do so and reduce irregularities in expenditures, workload and processing.  During Winter of 2008, the reference group will review the materials budgets with the intention of reallocating funds according to the curricular demands for video and digitized reference resources. If these discussions result in a larger budget for SAIL, more staff will be required to order and process the additional items. Additionally, the staff will be more deeply involved in researching web-based media collections.  This process will develop in concert with the push to digitize archival collections, including photographs, video, and copies of faculty artwork.  The Center for New Media will take the lead in this ongoing project.
+
 
+
 
+
During the self-study period, the budget for purchasing monographs was cut, starting with $49,000 reduction in 02/03. In 04/05,  $25,000 was transferred out of the monographs budget and into Periodicals/Reference. These cuts have been partially restored through a yearly allocation of $45,000 from Indirect Cost (soft money produced largely from grant activities involving research) and $10,000 from Library Fines, leaving a cut of $20,000.  There have been no new allocations in response to inflation. The monograph budget should be restored, even as periodical titles continue to grow in number and inflate in price, and even as we commit more resources to SAIL.  Any new (or reinstated)  funding should not automatically be applied across the board.  For instance, cuts in science monographs are balanced by burgeoning periodical titles, which tend to answer more inquiries in the sciences than do monographs. 
+
 
+
 
+
Because of the SUMMIT and ILLiad systems, the collections do not need to be designed to support individual students who engage in inquiries that lie outside the collection profile. However, SUMMIT use will allow the library to identify weaknesses in the collection that result in areas of high borrowing rates from other institutions. The data from SUMMIT should be analyzed in three years, at which point we will decide if such data are useful in developing the collection.  Additionally, the library will participate with other SUMMIT institutions in shared collection development.
+
 
+
 
+
The library will continue to take advantage of the significantly increased purchasing power created by consortial agreements for periodical and other database purchases.  The library needs to keep an eye on the time and expertise necessary to keep up with the ever-increasing work of evaluating these agreements, purchases and contracts and the technical work to support electronic resources and may want to consider creating a position for managing electronic resources.  A centralized specialist working on electronic resources would potentially help the selectors, by consistently researching and disseminating information about new products.
+
 
+
 
+
===Budgets and Support for Rapidly Evolving Information Technology===
+
 
+
While the Edutech report gave Evergreen good marks for its budgetary support of information technology, the report also recommended that “to follow current best practices, the replacement cycle should be permanently funded and the operations budgets need to be raised regularly to reflect the increase in technology-equipped classrooms, the increased number of servers and desktop computers that must be supported, and other increases in the technology base.”  The college has begun to address this issue, proposing permanent line items in the next biennium for replacing the core server and desktops. This movement toward more permanent allocations for replacement and repair will help ensure that the infrastructure can support the curriculum. Although ITCH can play only an advisory role, it has participated actively in the process of establishing permanent allocations, setting priorities, and sharing resources. Beyond budgets, Media Services, the Library, and especially Academic Computing need more instructors who focus on developing IT literacy across the curriculum. These specialists would work directly with the faculty and students, mentoring them through a technological landscape even more mutable than Evergreen's curriculum and should be a high priority for Academic ITCH in its role of advocacy for IT across the curriculum.
+
 
+
The remodeled Technology Wing created more teaching spaces and more technology. While labs are equipped with computers for each student, most classrooms include a computer along with projection and LCD display systems. The library plans to add more study lounges with computer access. But, most urgently, the library should convert one of its classrooms into a lab. At this point, Library and information resources and Academic Computer can adequately support the computer facilities distributed across campus, but that’s about it.  As enrollment creeps up toward the target of 5,000, the college will have to add additional resources—human and technological.
+
 
+
+
 
+
Media Loan has the daunting task of providing portable digital equipment at the same time that it struggles to maintain older analog equipment, such as Super 8. This double-duty creates problems with storage, with the maintenance of equipment for which many parts are no longer available, and with and teaching both the old and the new. Methods for resolving these competing demands are not sufficiently developed and should be addressed.
+
 
+
The Media Services area brought on-line a Web-based circulation system that greatly improves the efficiency of Media Loan.  Unfortunately the college hasn't been able to add a funding line for the annual maintenance contract and software updates.  Electronic Media authored an extensive Filemaker Pro-based system for space scheduling, equipment tracking, inventory control and work order controls.  Computing staff only minimally supported this effort.  These systems are critical to the area operations, and need to be integrated into the broader campus programming support schema.
+
 
+
The Arts Annex does not enjoy media, a/v or networked technology.  In order to project art images, the faculty must use Seminar II classrooms, far removed from their studio space in the Annex.  Ideally, the Art Annex should be equipped with projection and networked equipment that will allow programs to integrate the many web-based image resources into their curriculum.
+
 
+
 
+
The Media Services chargeback system has been an important tool for supplementing equipment/software and student hourly budgets based on actual use. A white paper on the chargeback process was written so that the college administration could review this practice.  [The white paper?] [The administration?] recommended that Media Services decrease its reliance on the chargeback system and, instead, transfer funds into Photo Services, Electronic Media and Media Loan to support the academic and production needs of the college.  This is still under consideration.  [Exhibit:  Chargebacks in Media Services]
+
 
+
==Appendixes==
+
 
+
===Appendix I: Information Technology Literacy as reported in End of Program Reports===
+
 
+
 
+
 
+
The survey asks faculty to describe their inclusion of information technology in programs.  While the descriptions and definitions are idiosyncratic, it is still possible to track patterns of technology use across planning units.  The table below portrays response rates for information technology sorted into five categories and organized by planning unit or interdisciplinary status (core and interarea programs). Other than library research, the categories distinguish between in-depth disciplinary tools used almost exclusively by one or two planning units (media production and specialized scientific applications) and more basic, cross-curricular entry-level tools which might reasonably be taught in a wide array of contexts (presentation media and basic computer applications such as Excel, social software or courseware, or simple webpage creation).  The two categories of cross-curricular tools (presentation media and basic computer applications), might be considered common components of basic information technology.  Extremely widely utilized applications such as word processing are not considered at all, as they are nearly ubiquitous and thus rarely appeared in the reports.
+
 
+
{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="4" | End of Year Program Reviews: ITL
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | Planning
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | # programs
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="2" | Research
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="2" | Presentation
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="2" | Basic Comp
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="2" | Media Prod
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="3" | Spec. Comp.
+
|-
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | Unit
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | %
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | %
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+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | %
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | %
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | %
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| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | CTL
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 70
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 27
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 39%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 8
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 11%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 6
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 9%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 13
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 19%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 0
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 0%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | Exp Arts
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 35
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 15
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 43%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 9
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 26%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 9
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 26%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 22
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 63%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 0
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 0%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | Env S
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 55
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 31
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 56%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 27
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 49%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 17
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 31%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 1
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 2%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 11
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 20%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | SI
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 48
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 17
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 35%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 22
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 46%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 8
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 17%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 2
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 4%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 23
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 48%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | SPBC
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 45
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 27
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 60%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 17
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 38%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 13
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 29%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 6
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 13%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 1
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 2%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | EWS
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 83
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 40
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 48%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 17
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 20%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 38
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 46%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 13
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 16%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 8
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 10%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | CORE
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 38
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 21
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 55%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 7
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 18%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 11
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 29%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 11
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 29%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 2
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 5%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | Interarea
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 54
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 34
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 63%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 14
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 26%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 12
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 22%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 21
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 39%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 3
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 6%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | Totals
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 428
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 212
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 50%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 121
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 28%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 114
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 27%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 89
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 21%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 48
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" | 11%
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
|-
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
 
|-
 
|-
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+
| Computer Center  || 221/4,423  ||   171/3,418 || 253/4,880
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
 
|-
 
|-
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="6" | *Includes Powerpoint, Illustrator; manipulated playback
+
| Computer Applications Lab  ||  50/1,368  ||   50/1,248  || 52/1,344
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" |
+
 
|-
 
|-
| valign="bottom" nowrap="undefined" colspan="11" | **Includes Excel, classroom management applications, program blogs, tserv, webpages
+
| Totals          ||  271/5,791  || 191/4,666  || 305/6,224
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+
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+
 
|}
 
|}
  
 +
Up until 2007, Academic Computing offered 30 to 40 general computer skills workshops per year in the Computer Center, attended by approximately 350 students. Professional staff focused these workshops on general technical skill building, independent of academic programs. Over time, fewer students were attending these workshops, presumably because more students come to college with strong technical skills and with specialized self-determined needs for support. In response to waning attendance, Academic Computing redesigned the workshops as student-centered support sessions to which students bring their questions or projects. This student-centered structure should more effectively meet the specific demands of students. Computing will evaluate the success of this reinvented structure. All areas of library, media, and computing find the strongest teaching and the greatest demand for instruction occurs in conjunction with programs.
  
What emerges from this study is a picture of how faculty teach or include  information technology literacy according to the content of their programs. Clearly, no single definition of appropriate information technology literacy applies across any significant portion of the curriculum. The data provides some insight into how students develop information technology experience at a college where there are no requirements or ITL standards. What follows is a summary of the various emphases and interests in information technology expressed through end-of-program reports, with an emphasis on planning units and curricular structures:
+
'''Which Students?'''
  
+
The number of teaching contacts shows that library and information resources staff reach a large number of academic programs, but does not indicate which programs. End-of-program surveys conducted from 2001 to 2006 by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment asked faculty, “Did your students use technology to present work, conduct research (including library research), or solve problems? If yes, How?” Not surprisingly, faculty answered that library/Internet research skills were the most commonly used at 50%, followed by some form of presentation technology. Ninety percent of programs reported some substantial use of information technology. (See[[Media: Summary_of_Information_Technology_Literacy_Emphasis_in_Programs.pdf | Summary of Information Technology Literacy Emphasis in Programs]])
  
Predictably, the CTL      planning unit reported the least involvement with information technology,     even including library research.  At 39% of programs reporting      library research, CTL is lowest of all planning units except      SI.  More unexpectedly, CTL reports media production work at      19%, which is higher than either presentation technology or other forms of      basic computer use. Obviously, a significant portion of CTL faculty      focus on close reading and thoughtful engagement with assigned texts,      avoiding the search for external authorities. They also are more likely to      use media production as a vehicle for storytelling, analogous to texts.
+
In 2006-07, questions were revised to more accurately identify programs where there was intentional focus on teaching ITL: "Did your program include activities to improve information technology literacy?" With this more restrictive language, 70% of programs reported including ITL. (See[[Media: End-of-program_Review_Results_for_2006-07_%E2%80%93_Information_Technology_Literacy_by_Planning_Unit.pdf | End-of-program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy by Planning Unit]])
  
+
Further, in 2006-07, a follow-up question asked specifically which kind of technology was taught. Significantly different technologies predominate in different parts of the curriculum. No standard set of applications comes into play, although as of 2006-07, presentation technologies (at 42% of all programs) have increased by 70% over their use in the 2001 to 2006 reports and now begin to approach library and Internet research in their prevalence at 50%. Online communication applications were reported by 32% of programs, an increase of 19% over the 2001-2006 data.
  
·        SI also places less frequent emphasis on library research, with 35% of programs reporting involvement. Perhaps original research—fieldwork and labs-- might supplant an emphasis on library research in some programs. The culture of the science planning unit may also presume that students are able to independently research their topics.
+
Reservation-based programs reported library and Internet research at the highest rate, at 100% of programs, although this work was weakly connected to library instruction and therefore it is unclear whether academic library-supplied resources were used. At the other end of the spectrum, Culture, Text, and Language was lowest with 21% reporting library or Internet searching. The remainder of planning units ranged between 43% and 50% library/Internet use, with Core programs at the low end with 43%.
  
+
The substantial move toward presentation media and online communication in programs drives increases in multimedia applications. Presentation technology and online communication applications encourage the use of still and moving images, sound clips, graphs, and charts. These media are mixed with traditional print communication written by students or linked from Web resources. While these media and print applications involve basic, commonly used applications of information technology, they easily migrate toward more advanced media production. The increasing presence of multimedia information technology in Evergreen's learning communities drives further demand upon Media Services and Academic Computing, along with increased overlap of their teaching and service roles.
  
Despite a strong      focus on non-scholarly and non-print texts and expression, Expressive Arts     nevertheless works with library research in a respectable 43% of programs.  
+
Since its inception in the context of Holly’s generic library, Media Services has followed its mission to support media literacy and instruction across the curriculum. During the last ten years, Media Services have changed dramatically as the personal computer has become the platform for entry-level media production and consumption. One measure of this change has materialized in how media staff have served programs through formal workshops since fall 2000. The scheduling data shows that almost 90% of formal program-based workshops serve Expressive Arts faculty. While this scheduling data does not cover equipment proficiency workshops or one-on-one instruction, both used more broadly across the curriculum, it is nevertheless clear that formal instruction by media staff focuses heavily on Expressive Arts programs, with an emphasis on advanced production applications, the exclusive provenance of expressive arts faculty. Media Services provides this advanced instruction in specialized labs, which were enhanced and expanded during the remodel. One effect of this specialization is that entry-level students have migrated to Academic Computing, where the staff works in collaboration with media staff to provide instruction on entry-level media-production applications. In fact, during fall and winter 2006-07, 68% of the faculty who requested workshops in Computer Center were from planning units other than Expressive Arts, and many of these workshops included media instruction (Photoshop, iMovie, Flash, etc.).  
  
+
Just as in the Computer Center, the Computer Applications Lab (CAL) shows a trend toward more broadly used applications. Although the CAL has traditionally focused on the science curriculum in the Environmental Studies and Scientific Inquiry planning units, these users have begun to share their space with those who have less specialized demands. Roughly 60% to 70% of the classes in the CAL now work with statistical or numeric analysis, primarily Excel, but also with Graphical Analysis, R, and SPSS. Ninety percent of CAL users prepare presentations, most often with Powerpoint, Word, Illustrator and Excel. Approximately 60% of the programs meeting in the CAL still use analytical tools, including (in order of usage) ArcGIS, Mathematica, and Stella, which were once the focal point of all CAL applications. Science faculty have shifted their emphasis to on-site analysis, using advanced applications in specialized scientific labs in ways that parallel the shift in Media Services toward advanced applications. Meanwhile, the CAL and the Computer Center serve increasing numbers of students who seek instruction or support for the increasingly powerful personal computing applications in media production, statistical analysis, and presentation media.
  
Core programs, where      one might expect strong emphasis on basic academic skills development,      report only 55% engagement in library research.
+
'''Does Library Instruction Result in ITL Gains?'''
  
+
The Library, consistent with college-wide practices, rejects requirements and embraces students who engage in open inquiry and independent judgment. In this context, the Library supports a fluid curriculum and responds to changes that drive the needs and expectations of an innovative teaching faculty. Standard or standardized assessment methods do not apply because the Library shapes teaching according to individual students, a fluid curriculum, and highly diverse pedagogy. Instead, the Library commits to the intensive and never-ending task of recreating learning goals, student-by-student, program-by-program. Context is everything, which obviates the role of abstract standardized measures.
  
Remaining planning      units report library research in between 50% and 63% percent of their programs
+
On the other hand, the Library does engage in qualitative assessment, the descriptive characterization of ITL teaching and learning. As is the case throughout the faculty (see Standard 2.B.3, Engagement and Reflection), library faculty write annual evaluations of themselves and their library and teaching colleagues. They also engage in five-year reviews in which a panel of teaching colleagues discusses their work. These evaluations consistently address instructional aspirations, successes, and failures. See [[Media: Reflections_on_library_instruction.doc | Reflections on Library Instruction]].
  
+
Further, under the leadership of the Office of Institutional Research, the librarians designed a project that assessed students as they worked through real research inquiries. The study, [[media: ActivityInfomationLiteracy.pdf |"The Activity of Information Literacy"]], documented the techniques and processes and even the thinking of several small samples of students as they collaborated intensively on research questions. The study showed that these particular students were stronger in their grasp of content than they were in their command of library research tools for their specific inquiries. In other words, a question about history might not lead them to historical abstracts. They were also strong in their ability to develop their research questions and to evaluate and synthesize the results. What these results suggest is that “Faculty may want to assess their students’ abilities to obtain information and offer tutorials or refer students to the Library when deficiencies are detected.”
  
Inter-area programs,     on the other hand, have the highest attention to research, at 63%.
+
Beyond the immediate results, this qualitative assessment also suggested that the students benefited greatly when they collaborated. Certainly, this observation is corroborated by the gains that students make when they work together in skill building instead of in canned computer workshops outside of programs. Additionally, peer groups are widely used across the curriculum as a way to encourage students to develop research topics and individual projects. Given the results of the qualitative assessment and given the widely practiced use of peer groups, library faculty should seek ways to implement collaborative research activities when they link their instruction to programs. This model of cooperation would build on the more isolated collaborations that take place, as a matter of course, between librarians and students at the reference desk. An enlarged vision of this basic transaction—discussion, exploration, and brainstorming—will enhance the relevance and effectiveness of library teaching and workshops.
  
 +
'''Student Assessment of Their ITL Learning'''
  
 +
The Evergreen Student Experience Survey (ESES) asks questions that elucidate what the students themselves think they learned at Evergreen. In 2006, the ESES asked, "To what extent have your Evergreen experiences contributed to your growth in ... the following computer-related fields...?" Responses generally matched fairly well with the perspectives found in the end-of-program surveys. For the category "Studying or Doing Research via the Internet or other online sources:
  
+
* 30.5% of Olympia-campus students reported at least some contribution.
 +
* 47.5% reported quite a bit or a lot, for a total of 77.5%.
 +
* More than 84% of Tacoma students reported at least some, of which 50% reported quite a bit.
 +
* More than 93% of reservation-based students reported at least some contribution; 86.2% reporting quite a bit or a lot.
  
A different picture emerges when planning units were surveyed about their use of more specialized media production and computer applications. That is, 63% of expressive arts programs report use of media production; and 48% of SI programs report use of specialized computer applications.  Not surprisingly, SI reports 4% use of media production while expressive arts reports 0% scientific applications. There is modest use of media production in other areas (19% in CTL; 13% in SPBC) and almost no use of specialized computer applications in planning units outside of SI and EA.
+
Considering how many students express self-confidence in their research skills, and as the Internet provides so many increasingly powerful tools for personal research, it is heartening to see that a good majority of students feel they developed their research skills as part of their education at Evergreen.  
  
Media production appears outside of its disciplinary home in Core and Inter-area programs. As faculty from EA move into interdivisional teaching, media production appears in 29% of Core programs and 39% of inter-area programs. Scientific computing appears in only 5% of Core and 6% of inter-area programs.  EWS programs offer 16% media production and 10% scientific computing in their \more specialized classes.  Although team teaching is one of the college’s strongest faculty development tools, specialized media or scientific applications do not appear to be spreading via team teaching. Media Production disseminates more than specialized scientific computing.
+
The 2006 ESES also asked about "Using the computer for artistic expression (e.g., music, other audio, still images, animation, video, etc.)":
  
 +
* More than 42% reported that Evergreen contributed "Some," "Quite a Bit," or "A Lot"
 +
* Fully 36.8% said "Not at All"
 +
* 20.9% said "Very Little"
  
To summarize, planning units show clear preferences.  For instance, SI focuses heavily on a combination of presentation media (often Illustrator posters) at 46% and on specialized computing with less use or at least less mention of more basic computer applications.  ES and SPBC are the most balanced in use of basic information technology tools.  ES uses presentation media heavily (49%) and a fair amount of basic computer applications (39%).  SPBC also uses presentation media in a substantial number of programs (38%) with basic computing in 29%.  EA reports 26% of each basic technology, showing a commitment to using many types of information technology.
+
The 2006 ESES surveyed use of non-artistic computer tools, asking about specific types of applications such as spreadsheets, GIS, Web development, posters, or programming. In general, as was found in end-of-program reviews, no single type of computer application dominated. No application type was used by more than 50% of students; instead, different types of applications were used by smaller subsets of the students surveyed.
 
