Fine Print Fall 2006 Murphy Library UW-La Crosse

Library First Floor now CLIC!

Reg Carr, Director of University Library Services & Bodley's Librarian at University of Oxford, wrote in a 2006 Ariadne article of the importance of academic librarians listening closely to their users. We, according to Carr, need to go beyond assuming we know what users need and ask—what do users want? The LibQUAL+ Survey Murphy Library conducted spring term 2004 did exactly that: it solicited user feedback on perceptions of library collections, services and facilities. One strong message from survey responses was that students wanted more collaborative study spaces.

Collaborative Learning Information Commons

Why not transform the first floor to create a collaborative learning space? Use statistics for the bound periodicals collections on first floor showed steadily declining usage of that collection over the last 5 years as the number of online resource subscriptions, including online periodicals, increased. By transferring the bound collection to the basement and shifting the current periodicals, we could open up some “prime real estate” on the first floor for other purposes. A team of librarians, Jen Holman, Galadriel Chilton and Stefan Smith, composed a Lab Modernization funding request which would create the Collaborative Learning Information Commons (CLIC), a wireless student learning environment for group work featuring Gateway tablet PCs, checked out at the Circulation Desk; updated printers; a scanning station; and lounge furniture reading clusters. The CLIC project funding package was enhanced with earmarked Library Endowment monies

Collaborative Learning Information Commons

To make this happen, there was much behind the scenes work—and visible disruption!--over the summer months. The Periodicals Department staff used a software program to project how much space to allocate for periodical runs as periodical titles from compact shelving and the first floor were merged. Bonnie Daines, who oversaw the periodicals move, estimates that over 58,768 bound volumes were shifted in the process. Personnel from the Physical Plant including Ron Button undertook the massive task of disassembling and reassembling shelving. A side bonus of the periodicals shift has been that residual shelving was added to the 2nd floor stack capacity. Everyone in the Library was involved at some point in the project.

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Inside this issue:	First Floor Frankfurt to La Crosse Library Commissions Artwork Honor with Books Fun U.S. Documents Titles Controlling Interlibrary Loan Costs Thanking Donors UW System Borrowing Expanded Link to the Library
Library Hours Telephone Directory Support Opportunities Past Issues

Frankfurt to La Crosse: a German scholar researches Special Collections

Elizabeth Althauser, a professor from the University of Frankfurt in Germany, was at UW-La Crosse in September on a faculty exchange program to assist German language classes and conduct research. Jay Lokken, director of the UW-L International Education Office, brought Professor Althauser to Special Collections in search of a possible research topic. Special Collections staff member Linda Sondreal initially directed her to the Nordstern, a German language newspaper published in La Crosse from 1856-1921.

Further research by Ms. Sondreal led to a special anniversary issue of the Nordstern published in 1906 in honor of the 50th anniversary of La Crosse’s city charter. Professor Althauser began reading this 100 page edition and discovered it contained detailed information about the city including poems, political articles, pictures and local ads – all in German. She decided to make the translation of the newspaper her research topic and for the next several weeks came in daily to Special Collections. This effort was especially opportune since the City of La Crosse was in the midst of celebrating its sesquicentennial, or 150th birthday, as a city. “On the occasion of the sesquicentennial of the City of La Crosse, it is perfect timing for these documents to be translated,” noted Jay Lokken. Plans were made for her to present the results of her research to La Crosse Mayor Mark Johnsrud as a press conference. Special Collections staff were invited and attended the ceremony at City Hall on September 28 where Althauser discussed the contents of the paper, read some of the poems, and gave the Mayor copies of her translations.

Time did not permit Professor Althauser to finish translating all that she wanted from the Nordstern special issue, so she was allowed to take digital images of portions of the paper. She plans to continue her research back in Germany and hopes that in the future other scholars from the University of Frankfurt will come to UW-L to continue researching and translating the German-American documents. She plans to work with German language faculty at UW-L and scholars at the University of Frankfurt to use articles from the Nordstern for students learning German as a second language, as well as to teach students about the use of German in 19th and early 20th century Wisconsin.

Paul Beck Special Collections Librarian & Director, La Crosse Area Research Center

Honor with Books Program

Now there is a way to honor those avid readers in your life. This fall Murphy Library launched the Honor with Books program where donors can recognize friends, relatives, students or members of the faculty and staff by contributing a tax-deductible gift of $50 to the Murphy Library Endowment Fund. A customized bookplate with the honoree and donor’s names will be placed in a recently purchased book in a broad subject area of the donor’s choice. Cataloging staff will add the names for each gift to the online catalog record for the designated book so the names will be displayed electronically. A notification of the gift can be sent to the honoree.

