ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries October 1993/507 Setting up a traveling reserve reference collection By Susan D ou ghty Raschke A practical solution to the accessibility problem R egis University’s extended campus course offerings include a non-traditional MBA program offered through the School of Profes­ sional Studies and geared to the needs of w ork­ ing professional adults. Students complete ten courses from six different areas of emphasis. Two courses per 14-week semester are usually taken at a time, with each class meeting once per week. The MBA program is increasingly being of­ fered to small communities that do not have convenient access to academic libraries. A so­ lution was needed to make the library services for these users “equitable with [those] provided to the on-campus community.”1 A nalyzing the problem A courier/FAX service is already available for regular circulating materials and interlibrary loan. But what about non-circulating reference materials? Many of the MBA extended campus students needed to be able to consult various reference tools on a regular basis; faxing of a few pages w ould not meet these user’s needs. Ideally, it w ould be advantageous to have a collection of materials available at each loca­ tion, but space and financial restraints prevent this option. Classes are typically small and ro­ tated throughout communities on about a two- year cycle or w henever there are enough stu­ dents interested to begin a session. A permanent collection cannot therefore be justified. Dayton Memorial Library has successfully served the special needs of patrons in prisons through a traveling reserve collection; thus the idea of the “traveling reference reserve collec­ tion” was conceived. Regis has initiated sev­ eral formal cooperative agreements betw een its academic library and extended site public or community college libraries to provide a variety of library services that include operat­ ing a reserve desk for students. The traveling collections could either be h o u sed at 1) a nearby public or community college library; 2) an offsite Regis location with an administrative staff; or 3) with the professor teaching the course. The solution: Step b y step A meeting with the dean of the School for Pro­ fessional Studies ensured support for the trav­ eling collection. In addition, the dean offered to see that courses at the various extended sites are scheduled so that the same course is not taught at two remote locations during the same time period until such time that more than one traveling collection can be supported. To decide which items should be included in the collection, several key MBA faculty mem­ bers were consulted as well as the librarian directly responsible for business reference col­ lection development. To save funds, an agreement was made with the Reference Department for certain serial pur­ chases to add newest updates to the on-cam­ pus reference collection, and move the newly outdated serial to the traveling collection. For example, Standard & Poor’s Industry Sumeys is received quarterly; the traveling collection will receive the newly outdated quarterly is­ sues. Students may call toll-free to the refer­ ence desk of the on-campus library for assis­ tance, so it was decided that all the materials in the traveling collection w ould be duplicates Susan Doughty Raschke, formerly o f Regis University, is head o f interlibrary services, Texas A&M University, e-ma il: sraschke@tamu. edu 5 0 8 /C&RL News of titles held in the regular business reference collection. A preliminary list of titles was generated. All MBA faculty w ere then sent a letter explain­ ing w hy the traveling collection was being de­ veloped along with a list of the items already suggested. Faculty w ere asked to identify by course title which of the items supported the needs of the courses they currently taught and to supply information about other items that they felt w ere necessary to add to the collec­ tion or desired for the future. Fifty-six percent of faculty responded to the questionnaire. The list of titles was ordered. As the materi­ als came in, they w ere processed in such a way that they w ere identified as copies to the main collection, and checked out indefinitely to ex­ tended campus operations. If the materials are not in use at an extended site they can be checked back in, used, and housed at the main library facility. In practice As the semester schedule of courses becom es available, the extended campus librarian checks the course offering against the list of reserve items needed to support the course previously provided by the MBA professor. Telephone follow-up ensures feedback from professors about new courses or those that w ere not in­ cluded in the survey. Cooperating public or community college libraries, facility coordina­ tors, or professors are contacted at each remote site and arrangements made to place the items on reserve and to collect usage statistics. Usage statistics will be important feedback tools. Some more heavily used titles may need to be ordered in duplicate. For example, Price W aterhouse donated a set of the handy Doing Business In . . . guides which provide an un ­ derstanding of the business environm ents of various countries. In the survey, professors in­ dicated that the guides w ould be useful to at least seven different courses. A perm anent budget allows serial titles to be renew ed and new items to be added to the collection as appropriate. Approximately 75% of the collection includes serials and govern­ m ent docum ents that will need to be purchased on a continuing basis. The budget for the col­ lection is expected to remain near the same each year, with a percentage added annually to reflect price increases. , Reference services at the main campus li­ brary support the collection through toll-free telephone, e-mail, and fax for 80 hours of a 95- hours-per-w eek schedule. W hen special assis­ tance is needed, the extended campus librar­ ian is a v a ila b le to p ro v id e b ib lio g ra p h ic instruction at the rem ote site classroom or by telephone. To publicize the collection, the extended campus newsletter distributed to faculty, ad­ ministrators, and students identifies new hold­ ings that are added to the traveling collection. Faculty receive a list of which items have been ordered to enhance the courses they are teach­ ing, and are contacted on a regular basis to ensure that the collection remains up-to-date. Conclusion The traveling collection is one of a num ber of ways librarians have found to successfully sup­ port extended campus students. The collection also provides a solution for some of the ac­ c re d ita tio n co n c ern s raise d by H o w ard L. Simmons such as accessibility to library re­ sources by extended campus patrons. “. . . some accreditors insist on discrete on-site library col­ lections for all off-campus programs, most en­ courage and will allow alternatives as long as they are comparable to those available to on- cam pus students.”2 In 1990 the Taskforce to Review the Guidelines for Extended Campus Library Services found that most agencies w ere not yet aware of the ACRL guidelines. Although there are currently no published norms against which extended campus library service pro­ grams are m easured,3 extended campus librar­ ians must prom ote the guidelines and assess how well their institutions m eet them. As ex­ tended campus librarians w ork with their ac­ crediting agencies, such norms should evolve. The process described above may be used as a m odel for other remote-site programs seeking to improve library support to extended campuses. Notes 1 Association of College and Research Li­ braries, Task Force to Review the Guidelines for E xtended Campus Library Services (1990), “ACRL G uidelines for Extended Campus Li­ brary Services,” C&RL News, 51, (April 1990): 354. 2 Howard L. Simmons, “Accreditation Expec­ tations for Library Support of Off-Campus Pro­ gram s,” Library’ Trends, 39, (Spring 1991): 396. 3 Lynn LaBrake-Harrison, “Extended Cam­ pus Library Services: Guidelines or Standards?” Library Trends, 39, (Spring 1991): 385. ■ October 1993/509