+
 
+
The interdivisional curriculum and the broad EWS programs show a different pattern. With a more distributed student body and with shorter class sessions concentrated in off-hours, EWS strongly depends on basic computing to support communication outside of the classroom (46%).  Surprisingly, Core reports low use of presentation media (18%) and modest use of basic computing (29%).  Inter-area programs are a bit more ambitious, with 26% use of presentation media and 22% use of basic computing, although media production is fairly well represented in inter-area programs at 39%.
+
 
+
Overall, 42% percent of programs work in both presentation media and basic computing.  In general, this work happens more in advanced curriculum than at Core, where faculty focus on basic reading and interpretation. On the other hand inter-area programs provide more opportunities  to develop a wider range of IT skills, presumably because students are better prepared and more experienced.  A significant majority of programs use media and computing information technologies, from general to specialized applications.
+
 
+
+
 
+
Off-campus programs are not represented in the table, although they were surveyed about how they used information technology as a tool for communicating and for accessing academic resources. When Tribal programs were asked, “To what extent has your Evergreen experience contributed to your growth . . .  using computer technology to present work, find information or solve problems, students responded, "Quite a bit" 44.8% of the time. In stark contrast, all other categories of students ranked computer use as last or 20th of 24 categories [Exhibit: http://www.evergreen.edu/institutionalresearch/studentexperiencesurvey2006responses.htm  question 19]as a skill developed at Evergreen.  
+
  
+
====5.E.1 Participatory Planning====
  
Presumably, students in more conventional settings feel that they come to college with their use of computers well established, or they developed their use outside of the curriculum. In addition, a larger percentage of faculty teaching off-campus programs leverage the on-line collaboration tools such as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and eportfolios to facilitate communication within the planning unit outside of class time. This brings a technology focus to the forefront for off-campus students.  The Tacoma program, which reports out as a single program, but represents many tracks for hundreds of students, always includes a research and a media production component.
+
''The institution has a planning process that involves users, library and information resource staff, faculty, and administrators.''
  
How does this spread of information technology instruction and use across the curriculum correlate to the teaching and support provided by library instruction? Library workshops for 2003 through 2007 show that although Core program focus is not particularly frequent (55%) compared to much of the curriculum, yet library faculty work heavily with that part of the curriculum.  Librarians gave workshops to 40 core programs over the time period, the highest commitment other than to EWS, with its very high number of individual programs and classes.  Thus while library research may not be as heavily covered in the Core curriculum as might be expected, faculty in core teams are reaching out for assistance in this aspect of the work very actively and the library is providing strong support.
+
=====Overall Planning for Collections & Services=====
  
Inter-area and social science curricula are also well supported by library instruction with 26 and 22 programs served.  Self-reported library research in programs (63% and 60%)correlates well to library-based instruction.  Thus while one might expect that interarea programs are able to include more information technology in their programs, this is not simply because students are already prepared or assumed to be prepared in basic skills such as library research. There might also be recognition that library research at the core level will be very different from what is expected in subsequent years.
+
The fluidity of interdisciplinary and individual study defines library services. The dean of Library Services strengthens the ties between academics and the Library and Media Services through weekly meetings with the provost, associate vice president for academic budget and planning, and academic dean of budget, as well as weekly academic deans meetings. Once a month, the director of computing and communications and the manager of Academic Computing also join the academic deans' meeting.
  
The science and environmental studies curriculum show lower use of library instruction, with 12 and 15 programs requesting workshops. CTL, an area which reported comparatively little use of library research in programs, also utilized very little library instruction: librarians provided workshops to only four CTL programs.
+
The interconnection of the instructional role with the planning and support functions drives the efficacy of all the services in these areas. In the [[Media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc | Edutech Information Environment Review]], Area 5 discussed planning and governance in the Evergreen information environment. The review was somewhat critical of the lack of coordination in support, planning, and governance of IT across the campus and advocated for a stronger role for the Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH), an organization which links library, media, and computing managers and instructors. However, the report did not emphasize how the teaching function and role in Academic Computing, the CAL, and Media Services creates strong collaboration in all service and instruction design.  
  
===Appendix II: Major Facilities===
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Further, placing library and information resources within the larger ethos of the college, any major policy discussions or long-term planning processes invoke the participatory college-wide Disappearing Task Force (DTF) structure. Budgetary processes are generally collaborative and include opportunities for review and input from the campus community (see Participatory Decision-Making Culture [Standard 1 Section 2.3] and Standard 6). The college budget process and schedule drives most mid-term library planning. (See Standard 7 Section 7.A.3).
  
Following is a description of the major information technology facilities supporting academic work.
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Additional opportunities for community contributions to planning include faculty who rotate into the Library and who focus on collection development and other planning projects. An annual Reference Services Group retreat establishes the year's work before classes start in the fall. Faculty development reviews, also known as five-year reviews, and faculty institutes provide opportunities for conversations across campus about a range of teaching, learning, and service questions as they impact information services. The library internship program provided a reading seminar for several years within which library faculty, staff, and interns could discuss changing information technology and its cultural meaning. Finally, the librarians often engage in faculty reading seminars, frequently focused on library issues, where shared thinking about the future of libraries evolves.
  
[[http://www2.evergreen.edu/wikis/computing/index.php?title=Category:Computing_on_Campus]]
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=====Loose Structures and Responsiveness to Rapid Change in the Information Environment=====
  
[Provide map of labs at least in library building]
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Among the organizations included in library and information resources, the Library is the largest and most embedded in tradition and thus may be the most invested in preexisting professional structures and assumptions. Additionally, a comparative lack of top-down managerial structures could lead to a tendency to stagnate in some environments. How well does the Library balance the competing demands of conservation, teaching, and technological adaptation and innovation? The success of the Library’s flat organization can be measured by the impressive way in which the Library group has responded to institutional and profession-wide changes and challenges. See the [[Media: Achievements.doc |Achievements]] document for a description of major changes in services, faculties, and collections implemented during the study period. Most of the changes are responses to opportunities provided by technological developments and external engagement in consortia. The consortia relieve any single library from much of the burden of research and develop into new technologies, an overwhelming burden for a comparatively small library such as Evergreen's. Additionally, Evergreen's library administration and staff have worked actively in leadership roles in the Orbis Cascade consortium to assure that the consortium supports efficient, cost-effective movement into the world of networked and shared resources.
  
Academic Computing operates the Computer Center located adjacent to the campus library. Media Loan is adjacent in the Information Technology wing. The Computer Center includes a large unscheduled, general access space plus four teaching labs, including two Windows classrooms, a Macintosh classroom, an Advanced Computing Classroom (ACC), each seating 25 students.  Five academic computing staff manage the center and provide instructional and faculty support broadly across the curriculum, as described under teaching and instruction above.
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====5.E.2 Planning Linkages====
  
The Academic Division operates the Computer Applications Lab or CAL, also known as Scientific Computing, located in Lab II, site of most of the campus laboratory facilities and dedicated science classrooms.  The Computer Applications Lab is operated by two full time staff plus 8-10 student workers and is equipped with 50 PC’s, 8 laptops, 2 macbooks, and 4 Power Mac G5 workstations. The CAL features two independent teaching spaces each with 25 PC’s and projection. In addition to general computing software (MS Office, OpenOffice, Adobe Suite, IE, Firefox), the CAL hosts and provides support for a range of scientific software including GIS (ArcInfo), math (MathCad, Mathematica), statistics (R, SPSS, PC Ord, Kaleidagraph) genetics and chemical modeling (CN3D, Mega, Chemdraw) and programming (Labview, Python, .Net,) software. The CAL supports faculty, staff, and students working in the physical and environmental sciences.  Strategic planning and integration with the curriculum occurs primarily through discussions with individual science faculty, curriculum deans, the Environmental Sciences (ES) and Scientific Inquiry (SI) planning units.
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''The institution, in its planning, recognizes the need for management and technical linkages among information resource bases (e.g., libraries, instructional computing, media production and distribution centers, and telecommunications networks).''
  
On the first floor of the library, Media Services runs the following facilities:
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=====Planning Across LIR=====
  
-The Multimedia Lab, a specialty lab that supports the media arts, offering resources for non-linear video editing, audio multi-tracking, 2-D animation, web design, graphical programming environments and 3-D modeling. The applications t includes Final Cut Pro, DVD studio Pro, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, IDVD, IMovie, Bias Peak, Digital Performer, Maya, MAX/MSP/Jitter and other media specific utilities and authoring environments. The area is supported with a full time staff, student intern and 10 student lab aides all trained in the software.
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With networked information technology and almost universal access to digitized academic information resources, coordination of planning across library and information resources has become increasingly critical. The information technology staff and librarians from across the administrative units found that while administrative restructuring did not appear to provide a more effective connection among services, it was nevertheless wise to imagine a new structure to foster collaboration. A cross-areas collaborative group entitled the Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH) was created, which provides the most formal mechanism for collaboration around technology across the various parts of the college.  
  
-Similar applications reside in the 2 24-hour access Non-Linear Video Editing suites.
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Evergreen supports three ITCH groups: Academic, Administrative, and Core. The Academic ITCH meets at least once a month and includes professional staff from each of the primary technology labs, faculty, and interested students. The Academic ITCH coordinates general academic IT initiatives, helps develop general academic computing policy, and guides strategic planning. Professional staff members in each of the primary technology areas have developed strong connections to discipline-specific slices of the curriculum, faculty, and academic administration. As the ITCH develops, the members will explore ways to communicate and plan in cross-disciplinary and cross-divisional programs. The ITCH provides one of the necessary cross-curricular and cross-divisional contexts for developing information technology across administratively distinct areas. The Administrative ITCH plans for administrative IT support and the Core ITCH acts as the coordinating body for all areas of IT represented in the ITCH.
  
-The Audio Mixing Benches are computer suites optimized for audio mixing, production, MIDI sequencing and composition. They are equipped with audio peripherals, keyboards, and full bandwidth speakers.
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The ITCH created a strategic plan in conjunction with the campus-wide strategic planning process in 2007. Strategic Direction number 7 addresses technology. The statement is notable for the breadth of its concerns, with aspirations addressing media, library, and computing technology: 
  
-The 5.1 Mix suite is an audio production facility for mixing in surround (5.1) audio formats for multimedia and DVD audio authoring. It has the highest resolution audio interfaces, and specialized software for creating many formats.
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: Use technology to enhance teaching and learning and administrative support at Evergreen.
 +
Evergreen will intentionally foster secure, sustainable, flexible, easy-to-use, and accessible information technologies (IT) that support and enhance our teaching and learning philosophies and the administrative needs of the institution. Evergreen’s continuing commitment to technology and media literacies as critical components of a liberal arts education has led us to re-envision our Television Studio into a Center for New Media [now entitled the Center for Creative and Applied Media (CCAM)] that will provide cross-curricular and extra-curricular support for computer mediated production, performance, interactivity, teleconferencing, live broadcasts, digital image storage, processing, re-broadcasting, and format conversion for all areas of the college. Accuracy and quality of information will improve and strong support will make technology and a broad range of information services available to on- and off-campus users. Security requirements of networks, software, hardware and data will be met while ensuring appropriate user access, including control of access to confidential information and the need for academic exploration. Classroom spaces will be technologically current and functional for meeting curricular needs (see the complete  [[Media: itchstrategicplan_wiki.pdf|IT Strategic Plan wiki]] for more detail).
  
There are additional facilities in the Communication Lab building across campus managed by Electronic Media, Including;
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The [[media: TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc |Edutech  Information Environment Review]] recommended a stronger, more formal role and status for the ITCH, which has not found support from higher-level administrators who have budgetary responsibility over the divisions of the college. This means the ITCH continues to serve as a bottom-up structure of collaboration based on the experience of direct collaboration with and support for students, staff, and faculty users.
  
-The two Eight track and single Sixteen track recording studios, with an excellent cross section of analog audio signal control and routing systems and computer based multi-tracking and music sequencing/composition software.
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=====Continue Blending More Functions within Library and Information Resources=====
  
- The four Music Technology Labs, again with excellent analog and digital synthesis peripherals, recording and monitoring systems, and complete computer based editing, sequencing, synthesis and analysis applications.
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Library and information resources support a surprisingly diverse infrastructure of technologies and media in the curriculum. For greatest efficiency, library and information resources should consider even more coordination across boundaries to provide technology support. Students should be able to move seamlessly between different areas, such as the CAL, the Multimedia Lab (MML), and the Computer Center. Certainly, the pathways between areas could be more clearly articulated by identifying and developing more common services, including printing, building and maintaining image sets, server file space, and common software. By taking better advantage of the network infrastructure, students will experience less confusion and IT staff who directly support the curriculum could dedicate more energy toward coordinating, developing, and designing IT strategies with academic programs instead of maintaining redundant infrastructures.
  
-2D and 3D animation facilities with lighting, cameras, staging resources and digital video production stations using Final Cut studio, Aftereffects, Photoshop as well as other image processing based applications.
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Library and information resources could develop a shared perspective about their public presence. One possibility for representing blended facilities and services would be a central help desk for the Information Technology Wing. The shared entrance to the wing has become a prominent architectural feature and an opportunity to reshape the community’s understanding of what the areas collectively represent. A central help desk could provide basic information about facilities, services, and staff, and it would help facilitate how efficiently patrons move between the various floors of the wing. Continued attention to the best use of the Library Underground and how to assure its connection to other floors should be part of this process; a large, flexible teaching and gathering space is developing there and appropriate equipment will be needed to support that vision. Concurrently, assuring safety for the adjacent Archives and Rare Books Collections is critical.
  
-A large traditional 16mm animation stand with a motion control system is located with other film based animation equipment.
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Construction of the Center for Creative and Applied Media (CCAM) will begin soon. This project has distinct relevance to the changing roles of Media Services, the Library, and Academic Computing within the evolving digital liberal arts. The CCAM will comprise a collection of media production studios and equipment to complement existing Media Services and Academic Computing media resources and provide the primary bridge between the campus media infrastructure and networked digital resources. For a discussion of the CCAM and related curricular projects, see  [[media: CNM.doc | Center for Creative and Applied Media]].
  
-Film editing and viewing suites are also located in the area.
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====5.E.3 Evaluation and the Future====
  
-Open users from across the curriculum have access to the Digital Imaging Studio (DIS) for still imaging, graphics, and web design. The facilities include ten PC workstations, many flatbed and film scanners, and two exhibition quality large format inkjet printers.
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''The institution regularly and systematically evaluates the quality, adequacy, and utilization of its library and information resources and services, including those provided through cooperative arrangements, and at all locations where courses, programs, or degrees are offered. The institution uses the results of the evaluations to improve the effectiveness of these resources.''
  
-Instructional Photography offers facilities for traditional B&W and color photography as well as a state of the art Digital Imaging Studio. Brand new  facilities include a B&W lab, a color lab with a 42” print processor, photo studio, print finishing area, and critique space.
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As part of an institution constantly engaged in processes of narrative evaluation and other forms of assessment, library and information resources engage in and are the subject of extensive assessment both within library and information resources and externally through Institutional Research and Assessment surveys and studies. In addition to formal annual processes such as budget building and annual library faculty retreats, the results of these assessments feed into the development of ongoing teaching and services through constant face-to-face interactions among faculty, administrators, staff, and students, which inform all operations. The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, as cited throughout this report, provides annual surveys about library and information resources, several of which are broken down by campus.
  
-Classes, workshops, and independent experimentation occur in the Instructional Photography facility, known as the Photo Center.  Students must take proficiency training in order to use the Photo Center's equipment.
+
See:
  
Academic Computing support two computer labs at the Tacoma program. Right now they have two labs (PC and Mac) and up until recently it has been supported by one technology systems specialist who also teaches intensively in the Tacoma curriculum. [How is this changing? Also, many of the reservation-based program facilities are abysmal--is this on the radar of academic computing at all?]
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[[ Media: Alumni_Surveys_2002-2006_-_Campus_Utilization_Statistics.pdf | Alumni Surveys 2002-2006 - Campus Utilization]]
  
In context of the recent remodel of the library facility, various adaptive and assistive technologies (AT) for people with disabilities have been upgraded, expanded, and collected into several central locations. Principal among these developments is the new AT Lab located on the ground floor of the academic library.  In the lab, there are three PC stations with a range of AT software applications and peripherals.  One station is specialized to support people with physical mobility, sensory, and dexterity problems.  One is specialized support people with cognitive and learning difficulties.  One is specialized for high-end graphics and digital photography work, with an electronic height adjustable table as the only disabilities-related accommodation.  The lab also contains a CCTV reading station for people with visual problems. Circulation maintains a selection of headsets and other peripherals for check out for use in the Lab.  The lab also provides necessary hubs and make software settings available to support such items owned by lab users.
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[[Media: Summary_of_Information_Technology_Literacy_Emphasis_in_Programs.pdf | Summary of Information Technology Literacy Emphasis in Programs]]
  
The lab environment provides the privacy and quiet necessary to many AT applications, and it also provides a haven and separate place where students and others in the disabilities community can mix socially or sit quietly together among themselves. In partnership with Access Services and Student Affairs, the faculty librarians supervise the AT Lab, its users, and the student interns that have made it a living place of shared support and learning for the disabilities community here at the college.  Matching the AT equipment and software in the lab are two stations across the foyer in the General Computing Center.  Disability accommodations for mobility problems in particular are also maintained in the Digital Imaging Studio in Photo Services and in the Multimedia Lab.  There is a need for more equipment in other areas of the college, as well as dedicated staff to administrate and maintain AT equipment campus-wide.
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[[Media: End-of-program_Review_Results_for_2006-07_%E2%80%93_Information_Technology_Literacy_Overview.pdf | End-of program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy Overview]]
  
The library remodel included three teaching spaces. Although none is currently configured as a lab significant thinking has gone into equipping and using the library underground, including one of the classrooms and the many study rooms as a good facility for large classes engaging in a variety of activities (seminar, media presentation, computer lab work, small group discussion, etc.).  The two additional classrooms have full computer, network and media viewing.  For laboratory style teaching, co-location with the computer center makes scheduling and using computer labs very easy and convenient. Typical of the variation among the rest of the faculty, some of the reference librarians prefer teaching in the library classrooms, some the computer labs, and some in the many classrooms on campus which now have web access and classroom display options.
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[[Media: End-of-program_Review_Workshop_-_Information_Technology_Across_the_Curriculum.pdf | End-of-program Review Workshop - Information Technology Across the Curriculum]]
  
Students find the public library computers configured to mirror applications in the computer lab so that students can work in either area. Printing is free in both environments. A desktop link to the CAL system supports fluidity across campus from the library public access computers.  The library circulation desk provides laptops for use within the library, although more and more students bring their own and take advantage of the wireless access.  Two multi-media stations (one on the Mac platform) in reference support slightly more specialized applications such as Dreamweaver and Photoshop with scanners for reproduction of materials which do not circulate from the library's collections.
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[[Media: Evergreen_New_Student_Survey_2005_%E2%80%93_Computer_Skills_%E2%80%93_First-time%2C_First-years.pdf | Evergreen New Student Survey 2005 - Computer Skills - First-time, First-years]]
  
===Appendix III: Service Points===
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[[Media: Evergreen_New_Student_Survey_2005_%E2%80%93_Computer_Skills_%E2%80%93_Transfer_Students.pdf | Evergreen New Student Survey 2005 - Computer Skills - Transfer Students]]
  
  Following is a t of the many service points where students, faculty and staff receive help with library, media and information technology.
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[[Media: Evergreen_Student_Experience_Survey_2004_-_Information_Technology_Literacy_and_Technology-related_Resources.pdf | Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2004 - Information Technology Literacy and Technology-related Resources]]
  
* Desktop Support Services for Faculty and Staff
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[[Media: Evergreen_Student_Experience_Survey_2006_%E2%80%93_Growth_in_Computer_Skills_%E2%80%93_Olympia_Campus_Students.pdf | Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2006 - Growth in Computer Skills - Olympia Campus]]
  
Technical Support Services provides desktop services and support to all faculty and staff.  This group prepares and deploys new equipment to faculty and staff, provides a drop-in counter for technical assistance, and phone and remote desktop support.
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[[Media: Evergreen_Student_Experience_Survey_2006_-_Satisfaction_of_Olympia_Campus_Students.pdf |
 +
Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2006 - Satisfaction of Olympia Campus Students]]
  
*Desktop Support Services for Students
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[[Media: End-of-program_Review_Results_for_2006-07_%E2%80%93_Information_Technology_Literacy_by_Planning_Unit.pdf | End-of-program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy by Planning Unit]]
  
Computer Center help desk and Housing provide the majority of desktop support to students although this is typically ad-hoc and informal since there is no organization on campus formally charged with this responsibility.  This is done through an informal network of student support by students for students, with the occasional help from professional staff.
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=====Collections and Access=====
  
*On-line services
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The Web presence of the Library will, of course, continue to evolve. The Library continues work on a new library front page and database search pages. It is likely that the new library front page will become the responsibility of the college-wide Web team, freeing library staff from this unfunded work. A new federated search is being implemented. Meanwhile, the Orbis Cascade consortium is migrating to WorldCat, which the Library will consider for local use as well. A local catalog designed on the principle of Web discovery tools can be expected to generate significant changes in library use. In this context, changes in staffing may be required to support increases in use of services such as Summit and ILLiad, and the content and focus of instruction may require substantial revision. Evaluation of service and instruction via peer comparisons will change, as discovery tools will generate higher uses without increased instruction. Instruction will likely need to focus even more on evaluating sources and finding those resources not easily located via discovery tools.
  