It’s a tribute that will connect the honoree and donor to the university and library for years to come while benefiting current and future generations of students.

Librarians and staff are engaged each day in initiatives that improve learning resources and spaces for university students and other library users. The Library Endowment is a critical piece in funding these initiatives that continue to move the library forward.

For more information about Murphy Library’s Honor with Books program, contact the Administrative Office at 5-8520 or check the Library’s Honor with Books website.

Anita Evans, Library Director

The Fine Print

We hope you enjoy this electronic version of the Murphy Library Fine Print Newsletter.

The Fine Print is being made available primarily as an electronic publication.

Please let us know if you have comments or suggestions on how to improve The Fine Print.

The Fine Print is published fall and spring terms for UW-La Crosse faculty, staff, students, and friends of Murphy Library.

Stefan Smith
Editor

Paul Beck
Department Chair

Anita Evans, Library Director

Murphy Library
University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
1631 Pine Street
La Crosse, WI 54601

Fun Titles in U.S. Government Documents

Are all government documents staid, dusty old tomes that can be utilized as effective sleep aids? Would you believe that your government has a sense of humor? Check out some of these U.S. government document titles. Each of the following works is available for check-out at Murphy Library:

Cooking Up Solutions: Cleaning Up with Lasagna
National Money Laundering Strategy
The Golden Age of Bathing
Sprocket Man
After the Cold War: Living with Lower Defense Spending
Elder Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation : Are We Doing Enough?
Index of Blank Forms
Let's Use TV!
Out of the Vapors: a Social and Architectural History of Bathhouse Row
PMS Blue Book
Patents in Space
Plane Clothes: Lack of Anonymity at the Federal Air Marshal Service Compromises Aviation and National Security
Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002 (a.k.a. RAVE Act of 2002)
Virtual Cement and Concrete Testing Laboratory Consortium, Annual Report

Credit must be given to participants on the national GOVDOC-L email list for compiling an extensive collection of titles like these, and to the folks at Free Government Information (FGI) for compiling the contributions to that thread and making them available at http://freegovinfo.info/best. Visit that site for many additional great titles in government documents.

Michael Current, Government Information Public Services Librarian

Interlibrary Loan: How You Can Help to Control Costs

Interlibrary loan has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade. Fueled by a number of factors, not the least being improved service, interlibrary loan usage, at current rates, will double every three years.

More library staff time and fiscal resources are directed to meet this demand. Staff time has not increased at the same rate as transaction numbers, and expense per transaction has declined.

Other polices and procedures have been implemented to control costs. Interlibrary Loan book requests are transferred to Universal Borrowing when possible. Sophisticated automated routing rules direct interlibrary loans to targeted queues for more effective processing. But even with these and other time and cost saving processes, total ILL costs continue to rise.

Are there any steps that could be taken by the library to temper demand? One obvious solution is to charge for the service or limit the number of requests one patron can have actively in service at any given time. We are trying to avoid creating these types of barriers to a service that has tremendous value to library users.

Other action steps could be taken by faculty to encourage responsible use of Interlibrary Loan by students. They include, but are not limited to:

Encourage students to use the service judiciously. Help them narrow their topic before proceeding with a shotgun approach toward collecting literature.
For those library assignments requiring students to identify just a few good resources, ask them to limit to items in the library.
Spread research topics out over a broad range of subjects so that an entire class of students is not requesting articles from the same journals. Our most costly interlibrary loan transactions involve paying copyright fees, which occur after the fifth article request in any calendar year from any given title (five years old or less) that we do not currently subscribe to. Certain journal titles cost us thousands of dollars each year in copyright fees. This is costly, but still cheaper than subscribing to the journal.

Interlibrary loan is a core library service. It brings the world’s libraries within reach of the researcher. With shrinking journal subscriptions, it allows for access, if not ownership. We are happy to see this service being used. Help us protect this service from possible restrictions by encouraging students to use it often when appropriate, and not at all when it is not.

Randy Hoelzen, Reference and Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Librarian

Thanking Donors

Murphy Library wishes to extend its sincere appreciation to all of those who have donated books this past year. Each donation greatly improves the library's collections in many ways such as broadening the diversity of subject offerings and allowing the library to stretch its purchasing power.

