Growing Pains
“If you build it, they will come” continues to hold true for
Murphy Library this fall. In each year of the last biennium, library use, as
measured by the gate count, has jumped by 8% and 10% respectively. The pattern
is repeating this year with nearly a 14% jump in use during the first quarter.
This increased activity can be attributed in large measure to the redesign of
space on the first floor in the summer of 2006 and other improvements since then
to promote the “Library as Place.”
Enhancements made over the past summer included creating a New
Books alcove where the copiers had been located and adding to the number of
public computing stations. The rethinking about how to plan user-friendly space
has been in response to listening to our users through such measures as the
LibQUAL+ survey, which solicited faculty, student and staff feedback about
existing services and what they would like to see. The last LibQUAL+ survey was
conducted in spring of 2004. The 2007-2009 Strategic Directions for CUWL
(Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries) calls for a new LibQUAL+ survey
in the spring of 2008 to be implemented across the UW System Libraries. The 2008
survey will update user attitudes and allow a comparison against the 2004
benchmark data. What users tell us does have a significant effect on how all of
us in the Library plan for future services, collections, and facility
enhancements, and we hope to have broad campus participation in the survey next
year.
The growing demand for library services goes beyond those campus
and community users who walk through the door. With the growth in distance
education programs, the document delivery numbers, where library owned materials
are sent to the students at home in the communities where they reside, have
increased dramatically. Similarly, the interlibrary loan office has seen a
sizeable increase in interlibrary borrowing traffic the last several years. The
borrowing volume, obtaining items for our users, for last fiscal year exceeded
10,000 requests, where the number was just over 6,000 for FY04. As we grow our
student populations and programs, place a greater emphasis on student and
faculty research, internationalize the curriculum, etc., there are a number of
direct, accompanying cost factors that impact the Library.
Librarians are keeping a close eye on student FTE. In the
future, an FTE count approaching 10,000 represents a critical tipping point.
Some vendors who license library databases set prices at tiered levels
corresponding to the size of institution, and 10,000 FTE is often a key
threshold. Also, some shared UW System costs (e.g. funding for the Shared
Electronic Collection) are computed on the basis of FTE. Upward trends in
student numbers and use compound the pricing challenges librarians are faced
with each year as vendors increase the cost of library databases, periodicals,
books and other materials. One certainty is that the annual increases will be by
a margin well beyond the inflationary rate for most other goods and services.
While we can look favorably on the expanding number of Library
users and demand for library services, we need to be attuned to the accompanying
“growing pains,” and how the library, working with campus partners, will
identify resources to support efficiently and effectively these successes and
respond to the ever present inflationary pressures.
Anita
Evans, Library Director
Goodbye Social Security
Numbers
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 People
across campus and the UW System have made it clear that they prefer not to use
personal IDs based on their Social Security number (SSN). On October 25, 2007, a
campus-wide email from the Provost's Office outlined steps being taken at UW-L
to reduce reliance on SSNs. Faculty and staff were encouraged to get the new ID
cards, which are encoded with Person IDs rather than SSNs.
This is one of a series of notices that Murphy Library is providing to alert
campus that it is transitioning from the use of Social Security numbers and will
require use of the Person ID as each library user's personal identifier.
In the near future, the library will release further notifications about this
transition. In addition, the library will provide alerts and notifications at
the point of use within systems that will be affected by this change.
Beginning January 1,
2008, FACULTY and STAFF must use their Person ID number to log in to the
following systems:
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ILLiad Interlibrary Loan form
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Murphy Library Catalog: Your record, requests, etc.
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Universal Borrowing
More information can be found at
http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/logins.html.
Questions can be directed to the Murphy Library Circulation Desk at
cirser@uwlax.edu or 785-8507.
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This
semester’s sale promises to have a great selection of materials at reasonable
prices. In addition to the huge collection of mostly non-fiction titles, you’ll
find a “Collector’s Corner” assortment of rare or unusual books, some reference
books, and some non-English titles.
Look
no further than Murphy Library stacks, where science, reality, and fiction meet.
Enter the fictional realms of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King, Star Trek,
Stan Lee, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as the more realistic worlds of
the science of sports in these books that provide enlightening answers to many
significant scientific questions. 
•
Background Notes from the State Dept. provide more extensive overviews of
the people and history, government and political conditions, economy, military
affairs, and foreign relations for all countries.
August
Moon by Michael Blaser