Through coordination with the developers and systems managers within Computing and Communications, a number of on-line resources and services are available to students and faculty. New  online services include myEvals (for managing and writing narrative evaluations on-line), my.evergreen (account and resource management) and other services currently under development. The college also manages a host of on-line collaborative services for programs wishing to use them.  This includes a content management system (drupal) for managing on-line content for a program such as discussions, chats, image galleries and a host of other services. Learning Management systems are available through Moodle which is supported by Academic Computing as on-line courseware. This tool allows students to engage in distance learning and faculty to manage threaded discussions, provide materials and readings on line and conduct surveys and quizzes remotely.  E-portfolios are also available for faculty to use if they are looking for alternative tools to engage students who are geographically distributed (such as the Tribal and Reservation-based programs).
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The continued expansion of audiovisual media collections represents a critical part of the vision of the generic library. To that end, one-time funds have frequently been infused into a small base budget for film and sound recordings, and the collection has grown significantly. Sound & Image Library (SAIL) staff and selectors have emphasized both new titles and replacement of older formats and worn copies. The Library anticipates circulating the collection through Summit, which will increase wear. See [[media:SAILacq.xls|SAIL Acquisition Statistics]]. Selectors will continue a recent change of policy allowing the purchase of any medium from their funds allocated for print monographs, but a stable and larger allocation for the SAIL budget would lessen the need to do so and reduce variations in expenditures, workload, and processing. The Resource Selection Committee is currently reviewing materials budgets with the intention of reallocating funds according to the curricular demands for video and digitized reference resources. If these discussions result in a larger budget for the SAIL, there will be more work, but also more consistency. Additionally, the staff will be more deeply involved in researching Web-based media collections. This additional workload represents a challenge for the SAIL.  
  
*Information desks in the Library
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Digital collection development should go forward in concert with the push to digitize archival collections, including photographs, video, and copies of faculty artwork. The CCAM will take the lead in this ongoing project.
  
A variety of help desks are scattered among traditional library services and collections.  In addition to the Reference Desk, the library operates the Sound and Image help desk which supports both audio visual collections and some basic media equipment for playback and transfer; the Assistive Technology Lab in conjunction with SAIL; Government Documents; Periodicals; Archives & Rare Books; Archives; and Circulation. Some collections are accessed primarily on the basis of appointments, such as Rare Books.  Most of the services other than Reference and Circulation are minimally staffed outside the normal workweek, with Reference and Circulation serving as general backup for those areas when questions arise during off hours.
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Because of the Summit and ILLiad systems, the core collections do not need to support individual students who engage in inquiries that lie outside the collection profile based upon the core curriculum. However, Summit use will also allow the Library to identify whether there are any consistent weaknesses in the collection that show up as subject areas driving high borrowing rates from other institutions. The data from Summit should be analyzed over a three-year period, due to the fluidity of the curriculum, at which point the Library will decide if such data are useful in guiding collection development.  
  
*Media help desks include Media Loan, a very large collection of portable media equipment available to students across the curriculum. Media Loan has an inventory of over 4,000 items and circulates audio/video and photographic equipment to support the academic and business needs of the college. It also houses the extensive advanced audio and video/film production equipment.
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The Library will continue to take advantage of the significantly increased purchasing power created by consortial agreements for periodical and other database purchases. The Library needs to keep an eye on the time and expertise required to keep up with the ever-increasing work of evaluating these agreements, purchases, and contracts and the technical work to support electronic resources, and it may want to consider creating a position for managing electronic resources. A centralized specialist working on electronic resources would potentially help the selectors by consistently researching and disseminating information about new products.
  
*Electronic Media has a help desk where users of the 40+ A/V classrooms can get assistance, training and hands-on help with preparing materials for use. There is a satellite office in the Seminar II building where an additional full time staff provides help in the cluster's 20+ A/V classrooms. At the help desk students and faculty can receive assistance with their audio and video productions as well as schedule any of the labs, get help with technical issues, arrange proficiency for studios, and get help from any of the technical staff. The adjacent Multimedia Lab is typically staffed with student or full time staff, providing hands-on technical help with applications. EM runs the campus multimedia production labs (e.g. the Multimedia Lab, Animation studios, video/editing suites and audio studios). EM also provides technical production support and services for academic and campus events.
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Overall, long-standing assumptions about budgets for collections must be reevaluated. While major cuts were made to the monographic budget early in the study period and were only partially restored over time, it is not clear that simply restoring those funds and adding funds for inflation are the desirable next moves. The Resource Selection Committee will need to continue to explore more flexible responses to a rapidly changing publishing environment in order to match collection budgets to evolving research needs. Private fundraising and other non-state funds have helped close collection development gaps in some cases, such as the SAIL budget. Library and information resources overall have begun to receive private support for equipment and facilities projects as well. More work with the Office of College Advancement should be emphasized, as many alumni have demonstrated willingness to support the library and information resources.  
 +
'''
 +
Support for Rapidly Evolving Information Technology'''
  
*Photo Services offers a wide variety of professional photographic advice and services including film processing, film recording, copy work, passports, scanning and digital printing plus a store that sells photo supplies. Staff also offers professional photography services for portraiture, events, and college publications.
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While the [[media:TESC_Information_Environment_Review.doc |Edutech  Information Environment Review]] gave Evergreen good marks for its budgetary support of information technology, the report also recommended that “to follow current best practices, the replacement cycle should be permanently funded and the operations budgets need to be raised regularly to reflect the increase in technology-equipped classrooms, the increased number of servers and desktop computers that must be supported, and other increases in the technology base.” The college has begun to address this issue, proposing permanent line items in the next biennium for replacing the core server and desktops. This movement toward more permanent allocations for replacement and repair will help ensure that the infrastructure can support the curriculum. Although the ITCH can play only an advisory role, it has participated actively in the process of establishing permanent allocations, setting priorities, and sharing resources.  
  
*The Instructional Photography help desk answers questions from students, faculty and community members about analog and digital image processing/manipulation and printing.
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The remodeled Information Technology Wing and the construction of the Seminar II building created dramatically more technology-equipped teaching spaces. There are now forty-nine media and computer-capable classrooms, with more on the way. Labs are equipped with computers for each student, and most classrooms now include a computer along with projection and display systems. The Library plans to convert one classroom in the Library Underground to a lab, and teaching spaces on campus still without computers or display technology are on the way to being equipped. At this point, library and information resources just manage to support the computer facilities distributed across campus. As more spaces are computerized and enrollment creeps up toward the target of 5,000, the college will have to add additional staff and funding for maintenance. All capital construction and remodeling plans must include consideration of maintenance, replacement, and support for media and networked display.  
  
*Virtual access
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As media technology has changed, some faculty choose to continue teaching older analog equipment, often for good pedagogical and aesthetic reasons. In the context of doubling instruction loads, this breadth of technologies generates a daunting challenge for Media Loan as it stretches to maintain, house, and teach a very wide array of portable equipment. Media Loan should work with the Expressive Arts faculty and other major users to reduce the range of Media Loan equipment necessary to support the curriculum.
  
With the digital turn in information technology, the library's collections and services have moved extensively on-line, where appropriate for this curriculum and pedagogy.  The two major off-campus programs have been great beneficiaries of the digital turn: a huge number of new periodical titles and reference sources are now online; students may order interlibrary loan (ILLiad) and (SUMMIT) materials on-line; a toll-free telephone option has been added for access to the reference desk; on-line holds in the library catalog will cause materials to be sent directly to the homes of students or their campus.  The lag in getting almost any materials to off-campus students is a few days at the most and the instructional support which has been the historical focus of service to off-campus works to assure that students know how to access these services.
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=====Library Instruction=====
  
===Appendix IV: Achievements/Changes===
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The reduced number of library faculty has resulted in less ability to provide library instruction deeply and broadly to the  entire curriculum. Further, reference desk service has changed as the Internet creates patrons who access our resources from remote locations. Most immediately, virtual patrons do not benefit from the teaching that takes place at the reference desk, although the transactions that do occur at reference tend to be more substantive. As traffic at the physical reference desk has diminished, faculty who rotate into the Library have more limited opportunities to learn about library resources through interactions with patrons. These trends should inform the reference group as they consider how to proceed in allocating team responsibilities with or without an increase in the number of library faculty.
  
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The reference group should evaluate service to areas of the curriculum that report or demonstrate less involvement in the various forms of information technology instruction (as reflected in end of program reports), and consider whether more or different instructional support would be appropriate, feasible, or desirable.
  
Following is a t of the new services provided and collections developed over the past ten years, as Library and information resources has made the digital turn:
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Library instruction will evolve in the context of catalogs that imitate Web discovery tools. It is entirely likely that patrons will frequently discover services which have, until now, had to be pointed out to them. For the near future, however, finding and using the most effective, appropriate journal databases still requires instruction or intervention on the part of librarians or faculty. Evaluation of library instruction based upon comparative use statistics will probably be less valuable than in this past study period, as academic library finding tools will vary greatly for some time to come, creating widely disparate use statistics. Thus close attention to database use trends and their correlation to the implementation of new finding tools will be important in the near future.
  
We implemented Innovative as the circulation system and were able to collaborate with other Washington and then Oregon academic libraries in order in circulate thousands of books, videos and sound recordings borrowed and lent from regional libraries using on-line ordering through SUMMIT (previously Cascade). 1 million system wide thus far (2006) .  Categories of items which are shared have expanded frequently, so that most audio/visual materials are borrowable.  Through SUMMIT, Evergreen students have complete access to walk in and check out collections of 30+ academic libraries around the region
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Intensive, embedded library and media instruction remain the most desirable and effective models. Some librarians focus on these models, including such work as evaluating bibliographies, which become the basis for assessing the quality of student research and the basis for further instruction. Faculty librarians may want to explore evaluating research results more commonly as they develop their ties with programs and faculty in all disciplines, particularly if discovery tools generate easier access to resources beyond the immediate catalog search. As librarians become more involved in each stage of research, including writing or production, they should be able to provide more consistent support to students. Time for this work with students is restricted by the number of librarians, as is time for the more extended work essential to students from Tacoma and reservation-based programs, who depend so heavily upon off-campus access and have less opportunity to confer with librarians at the reference desk. Faculty who rotate into the Library must be more fully engaged in this aspect of the librarians' work in order to help balance the external teaching demands upon library faculty.
  
Intensive collection development and circulation were made possible through networking.  Periodicals subscriptions have increased from about 2,000 titles to over 17,000 titles (13,000 online) plus over 1600 free online journals linked to the catalog. Much of this dramatic increase has been made possible through increased leverage via cooperative purchases made with the other public 4-year institutions in the state or with the Orbis/Cascade Alliance covering Oregon and Washington. Most indexes and abstracts are on-line, including many discipline-specific academic indexes are on-line.  About 400 reference sources are on-line. Students at Tacoma, the reservation-based programs, and Grays Harbor as well as those who are homebound away from campus or traveling as part of their independent work have complete access to these resources. The public still may access most of the resources if they come to campus.  Fall of 2007, Serials Solutions MARC record updating service for e-journals replaced the manual maintenance and updating of a little over 16,000 records representing almost 30,000 urls or links.
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When the Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning and Writing Centers were planned into the new Information Technology Wing, the hope was for substantial collaboration. While the location of these centers within the Library brings more students in, aids the sense of hospitality, and provides convenient resources for students, collaboration has remained minimal. Thus opportunities for shared instruction and service have yet to be exploited.
  
The ILLiad system was implemented so that patrons may now make interlibrary loan requests on-line, be notified by e-mail and even receive digitized versions of many documents also via e-mail.  The campus has implemented e-mail as the required method of communication  with students, so that the library may now consistently use e-mail for notification for these and other materials received.  Almost 8,000 items were ordered on-line in 2004, a jump of 70% from the previous year, another testimonial to the efficiency with which the  word gets out about new information resources and methods.
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'''Cross-Curricular Information Technology Literacy'''
  
Students are automatically set up with library accounts when they register, allowing off campus web access to subscription databases, ILLiad and SUMMIT, holds, and management of their accounts. Students at the reservation-based programs may have books mailed directly to their homes automatically through the on-line holds system. Students at Tacoma may have materials sent to the Tacoma campus. In fact, all users of SUMMIT may have items sent to any participating campus that is convenient to the user. A free long-distance phone reference service was established for the students on the reservations.
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As discussed above, library and information resources and the teaching faculty assure that information technology infuses the curriculum. On the other hand, the faculty has not embraced any particular set of information technology skills as fundamental to the liberal arts undergraduate at Evergreen. Instead, faculty choose and adapt information and media technologies according to the pedagogical and disciplinary requirements of their chosen inquiry. There is little work across the curriculum about critical approaches to media or basic definitions of college-level technical literacy for the liberal arts. In the immediate future, library and information resources should invite the teaching faculty into a discussion about whether the campus has any broad consensus about Information Technology Literacy (ITL), including critical approaches. Long ago, the college committed to writing across the curriculum and allocated significant institutional resources to encourage that work—without proscriptive limits or standards. A wider discussion about ITL could produce a similar vision and institutional support. In the long run, such a vision will shape our understanding of digital scholarship in the liberal arts.
  
At the start of the self-study period the Government Documents collection was almost invisible. A new Government Documents specialist was hired at about that time who immediately began to develop an extensive web presence, providing clear pathways into  the rapidly developing online federal and other government world.  He also created hot topic pages that attracted significant interest from on and off campus.  Overlapping the same period (1997-1999/2005, the physical government documents collection was cataloged, including paper, microfiche and maps. In Fall 2007, the library began using the Marchive tape service for maintaining Government Documents cataloging records.
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The expansion of entry-level media technology instruction raises questions about the staffing assumptions in Academic Computing. If critical approaches to information technology are to be addressed, and if cross-curricular information technology literacy is a priority for the contemporary liberal arts, then instructional staffing based on historical models of canned skills workshops may be insufficient. Academic Computing should continue current efforts to recruit instructional staff who have the expertise to work intensively in program planning and curriculum development, as well as on technical support for those activities. The numbers of such instructional IT staffing may also need to be evaluated in response to these new and expanding demands for work within the curriculum.
  
The Media Services area has brought an on-line Web-based circulation system that greatly improves the efficiency of Media Loan.  An automated scheduling system began in 2001. Much of the analog media equipment is being replaced with digital. Media Services has upgraded the Digital Imaging Studio, and tripled the size of the Multimedia Lab. A new design lab was added to the Communications Building. Access to the Tacoma campus, located 40 miles to the north, was improved by adding a video conferencing system that links the two campuses in 1998.
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====Conclusion: Holly's Generic Library Has Come to Fruition====
  
Media Service's instructional support is facilitated by the Head of Instructional Media, who works closely with faculty and media staff on workshop planning and meets regularly with the Academic Computing staff to promote integration and coordination of teaching support.
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Library and information resources have been deeply influenced by the organizational habits of the college, habits of collaboration, egalitarian ideals, fluidity, face-to-face interactions, non-departmentalization, reflexive learning, and independent and interdisciplinary inquiry. The result is a responsive, flexible, evolving set of services and resources. Library and information resources faculty and staff work across the media, regardless of where services reside administratively, in order to fuse traditional library services, information services, computing, and media. Library and information resources assess technology within the context of Evergreen’s particular curriculum and implement new applications incrementally in collaborative processes involving all three areas of service and the teaching faculty. As part of that work, library and information resources have had the distinct historical advantage of presuming that information comes in all formats and that it is not only possible but advisable to break down as many barriers as possible to access information in all its forms. In this, library and information resources are shaped by their founding vision - the generic library - an idea whose time has come.
  
Because of an overall reliance on computer-based systems, Media Services added or reclassified four staff as Information Technology Specialists.
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===Standard 5 Findings and Conclusions===
  
The very large Seminar II classroom building came on-line.  Audio-visual and web display capabilities grace every classroom, bringing the number of AV classroom spaces on campus to 49.  Thus, at this time, most faculty may assume that they will easily be able to use audio-visual, computer and web technologies in their programs at any time, with the notable exception of the Arts Annex. The electronic media section of Media Services supports all these classrooms, with two new staff positions.
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Findings:
  
Photo Services created an on-line photo collection/archive that is accessible to the campus community. The on-line digital imaging services have been enhanced and now provide Web-page design support to the campus.
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1) Overall, library and information resources at Evergreen demonstrate effective development of collaborative planning, services, and instruction in support of the academic mission and educational programs of the college.
  
The Sound & Image Library (SAIL) absorbed the Washington State Film Library collection of 1,578 DVD’s, 738 16mm films and 3,208 VHS tapes in 1998. In 2001/02, the Library decided to circulate videos to students as well as staff and faculty. Circulation jumped from 3362 to 8277 and now has leveled off at over 12,000 items per year.
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2.) Over the past decade, the Library and Media Services have fully committed to networking and digital resources. This shift has implied a change in organization, reorganization of job classifications, and the creation of new patterns of work supported in all areas.
  