Thank You Donors!
Patricia Ardovino	Tim Gerber	Betsy Morgan
Lynn Bartsch	Doug Hastad	Charissa Niedziecki
Kevin Becker	Ed Hill	Randy Paine
Sara Bentley	Jenifer Holman	Cris Prucha
Heidi Blanke	Deb Hoskins	Jon and Marcy Ruesch
Pat Brunet	John Jax	Marjorie Schroeder
Dr. Patrick Conway	Joe Jax	Constance Scofield
Bonnie Daines	Paul Kletzke	Eleanor Seelow
Ron Deiss	Kent Koppelman	Paul and Carol Stoelting
William Doering	Ginny Kreyer	Michele Strange
Dr. Phil Doescher	Karen Lange	Walter Susdorf
Anita Evans	Jay Lokken	Cyndi Taylor
Phillip Gaustad	Moni McCarty	Curtis and Yvonne Theines
John Gardner	Lisa Mohr	John Wochos
		Becky Yoshizumi

How do I donate items to Murphy Library?

Donations can either be dropped off at the library or picked up at your office or home. Please call (608) 785-8509 to schedule a donation pick up or drop off. Donations can be picked up during normal business hours.

What happens to materials after they are donated?

Once donations are received at the library, the donations are counted and sorted. As the sorted materials are reviewed, the staff decides which materials will be added to the library’s collections, which will be offered to other UW System campuses, and which will be sold in the twice annual book sale. Materials given to the book sale will be sold to help raise funds for the Library. Books that are added to the collection are either replacements for missing books or books needed to expand the Library's collection.

Thank you for your interest in Murphy Library’s book donation program.

John Jax & Karen Lange
Collection & Resource Development Department

UW System Borrowing Expanded

The loan period for materials borrowed directly from other UW-System libraries has been increased from 28 days to one semester for faculty. This applies only to book materials, not videos or DVD's, requested through Murphy Library’s Universal Borrowing system.

Universal Borrowing allows UW-L faculty, staff, and students to borrow circulating materials such as books and videos from the other UW-System libraries. People submit their own requests through the Murphy Library catalog, and materials are delivered directly to the circulation desk at Murphy Library within 2-4 days. It also allows people from UW-L to use their campus ID to borrow books in person at any other UW library. Learn more about Universal Borrowing at http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/ub/index.html.

Create a link to a library web page!

Many web pages on campus link to the Murphy Library web site. Some link to the library’s home page, others link to other Murphy Library web pages. Librarians encourage this cross linking and are available to help people find and formulate links.

Examples of pages that you might wish to link to include:

The library home page. Simply point to this URL to bring students quickly to the library's virtual front door: http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/

The library's web page for Graduate Students. To meet the special needs of graduate students: http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/gradstudents/

The library's web page for Distance Learners. Provides links to everything from document delivery to the library's toll-free phone number: http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/distance/

Subject Resources pages. There is a subject resources page for just about every campus major. These pages include quick links to the most relevant resources for each major: http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/subject/

Individual databases. Great for individual course websites. When linking to individual databases, make sure the link is copied from the referring web page rather than from the database’s address bar. Otherwise, the link will not go through the library’s proxy server and students will not get off-campus access. Contact us for help with this!

Government resources. The library has an excellent collection of government resources arranged by broad subject areas. Look for a page relevant to your discipline: http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/subject/government.htm

Library guides or informational pages. For example, the “Citation Guides” page could appear on just about any page relevant to students who need to write papers and formulate reference lists. http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/citations.html

The library has dozens of pages that may be useful links on your UW-L web sites. Browse the Murphy Library web site, find links, and let us know if you have questions.

Stefan Smith, Outreach Librarian

Library First Floor now CLIC, continued from above

Consultations with Jim Jorstad, Educational Technologies, in late spring led to choosing Herman Miller multi-table configurations successfully employed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Library. Herman Miller Caper chairs with casters give students mobility to cluster around a laptop in small groups. The furniture adds to both the usability and aesthetics of the space which now has open sight lines and visible windows from the study spaces.

How have students responded to the new design? Typical student comments are: I am “personally very excited,” and the newly designed space is “really cool.” The tablet PCs have been popular with the students; in just over a month, students have checked out the 6 tablet PCs 258 times. Students have gravitated to the new space, and the new Herman Miller furniture is often occupied—even early in the morning. Further input from student will be solicited through quick onsite and web surveys as a library team works on the next phase which will feature a rolling cart and monitor for work on group presentations, additional furniture, and artwork (see the story on Matt Duckett).

While students are accessing more information digitally and using the virtual library 24/7, “Library as place,” is becoming an even more important aspect of their learning and social experiences. We will continue to be attuned to how students studying and learning patterns are changing and how to design flexible library spaces which adapt to these trends.

Anita Evans, Library Director