TTT Logo

Vol. 7, No. 1: September 15, 2000

Incorporating Technology into Academic Libraries:
New Developments on the Madison Campus

by Nolan Pope
Associate Director for Technology,
General Library System, UW-Madison

Line

Not only have libraries been using technology for three decades, many of the features envisioned in the early 1970s have become a reality. Libraries now collect information in various digital forms, along with the continually expanding number of print publications. While more and more resources are available in both print and electronic form, it is increasingly common for them to be "born digital," and for the electronic version to have more content as well as numerous links within the resource and to external sources.

The UW-Madison libraries have organized thousands of electronic resources which are accessible from a set of Web pages. Within these, the online catalog, journal indexes, electronic journals, electronic reserve materials requested by professors for individual classes, and subject guides to resources in all formats (for example, in biology) are presented and continually updated.

The UW-Madison Libraries have also digitized resources from their traditional collections to greatly improve access to students and the rest of the state's citizens (for example, see the Wisconsin Reader, filled with historical information about Wisconsin's past). The libraries have also worked with faculty from various departments to create special subject-area resources. For example, the libraries collaborated with Professor Dick Ringler of Madison's English and Scandivanian studies departments to electronically publish new books and information like Jónas Hallgrímsson, Selected Poetry and Prose. With the African studies department, the libraries created Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent. The libraries also provide links to library catalogs around the world, and participate in cooperative efforts like HealthWeb to organize Internet resources openly available to anyone.

Electronic resources present many new or more complicated issues in terms of selecting, organizing, and providing access to the University community. Some require local hosting on library and campus computers; others are accessible at remote sites. For most commercially-licensed resources, regardless of where they are physically housed, very specific access controls are required to provide access to users anywhere, as long as they are a member of the group defined in the license. While today most resources’ access control is via Internet address filtering, including using proxy servers for off-campus access, there is a growing need to move toward individual passwords. Incorporating and expanding services such as document delivery, individualizing pages of resources tailored to a person's studies and interests, storing profiles for finding new additions to electronic resources which are continually updated, accessing a person’s currently borrowed materials or interloan requests --- these not only require individual password-type access mechanisms, they introduce the need for secure transmissions and e-commerce support. Thus the directions of the UW-Madison and the UW System initiatives toward comprehensive university directory services are critical to future library services.

For the past twenty years, online catalogs have been common in most academic libraries. Online search services for databases of indexed and abstracted journal articles have grown and moved from remote computers accessed under "pay by the minute" licenses, to CDs, to locally loaded computer databases, and now largely to publisher or provider host computers with commonly used Web browser interfaces. Technology advances have finally reached the true integration of text, image, sound, and video into a single resource, accessible with tools that are affordable and omnipresent. While these are growing individually, the new techniques for linking related resources and navigating within and between resources is taking electronic library resources and services to the next level. Upon finding a citation in a database or as reference in an article, students can sometimes link to full text representation and have immediate access. As more and more publishers or commercial resources add such links and the UW Libraries incorporate the necessary tools in their technology infrastructure, these capabilities will be more and more common.

Technology capabilities, at an affordable cost, now enable libraries to digitize many of their own materials, offering much greater access and use. Materials not found in the commonly licensed commercial databases are suddenly available. Many primary resource materials and documents are being digitized and offered. However, for all the marvels and potential of such digital resources, they bring an equally daunting list of challenges. Selecting the appropriate level of digitization, identifying the necessary textual data for retrieving the image, and designing intuitive interfaces have required library staff to develop new skills and capabilities. Insuring copyright compliance, an organized and meaningful presentation of the resources, and tools for accessing, navigating and integrating materials – the traditional foundations of libraries – now must accommodate the traditional print and non-digital formats as well as the numerous new electronic ones. And while the traditional formats varied in size, shape, and equipment needed to utilize them, those same types of characteristics introduce far more variety, options, and requirements in the digital environment.

In order to provide greater access in combination with ease of use, libraries are digitizing many resources, creating subject and topical collections of information, and providing links to navigate between them and related resources. The UW-Madison libraries work collaboratively with the other UW System university libraries, as well as those in the CIC/Big Ten and other research universities to create and share more resources by avoiding duplicative efforts and providing electronic access to a greater range of resources. By exploiting new technologies, libraries have brought their long-standing commitment to resource sharing to more immediate and responsive services regardless of location.

Return to TTT Home Page