The Sound and Image Library also continues to maintain and circulate a collection of over 80,000 slides, primarily art history images. A few faculty continue to use slides, but use of the collection has dropped significantly from more than 10,500 in 1999 to 2456 in 2007.  Subscription to ARTstor in 2007 appears to be the easiest and most efficient way to provide most of the high quality teaching images needed for the curriculum. The library is exploring using ARTstor to make local work available, primarily work submitted by past and present Evergreen faculty [Exhibit: grant application]
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3.) Commitment to the use of networking digital information resources has allowed and promoted the integration of all sections of library and information resources and has pushed the staff in all areas to reconceptualize their work and to find new patterns of organization and collaboration.
  
As the physical collection of videos and music shifts toward new digital media, SAIL has also moved toward the purchase of a few really exceptional web-based collections and tools such as an on-line sound effects database and the Smithsonian collection of traditional music. Subscriptions to web-delivered media are the preferred medium for the foreseeable future because of their accessibility for off campus programs and at all hours.
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4.) Students and faculty are thinking about and using information resources in all media. They can now reasonably expect to have seamless access to a wide array of high-quality academic information, media, and computer applications almost anywhere on campus.
  
Library computers were opened up to enable use for writing and producing, not just research.  Web access and Office suite were made available and free printing continued.  Two multi-media stations support scanning, image manipulation with Photo Shop, and web publishing with Dreamweaver.  An experiment with color printing failed under the weight of its own popularity and this is still a gap in campus information services generally.  Large-scale printing and high quality color printing are available in media services for a fee.
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5.) The Library is funded like a public college, but the emphasis on projects, the array of inquiries, and the fact that it is a teaching library means that it is used as if it were a part of a private liberal arts college.
  
Creation of a new library catalog and services website has been a long-term desire, but catching up to the demands of web support has been a problem.  Within the library there was not sufficient expertise or time to support any major redesign and simple upkeep with the existing pages was a major issue [other areas need to discuss this?].  Extensive discussions in 2006 finally lead to agreements among the staff about how to reallocated some of the new work generated by new digitized sources and the expectation for a web presence generally.  Two successful library faculty hiring processes increased the level of expertise in the reference group and an active catalog redesign working group is well on its way, with expectation for a new library front page within the year which will include a quick search of the catalog on the front page, bringing the library search closer to the front of the college web presence.  Recruitment strategists and web page analyses are starting to note the attention potential students and their parents are paying to library services as a way to assess colleges.  Perhaps the library will be linked from the front page some day.
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Conclusions:
  
Staff and faculty work has shifted throughout the period to respond to these changing needs: 1) Reference was reduced due to an opening that came about during budget cuts.  The reference desk is no longer double-staffed during peak hours in response to lower use rates as web searching has become commonplace for basic information needs.  Use statistics for reference are problematic and have been throughout the history of the library.  A recent revision in method has produced a huge drop in reporting reference contact, as did a revision in 98/99; this data is not trustworthy.  Nevertheless, general attention to the role of the reference desk within the entire range of information instruction and services should continue. The Government Documents Specialist helps cover hours, as does the Reference Specialist. Approximately one half of one FTE was deployed to teaching a library internship, which generated extensive student support in all areas which choose to take part [Exhibit: links to syllabi, discussion about future of this project from Unsel self-eval]. The Archivist, who had supported the reference schedule moved to Archives full-time during the academic year in part in recognition of the major new spaces in a newly remodeled special collections are in the basement. 2) Staff in interlibrary loan, technical services and circulation were shifted to accommodate the new workflows supporting SUMMIT (a service which may be seen as either ILL or circulation); 3) the Acquisitions Specialist and technical services staff took on the ordering, cataloging and processing of digitized subscriptions which were not really serial publications in recognition of the shift in expenditures away from print monographs and toward digitized collections requiring annual payments; 4) substantial cross area conversations lead to workload changes as the overload of government documents cataloging was addressed and a Marchive service initiated [update]; 5)leadership for library catalog web development returned to the reference group as the expertise became available.
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1.) The Evergreen Library has always been what other libraries have striven to become: a '''teaching library''' deeply connected to the faculty and curriculum. The result is that students use the Library very actively. Historically, Media Services has had the same teaching focus. Academic computing, with a longstanding instructional role, is also moving toward more substantive teaching and collaboration with faculty. This cross-curricular emphasis on teaching must be continued.
  
===Appendix V: The Center for New Media===
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2.) The original vision of the Library was "generic," which means that it includes all media in all locations. The contemporary term in the profession is the '''virtual library. ''' Evergreen's library and information resources have been able to realize the vision due to the advent of effective, ubiquitous networking and digital resources. The new technology plus major consortial agreements have created an explosion of access to high-quality scholarly information and media.
  
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3. The remodeled and more unified Information Technology Wing is the physical manifestation of the blending of traditional print, media, and computer technology that characterizes the virtual library and information in the digital age. Despite being spread across administrative divisions, the Library, Media Services, Academic Computing, the CAL, and Computing and Communications all collaborate effectively to assure more and more seamless access to information resources. We must guard these interconnections and continue to seek opportunities for collaboration that will provide the best service, teaching, and efficiency.
  
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Commendations:
  
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1.) Through consortial agreements and wise use of resources made available to the college, an extraordinary array of high-quality academic resources. For example, the number of academic journals now available is nine times larger than at the outset of the review. Active leadership in consortia such as Orbis Cascade and the Cooperative Libraries Project supported these cost-effective approaches.
  
The CNM re-imagines and rethinks the traditional television studio and associated Master Control facility. In the new environment of network-based content from web to HDTV resolution, the CNM replaces the outdated production core with a flexible, current, and comprehensive production system for open authorship, independent production, and instantaneous distribution of multimedia content for the college and beyond.
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2.) The willingness of staff from all areas to share, collaborate, and dream as they worked through the complex reorganizations and new work necessary to create an operative virtual library has been extraordinary.
  
Some specific function for the NMC include:
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3.) The creation of an accessible, integrated, well-conceived teaching space with the renovation of the B and C wings of the Library has allowed the virtual library to have a physical presence that embodies the integration of these areas, while providing hospitable spaces and programming to complement virtual use information resources.
  
Provide a technical foundation for skills building in media production from web to HDTV resolution.
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4.) The spread of digital media and computer facilities to the campus as a whole, in the Lecture Halls, and in the new classrooms of Seminar II, as well as the extension of wireless access to most of the campus has allowed the teaching resources of library and information resources to be used across the campus.
  
Promote and facilitate media literacy and technological proficiency across the curriculum.
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5.) Both the development of the virtual library and a continued commitment to extensive instruction have led to effective library and information resources for off-campus programs and users.
  
Prepare media students with knowledge and production skills necessary for independent, commercial and other computer-based forms of production and distribution.
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Recommendations:
  
Provide current technical skills and access to broadcast standard technologies.
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1.) Library and information resources must maintain the flexibility in staff’s capacity to respond to the rapidly changing digital environment.
  
Provide for faculty and staff professional development in the realm of technical skills, distribution standards, and modern production.
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2.) Library and information services must continue to remain aware of developments in information technology, critically assess them, and carefully integrate technological capacities into the staff’s capacity for teaching.
  
Create an easy to use, A/V presentation space for recording and distribution of lectures.
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3.) Library and information resources should assure that connections between the three units (the Library, Academic Computing, and Media Services) that make up library and information resources are as seamless as possible.
  
Bring faculty training institutes and production opportunities back to a broad cross-section of the college.
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4.) Media Services instructors should consciously promote considerations of media among faculty across the curriculum, as well as continue to work effectively with those who depend upon media as the center of their work.
  
Create a centralized technical resource to support initiatives developing format standards for digital archives and content collections.
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5.) Staff from all areas should pursue and develop cross-curricular faculty conversations about information and technology as literacies for the liberal arts, including critical perspectives.
  
Expand the college’s ability to produce interactive and streaming media content for and about the Evergreen learning community.
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6.) Library and information services should assure that instructional staffing and library faculty is sufficient in training and numbers to support extensive, integrated information technology literacy instruction across the curriculum and to off-campus and weekend and evening programs.
  
Enable faculty, students, and staff to format, store, and publish media in the wide range of formats currently available (from web to HDTV to Blu-ray and HDDVD standards).
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7.) Library and information services should continue to develop maintenance and replacement funds to support rapidly expanding information technology, instruction, and service throughout the campus.
  
Scheduled to be completed and included in the curriculum for Fall 2009/10, the CNM will help connect the use of specialized technology in the general liberal arts and the media-focused curriculum. Promoting the use of the facility across the curriculum and across levels of user proficiency and skill will be one of the primary goals for the CNM.  Cross-curricular use and instruction are central to both the mission and function of the CNM as is increasingly true for all other academic information technology resources on campus.
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Plans:
  
Currently, a key project is planned to address the complex problem of media silos in the curriculum through the CNM. In keeping with one of Evergreen’s traditional pedagogical approaches, an emphasis on grounded, project-based learning, Library faculty and Expressive Arts media faculty are working with Library Archives and Media Services staff toward a digital archives project meant to involved the whole Evergreen community. The Evergreen Visual History Archives (EVHA) project will focus on the current generation of faculty retirements and new hires, occasioned by the thirtieth anniversary of the college’s founding. It will bring together faculty from across the curriculum, and at every range of career tenure, into numerous media training institutes focused on digitally preserving and celebrating the college’s past. The EVHA project, with the CNM as its hub, will enrich, expand, and even reinvent the existing uses of digital technologies on campus as participating faculty incorporate their experience into their teaching.  Several academic programs that combine digital arts with history, political science, law, and anthropology are in consideration for 09-10 curriculum, with EVHA and the CNM at their center.  The expectation, in this and other projects to come, the broad integration of the CNM into the curriculum to begin with media specialists and then to disseminate outward through years of shared planning, team teaching, and independent student work.
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1.) Library, Media Services, and Academic Computing staff and faculty will collaborate in planning ongoing summer faculty institutes facilitating cross-curricular faculty conversations about information technology literacy for the liberal arts.
  
The focus on archives and collection and dissemination of digitized liberal arts knowledge will bring library interests into the CNM project. Meanwhile, the instructional role of the library faculty will continue to involve more digitized formats and media.  The influence of the web has already dramatically changed library teaching at the reference desk and the library faculty have reduced their commitment to the reference desk due to both reduced faculty lines and reduced traffic. On the other hands, substantial increases in the Evening and Weekend curriculum have created a set of additional demands, spread over a wide range of the schedule, to be satisfied with a smaller team.  The need for consistent support for and engagement with off-campus programs remains a difficult challenge.
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2.) The shape of expenditures on collections should evolve as inflation, consortia, networked access, and digital publications continue to change the information environment. The Library Resource Selection Committee will continue to review database, Summit, and local collection use, as well as allocation of non-state funds in order to appropriately support collections in all media. As a member of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, the Library will pursue collaborative collection development emphasizing strong core local collections and coordinated shared collections.
  
== Standards ==
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3.) The substantial instructional role necessary to support information technology literacy across the curriculum should be recognized in campus hiring priorities.
=== [[Standard 5.A|Standard 5.A - Missions and Goals]] ===
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=== [[Standard 5.B|Standard 5.B - Planning and Effectiveness]] ===
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4.) The Library, Media Services, and Academic Computing will continue to emphasize shared work. Several areas of potential collaboration in addition to faculty institutes include considering a shared public presence at the newly emphasized main entrance to the Information Technology Wing, an increased role for the ITCH in planning and management of information technology on campus, shared staff positions, shared hiring processes, and more collaborative instruction for academic programs.
=== [[Standard 5.C|Standard 5.C - Facilities and Access]] ===
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=== [[Standard 5.D|Standard 5.D - Personnel and Management]] ===
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=== [[Standard 5.E|Standard 5.E - Planning and Evaluation]] ===
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== Supporting Documentation ==
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== Standard 5 - Supporting Documentation ==
See [[Supporting Documentation for Standard Five|Supporting Documentation for Standard Five]]
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See [[Supporting Documentation for Standard Five|Supporting Documentation for Standard 5]]

Latest revision as of 11:45, 4 August 2008

Contents

Standard 5 – Library and Information Resources

Five resources.jpg

Standard 5.A – Purpose and Scope

The primary purpose for library and information resources is to support teaching, learning, and if applicable, research in ways consistent with, and supportive of, the institution’s mission and goals. Adequate library and information resources and services, at the appropriate level for degrees offered, are available to support the intellectual, cultural, and technical development of students enrolled in courses and programs wherever located and however delivered.

Supporting the Academic Mission of the College

Library and information resources at The Evergreen State College support students as they learn to reason and communicate about freely chosen inquiries whose outcomes remain to be discovered or created (Smith, Standard 2). Library and information resources at Evergreen must therefore balance the open-ended demands of free inquiry with the need for stability, security, and efficiency in systems and services. Historically, the Library has been well funded when compared to many public baccalaureates, in recognition of the extraordinary demands of open-ended inquiry and independent study. All library and information resources are shaped by the primary mission of teaching and providing state-of-the-art facilities for academic programs and individual students in this interdisciplinary, liberal arts curriculum. Strong collaboration among library, computing and media staff, faculty, and administration assures the development of the library and information resources as centers for teaching and learning.

The Founding Vision of the Library: Any Medium, Any Location

In 1969, when the founding dean of Library Services James Holly wrote his “Position Paper No. 1,” he proposed a model which he called the generic library, in some ways anticipating the concept of today's virtual library. “By generic I include man’s [sic] recorded information, knowledge, folly, and wisdom in whatever form put down, whether in conventional print, art forms, magnetic tape, laser storage, etc. By generic, I also eliminate physical boundaries such as [a] specific building or portion limited and identified as ‘the library.’” Holly's vision motivated many aspects of library, media, and computer services, but proved in many ways untenable due to technical and budgetary constraints and because the college community expressed traditional longings for a bounded space. Today, laptops and networked data are ubiquitous and most students expect remote access to information resources, regardless of medium. Technology, as well as community values, have caught up with Holly’s founding vision, and Evergreen's library and learning resources now include all media, distributed to almost any location. Display of networked and audiovisual information now brings information technology to almost any classroom on campus. Active involvement in new consortia has led to quick access to expanded collections and information resources from around the region. Academic programs and students off-campus have access to rich, academically sound journal holdings. A wide selection of digitized media applications and advanced media labs provide access to media production. Increasingly seamless access to media, computing, and traditional information resources benefits all students. At the same time, the physical library has expanded its role as a social and intellectual space and provides an increasingly hospitable center for learning and gatherings of all kinds. A $22-million remodel connected previously disparate areas and created a more cohesive information-technology wing, providing one central entrance for the Library, Media Services, the Computer Center, and the Computing and Communications offices.

Functions and Facilities Covered in Standard 5

Reflecting these developments, Standard 5 considers information resources and services from several disparate administrative units: Library Services, including Media Services (administratively part of the Academic division); Academic Computing (administratively part of the Finance and Administration division); and the Computer Applications Lab (CAL) (administratively part of the academic division, with a historical role supporting the science curriculum). The phrase "library and information resources" in Standard 5 should be understood to refer to these units collectively, while comments about separate areas will use more specific language such as the Library, Media Services, the CAL, or Academic Computing. Occasional references to Computing and Communications will address technology infrastructure when relevant to instructional and academic support functions.

The information resources offered and supported by the Library, Academic Computing, and the CAL represent facilities and functions commonly found in libraries and computer centers elsewhere in academia. The Media Services section of the Library requires some explanation, as its role and location in the institution are unique. Media Services provides not only the usual audiovisual support for instruction, but also extensive collections and facilities in support of media production by students across the curriculum. Media production labs, a large circulating collection of portable media equipment, and extensive instruction represent activities, facilities, and functions which will not be found within the library at most institutions. Some media arts, communications or education departments might provide some such services to students of their curriculum, but not the library, and certainly not for general use. In the context of an interdisciplinary college, and in the light of the original ideal of the generic library, these services are provided through the Library in order to assure cross-curricular access and opportunity for students from anywhere in the curriculum, whether those students are studying media or simply wish to communicate academic content using media beyond print.

5.A.1 Sufficiency of Information Resources and Services

The institution’s information resources and services include sufficient holdings, equipment, and personnel in all of its libraries, instructional media and production centers, computer centers, networks, telecommunication facilities, and other repositories of information to accomplish the institution’s mission and goals.

Throughout this study, library and information resources will be found to be strongly linked via face-to-face collaboration and consultation with faculty, staff, and students. These interconnections, within a flat organizational structure, assure constant feedback and redevelopment of services and facilities. Library funding generally compares very well with public institutions and correlates strongly to average funding for private liberal arts peers, peers with whom our use statistics compare favorably. An external assessment performed by Edutech described budgetary support for information technology as comparable to that of institutions with similar missions. There are no comparable institutions for studying the large activity of cross-curricular media services; however, advocacy from both the cross-curricular perspective of the Library and from the specific needs of the media faculty help ensure support. Rapid expansion in information technology access and aspirations have led to changes in personnel allocation and expertise and will continue to make increasing demands on a staff and faculty already stretched in many areas.

For a description of facilities, see Major Facilities and Areas 1 & 2 of the Edutech Information Environment Review. For holdings and equipment, see Standard 5.B.1. For personnel, see Standard 5.D.1. For evaluation of budgetary support, see Standard 5.D.6.

5.A.2 Sufficiency of Core Collection and Related Resources

The institution’s core collection and related information resources are sufficient to support the curriculum.

Broad institutional support for cross-curricular library and information services has historically generated sufficient institutional budgetary support for core collections and facilities. During the study period, inflation and budget cuts reduced base budgets for local monograph collections. Non-state resources bridged some of the gap without building the base budget permanently. Consortial agreements created opportunities for cost-effective collective purchases of serials and for efficient resource sharing, resulting in better support for the intensive work by individual students.

Collection Development, see 5.B.1 and 5.B.5

5.A.3 Education Program Drives Resources and Services

Information resources and services are determined by the nature of the institution’s educational programs and the locations where programs are offered.

Strong connections to the curriculum inform all library and information services. A distinctive library rotation system connects the library and teaching faculty in the shared project of curriculum and program planning. Teaching alliances between media services professionals and media faculty determine the character of media services. A strong liaison system connects Academic Computing instructors and services with teaching faculty. Meanwhile, a very experienced staff with substantial managerial responsibilities manages day-to-day library services while implementing services in response to the new opportunities advancing information technology affords. (See Standard 5.B.2 - Teaching and Instruction).

Information technology planning and governance are discussed in Area 5 (Planning and Governance) of the Edutech Information Environment Review. The study notes that planning is collaborative and responsive to academic needs, and could be strengthened through a stronger role for the Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH).

Standard 5.B – Information Resources and Services

Information resources and services are sufficient in quality, depth, diversity, and currency to support the institution’s curricular offerings.

5.B.1 Equipment and Materials to Support the Educational Program

Equipment and materials are selected, acquired, organized, and maintained to support the educational program.

