River Campus Libraries

Location, Location, Location…Inserting Library Resources into the Course Syllabus

Stephanie Frontz, University of RochesterARLIS/NA Annual MeetingHouston, April 3, 2005sfrontz@library.rochester.edu

Location, location, location…

CoURse Resources, a relational database of major library resources and course offerings

Collaboration between faculty and librarians

What about WebCT? Relationships with other UR IT departments

Usability Testing

Formerly used Subject Guides…students didn’t think of themselves as “art historians”, etc.

UR Homepage

Library Homepage

Usability findings

Students cannot find articles Students overwhelmed with database names,

contents, and search protocols Students insist on search simplicity Library needs to eliminate the complexity of

information retrieval Technologies exist to make it simpler Politics exist to make it complex Be there, where the students are…connect to

Course Syllabus

CoURse Resources and Reserves

Select Instructor/Dept.

Select Course

CoURse Resources Page

Link to online Course Syllabus

Course Syllabus

Links to e-reserves

CoURse Resources Page

Link to online Course Syllabus

Link to Course webpage (if avail.)

Course homepage

Course Resources Page

Link to online Course Syllabus

Link to Course webpage (if avail.)

Link to faculty email

CoURse Resources Page

Link to online Course Syllabus

Link to Course webpage (if avail.)

Link to faculty email Photo/link to

librarian’s email

CoURse Resources Page

Link to online Course Syllabus

Link to Course webpage (if avail.)

Link to faculty email Photo/link to

librarian’s email Links to library

resources

Article databases

Websites

Journals

Books

Media

Staff Resource Manager

Resource Association List

Course Associations

Ask a Librarian

Results

Students USE CoURse Resources pages for access to syllabus

Students come into the libraries requesting assistance from subject specialists by name

Librarians receive email directly from students asking for assistance

Writing on Art Coursepage

Future Plans

Incorporate course clusters for easy database searching

Work with federated search vendors to produce results in relevance order

Include a “blog” tab for student comments on resources, etc.

Continue to work with ITS to gain access to WebCT coursepages

The Google challenge

UR Librarians enjoy reengineering librarianship in a Google world, and will continue to explore new approaches and applications…

Technical information

CoURse Resources/Reserves software is Open Source and available at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/libcbDemo available—contact Susan Gibbons sgibbons@library.rochester.edu

Event Recording Software = Moraehttp://www.techsmith.com/products/morae/default.asp

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