Like most other academic libraries, UCSB has established a Fall tradition of presenting orientations to library resources and services to new graduate students and faculty. The sciences and engineering librarians decided this year to focus on the electronic products and services that we can offer centering on remote access services. The library has increased the number of online databases and services accessible via the world wide web. Thousands of our undergraduate students have participated in hands-on orientations to library resources such as the databases on MELVYL Ž, the University of California's online system. We perceived a need to direct the attention of our graduate students, especially the new graduate students, and faculty to what the library offers them through electronic means. In addition to online databases, book or journal recommendations, interlibrary loan requests, and direct inter-campus borrowing requests may be accessed through the forms available on InfoSurf. However, since their introduction, the usage of these web-based forms has been relatively light compared to the in-person requests. In addition, we were eager to demonstrate enhancements such as the full text electronic journals, search capabilities of BIOSIS, and the images available on INSPEC through an IEEE/UC innovative project. In several planning conferences, the sciences and engineering librarians outlined the approach to attract as many participants as possible. We formulated our strategy. Reduced to the essentials, they are: Planning, Preparation and Publicity, Presentation and Post-workshop Evaluation.
A seismic retrofitting project required the UCSB Library (University of California, Santa Barbara) to permanently reduce its on-site collections by 120,000 volumes. To accomplish this successfully, a strong collaboration with the faculty was essential. This article describes a planning process in which the library worked with a faculty committee to implement a campus-wide survey of faculty and graduate students regarding their behaviors and preferences in accessing and using the collections. The survey outcomes informed a common understanding of which physical materials should remain on-site and which could be moved to storage with the least impact on research and teaching.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.