Collection Development Procedures & Methods

The Library faculty develops collections to support Evergreen's changeable interdisciplinary curriculum without the usual benefit of departmental allocation or structures. The librarians build collections and vendor profiles on the basis of their work as both library and teaching faculty (see 5.B.2), work which involves full-time teaching, faculty governance, extensive collegial engagement with the teaching faculty, and affiliation with planning units. The curriculum committee is the faculty as a whole, and develops the curriculum in curricular planning units, curriculum retreats, and governance groups. The Library faculty's overall knowledge of the curriculum is strengthened by teaching faculty who rotate into the Library and lavish their attention on areas of the collection related to their disciplinary expertise. Finally, librarians honor most requests from individuals for additions to the collection, working from the fact that free inquiry and individual research are central to the Library’s mission.

In the past, the Library has struggled to satisfy incidental research demands outside the boundaries defined by the core, repeating curriculum. The substantial part of the curriculum which varies from year to year, the significant amount of work by independent contract students (almost 1,300 independent study contracts in 2006-07), and the opportunity for intensive individual projects within full-time, multi-quarter programs have all driven demand for specialized materials outside the core collection. Resource sharing and large, shared purchases, all made efficient because of networking technology, have eradicated this problem, although budget cuts and inflation create some difficulties keeping the core collection current. The budget for core monograph purchases has been supplemented with allocations from non-state resources in order to help bridge this gap. See 5.B.5 below.

Media Services

Close work with the curriculum and faculty also informs the development of media facilities and services. Media staff attend the Expressive Arts planning unit meetings, in particular the Moving Image subgroup. Budgetary processes for equipment purchase and operating costs include multiple avenues for consideration of educational program needs. Through the planning units, needs are communicated to the academic budget planners. Through the Library, cross-curricular media demands are communicated to the academic budget planners. Through the ITCH, cross-unit needs are coordinated and passed up to the campus-wide budget process. These three avenues help ensure that the budget process addresses both broad and specific curricular demands for media.

Some stresses develop. Like the Library, Media Services serves the entire academic community, from programs to individuals. And, like the Library, Media Services strains under the pressure of answering the needs of independent study, as well as a fluid curriculum. Students working on independent media productions compete with Expressive Arts programs for scarce resources, from equipment to laboratories to teaching staff. In order to balance these competing demands, Media Services requires students and faculty to submit media request forms, which are reviewed by the Media Services manager and the head of Instruction Media, who allocate resources, both human and technological. Independent contract forms include a question about the need for special equipment or facilities, which serves as a safety net for screening intensive media use. In these ways Media Services assures that students embarking on media studies do so with appropriate support. The Expressive Arts planning unit also instituted a Student Originated Studies (SOS) group contract in media to assure that students have consistent access to facilities and instructional support as they pursue their independent projects.

Information Technology Equipment & Facilities

The Edutech Information Environment Review includes equipment in its discussion of technological facilities in Area 1 of the report. The report states, "Computing, networking and information technology facilities at Evergreen are extensive and impressive. In most cases, Evergreen facilities are at or near standards for similar institutions, and in some cases surpass them. However, these standards are a moving target, and there are areas in which the college will probably have to make upgrades in the near future." The report lauded the computer labs, classroom technology, and access to computers. Recommended improvements were to extend wireless to the entire campus and permanently fund a replacement cycle for equipment.

5.B.2 Teaching and Instruction

Library and information resources and services contribute to developing the ability of students, faculty, and staff to use the resources independently and effectively.

Defining Information Technology Literacy

Standard 2 links the five foci and six expectations of an Evergreen education to the idea of reflexive thinking. "Reflexive thinking begins with a question, an interrogation of the world, and an encounter with the other. As such it involves the student in the whole process of substantive learning about subjects, disciplines and methods that is the standard domain of learning. But reflexivity is the capacity that a learner has to think about the situation and conditions that underlie her own personal and collective experience of thinking and knowing." (See reflexive thinking). This work is engaged and supported through the broad and deep resources of the collections and instruction within the library and information resources.

The professional literature and practice of librarianship defines information literacy as a reflective process. To be clear, a reflective process considers, evaluates, synthesizes, and in general, engages information discovered through research. In contrast, a reflexive process goes on to consider one's own learning and knowledge as influenced through exposure to the information under consideration. According to Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes, in their article entitled 'Information Literacy as a Liberal Art', information literacy should "be conceived more broadly as a new liberal art that extends from knowing how to use computers and access information to critical reflection on the nature of information itself, its technical infrastructure, and its social, cultural and end even philosophical context and impact..."

The information literacy curriculum includes:

  • Tool literacy - The ability to use print and electronic resources including software and online resources.
  • Resource literacy - The ability to understand the form, format, location, and methods for accessing information resources.
  • Social-structural literacy - Knowledge of how information is socially situated and produced, including understanding the scholarly publishing process.
  • Research literacy - The ability to understand and use information technology tools to carry out research, including the use of discipline-related software and online resources.
  • Publishing literacy - The ability to produce a text or multimedia report of research results.


ITL in the Context of Holly's Generic Library

Information literacy at Evergreen is itself a reflexive practice, in addition to being central to the process of reflexive thinking in the broader context of undergraduate education at Evergreen. That is, the student uses library and information resources to put herself in relation to information and thinking from a variety of sources and further, reflects about herself and her learning as she researches and learns. Within the context of library and information resources as understood and managed at Evergreen, this literacy includes not just print scholarship, but media and computing, to become not just information literacy but Information Technology Literacy (ITL). Reflection upon information includes reflection upon the nature and role of the tools themselves. Reflexive thinking includes the relation of the user to the information and the tools.

Thus, in order to assure that students have the skills to communicate about their open inquiries and the resources to support deeply reflexive thinking, library and information resources take a broad role in the curriculum. Two of the “Six Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate” relate directly to commitment by the library and information resources to help students achieve intellectual independence, creativity, and critical acumen. Expectation Two states that our graduates will communicate creatively and effectively; Expectation Four, that our graduates apply qualitative, quantitative, and creative modes of inquiry appropriately to practical and theoretical problems across the disciplines. Not only should literate students read and write astutely, they also should access, view, critique, and produce media and writing that is eloquent and complete. In this way, digital scholarship merges seamlessly with individual and formal educational goals, just as print scholarship has in the past.

Cross-Curricular Media Instruction

Library and information resources support ITL as an agenda for students across programs, disciplines, and media. Library and information resources staff and faculty collaborate with teaching teams as they instruct students in media and students who create films, multimedia, or musical works for programs or for independent study. These are the challenges of the "freely chosen inquiry," challenges that cannot all be met at all times. However, the location of Media Services administratively and physically within Library Services is meant to ensure that media studies and media production are supported appropriately both within the programs that media faculty teach and elsewhere in the inquiries of students. The spread of entry-level media applications into the general-use computer labs increases access to media production across the curriculum.

Although library and information resources instructors work to fuse teaching with program content, students are nevertheless able to access any media application or information technology beyond or without considering program content. Likewise, many programs focus entirely on technical skill building, without any formal attempt to link these practices to disciplinary content. And in other areas of the curriculum, such as the Culture, Text, and Language planning unit, critical media and information studies are often taught in a theoretical mode, without hands-on media production—the thing itself. The point is that when skills are valorized over content, or when theory ignores practice, students neglect concrete critical reflection on how technology impacts the message, the creators, the audience, or society. However, Holly's generic library model, the founding principle for library and information resources at Evergreen, has emphasized and counterbalanced the tendency to isolate skills from content. Students who read texts expect to write as well; why should they view media and not expect to create it? Early on, a rotating faculty member who helped link instruction with critical media studies and with interdisciplinary programs directed Media Services. Library and information resources continue to struggle to advocate for the critical study of media and information technology across the curriculum.

Academic computing also provides access to and instruction in information technologies through a balance of specialized and open computing facilities. With the migration of many media applications to commonly available personal computer platforms, instruction and facilities to support entry-level media production have spread to academic computing and even to the Library proper.

Library and information resources faculty and staff instruct and teach in multiple modes, from basic skills instruction to more complex, content-driven teaching by faculty and professionals in the curriculum. In addition, the teaching faculty contribute substantively and collaboratively to planning and implementing information services, collections, and policies. This dynamic collaboration between the teaching faculty and the library and information resources has shaped the primary mission to support inquiry-based education. Each area within library and information resources has developed structures to connect teaching and instruction closely to the faculty, the curriculum, and the academic mission of the college. Utilization, satisfaction, and curricular surveys demonstrate the breadth and effectiveness of this work (See Planning and Evaluation 5.E).

Faculty Librarians and Library Teaching

Evergreen requires rotation between the librarians and the teaching faculty. Briefly stated, faculty librarians rotate out of the Library to teach full time on a regular basis and, in exchange, teaching faculty rotate into the Library to serve as librarians providing reference, instruction, and collection development. (See Pedersen pp. 41-44 for more discussion of this system). Faculty who rotate into the Library leave with updated skills for developing information literacy within their programs and teams across the curriculum. Library faculty develop their subject specialties and enhance their ability to work across pedagogical and disciplinary realms. Perpetual faculty-wide interactions in faculty governance and team-teaching reinforce the strong connections between the library faculty and the teaching faculty. Librarians know the faculty as colleagues and teaching faculty know the librarians (probably the only basis for widespread and effective library instruction in a curriculum without requirements). Teaching teams also spread effective library instruction practices as experienced teaching faculty introduce their new faculty teammates to their library colleagues and the teaching they offer. Most new faculty also bring updated information technology skills and experience to share with their colleagues.

A loose liaison system links each librarian with a subset of the curriculum, based on subject expertise, planning unit affiliation, and personal alliances. Faculty librarians provide a wide array of library and information technology-related teaching. One-time workshops designed to engage sources particular to the research projects within an academic program represent the most common format. Librarians and teaching faculty design these workshops with the assumption that the skills imparted are embedded in the interests and needs of the program learning community. At a minimum, the faculty for the program usually 1) create a research assignment which informs and motivates the students’ work; 2) attend the research workshop and participate, adding their expertise and/or questions; 3) provide the library liaison with a syllabus and a copy of the assignment and a list of the topics students are considering; and 4) ask the students to begin considering their topic before attending the workshop so they are primed to begin actual research during the workshop.

Librarians teach workshops on research most frequently in the graduate programs, the sciences, and the off-campus programs. The teaching models for these more extended situations vary according to the library faculty involved and the role in the curriculum, and they evolve significantly year to year. Each year, library faculty affiliate deeply with a few such programs, meeting weekly to create stepped learning conjoined with research assignments. For documents exemplifying this teaching, see Forensics Syllabus and Chemistry Health Professions Project. During several academic years, an information technology seminar linked library internship opportunities with a hands-on Web technology workshop. In that model, a small group of students explored contemporary questions in the world of rapid digitization and its social implications. They paralleled that study with real library work and Web production practice, including wikis and Web pages designed to support library functions. The seminar and workshop have provided a venue for library faculty, staff, and Academic Computing instructors to gather and consider both the past and future of information technologies. See the syllabi for the programs Still Looking (fall, winter, spring), Information Landscapes (fall, winter, spring), and Common Knowledge (fall, winter, spring). Each year, one librarian also offers research methods through the evening and weekend curriculum.

In-depth, extended library-related teaching within programs and service to off-campus and Evening and Weekend programs can be a challenge in the context of a reduced core of library faculty. During the self-study period, one faculty line was cut during budget reductions. This causes significant stress on the quality and quantity of instruction the area is able to provide.

Library Faculty as Service Providers

Library faculty see themselves primarily as teachers. They tend to understand the services of the Library in the context of teaching and learning, specifically teaching as it actually happens in the Evergreen curriculum. Thus, they do not tend to work from externally defined "best practices," nor do they function in a reactive mode. They take a proactive approach to the work, suggesting tools and strategies for designing library instruction and finding the intellectual work in the world of research instruction. They position themselves to work across administrative as well as curricular boundaries and sustain an important role in the crossroads of traditional research methods, contemporary information technology, and the world of the curriculum and their teaching colleagues.

Service and Teaching

The faculty librarians have transformed the reference desk into a teaching space, which goes well beyond traditional service models. For this reason, there is generally a librarian at the desk during the hours the Library is open to the public. Each contact between a librarian and a patron represents an opportunity to teach and learn. In collections, Web page design, signage, collection organization, and creation of virtual services, the librarians ask not just what is easiest or matches the expectations of inexperienced users, but what can be taught through the new design, service, or collection. For example, broad aggregate databases have been purchased because they are cost effective, but the librarians also emphasize and teach comparatively complex digitized indexes, which refer students more deeply into the discipline-based literature of their inquiries. As discussed throughout this document, library and information resources are designed, planned, taught, and supported in the context of college-wide teaching and learning.

Library Faculty and Off-Campus Programs

Library support for the two major off-campus offerings, the Tacoma and the Reservation-Based Community-Determined programs, focuses heavily on instruction, with additional support from networked technology, including specialized Web pages for these programs. See services for Reservation-Based students and services for Tacoma-based students. Students of these programs have limited access to the physical library and must be alerted to the many high-quality resources available to them online through the Library. End-of-program reports show very high engagement with information technology in these programs (See End-of-program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy by Planning Unit). Most years, librarians work closely with the Research Methods class at Tacoma, providing laboratory-based instruction on location several weeks per quarter. As of 2007-08, this work has taken on a more formalized structure and has developed into credit-generating research classes.

Library instruction at the upper-division off-campus sites of the Reservation-Based Community-Determined programs has varied widely year-by-year. Recently, the program has focused on building library methods into the lower-division bridge curriculum, which has not involved the library faculty directly. Reservation-based programs report 100% teaching and use of library and Internet research in 2007; however, this work has not engaged the Library's holdings or services significantly. Rebuilding this connection should be a high priority, and a planned faculty rotation from a former director of the reservation-based program will be an opportunity to do so. Perusal of the Achievements list for the self-study period demonstrates that almost every development supports distant access to collections and services and thus the off-campus programs.

Modes of Instruction in Media and Academic Computing

In all major computer and media labs, staff instructors provide group instruction designed to support the needs of specific academic programs, covering particular applications and tools relevant to the disciplines involved. Media and computing instructors teach workshops in different spaces and in different modes, depending on the discipline and the technology. There are no constraints upon which facilities may be used. In one quarter, a science program might have workshops in the Computer Center focusing on blogs, a math workshop using Excel in the Computer Applications Lab, a session on video documentation for field research in the Multimedia Lab, and a library research workshop in one of the Computer Center's general-purpose labs. In this way, academic programs leverage staff expertise and facilities as needed.

Teaching faculty must be able to easily identify and contact the appropriate staff member to coordinate computer instruction, which may require significant logistical support such as lab scheduling, equipment checkout, server space, password access, personnel scheduling, and other details. In Academic Computing, program liaisons work with faculty to coordinate how programs will teach technology. For instance, the staff liaison helps set up file shares and Web spaces and schedules and teaches workshops. In Media Services, the head of instructional media provides a central location for faculty and students requesting instructional support in media to connect with appropriate media instructors and to schedule facilities and instruction. The Media Services staff work with faculty to design and integrate media into their programs. Media Services staff meet regularly with media faculty in the Expressive Arts planning unit so they can develop facilities, plan for access, and foster integration of media into academic programs.

Students who work independently on media or computing projects or who decide to tackle media projects within non-media oriented programs also receive many forms of instructional support. Academic Computing offers regularly scheduled technology workshops, which are open to all. In addition, Evergreen students can access Lynda.com, which tutors students in software applications and programming languages. The Library recently subscribed to Safari Books Online, which supports the computer science curriculum and addresses technical inquiries from students across the curriculum. Academic Computing began a computing wiki in 2006-07 which hosts approximately 2,000 pages of instructions and tutorials and which continues to expand. Increasingly, students, faculty, and staff rely on the Academic Computing wiki to stay abreast of technologies hosted on campus.

Any student may access most media-production facilities and check out portable media equipment once they have completed relevant hands-on training sessions called proficiencies. Media instructors run hundreds of these quick, skills-focused instructional sessions annually, which serve thousands of students, ensure proper use of the equipment, and provide supportive technical background for systems. The number of formal instructional sessions provided to programs has doubled since 2000, suggesting the rapidly expanding use and breadth of college-supported media technology. Finally, the Evening and Weekend Studies curriculum provides a coherent, regular pathway for learning more complex media-production processes.

Like the library faculty, media instructors teach in a variety of modes: full-time, part-time, introductory, intensive, general, sustained, intermittent, specialized, individual, within programs, or collaboratively in small groups. Many of the media staff are artists, professionals, and faculty in their own right, with Master of Fine Arts degrees in their fields. They teach photography, electronic music, Web design, and digital imaging as adjuncts in Evening and Weekend Studies and in Extended Education. Media staff who teach as adjunct faculty are often called to teach full time as visiting artists. Their contributions to the part- and full-time curriculum are substantial and sustained, some of them having taught for more than twenty years. Their work supports the Expressive Arts. It assures access and instruction for students who do not consider themselves artists but who want to engage in technologies that constitute important developing communication media and also define the visual aesthetics of science, history, political science, psychology, and other narratives. Additionally, Photo, Electronic Media, and Media Loan staff annually teach as field supervisors for up to eight student interns who are critical to the effective functioning of labs and services. These students typically not only gain high-level technical production skills, but also develop instructional, collaborative, and administrative experience by working closely with students, faculty, and technical staff. Finally, all media staff sponsor many individual contracts, which provide opportunities for students who have identified intensive individual inquiries that are not supported in the curriculum at large. In general, media staff are central to the success of media-based programs and are viewed as colleagues by the Expressive Arts faculty, whose programs they support. These working relationships form the backbone of Media Services.

Faculty Institutes

As described thus far, library and information resources instructors regularly work with, instruct, and support the teaching faculty through individual collaboration. In addition, they design and teach several faculty institutes each summer. Faculty institutes create valuable connections among faculty, library, media, and academic computing instructors. Recent information technology institutes have focused on specific applications such as teaching statistics with Excel, using online collaborative tools to foster learning communities, or creating program Web pages. Some years, substantive discussions of information technology literacy as opposed to hands-on training have been offered. During institutes, faculty are often afforded paid time for self-directed work that focuses on their program planning. In these instances, faculty evaluate technology, practice using it, and plan how to incorporate applications into their programs.

5.B.3 Availability of Policies

Policies, regulations, and procedures for systematic development and management of information resources, in all formats, are documented, updated, and made available to the institution’s constituents.

The Web provides a venue for all policies, regulations, and procedures for all information resources and services.

See Required Exhibit 2: Policies, Regulations, and Procedures for the Development and Management of Library and Information Resources

5.B.4 Participatory Planning

Opportunities are provided for faculty, staff, and students to participate in the planning and development of the library and information resources and services.

Faculty, staff, and students participate in the planning and development of library information resources and services. The college community values face-to-face communication and formal procedures for consultation are minimal. All learning and information resources staff and faculty receive and welcome direct requests and suggestions. As an example, good hiring represents an important decision determining how library and information services evolve and prosper. Hiring processes are broadly consultative. Committees with representation from different work units interview and recommend for all staff positions. Students, staff, and faculty representatives join in hiring committees for any major positions, especially those of administrators and faculty. These hiring processes routinely include public presentations by the candidates, which are announced to the entire college community to allow input from staff, faculty, and students.

More broadly, collaborative work with teaching faculty and other clients drives the design and planning for almost all instructional and technical support. Face-to-face planning and direct engagement with teaching faculty in a program-by-program context defines the work of library and information resources across all units (see Participatory Planning 5.E.1).

