ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ April 2001 / 393 COMMUNITY & COLLABORATION A new academic library model Partnerships for learning and teaching by Hannelore B. Rader T he beginning of the new millennium can be characterized as the information age in a technology environment. Information is generated at the fastest pace ever and has become a major entity of economic develop­ ment. Countless industries and enterprises are based on information and information tech­ nologies. Many people proclaim themselves to be “information ex­ perts,” and the Internet and the Web are often assumed to be the “li­ brary” of the 21st cen­ tury. Where does that leave libraries and the li­ brary profession? During the past de­ cade, librarians and in­ formation professionals have been concerned about the many changes caused by the electronic information environ­ ment, and they have at­ tempted to deal with this changing situation. Professional organizations, consortia, and schools of library and information science have begun to reform themselves to success­ fully handle the new information environ­ ment. An example of one of the more than 500 classes taught in the University of Louisville Libraries annually to instruct honor students in information skills. This group of honor students is involved in resource-based learning. As part of these reform movements, the ALA, the Special Library Association, various regional groups, and various professional schools are developing new and revised com­ petencies for the profession in special, school, public and academic library settings. Such work needs to con­ tinue to ensure that the library and infor­ mation professions remain viable, ener­ getic, and ready to assume leadership positions in the infor­ mation environment of the 21st century. In the November 2000 issue of C&RL News, Carla Stoffle and others discussed how academic librar­ ies and librarianship should be rein­ vented.1 They listed 17 challenges for aca­ demic libraries and how these challenges can be met. They de­ scribed the scholarly communication envi­ ronment and academic librarians’ role within it, and they provided ten axioms for academic librarians to help them be successful in this new century. Most important, the article ad­ About the author Hannelore B. Rader is university librarian at the University of Louisville, e-mail: h.rader@louisville.edu mailto:h.rader@louisville.edu 394 / C&RL News ■ April 2001 dressed the impact of the external environ­ ment on libraries and librarians and provided some guidance on how to deal with that. There are many noteworthy examples of how academic librarians are addressing their many professional challenges in higher edu­ cation. Librarians at the University of Louis­ ville (UL) provide one of the successful sce­ narios where through a variety of partner­ ships the libraries have become more cen­ tered within the campus teaching and learn­ ing community. Some of the initiatives de­ scribed are small, some are large, some are less significant, some are more significant. However, all of them have helped the librar­ ies become more visible on campus and in the community; more involved in teaching, learning, and research; and, ultimately, more effective in producing positive learning out­ comes. UL is Kentucky’s Metropolitan Re­ search University with ambitious goals for education and research, which are fully sup­ ported by the libraries. Partnerships with faculty Forming partnerships with faculty has been a goal for academic librarians for a long time. Librarians support teaching, learning, and re­ search by building collections, providing elec­ tronic information access, and offering pro­ active library services and integrated information skills instruction. At UL, librar­ ians who are members of the faculty have begun to form strong partnerships with a sig­ nificant number of their teaching colleagues. The Library Liaison Program, in existence for several years, connects all librarians with rel­ evant faculty departments for the purpose of collection development and information lit­ eracy instruction. • Information literacy. Librarians pro­ vide approximately 500 sessions of curricu­ lum-integrated information literacy instruction a year to more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students, particularly in the health sciences, music, art, business, chemistry, edu­ cation, engineering, social work, and English. They have created information literacy com­ petencies for the different levels based on ACRL’s “Information Literacy Competencies Standards for Higher Education,” adopted in January 2001. They have incorporated active learning techniques in their information skills instruction. Working closely with the faculty, librarians have integrated a required compo­ nent of information literacy instruction in the honors program and the undergraduate re­ quirements. • Distance education (www.louisville. edu/library/dlls). The Office of Distance Learning Library Services (DLLS) supports 20 distance education programs, particularly in business, education, engineering, and social work offered by UL