Some Question and Trends
HSL Retreat, 20 June 2002

Just Some of the Questions to Ask Ourselves about the Future

• How will students and faculty of the future want to “get” information in the future
• How should we integrate into teaching, research and clinical care in the future
• How will change to digital content change the staff work and workspaces
• Services to UW HS locations off-campus (e.g., Rosen)
• Services to UW distance-based education
• How many physical locations?
• Merging or collaboration as a wholistic biosciences library for researchers
• Common Space: for reflection (individual, quiet) vs. Alternative Workspace (individual/group)
• Wireless access anywhere in HS building, etc. by portable device

Where we are now

We Serve: Medicine & Medical Centers

Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, Social Work

Physical Facility

60,000 sq ft in HSLIC

10,000 at SWL/KKS

2000 HSLIC basement compact shelving for older materials

490 study seats at HSLIC

45 public PC seats at HSLIC

151 student/classroom PC seats at HSLIC

30 plug-n-connect ethernet at HSLIC

Networked laser printing at HSLIC/KKS/SWL

Proxy authentication for home/office/remote use

Staff FTE fy01 76 total (23 professionals)

Expenditures, fy01 4.8 million state funds

2.1 million information resources

See: Statistical Trends & Digital Library Transformation, 18 Jun 2002

Interesting changes in upward and downward trends of digital library and walk-in services.

Take a look. 2001-02 are projections. Some are apples and oranges but there are clearly
user transitions that have taken place based on our strategic initiatives from 2000.

And a comparison of ScienceDirect (Elsevier) title use, 2000-01 vs 2001-02.

See: The Deserted Library, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 2001

RML has changed too

Compared to 5 years ago the RML now focuses on partnerships, communities, evaluation, consumers, and health disparities. Rather than simply "doing" outreach, as best we could, where we could, our approach has matured and become more sophisticated, as knowledge of the field has developed. Our approach has become similar to that of a public health intervention: identifying communities and establishing partnerships, assessing needs, designing a response, carrying it out, evaluating the results and applying what is learned. This is a more complex way of operating, in a more complex environment. It requires re-assessing what we do and how we do it; assuming that a changing environment is the norm, and yet remaining accountable for results.

See: How are we doing? 8 Feb 2002 (summary below)

Libraries Triennial Survey, Spring 2001 (HS = 48% faculty response)

90% very satisfied with library

87% see library as important source of info

75% use digital library at least once a week
Online content lead to more productive research and teaching

Top 2 Priorities: 76% deliver full-text to desktop

62% provide online to older journals

Faculty Focus Group, May 2002

• Proxy server & online journals wonderful; barcode access too complicated
• Online access has been the transforming experience, especially journals
• Tend to go for easiest to access online first
• Struggle for funding in scholarly publishing
• E-archiving issues
• Back issues of core journals online
• Use simple search techniques; need more intuitive searching; more Google-like.
• May not know what’s available or what’s new
• Need someone to tell them what to do
• Color printing

Electronic change your work? Your productivity?

• Absolutely. For the better. Missing a lot less things. Big improvement.
• May miss serendipitous discoveries.
• Libraries used to be leisurely. That’s changed.
• Now tremendously impatient in finding information.
• Spend more time doing things.
• Librarians valuable in teaching.

Future?

• More online journals.
• Better way to search PubMed; search engines sympathetic to need.
• People support for teaching and answering questions.