5.B.5 Networks Extend Information Resources

Computing and communications services are used to extend the boundaries in obtaining information and data from other sources, including regional, national, and international networks.

Consortial arrangements in the Orbis Cascade regional system offer Summit, a resource-sharing system that makes it possible to satisfy almost any book and most media requests generated by the individualistic interests of students working on independent projects. The Summit system includes thirty-five academic libraries from Oregon and Washington and delivers resources within two or three days. Students also use many highly specialized materials from periodicals databases, which have expanded the number of journal subscriptions Evergreen holds eight to nine times over the self-study period. This enhancement is largely due to the Cooperative Library Project (CLP), a state-funded resource-sharing project among the four-year Washington state baccalaureates.

Consortial purchases have reduced per-title costs dramatically and have strengthened areas of the curriculum not necessarily the focus of a core liberal arts collection. For example, psychology, education, and business were heavily emphasized in the most recent round of shared purchasing by CLP. Finally, ILLiad, the interlibrary loan system, brings journal articles to the students' mailboxes and e-mail accounts within a few days. There are almost no discernible limits to accessing published information for any researcher except those who need to present within twenty-four hours. Effective campus networks supported by Computing and Communication's technical support staff make this possible. College-wide steps that have made efficient resource sharing and online information possible have included implementing the Banner student records system and establishing e-mail as the official student communications medium.

Standard 5.C – Facilities and Access

The institution provides adequate facilities for library and information resources, equipment, and personnel. These resources, including collections, are readily available for use by the institution’s students, faculty, and staff on the primary campus and where required off-campus.

5.C.1 Availability of Information Resource Facilities

Library and information resources are readily accessible to all students and faculty. These resources and services are sufficient in quality, level, breadth, quantity, and currency to meet the requirements of the educational program.

For a description of facilities, see Major Facilities and Areas 1 and 2 of the Edutech Information Environment Review.

The Edutech Information Environment Review specifically considered networking, telecommunications, and other information technology relevant to accessibility. The campus network was lauded as "solid and reliable." The network itself is described technically in Area 1 of the report. Expansion of wireless access from 75% to the entire campus was recommended; this work is proceeding and has the budgetary support to continue into the future. Most classrooms have been networked with display capability, spreading library and information technology access to large portions of the curriculum. This changes the presumptions of the faculty and students and greatly increases the frequency with which social software, digitized presentations, and other multi-media information technology is incorporated in programs. The Edutech report also recommended establishing at least one dedicated teleconferencing space for general use, which is planned within the Center for Creative and Applied Media (CCAM). According to Edutech, "student access to computers at Evergreen does not seem to be a problem."

The Information Technology Wing

LIR Facilities and Services Visibly Interconnect

With the generic library as a foundation and the interdisciplinary curriculum as the context, merged collections and services build upon an alternative past. Library and information resources thus collaborate actively across academic and administrative departmental boundaries. The major remodel, implementing a newly consolidated Information Technology Wing, substantially strengthened opportunities for connecting services, facilities, and staff. One central, broad entrance now provides access to the Library, the Computer Center, Media Loan and the stairs to Electronic Media, Photo Services and Computing and Communications. See Consultant Pre-Remodel Report for an assessment of facility requirements produced before the project. For further detail, extensive documents describing the project are available in the documents room.

More Teaching and Study Spaces

The ideal of collaborative learning shaped the remodel. Shared study spaces predominate, whether open area study tables, grouped lounge furniture, pod-shaped arrangements in labs, or small group study and media viewing rooms. Wireless access allows informal group work around personal or library-owned laptops. Additional laboratory spaces provide easier scheduling for program work and more computers for individuals when classes do not use the labs. Limited quiet study areas provide an alternative for the solitary scholar; at the same time, small group work is facilitated and encouraged. Overall, the Information Technology Wing has shed barren hallways and utilitarian desks in favor of lounge areas and comfortable study spaces. Overstuffed couches and chairs, large tables, task lighting, and more room for collections all contribute to the conviviality that informs shared inquiry.

Hospitable Spaces and Blended Access

Art exhibitions invite patrons into lounge and study areas and help define the Library as a public space. The new basement lounge, affectionately dubbed the "Library Underground," hosts frequent campus gatherings and public readings, although flooding (a new issue since the remodel) disrupted the area several times in 2006-07. Groups from across campus meet, study, and teach in library spaces, which are open to all and where food and drink have always been allowed. The Sound and Image Library (SAIL) media collections are prominently located in the reference area, where SAIL staff work closely with the reference librarians. The newly established Assisted Technology Lab (ATL) conjoins the SAIL and has become a vital meeting place for students to work and show their art and media productions. Again, SAIL and reference staff provide service and technical support for ATL patrons. As the physical reference collection continues to shrink, reference, the SAIL, the ATL, and Circulation will continue forming a more blended and prominent shared public presence.

More General Access Lab Facilities

Rapid developments in networked information technology have blurred between general and specialized technology labs. The main computer center includes many specialized scientific software packages such as ArcGIS and Mathematica, while common graphic manipulation software, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, appear in the CAL. Similarly, the Computer Center supports high-level statistics applications such as R, as well as digital music editing. The library computers provide basic Office applications and general Web access in addition to library-specific searches, but specific library computers also provide GIS, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, assistive/adaptive technology, and scanning applications, while the SAIL provides multiple stations for basic media dubbing, transfer, and editing. Switching to a single user domain and sign-on means simpler, more consistent access to networked resources across campus. The Digital Imaging and Multimedia facilities provide applications for advanced media production, but are open to all students. Some specialty labs have self-contained resources, such as large format printers or applications requiring more sophisticated hardware. However, the primary distinction among labs is the level of expertise and specialized knowledge of the staff. Students benefit when they know the specialized character of a lab means there will be more skilled assistance.

5.C.2 Cooperative Agreements

In cases of cooperative arrangements with other library and information resources, formal documented agreements are established. These cooperative relationships and externally provided information sources complement rather than substitute for the institution’s own adequate and accessible core collection and services.

Despite greatly expanded information access through Summit and shared purchasing agreements, the Library continues strong support for the core collection within budgetary constraints created by budget cuts and inflation. Over time, Summit circulation data will provide specific reports on areas of the collection where students and faculty consistently or repeatedly demonstrate the need for more depth. Additionally, the Orbis Cascade Alliance is working on shared collection development guidelines to help design complementary collections.

See Collection Development Procedures and Methods.

See Required Exhibit 11 Formal Agreements with Other Libraries.

Standard 5.D – Personnel and Management

Personnel are adequate in number and in areas of expertise to provide services in the development and use of library and information resources.

5.D.1 Sufficiency of Staffing

The institution employs a sufficient number of library and information resources staff to provide assistance to users of the library and to students at other learning resources sites.

The chart below suggests that library and information resources staffing is similar to that of comparable public institutions, falling between the averages of peer public liberal arts colleges (COPLAC) and the larger regional universities in the state (WA Regionals in the table below). Note that Evergreen (TESC) and other public college library staffing averages are significantly below the staffing for groups made up largely of private Ivies, DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practices), CTCL (Colleges That Change Lives), and CIEL (Consortium of Innovative Environments for Learning).

Staffing Comparisons
Library Professionals/FTE Total Staff/FTE
TESC 1.93 7.5
DEEP 4.65 16.32
CTCL 4.79 14.71
CIEL 5.51 13.43
COPLAC 2.67 8.55
WA Regionals 1.41 5.62

Source: IPEDS 2006 (See DEEP 2006; CTCL 2006; CIEL 2006; COPLAC 2006; WA State Public 2006)

(N.B. The staff count for Evergreen has been halved since approximately 50% of Library and Media Services staffing is devoted to Media Services production, instruction, and equipment check-out. At other institutions, these services, if they are offered at all, reside in academic departments such as media arts or education.)

The Edutech Information Environment Review discusses staffing in Area 3. The report shows staffing to be average when compared to similar institutions in terms of size, mission, and culture.

Because library use at Evergreen compares favorably to more heavily staffed private liberal arts colleges and because all areas sustain a substantial instructional role, there are areas of strain. The rapid expansion of technology-driven services and collections also creates stresses, despite reallocation of staff as media and technologies shift. Following are the primary areas of concern:

  • Support for rapidly expanded classroom technology, an additional demand on top of general institutional growth
  • Staffing for greater focus on curriculum planning and engagement with faculty in Academic Computing
  • Staffing to support expanding electronic library resource collections (ordering, contracts, management, evaluation, etc.)
  • Weakened presence of faculty librarians due to the loss of one line in budget cuts during the self-study period


5.D.2 Staff Qualifications

Library and information resources staff include qualified professional and technical support staff, with required specific competencies, whose responsibilities are clearly defined.

The balance of librarians to other library staff is weighted toward non-professionals when compared to other liberal arts college libraries. Further, as librarians rotate into the full-time curriculum, they temporarily leave behind reference work, management, administration, and collection development. Any sustained work, such as Web-page development, is interrupted by these regular absences. Further, full-time teaching faculty rotate into the Library as neophytes who need training and who present widely disparate skills, abilities, and ambitions. Beyond the system of rotation, with its concomitant duties, librarians are contractually obligated to participate in college governance and curriculum planning, not to mention their own scholarly projects and sabbaticals. Librarians have nine-month contracts and several are absent during the summer sessions when the Library is minimally staffed. These organizational facts mean that Evergreen has no managerial class of librarians. Instead, the team of faculty librarians share management with staff. Paraprofessionals head almost all departments, including Circulation, Government Publications, Periodicals, Technical Services, and Acquisitions. Their year-round presence and regular workdays provide consistency for development of services, maintenance of collections, public service, and supervision of classified staff and student workers. In this collaborative environment, staff often lead the way in adopting new services. The tremendous commitment by the staff grounds the Library and makes it an ideal teaching environment.

Most library faculty carry both subject and library master's credentials in order to support their teaching as well as their role as professional librarians (see CVs of professional library staff).

As is the case with librarians, many media staff and instructors carry additional graduate training. Graduate degrees noted by staff other than librarians include three MPAs, two MFAs, an MA in art history, an MEd and EdS, an MSE (technical engineering), an MS in chemistry, and an MS in computer information systems. The library faculty, whose roles require substantial attention to teaching and governance outside the Library, must depend upon library staff as managers of major services and functions within the Library. Highly experienced staff with significant levels of responsibility keep the Library not just open, but anticipating and embracing change and new opportunities for service (see 5.B.2 Modes of Instruction in Media and Academic Computing for a discussion of media instructors as artists and teaching faculty).

In the realm of technical support, the Edutech report recommended assigning "staff responsibilities more specifically." More specific responsibilities and positions have been implemented in Technical Support Services. In the smaller units that provide distributed service and instruction such as the CAL, Academic Computing, and Media Services, this stricter delineation of support functions is not as clearly appropriate. Instead, it is often valuable for staff to be well versed on all or most aspects of the instruction or service required and in direct communication with the student, staff, or faculty who needs help. For example, the liaison system in Academic Computing assumes that in most cases a faculty member will receive all aspects of support from one liaison, or that the liaison will coordinate the support and instruction required.

All staff and faculty have engaged new skills as the information technology evolves. Multiple reclassifications have assured that staff job descriptions and pay scales match new expectations for technological expertise. Staff have also shifted the location of their work partially or entirely as budget cuts and new programs such as Summit and ILLiad have relocated the areas of greatest stress. Increased emphasis on technology in many positions has led to reclassifications and increases in salaries for some staff, resulting in compression of salaries for some managers. A campus-wide study of exempt salaries is expected to address this issue.

5.D.3 Professional Growth

The institution provides opportunities for professional growth for library and information resources professional staff.

The library faculty are fully funded for professional activities through the central faculty professional development funds and policies, as well as through faculty institutes.

See Faculty Development at Evergreen

See Professional Leave (Faculty Handbook 6.100)

See Professional Travel (Faculty Handbook 6.200)

See Faculty Development (Faculty Handbook 6.300)

The remaining library and media services staff may request up to $500 annually from a pool of $2,500. Additional funding has been requested to bring the maximum benefit up to $750 in order to be consistent with the rest of academics, but this funding has not been granted thus far. Non-state funds from the Friends of the Library have been allocated for retreats and other staff meetings in order to compensate for some of this differential access to professional development funds.

Computing and Communications allocates more than $40,000 per year to support attendance of technical staff at technical conferences and trainings. This allows staff to expand their skills with current technology, increase their knowledge of new and advancing technology, and connect with peers from other institutions and experts in specific technologies. These training opportunities are critical to the team’s ability to support teaching and learning and to provide management of the college’s administrative systems (see CC Training Spreadsheet).

5.D.4 Organizational Structure

Library and information resources and services are organized to support the accomplishment of institutional mission and goals. Organizational arrangements recognize the need for service linkage among complementary resource bases (e.g., libraries, computing facilities, instructional media and telecommunication centers).

The fundamental organizing principle of library and information resources at Evergreen is that an interdisciplinary curriculum demands integrated services. Beyond that, the founding vision aspired to provide all media, in any location. Contemporary networked technology and the expectations of students now create a climate in which barriers between different information can and must be dissolved. For all these reasons, blended resources, facilities, and services predominate throughout Standard 5.

See The Founding Vision: Any Medium, Any Location.

See The Information Technology Wing.

Shared Technology Creates the Need for More Shared Work

Media applications, which were once physically limited to Media Services, are now located, maintained, taught, and used throughout the facilities administered by Academic Computing and, to a degree, the Library. Similarly, library resources, which were once physically limited to the Library building, are now found anywhere within reach of the Web. Public computers, once found only in the Computer Center, are everywhere, as are privately-owned laptops. These shifts have accelerated during the past ten years and have changed the instructional roles of the areas and their relationship to the curriculum. Undoubtedly, library and information resources will continue to distribute their budgets, facilities, and staff to continue expanding access to information technology in academic programs and for individual students.

As technologies have changed, so have the relationships among the Library, Media Services, and Computing, which now share in the communal project of interconnecting, teaching, and supporting our information and technological resources. At this juncture, there seems little point in redesigning the administrative structures that oversee these areas because new relationships and responsibilities have evolved organically, based on need, demand, and interest, and will continue to do so. In order to ensure that these effective working relationships continue to develop, reinforcing connections such as joint staffing, deliberately planning together, and continuing involvement across the areas when hiring for new staff and particularly administrators must be emphasized.

The Edutech Information Environment Review suggested that the existing distributed structures were valuable, but recommended greatly enhancing the role and formal responsibilities of the ITCH to assure better planning in consonance with the mission of the college. See 5.E for fuller discussion of this recommendation. Edutech did not capture the centrality of the teaching role in major portions of the information resources environment at Evergreen. It is teaching and its development that assures the most important connections between the academic mission of the college, the educational program, and IT services of all kinds. While the Library and Media Services collaborate as a matter of course with Academic Computing, the real challenge remains: How to more thoroughly engage the teaching faculty across the curriculum in defining the role of information technology in the academic careers of our students.

5.D.5 Engagement in Curriculum Development

The institution consults library and information resources staff in curriculum development.

See Collection Development Procedures & Methods 5.B.1

5.D.6 Library and Information Resources Budgets

The institution provides sufficient financial support for library and information resources and services, and for their maintenance and security.

Similar to staffing levels noted above, the Library is well funded compared to other regional public baccalaureates in the state (WA State Public in the table below) and peer public liberal arts libraries nationally (COPLAC in the table below). This comparatively rich funding reflects a historical recognition of the demands of open inquiry and independent research and the centrality of library research in a liberal arts education. Both funding and use rates closely match those of the private liberal arts libraries which predominate the DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practices), CTCL (Colleges That Change Lives) and CIEL (Consortium of Innovative Environments for Learning) peer groups. Thus, the general funding level for the Evergreen Library compares closely to that of institutions with similar missions, services, and roles within their institutions. For further discussion of the role of libraries in liberal arts colleges, see Comparing Use Statistics With Other Libraries (5.E). On the other hand, the library budget reported below includes Media Services (approximately 50% of library staffing falls into this category). Most libraries do not include any of the functions provided by Media Services at Evergreen. Instead, these functions, including media instruction, media-production facilities, media production to support college activities, and portable media production equipment check-out, if offered at all, would be part of an academic department such as education or media arts. If Media Services costs and services were not considered, then budgets are close to those of other public institutions, while use statistics are comparable to private liberal arts institutions.

Library FTE Circulation+ILL/FTE Expenditures/FTE
Evergreen 4153 31 $782
DEEP Colleges 2046 18 $829
CTCL 1506 23 $859
COPLAC 3742 16 $464
CIEL 7042 25 $794
WA State Public 11,415 15 $373

Source: IPEDS 2006 (See DEEP 2006; CTCL 2006; CIEL 2006; COPLAC 2006; WA State Public 2006)

As budget cuts have reduced both staffing and collections, diversified revenue sources have become a high priority for library administration. Generous biennial infusions from the central academic budget have withered since earlier study periods. Indirect funds from activity grants to the faculty, major gifts from donors, book sales, and fines for lost or destroyed books have all increased to make up important non-state sources for collection development. The development of facilities and programming have been supported through major donors, with the library dean and the campus fundraisers focusing significant attention on these efforts.

The Edutech Information Environment Review discusses budgets in Area 4 and compares Evergreen to similar schools on the basis of physical environment, enrollment numbers, education goals and aspirations, residential nature, tuition, and governance structure. The review determined that Evergreen devotes considerable resources to IT and is consistent with its peers. In 2005, Evergreen’s expenditure on IT—expressed as a percentage of total institutional expenditures—was 6.7%. This percentage aligns with the 6.7% reported by Computing in a 2006 survey of public four-year colleges. The average for all institutions was 6.5%. Generally, IT is funded comparably to institutions with similar missions and culture. The report recommended that budget processes should be addressed that take into account the heavy demands upon replacement, operation, and maintenance as IT becomes ubiquitous in the classroom, as well as in labs.

See Comprehensive Budget (Required Exhibit 9)

Standard 5.E – Planning and Evaluation

Library and information resources planning activities support teaching and learning functions by facilitating the research and scholarship of students and faculty. Related evaluation processes regularly assess the quality, accessibility, and use of libraries and other information resource repositories and their services to determine the level of effectiveness in support of the educational program.

Evaluating Information Services and Collections

Assessments of Evergreen's library and information resources confirm support for the academic mission of the college as a public liberal arts college that expects a substantial number of students to engage in self-selected independent inquiry. Utilization patterns among Evergreen students correlate closely to the intensive use found among liberal arts colleges as opposed to lower use rates found among more comprehensive institutions.

Comparing Use Statistics With Other Libraries

In 2002, Washington's four-year public baccalaureate institutions implemented the Cascade resource-sharing consortium. This start-up provided an amazing new service and an opportunity to assess how rapidly a major new service might be implemented. Evergreen patrons borrowed 9,723 items during the first year, more than any other library, even though Evergreen was by far the smallest institution in the consortium at that time. Although ten times bigger than Evergreen, the University of Washington borrowed just under 7,000 items during the first year. The quick acceptance of Cascade testified to the efficient connection between the Library, library instruction, and the teaching faculty and curriculum at large.

Cascade became Orbis Cascade as the Washington and Oregon academic consortia merged. The new resource-sharing service, entitled Summit, provides ongoing comparative statistics. To continue comparison with the original members of Cascade, in 2006, Evergreen borrowed 4.52 items per FTE; almost four times the next heaviest user at 1.15 items borrowed per student. Although one might assume that small collection size drives this higher demand, the fact is that the Evergreen collection circulates at a high rate per student as well, according to federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data.