in Kentucky and univer­ sities and colleges in other parts of the coun­ try and the world. The courses use satellite television, interactive video-conferencing, and the Web as onsite teaching at off-campus lo­ cations. The majority of the programs are at the graduate level, including a doctoral pro­ gram in social work. The distance education librarian works with faculty to prepare dis­ tance education courses, trains faculty in in­ formation literacy matters, and provides in­ formation and instructional support for the approximately 3,000 students enrolled in these programs as far away as Athens, Cairo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Panama, and San Salvador. • Faculty development. In 2000, the Delphi Center, a faculty development center that helps faculty to bring technology into their teaching and to develop online courses and programs, was relocated into the main library. Librarians are beginning to work with faculty as they restructure their courses and programs to teach in the electronic environ­ ment. The libraries created DLLS within the center to work more closely with faculty de­ velopment for distance education. • Writing Center. The Writing Center, part of the College of Arts and Sciences, was moved into the main library in 2000. The library works with Writing Center personnel to support the students using the center to improve their writing skills related to term papers, essays, theses, proposals, résumés, and others. • Metropolitan College. Metropolitan College is the result of a partnership between the university and the United Parcel Service to provide higher education opportunities for UPS employees. The libraries are participat­ ing through the Metro Computer Laboratory, a state-of-the-art computer facility for all stu­ dents to learn computer skills, prepare their course work, and do research under the guid­ ance of library-trained assistants. http://www.louisville C&RL News ■ April 2001 / 395 • Research (scholars’ qualifications). Librarians partner with the Research Office to evaluate the university’s scholars qualifications, grant support, and research support for the university’s more than 70 endowed chairs. • Assessment. The libraries are part­ nering with all academic units to assess edu­ cational outcomes. Working with an external company, survey instruments have been de­ veloped including appropriate library infor­ mation. The libraries have also developed their own instruments for various campus groups. The first batch of surveys has been collected and summarized. The results of these surveys have been most encouraging in terms of student outcomes related to li­ brary and information skills. Partnerships in the health sciences The Health Sciences Library supports the health sciences campus units—den­ tistry, nursing, and medicine—and has built strong partner­ ship over the years with various con­ stituents. • Initiatives with the hospi­ tals. The library has worked with the three municipal hospitals to share resources and train­ ing. A strong part­ nership has been formed with the university hospital to administer that library under contract. A partnership with another hospital has enabled its library to become part of the libraries’ Endeavor system. The three hospitals have an informal consortium for joint purchasing of health care databases and electronic journals. • IAIMS grant for informatics. The li­ brary has worked with all constituents on the health sciences campus—dentistry, nursing, allied health, and medicine—to obtain a two- year Integrated Advanced Information Man­ agement System (IAIMS) grant from the Na­ tional Library of Medicine. The purpose of the grant is to plan for the integrated use of health care information for Hannelore Rader teaches in a state-of-the-art electronic class at the University of Louisville (UL) Ekstrom Library, the Information Literacy graduate course for the University of Kentucky (UK) School of Library and Information Science. Offering classes at a distance is part of the UK-UL partnership. the support of education, research, clinical care, community health, and consumer health. All health care-related organizations in the greater Louisville area are being included in the joint effort. Partnerships on campus Opportunities arise regularly to form more and new partnerships on campus, and the UL librarians have begun to take advantage of them. • Students. The libraries work closely with student government groups to address their information needs and to ensure that they have appropriate access to libraries and library information. Adding a first-class coffee bar in the main library, lending laptops to students, extending library hours, doing a joint student survey, and general student satisfaction and regular in­ creases in library use are but a few of the outcomes from the student-librar­ ian partnership. • Information technology. Keep­ ing the library on the cutting edge of technology in terms of comput­ ers, software, net­ works, training, and security is based on a strong partnership be­ tween personnel in information technology and the university libraries tech­ nology office. The libraries’ client server sys­ tem, Endeavor, is jointly administered by the two units, not only for UL but also the west­ ern half of Kentucky, another partnership. Partnership with business For more than 15 years, the libraries have had a partnership with General Electric Ap­ pliance Park in Louisville to administer its library and information services through con­ tractual arrangements. Partnership with other libraries Cooperative ventures among libraries have long been a strong component of library work 396 / C&RL News ■ April 2001 in Kentucky. In recent years, such ventures have been increased as follows: • Partnerships with public and school libraries. The UL libraries have worked with the Jefferson County Schools’ Media Centers and the Louisville Free Public Library (LFPL) on a variety of projects. —Professional education: The shortage of librarians in the Louisville area is acute— and the university libraries have worked with the school media centers and the public libraries to bring two-thirds of the library and informa­ tion science program from the University of Kentucky to the University of Louisville. Li­ brarians from the university and the public li­ brary teach most of these classes in the uni­ versity libraries. Some classes are taught through videoconferencing. Thanks to this partnership, the university libraries were able to establish a minority librarian internship in reference where the individual works full-time in the library while completing a master’s de­ gree in library and information science. —Managerial training: LFPL has con­ tracted with the university libraries to pro­ vide a yearlong management training pro­ gram for beginning public library managers in cooperation with the university’s School of Business. —Information literacy training: The uni­ versity libraries are working with the librar­ ians in the school and public libraries to help them develop their instructional expertise to teach information skills. —Archival preservation: University archivists are working with LFPL to train them in preserv­ ing important African-American archives. —Metroversity: Metroversity is a consor­ tium of all academic institutions, public and private, in the Louisville and Indiana areas to support higher education and workforce de­ velopment. The academic and public librar­ ies have formed their own council to address the information needs of students and the public. Through resource-sharing of informa­ tion using interlibrary loan, special loan privi­ leges, and Web sites, the libraries are con­ tributing to area educational goals. • Kentucky Virtual Library (www. kyvl. org). The Kentucky Virtual Library was started in 1999 as a consortium of all libraries in Kentucky—private, public, state, academic, school, public, and special. The purpose is support for distance education, support for the Kentucky Virtual University, information­ sharing, access to electronic databases, refer­ ence, and Web-based tutorials for learning information skills electronically. • Kentucky Union List of Periodicals. Since 1968, UL has maintained a union list of serials. In 1972, this project evolved into the state­ wide Kentucky Union List of Serials (KULS) with the assistance of federal funding administered by the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Ar­ chives. Currently, the union list contains over 179,000 holdings from more than 200 public, academic, and special libraries in Kentucky. Between 1993 and 1997, the database was moved from a mainframe at the university to OCLC’s Union Listing Module. Among the many benefits of this change was the oppor­ tunity it extended to Kentucky Library Net­ work members to process their own hold­ ings records through their established con­ nections to OCLC. Regular training is pro­ vided to interested libraries. Librarians across the state have created an important resource­ sharing and reference tool for all individuals interested in Kentucky’s library collections. Conclusion Based on UL’s limited experience with part­ nerships involving academic libraries, this seems to be a good direction in which to move at the beginning of the 21st century. Both Carla Stoffle and Emily Mobley advocate that academic librarians need to be aggressive, able to take risks, and look outside their specific library environment to continue to be success­ ful in this competitive information age.2 They must be aware of, and not intimidated by, the competition from such diverse areas as the NetLibrary, e-learning groups, e-information providers, and others. Academic libraries in the 21st century will continue to be major play­ ers in education and the center for teaching, learning, and research on their campuses if they use their unique and specialized exper­ tise, think out of the box, reach out to form new partnerships, and achieve measurable educational outcomes. Note 1. Carla Stoffle, Barbara Allen, Janet Fore, and Emily R. Mobley, “Predicting the Future: What Does Academic Librarianship Hold in Store?” C&RL News 61, no. 10 (Nov. 2000); 894-901. ■ C&RL News ■ April 2001 / 397 C&RL News ■ April 2001 / 399