Joan Giesecke

Institutional Repositories: Keys to Success

ABSTRACT Institutional repositories are a relatively new activity for higher education. They are defined most often as a set of services that are offered by an institution for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the members of the institution or scholarly community. This article will describe the challenges institutions are facing in creating repositories, will explore the economics of managing repositories, and will offer a model for creating a successful set of service.

Finding the Right Metaphor: Restructuring, Realigning, and Repackaging Today's Research Libraries

ABSTRACT To change from collection-centric to user-centered research libraries and to survive in tough economic times, libraries face 2 major challenges: 1st, libraries need to change how they are viewed by their constituencies so they are seen as indispensable; and 2nd, libraries need to help the librarians and staff change their own mental models of their roles to remain relevant in these changing times. Metaphors are one way to help people connect terms in new ways so they develop new images of those terms. For more than 100 years, libraries have used metaphors to seek connections that will help people see libraries as something other than warehouses for books. This article will explore various metaphors being used in the library field and how these metaphors can help libraries introduce change to improve their chances of receiving the support needed to survive.

The Value of Partnerships: Building New Partnerships for Success

ABSTRACT In todays economy, higher education institutions are struggling to maintain quality while functioning with fewer resources. For libraries, the economic situation is compounded by the impact of an information marketplace that is characterized by prices for resources that increase at 7 to 10% per year, and by near and actual monopolies controlling content. Added to the complexities of the marketplace are the demands of a faculty and student body that prefer individual actions to group efforts. These economic and social issues can become real barriers to innovation, quality improvement, and successful services for todays libraries. One way to combat the economic and social environment is by creating new and improved partnerships to leverage resources and share expertise in order to provide better services and access to wider collections. But forming partnerships is not easy. This paper will review the characteristics of successful partnership as developed by the Gallup Corporation and will show how these values can be used in the academic library environment to create opportunities for success.

Scenario Planning: A Tool for Academic Health Sciences Libraries

OBJECTIVE Review the International Campaign to Revitalise Academic Medicine (ICRAM) Future Scenarios as a potential starting point for developing scenarios to envisage plausible futures for health sciences libraries. METHOD At an educational workshop, 15 groups, each composed of four to seven Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) directors and AAHSL/NLM Fellows, created plausible stories using the five ICRAM scenarios. RESULTS Participants created 15 plausible stories regarding roles played by health sciences librarians, how libraries are used and their physical properties in response to technology, scholarly communication, learning environments and health care economic changes. CONCLUSIONS Libraries are affected by many forces, including economic pressures, curriculum and changes in technology, health care delivery and scholarly communications business models. The future is likely to contain ICRAM scenario elements, although not all, and each, if they come to pass, will impact health sciences libraries. The AAHSL groups identified common features in their scenarios to learn lessons for now. The hope is that other groups find the scenarios useful in thinking about academic health science library futures.

Using LibQUAL+™ to improve services to library constituents: a preliminary report on the University of Nebraska‐Lincoln experience

Participation in the Spring 2001 LibQUAL+™ research and development project has helped the University Libraries at the University of Nebraska‐Lincoln (UNL) to better serve its main user groups. An in‐depth investigation of the UNL LibQUAL+™ survey results is currently underway. This investigation is ongoing and results will inform future planning efforts of the university libraries. Concurrently, the libraries have been able to make changes to services during the past year as a direct result of the LibQUAL+™ data. This paper will report on the libraries’ first efforts to address areas where perceptions of service differed from patron expectations, and will indicate plans for future efforts.

Toward Nebraska's statewide electronic library: planning the future

The National Science Foundation (NSF) planning grant for

Transitioning to the learning organization

100,000 administered by the University of Nebraska and the Nebraska Library Commission, addresses two key barriers to the implementation of an electronic library in Nebraska: compatibility of network systems, and training for end users. Moreover the project is designed to identify and prioritize content that should be available through the network to support education, economic development, and life-long learning goals for Nebraskans. The grant period is November, 1994 through October, 1995.