IPEDS data for 2006 also provide the opportunity to compare use statistics of liberal arts colleges with Evergreen and with small master's-level universities (Carnegie Class Master's I), where strong distinctions appear again. When both circulation and interlibrary loan are counted, Evergreen circulates 31 items per FTE, liberal arts colleges nationally average 24 items per FTE, and the Master's I institutions circulate 8.34 per FTE.

The same dramatic distinction between liberal arts colleges and comprehensive institutions appears in the Summit consortium, which covers a full array of colleges and universities in Oregon and Washington. The following table lists the heaviest users from the member libraries, based upon their rates of use per FTE in 2006. Evergreen places high on the list, among the most highly ranked liberal arts colleges, which placed well above usage rates at more comprehensive institutions.

Library Number of Items Borrowed FTE Items/FTE
Reed College 20,480 1,268 16.15
George Fox University 14,427 2,392 6.03
Marylhurst University 4,548 852 5.34
Lewis & Clark College 14,386 2,953 4.87
The Evergreen State College 16,118 4,200 3.84
Whitman College 6,672 1,803 3.70
Willamette University 9,164 2,511 3.65
University of Puget Sound 7,570 2,742 2.76
Seattle Pacific University 8,589 3,466 2.48
Linfield 5,354 2,331 2.30
Western Oregon University 8,623 3,992 2.16
University of Portland 6,764 3,211 2.11
University of Oregon 38,796 18,880 2.05
Eastern Oregon University 4,620 2,306 2.00
Pacific University 4,232 2,341 1.81

(Source: Summit Borrowing Statistics FY06)

Thus it is clear that, as of 2006, Evergreen library utilization mirrors the practices of liberal arts colleges. High-use rates also seem to reflect an academic emphasis on major student projects. For instance, at Reed College, which requires a senior thesis, the college library circulates or borrows 120 items per student. On the other hand, looking ahead, academic library use patterns are in a period of dramatic change. In 2007, the University of Washington implemented WorldCat Local, which provides immediate click-though prompts, leading the user from local catalog to Summit to some journal databases, periodical holdings, and interlibrary loan if appropriate. Summit use at the University of Washington doubled since implementation and interlibrary loan has also increased steeply. A large increase in borrowing at the University of Washington drives lending rates throughout the Summit system, but even more important, it suggests that discovery tools will dramatically increase usage without change in the library instructional program or academic practices. The Orbis Cascade consortium will soon be implementing WorldCat as the shared Summit catalog and many libraries in the consortium will undoubtedly implement WorldCat Local as their local library catalog as well.

Library and Computer Center Use & Satisfaction Rates

The data above demonstrate that library and information resources are comparatively well utilized. While high rates of use suggest something about effectiveness, surveys of popularity (frequency of use and satisfaction with use) provide further affirmation. Institutional Research routinely surveys alumni and students about campus resources. A summary of campus resource utilization (See Alumni Surveys 2002-2006 - Campus Resource Utilization) shows that during the six-year period, the Library and the computing facilities have been the top two most used campus facilities, trading off for first place. Alumni who were somewhat or very satisfied with the services have reported in at between 87% and 92% during the period surveyed.

Starting in 2006, the Evergreen Student Experience Survey (ESES) included questions about using library resources online and found that 85.2% of respondents use online library resources. Internal records also suggest phenomenal growth in online use of library resources. In 2000, when the Library subscribed to three aggregate journal databases (Proquest, Ebscohost and JSTOR), users conducted 80,000 searches. In 2007, among approximately 30 subscription databases, there were well over 250,000 searches. Careful review of variations of use from year to year reveals the direct impact a fluid curriculum has on database use. For example, Modern Language Association International Bibliography statistics are quite erratic; one major project in a large academic program explains a fivefold increase of use in one year. As JSTOR has developed into a more deeply and broadly multi-interdisciplinary tool, use statistics show a shift away from heavy dependence on the less scholarly aggregates. Extensive lobbying by faculty and librarians encourages this shift toward use of scholarly resources such as JSTOR. Use statistics for periodicals and databases drive selection and instruction planning. When use statistics are low for a database seen by the library faculty as critical to a discipline or of particularly high academic value, then library faculty focus instruction on that database whenever appropriate.

Media Services User Surveys

Institutional Research and Assessment added Media Services to its alumni survey of campus resource utilization starting in 2004. Since then, Media Services has been listed as the fifth most utilized resource. Alumni reported being somewhat or very satisfied at a rate of 89% and 90% in the two survey years (see Alumni Surveys 2002-2006 - Campus Resource Utilization).

The 2006 Evergreen Student Experience Survey (ESES)asked students about their use of Media Services, which showed 48% use of Media Loan (see Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2006 - Campus Resource Utilization - Olympia). A survey designed and implemented by staff member Lin Crowley supplemented this data. Crowley’s respondents reported an average satisfaction level for each service ranging from 3.07 to 3.62 (out of 4), which indicated that those who used current services were generally fairly satisfied with each of the services they use.

Although respondents to Crowley’s survey were predominantly active Media Services users, many respondents were uninformed about some services. Respondents supported investment in new digital technologies, but most were unaware of new or planned digital facilities. One clear conclusion of the survey is that visibility and access could be better for some services. Suggested improvements often focused on access, whether longer hours, more workshops, or more facilities. The survey project director recommended that future follow-up surveys be conducted to compare whether the reasons people use each service change and to evaluate the satisfaction levels for each type of services by patron types. See Evergreen Media Services Assessment Project

Evaluation of Teaching and Instructional Programs: Information Technology Literacy

The strong focus on teaching throughout library and information resources suggests the following questions: 1) In a college without requirements, does information technology instruction reach enough students to assure that the vast majority of graduates develop skills in support of their inquiries? 2) Which students are taught? Do students receive information technology instruction in an array of disciplinary and developmentally varied situations or is it happening only in pockets of the curriculum? 3) Is it working? Are students acquiring cross-curricular information technology, including media literacy?

How many students are taught?

About 3,000 students attend program-based library instruction workshops annually. These statistics exclude most cases of repeated contacts with the same student and thus represent very broad coverage of the student body.

From 2000 to 2007, Media Services offered a total of more than 1,500 workshops to approximately 156 academic programs. This number does not include the thousands of quick proficiencies also provided by the area. The number of formal media workshops given and students reached in 2005 and 2006 were each more than double the numbers provided in 2000. Workshops have increased along with new technologies, especially in Media Loan and in the new Multimedia and Digital Imaging Studio (DIS) labs.

Most instruction provided by Academic Computing and the Computer Applications Lab (CAL) serves specific academic programs. These sessions are represented in the following table:

Computer Lab Workshops for Academic Programs (cells represent academic programs/number of students)
Year 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07
Computer Center 221/4,423 171/3,418 253/4,880
Computer Applications Lab 50/1,368 50/1,248 52/1,344
Totals 271/5,791 191/4,666 305/6,224

Up until 2007, Academic Computing offered 30 to 40 general computer skills workshops per year in the Computer Center, attended by approximately 350 students. Professional staff focused these workshops on general technical skill building, independent of academic programs. Over time, fewer students were attending these workshops, presumably because more students come to college with strong technical skills and with specialized self-determined needs for support. In response to waning attendance, Academic Computing redesigned the workshops as student-centered support sessions to which students bring their questions or projects. This student-centered structure should more effectively meet the specific demands of students. Computing will evaluate the success of this reinvented structure. All areas of library, media, and computing find the strongest teaching and the greatest demand for instruction occurs in conjunction with programs.

Which Students?

The number of teaching contacts shows that library and information resources staff reach a large number of academic programs, but does not indicate which programs. End-of-program surveys conducted from 2001 to 2006 by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment asked faculty, “Did your students use technology to present work, conduct research (including library research), or solve problems? If yes, How?” Not surprisingly, faculty answered that library/Internet research skills were the most commonly used at 50%, followed by some form of presentation technology. Ninety percent of programs reported some substantial use of information technology. (See Summary of Information Technology Literacy Emphasis in Programs)

In 2006-07, questions were revised to more accurately identify programs where there was intentional focus on teaching ITL: "Did your program include activities to improve information technology literacy?" With this more restrictive language, 70% of programs reported including ITL. (See End-of-program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy by Planning Unit)

Further, in 2006-07, a follow-up question asked specifically which kind of technology was taught. Significantly different technologies predominate in different parts of the curriculum. No standard set of applications comes into play, although as of 2006-07, presentation technologies (at 42% of all programs) have increased by 70% over their use in the 2001 to 2006 reports and now begin to approach library and Internet research in their prevalence at 50%. Online communication applications were reported by 32% of programs, an increase of 19% over the 2001-2006 data.

Reservation-based programs reported library and Internet research at the highest rate, at 100% of programs, although this work was weakly connected to library instruction and therefore it is unclear whether academic library-supplied resources were used. At the other end of the spectrum, Culture, Text, and Language was lowest with 21% reporting library or Internet searching. The remainder of planning units ranged between 43% and 50% library/Internet use, with Core programs at the low end with 43%.

The substantial move toward presentation media and online communication in programs drives increases in multimedia applications. Presentation technology and online communication applications encourage the use of still and moving images, sound clips, graphs, and charts. These media are mixed with traditional print communication written by students or linked from Web resources. While these media and print applications involve basic, commonly used applications of information technology, they easily migrate toward more advanced media production. The increasing presence of multimedia information technology in Evergreen's learning communities drives further demand upon Media Services and Academic Computing, along with increased overlap of their teaching and service roles.

Since its inception in the context of Holly’s generic library, Media Services has followed its mission to support media literacy and instruction across the curriculum. During the last ten years, Media Services have changed dramatically as the personal computer has become the platform for entry-level media production and consumption. One measure of this change has materialized in how media staff have served programs through formal workshops since fall 2000. The scheduling data shows that almost 90% of formal program-based workshops serve Expressive Arts faculty. While this scheduling data does not cover equipment proficiency workshops or one-on-one instruction, both used more broadly across the curriculum, it is nevertheless clear that formal instruction by media staff focuses heavily on Expressive Arts programs, with an emphasis on advanced production applications, the exclusive provenance of expressive arts faculty. Media Services provides this advanced instruction in specialized labs, which were enhanced and expanded during the remodel. One effect of this specialization is that entry-level students have migrated to Academic Computing, where the staff works in collaboration with media staff to provide instruction on entry-level media-production applications. In fact, during fall and winter 2006-07, 68% of the faculty who requested workshops in Computer Center were from planning units other than Expressive Arts, and many of these workshops included media instruction (Photoshop, iMovie, Flash, etc.).

Just as in the Computer Center, the Computer Applications Lab (CAL) shows a trend toward more broadly used applications. Although the CAL has traditionally focused on the science curriculum in the Environmental Studies and Scientific Inquiry planning units, these users have begun to share their space with those who have less specialized demands. Roughly 60% to 70% of the classes in the CAL now work with statistical or numeric analysis, primarily Excel, but also with Graphical Analysis, R, and SPSS. Ninety percent of CAL users prepare presentations, most often with Powerpoint, Word, Illustrator and Excel. Approximately 60% of the programs meeting in the CAL still use analytical tools, including (in order of usage) ArcGIS, Mathematica, and Stella, which were once the focal point of all CAL applications. Science faculty have shifted their emphasis to on-site analysis, using advanced applications in specialized scientific labs in ways that parallel the shift in Media Services toward advanced applications. Meanwhile, the CAL and the Computer Center serve increasing numbers of students who seek instruction or support for the increasingly powerful personal computing applications in media production, statistical analysis, and presentation media.

Does Library Instruction Result in ITL Gains?

The Library, consistent with college-wide practices, rejects requirements and embraces students who engage in open inquiry and independent judgment. In this context, the Library supports a fluid curriculum and responds to changes that drive the needs and expectations of an innovative teaching faculty. Standard or standardized assessment methods do not apply because the Library shapes teaching according to individual students, a fluid curriculum, and highly diverse pedagogy. Instead, the Library commits to the intensive and never-ending task of recreating learning goals, student-by-student, program-by-program. Context is everything, which obviates the role of abstract standardized measures.

On the other hand, the Library does engage in qualitative assessment, the descriptive characterization of ITL teaching and learning. As is the case throughout the faculty (see Standard 2.B.3, Engagement and Reflection), library faculty write annual evaluations of themselves and their library and teaching colleagues. They also engage in five-year reviews in which a panel of teaching colleagues discusses their work. These evaluations consistently address instructional aspirations, successes, and failures. See Reflections on Library Instruction.

Further, under the leadership of the Office of Institutional Research, the librarians designed a project that assessed students as they worked through real research inquiries. The study, "The Activity of Information Literacy", documented the techniques and processes and even the thinking of several small samples of students as they collaborated intensively on research questions. The study showed that these particular students were stronger in their grasp of content than they were in their command of library research tools for their specific inquiries. In other words, a question about history might not lead them to historical abstracts. They were also strong in their ability to develop their research questions and to evaluate and synthesize the results. What these results suggest is that “Faculty may want to assess their students’ abilities to obtain information and offer tutorials or refer students to the Library when deficiencies are detected.”

Beyond the immediate results, this qualitative assessment also suggested that the students benefited greatly when they collaborated. Certainly, this observation is corroborated by the gains that students make when they work together in skill building instead of in canned computer workshops outside of programs. Additionally, peer groups are widely used across the curriculum as a way to encourage students to develop research topics and individual projects. Given the results of the qualitative assessment and given the widely practiced use of peer groups, library faculty should seek ways to implement collaborative research activities when they link their instruction to programs. This model of cooperation would build on the more isolated collaborations that take place, as a matter of course, between librarians and students at the reference desk. An enlarged vision of this basic transaction—discussion, exploration, and brainstorming—will enhance the relevance and effectiveness of library teaching and workshops.

Student Assessment of Their ITL Learning

The Evergreen Student Experience Survey (ESES) asks questions that elucidate what the students themselves think they learned at Evergreen. In 2006, the ESES asked, "To what extent have your Evergreen experiences contributed to your growth in ... the following computer-related fields...?" Responses generally matched fairly well with the perspectives found in the end-of-program surveys. For the category "Studying or Doing Research via the Internet or other online sources:

  • 30.5% of Olympia-campus students reported at least some contribution.
  • 47.5% reported quite a bit or a lot, for a total of 77.5%.
  • More than 84% of Tacoma students reported at least some, of which 50% reported quite a bit.
  • More than 93% of reservation-based students reported at least some contribution; 86.2% reporting quite a bit or a lot.

Considering how many students express self-confidence in their research skills, and as the Internet provides so many increasingly powerful tools for personal research, it is heartening to see that a good majority of students feel they developed their research skills as part of their education at Evergreen.

The 2006 ESES also asked about "Using the computer for artistic expression (e.g., music, other audio, still images, animation, video, etc.)":

  • More than 42% reported that Evergreen contributed "Some," "Quite a Bit," or "A Lot"
  • Fully 36.8% said "Not at All"
  • 20.9% said "Very Little"

The 2006 ESES surveyed use of non-artistic computer tools, asking about specific types of applications such as spreadsheets, GIS, Web development, posters, or programming. In general, as was found in end-of-program reviews, no single type of computer application dominated. No application type was used by more than 50% of students; instead, different types of applications were used by smaller subsets of the students surveyed.

5.E.1 Participatory Planning

The institution has a planning process that involves users, library and information resource staff, faculty, and administrators.

Overall Planning for Collections & Services

The fluidity of interdisciplinary and individual study defines library services. The dean of Library Services strengthens the ties between academics and the Library and Media Services through weekly meetings with the provost, associate vice president for academic budget and planning, and academic dean of budget, as well as weekly academic deans meetings. Once a month, the director of computing and communications and the manager of Academic Computing also join the academic deans' meeting.

The interconnection of the instructional role with the planning and support functions drives the efficacy of all the services in these areas. In the Edutech Information Environment Review, Area 5 discussed planning and governance in the Evergreen information environment. The review was somewhat critical of the lack of coordination in support, planning, and governance of IT across the campus and advocated for a stronger role for the Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH), an organization which links library, media, and computing managers and instructors. However, the report did not emphasize how the teaching function and role in Academic Computing, the CAL, and Media Services creates strong collaboration in all service and instruction design.

Further, placing library and information resources within the larger ethos of the college, any major policy discussions or long-term planning processes invoke the participatory college-wide Disappearing Task Force (DTF) structure. Budgetary processes are generally collaborative and include opportunities for review and input from the campus community (see Participatory Decision-Making Culture [Standard 1 Section 2.3] and Standard 6). The college budget process and schedule drives most mid-term library planning. (See Standard 7 Section 7.A.3).

Additional opportunities for community contributions to planning include faculty who rotate into the Library and who focus on collection development and other planning projects. An annual Reference Services Group retreat establishes the year's work before classes start in the fall. Faculty development reviews, also known as five-year reviews, and faculty institutes provide opportunities for conversations across campus about a range of teaching, learning, and service questions as they impact information services. The library internship program provided a reading seminar for several years within which library faculty, staff, and interns could discuss changing information technology and its cultural meaning. Finally, the librarians often engage in faculty reading seminars, frequently focused on library issues, where shared thinking about the future of libraries evolves.

Loose Structures and Responsiveness to Rapid Change in the Information Environment

Among the organizations included in library and information resources, the Library is the largest and most embedded in tradition and thus may be the most invested in preexisting professional structures and assumptions. Additionally, a comparative lack of top-down managerial structures could lead to a tendency to stagnate in some environments. How well does the Library balance the competing demands of conservation, teaching, and technological adaptation and innovation? The success of the Library’s flat organization can be measured by the impressive way in which the Library group has responded to institutional and profession-wide changes and challenges. See the Achievements document for a description of major changes in services, faculties, and collections implemented during the study period. Most of the changes are responses to opportunities provided by technological developments and external engagement in consortia. The consortia relieve any single library from much of the burden of research and develop into new technologies, an overwhelming burden for a comparatively small library such as Evergreen's. Additionally, Evergreen's library administration and staff have worked actively in leadership roles in the Orbis Cascade consortium to assure that the consortium supports efficient, cost-effective movement into the world of networked and shared resources.

5.E.2 Planning Linkages

The institution, in its planning, recognizes the need for management and technical linkages among information resource bases (e.g., libraries, instructional computing, media production and distribution centers, and telecommunications networks).

Planning Across LIR

With networked information technology and almost universal access to digitized academic information resources, coordination of planning across library and information resources has become increasingly critical. The information technology staff and librarians from across the administrative units found that while administrative restructuring did not appear to provide a more effective connection among services, it was nevertheless wise to imagine a new structure to foster collaboration. A cross-areas collaborative group entitled the Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH) was created, which provides the most formal mechanism for collaboration around technology across the various parts of the college.

Evergreen supports three ITCH groups: Academic, Administrative, and Core. The Academic ITCH meets at least once a month and includes professional staff from each of the primary technology labs, faculty, and interested students. The Academic ITCH coordinates general academic IT initiatives, helps develop general academic computing policy, and guides strategic planning. Professional staff members in each of the primary technology areas have developed strong connections to discipline-specific slices of the curriculum, faculty, and academic administration. As the ITCH develops, the members will explore ways to communicate and plan in cross-disciplinary and cross-divisional programs. The ITCH provides one of the necessary cross-curricular and cross-divisional contexts for developing information technology across administratively distinct areas. The Administrative ITCH plans for administrative IT support and the Core ITCH acts as the coordinating body for all areas of IT represented in the ITCH.

The ITCH created a strategic plan in conjunction with the campus-wide strategic planning process in 2007. Strategic Direction number 7 addresses technology. The statement is notable for the breadth of its concerns, with aspirations addressing media, library, and computing technology:

Use technology to enhance teaching and learning and administrative support at Evergreen.

Evergreen will intentionally foster secure, sustainable, flexible, easy-to-use, and accessible information technologies (IT) that support and enhance our teaching and learning philosophies and the administrative needs of the institution. Evergreen’s continuing commitment to technology and media literacies as critical components of a liberal arts education has led us to re-envision our Television Studio into a Center for New Media [now entitled the Center for Creative and Applied Media (CCAM)] that will provide cross-curricular and extra-curricular support for computer mediated production, performance, interactivity, teleconferencing, live broadcasts, digital image storage, processing, re-broadcasting, and format conversion for all areas of the college. Accuracy and quality of information will improve and strong support will make technology and a broad range of information services available to on- and off-campus users. Security requirements of networks, software, hardware and data will be met while ensuring appropriate user access, including control of access to confidential information and the need for academic exploration. Classroom spaces will be technologically current and functional for meeting curricular needs (see the complete IT Strategic Plan wiki for more detail).

The Edutech Information Environment Review recommended a stronger, more formal role and status for the ITCH, which has not found support from higher-level administrators who have budgetary responsibility over the divisions of the college. This means the ITCH continues to serve as a bottom-up structure of collaboration based on the experience of direct collaboration with and support for students, staff, and faculty users.

Continue Blending More Functions within Library and Information Resources

Library and information resources support a surprisingly diverse infrastructure of technologies and media in the curriculum. For greatest efficiency, library and information resources should consider even more coordination across boundaries to provide technology support. Students should be able to move seamlessly between different areas, such as the CAL, the Multimedia Lab (MML), and the Computer Center. Certainly, the pathways between areas could be more clearly articulated by identifying and developing more common services, including printing, building and maintaining image sets, server file space, and common software. By taking better advantage of the network infrastructure, students will experience less confusion and IT staff who directly support the curriculum could dedicate more energy toward coordinating, developing, and designing IT strategies with academic programs instead of maintaining redundant infrastructures.

Library and information resources could develop a shared perspective about their public presence. One possibility for representing blended facilities and services would be a central help desk for the Information Technology Wing. The shared entrance to the wing has become a prominent architectural feature and an opportunity to reshape the community’s understanding of what the areas collectively represent. A central help desk could provide basic information about facilities, services, and staff, and it would help facilitate how efficiently patrons move between the various floors of the wing. Continued attention to the best use of the Library Underground and how to assure its connection to other floors should be part of this process; a large, flexible teaching and gathering space is developing there and appropriate equipment will be needed to support that vision. Concurrently, assuring safety for the adjacent Archives and Rare Books Collections is critical.

Construction of the Center for Creative and Applied Media (CCAM) will begin soon. This project has distinct relevance to the changing roles of Media Services, the Library, and Academic Computing within the evolving digital liberal arts. The CCAM will comprise a collection of media production studios and equipment to complement existing Media Services and Academic Computing media resources and provide the primary bridge between the campus media infrastructure and networked digital resources. For a discussion of the CCAM and related curricular projects, see Center for Creative and Applied Media.

5.E.3 Evaluation and the Future

The institution regularly and systematically evaluates the quality, adequacy, and utilization of its library and information resources and services, including those provided through cooperative arrangements, and at all locations where courses, programs, or degrees are offered. The institution uses the results of the evaluations to improve the effectiveness of these resources.

As part of an institution constantly engaged in processes of narrative evaluation and other forms of assessment, library and information resources engage in and are the subject of extensive assessment both within library and information resources and externally through Institutional Research and Assessment surveys and studies. In addition to formal annual processes such as budget building and annual library faculty retreats, the results of these assessments feed into the development of ongoing teaching and services through constant face-to-face interactions among faculty, administrators, staff, and students, which inform all operations. The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, as cited throughout this report, provides annual surveys about library and information resources, several of which are broken down by campus.

See:

Alumni Surveys 2002-2006 - Campus Utilization

Summary of Information Technology Literacy Emphasis in Programs

End-of program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy Overview

End-of-program Review Workshop - Information Technology Across the Curriculum

Evergreen New Student Survey 2005 - Computer Skills - First-time, First-years

Evergreen New Student Survey 2005 - Computer Skills - Transfer Students

Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2004 - Information Technology Literacy and Technology-related Resources

Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2006 - Growth in Computer Skills - Olympia Campus

Evergreen Student Experience Survey 2006 - Satisfaction of Olympia Campus Students

End-of-program Review Results for 2006-07 - Information Technology Literacy by Planning Unit

Collections and Access

The Web presence of the Library will, of course, continue to evolve. The Library continues work on a new library front page and database search pages. It is likely that the new library front page will become the responsibility of the college-wide Web team, freeing library staff from this unfunded work. A new federated search is being implemented. Meanwhile, the Orbis Cascade consortium is migrating to WorldCat, which the Library will consider for local use as well. A local catalog designed on the principle of Web discovery tools can be expected to generate significant changes in library use. In this context, changes in staffing may be required to support increases in use of services such as Summit and ILLiad, and the content and focus of instruction may require substantial revision. Evaluation of service and instruction via peer comparisons will change, as discovery tools will generate higher uses without increased instruction. Instruction will likely need to focus even more on evaluating sources and finding those resources not easily located via discovery tools.

The continued expansion of audiovisual media collections represents a critical part of the vision of the generic library. To that end, one-time funds have frequently been infused into a small base budget for film and sound recordings, and the collection has grown significantly. Sound & Image Library (SAIL) staff and selectors have emphasized both new titles and replacement of older formats and worn copies. The Library anticipates circulating the collection through Summit, which will increase wear. See SAIL Acquisition Statistics. Selectors will continue a recent change of policy allowing the purchase of any medium from their funds allocated for print monographs, but a stable and larger allocation for the SAIL budget would lessen the need to do so and reduce variations in expenditures, workload, and processing. The Resource Selection Committee is currently reviewing materials budgets with the intention of reallocating funds according to the curricular demands for video and digitized reference resources. If these discussions result in a larger budget for the SAIL, there will be more work, but also more consistency. Additionally, the staff will be more deeply involved in researching Web-based media collections. This additional workload represents a challenge for the SAIL.

Digital collection development should go forward in concert with the push to digitize archival collections, including photographs, video, and copies of faculty artwork. The CCAM will take the lead in this ongoing project.

Because of the Summit and ILLiad systems, the core collections do not need to support individual students who engage in inquiries that lie outside the collection profile based upon the core curriculum. However, Summit use will also allow the Library to identify whether there are any consistent weaknesses in the collection that show up as subject areas driving high borrowing rates from other institutions. The data from Summit should be analyzed over a three-year period, due to the fluidity of the curriculum, at which point the Library will decide if such data are useful in guiding collection development.

The Library will continue to take advantage of the significantly increased purchasing power created by consortial agreements for periodical and other database purchases. The Library needs to keep an eye on the time and expertise required to keep up with the ever-increasing work of evaluating these agreements, purchases, and contracts and the technical work to support electronic resources, and it may want to consider creating a position for managing electronic resources. A centralized specialist working on electronic resources would potentially help the selectors by consistently researching and disseminating information about new products.

Overall, long-standing assumptions about budgets for collections must be reevaluated. While major cuts were made to the monographic budget early in the study period and were only partially restored over time, it is not clear that simply restoring those funds and adding funds for inflation are the desirable next moves. The Resource Selection Committee will need to continue to explore more flexible responses to a rapidly changing publishing environment in order to match collection budgets to evolving research needs. Private fundraising and other non-state funds have helped close collection development gaps in some cases, such as the SAIL budget. Library and information resources overall have begun to receive private support for equipment and facilities projects as well. More work with the Office of College Advancement should be emphasized, as many alumni have demonstrated willingness to support the library and information resources. Support for Rapidly Evolving Information Technology

While the Edutech Information Environment Review gave Evergreen good marks for its budgetary support of information technology, the report also recommended that “to follow current best practices, the replacement cycle should be permanently funded and the operations budgets need to be raised regularly to reflect the increase in technology-equipped classrooms, the increased number of servers and desktop computers that must be supported, and other increases in the technology base.” The college has begun to address this issue, proposing permanent line items in the next biennium for replacing the core server and desktops. This movement toward more permanent allocations for replacement and repair will help ensure that the infrastructure can support the curriculum. Although the ITCH can play only an advisory role, it has participated actively in the process of establishing permanent allocations, setting priorities, and sharing resources.

The remodeled Information Technology Wing and the construction of the Seminar II building created dramatically more technology-equipped teaching spaces. There are now forty-nine media and computer-capable classrooms, with more on the way. Labs are equipped with computers for each student, and most classrooms now include a computer along with projection and display systems. The Library plans to convert one classroom in the Library Underground to a lab, and teaching spaces on campus still without computers or display technology are on the way to being equipped. At this point, library and information resources just manage to support the computer facilities distributed across campus. As more spaces are computerized and enrollment creeps up toward the target of 5,000, the college will have to add additional staff and funding for maintenance. All capital construction and remodeling plans must include consideration of maintenance, replacement, and support for media and networked display.

As media technology has changed, some faculty choose to continue teaching older analog equipment, often for good pedagogical and aesthetic reasons. In the context of doubling instruction loads, this breadth of technologies generates a daunting challenge for Media Loan as it stretches to maintain, house, and teach a very wide array of portable equipment. Media Loan should work with the Expressive Arts faculty and other major users to reduce the range of Media Loan equipment necessary to support the curriculum.

Library Instruction

The reduced number of library faculty has resulted in less ability to provide library instruction deeply and broadly to the entire curriculum. Further, reference desk service has changed as the Internet creates patrons who access our resources from remote locations. Most immediately, virtual patrons do not benefit from the teaching that takes place at the reference desk, although the transactions that do occur at reference tend to be more substantive. As traffic at the physical reference desk has diminished, faculty who rotate into the Library have more limited opportunities to learn about library resources through interactions with patrons. These trends should inform the reference group as they consider how to proceed in allocating team responsibilities with or without an increase in the number of library faculty.

The reference group should evaluate service to areas of the curriculum that report or demonstrate less involvement in the various forms of information technology instruction (as reflected in end of program reports), and consider whether more or different instructional support would be appropriate, feasible, or desirable.

Library instruction will evolve in the context of catalogs that imitate Web discovery tools. It is entirely likely that patrons will frequently discover services which have, until now, had to be pointed out to them. For the near future, however, finding and using the most effective, appropriate journal databases still requires instruction or intervention on the part of librarians or faculty. Evaluation of library instruction based upon comparative use statistics will probably be less valuable than in this past study period, as academic library finding tools will vary greatly for some time to come, creating widely disparate use statistics. Thus close attention to database use trends and their correlation to the implementation of new finding tools will be important in the near future.

Intensive, embedded library and media instruction remain the most desirable and effective models. Some librarians focus on these models, including such work as evaluating bibliographies, which become the basis for assessing the quality of student research and the basis for further instruction. Faculty librarians may want to explore evaluating research results more commonly as they develop their ties with programs and faculty in all disciplines, particularly if discovery tools generate easier access to resources beyond the immediate catalog search. As librarians become more involved in each stage of research, including writing or production, they should be able to provide more consistent support to students. Time for this work with students is restricted by the number of librarians, as is time for the more extended work essential to students from Tacoma and reservation-based programs, who depend so heavily upon off-campus access and have less opportunity to confer with librarians at the reference desk. Faculty who rotate into the Library must be more fully engaged in this aspect of the librarians' work in order to help balance the external teaching demands upon library faculty.

When the Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning and Writing Centers were planned into the new Information Technology Wing, the hope was for substantial collaboration. While the location of these centers within the Library brings more students in, aids the sense of hospitality, and provides convenient resources for students, collaboration has remained minimal. Thus opportunities for shared instruction and service have yet to be exploited.

Cross-Curricular Information Technology Literacy

As discussed above, library and information resources and the teaching faculty assure that information technology infuses the curriculum. On the other hand, the faculty has not embraced any particular set of information technology skills as fundamental to the liberal arts undergraduate at Evergreen. Instead, faculty choose and adapt information and media technologies according to the pedagogical and disciplinary requirements of their chosen inquiry. There is little work across the curriculum about critical approaches to media or basic definitions of college-level technical literacy for the liberal arts. In the immediate future, library and information resources should invite the teaching faculty into a discussion about whether the campus has any broad consensus about Information Technology Literacy (ITL), including critical approaches. Long ago, the college committed to writing across the curriculum and allocated significant institutional resources to encourage that work—without proscriptive limits or standards. A wider discussion about ITL could produce a similar vision and institutional support. In the long run, such a vision will shape our understanding of digital scholarship in the liberal arts.

The expansion of entry-level media technology instruction raises questions about the staffing assumptions in Academic Computing. If critical approaches to information technology are to be addressed, and if cross-curricular information technology literacy is a priority for the contemporary liberal arts, then instructional staffing based on historical models of canned skills workshops may be insufficient. Academic Computing should continue current efforts to recruit instructional staff who have the expertise to work intensively in program planning and curriculum development, as well as on technical support for those activities. The numbers of such instructional IT staffing may also need to be evaluated in response to these new and expanding demands for work within the curriculum.

Conclusion: Holly's Generic Library Has Come to Fruition

Library and information resources have been deeply influenced by the organizational habits of the college, habits of collaboration, egalitarian ideals, fluidity, face-to-face interactions, non-departmentalization, reflexive learning, and independent and interdisciplinary inquiry. The result is a responsive, flexible, evolving set of services and resources. Library and information resources faculty and staff work across the media, regardless of where services reside administratively, in order to fuse traditional library services, information services, computing, and media. Library and information resources assess technology within the context of Evergreen’s particular curriculum and implement new applications incrementally in collaborative processes involving all three areas of service and the teaching faculty. As part of that work, library and information resources have had the distinct historical advantage of presuming that information comes in all formats and that it is not only possible but advisable to break down as many barriers as possible to access information in all its forms. In this, library and information resources are shaped by their founding vision - the generic library - an idea whose time has come.

Standard 5 Findings and Conclusions

Findings:

1) Overall, library and information resources at Evergreen demonstrate effective development of collaborative planning, services, and instruction in support of the academic mission and educational programs of the college.

2.) Over the past decade, the Library and Media Services have fully committed to networking and digital resources. This shift has implied a change in organization, reorganization of job classifications, and the creation of new patterns of work supported in all areas.

3.) Commitment to the use of networking digital information resources has allowed and promoted the integration of all sections of library and information resources and has pushed the staff in all areas to reconceptualize their work and to find new patterns of organization and collaboration.

4.) Students and faculty are thinking about and using information resources in all media. They can now reasonably expect to have seamless access to a wide array of high-quality academic information, media, and computer applications almost anywhere on campus.

5.) The Library is funded like a public college, but the emphasis on projects, the array of inquiries, and the fact that it is a teaching library means that it is used as if it were a part of a private liberal arts college.

Conclusions:

1.) The Evergreen Library has always been what other libraries have striven to become: a teaching library deeply connected to the faculty and curriculum. The result is that students use the Library very actively. Historically, Media Services has had the same teaching focus. Academic computing, with a longstanding instructional role, is also moving toward more substantive teaching and collaboration with faculty. This cross-curricular emphasis on teaching must be continued.

2.) The original vision of the Library was "generic," which means that it includes all media in all locations. The contemporary term in the profession is the virtual library. Evergreen's library and information resources have been able to realize the vision due to the advent of effective, ubiquitous networking and digital resources. The new technology plus major consortial agreements have created an explosion of access to high-quality scholarly information and media.

3. The remodeled and more unified Information Technology Wing is the physical manifestation of the blending of traditional print, media, and computer technology that characterizes the virtual library and information in the digital age. Despite being spread across administrative divisions, the Library, Media Services, Academic Computing, the CAL, and Computing and Communications all collaborate effectively to assure more and more seamless access to information resources. We must guard these interconnections and continue to seek opportunities for collaboration that will provide the best service, teaching, and efficiency.

Commendations:

1.) Through consortial agreements and wise use of resources made available to the college, an extraordinary array of high-quality academic resources. For example, the number of academic journals now available is nine times larger than at the outset of the review. Active leadership in consortia such as Orbis Cascade and the Cooperative Libraries Project supported these cost-effective approaches.

2.) The willingness of staff from all areas to share, collaborate, and dream as they worked through the complex reorganizations and new work necessary to create an operative virtual library has been extraordinary.

3.) The creation of an accessible, integrated, well-conceived teaching space with the renovation of the B and C wings of the Library has allowed the virtual library to have a physical presence that embodies the integration of these areas, while providing hospitable spaces and programming to complement virtual use information resources.

4.) The spread of digital media and computer facilities to the campus as a whole, in the Lecture Halls, and in the new classrooms of Seminar II, as well as the extension of wireless access to most of the campus has allowed the teaching resources of library and information resources to be used across the campus.

5.) Both the development of the virtual library and a continued commitment to extensive instruction have led to effective library and information resources for off-campus programs and users.

Recommendations:

1.) Library and information resources must maintain the flexibility in staff’s capacity to respond to the rapidly changing digital environment.

2.) Library and information services must continue to remain aware of developments in information technology, critically assess them, and carefully integrate technological capacities into the staff’s capacity for teaching.

3.) Library and information resources should assure that connections between the three units (the Library, Academic Computing, and Media Services) that make up library and information resources are as seamless as possible.

4.) Media Services instructors should consciously promote considerations of media among faculty across the curriculum, as well as continue to work effectively with those who depend upon media as the center of their work.

5.) Staff from all areas should pursue and develop cross-curricular faculty conversations about information and technology as literacies for the liberal arts, including critical perspectives.

6.) Library and information services should assure that instructional staffing and library faculty is sufficient in training and numbers to support extensive, integrated information technology literacy instruction across the curriculum and to off-campus and weekend and evening programs.

7.) Library and information services should continue to develop maintenance and replacement funds to support rapidly expanding information technology, instruction, and service throughout the campus.

Plans:

1.) Library, Media Services, and Academic Computing staff and faculty will collaborate in planning ongoing summer faculty institutes facilitating cross-curricular faculty conversations about information technology literacy for the liberal arts.

2.) The shape of expenditures on collections should evolve as inflation, consortia, networked access, and digital publications continue to change the information environment. The Library Resource Selection Committee will continue to review database, Summit, and local collection use, as well as allocation of non-state funds in order to appropriately support collections in all media. As a member of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, the Library will pursue collaborative collection development emphasizing strong core local collections and coordinated shared collections.

3.) The substantial instructional role necessary to support information technology literacy across the curriculum should be recognized in campus hiring priorities.

4.) The Library, Media Services, and Academic Computing will continue to emphasize shared work. Several areas of potential collaboration in addition to faculty institutes include considering a shared public presence at the newly emphasized main entrance to the Information Technology Wing, an increased role for the ITCH in planning and management of information technology on campus, shared staff positions, shared hiring processes, and more collaborative instruction for academic programs.

Standard 5 - Supporting Documentation

See Supporting Documentation for Standard 5