ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries April 1987 / 181 With a little help from our friends By Eileen Chalfoun Coordinator of Research & Information Services Community College of Vermont Library services at the Com m unity College o f Vermont. I n December of 1986, Vermont’s governor, Mad- eleine M. Kunin, officially cut the computer rib­ bon which activated the state’s Automated Library System. This momentous occasion marked a mile­ stone in the joint planning efforts of the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Vermont State Col­ leges, Middlebury College, and the University of Vermont to bring the “online catalog” and auto­ mated circulation to the citizens of the state of Ver­ mont. The Governor noted that the “machine age has begun in earnest.”1 Community College of Vermont (CCV), one of the five state colleges, has awaited this event with great anxiousness, and yet a proper dose of scepti­ cism. For the past three years the College has been trying to address the problem of providing library services to approximately 3,000 students, 400 in­ structors and 75 staff members located in regional sites and widely dispersed throughout the state. CCV has no central campus and no campus li­ brary. It is a statewide, open admissions, two-year school serving primarily adult learners through in­ dividualized programs of study. The College offers a self-designed associate degree and serves approxi­ mately 3,000 students each semester. Its academic pro g ram and stu d e n t services are delivered through twelve regional offices located around the state. These regional offices are operated by Col­ lege staff who coordinate the College’s curriculum locally, hire part-time teachers, and advise stu­ dents. 1“Governor Cuts Ribbon on C om puter,” De­ partment of Libraries News, January 1987, p. 1. The regional offices, called “sites,” are located in downtown areas easily accessible to students. Each site office is staffed by at least one Coordinator of Instruction and Advisement, as well as support staff. Site offices house classrooms and a small ref­ erence library, and most are near a public or re­ gional state library facility. The problem was obvious. How could library services be provided to such a decentralized assort­ ment of patrons? Some librarians have prophesied that the “ways in which technology can and should be applied are fruitful topics for wide discussion. This is a classic case of more heads being better than one.”2 In CCV’s case, with a little help from friends, three years of planning, and commitments to networking within the state, a unique and excit­ ing system of library service was developed to serve our staff, instructors and students. And it could not have been accomplished without the wonders of modern technology. In 1982 the State College Library project began quietly. A system-wide Assessment Group was as­ sembled by the Chancellor of the five Vermont State Colleges to conduct a detailed assessment of library and information services. How to provide library services to Community College of Vermont students was one of the driving forces in this joint planning project. Assessment Group membership consisted of representatives of each of the five state colleges, and the assessment process took into con­ sideration the quality and quantity of collections as 2Karen Horny, “Managing Change,” Library Journal, October 1, 1985, p.58. 182 / C&RL News well as ratings of how they support each college’s general education program. The assessment took nearly a year, and in July 1983 the Group produced a 38-page report for the Board of Trustees proving that the Vermont State Colleges’ libraries were weak when compared to ACRL standards.3 The next step was for the Chan­ cellor to appoint a system–wide Task Force on Li­ brary Development in the Fall of 1983 to address the following recommendations: 1) there should be parity between on-campus and off-campus programs in requirements for and use of library/information resources; 2) the system will have a single, joint online cata­ log as one node in a network also including the Uni­ versity of Vermont, Middlebury College, and the State Departm ent of Libraries; 3) increased reference services will include refer­ ence librarians for the Community College of Ver­ mont; 4) a joint serials list will be developed; 5) there will be a five-year coordinated collec­ tion catch-up program to add 15,000 volumes per year to system holdings, including small reference collections for CCV site offices. Costs were projected to be $2.6 million in one­ time (capital) funds and increments to the annual operating budget to total $561,000. It is now four years later, and Community Col­ lege is able to offer an unusual variety of library ser­ vices to its patrons. The first step was collections. Twelve site refer­ ence collections were begun in the spring of 1985, and further developed during the following year bringing the volume total to approximately 7,000 in 1987 (about 600 per site office). They may be generally described as reference collections cover­ ing all sections of the Dewey classification system with special emphasis on business and hum an ser­ vice materials to match program needs. With the exception of specialized materials, these are non­ circulating collections. Specialized collections cir­ culated on a rotating basis among sites include adult education, science, fine arts, Vermont his­ tory, sign language, cultural anthropology, and psychology. Each site receives subscriptions to gen­ eral subject and business journal indexes, and one site a subscription to an education index. Non-print materials accessed through our computerized in­ structional resource and information system are housed in all sites. The collections were never designed to be mini­ libraries to fill all the research needs of students. In­ stead, they could be described as laboratories for learning library/research skills.4 Small card cata­ logs are kept at each site. Bibliographies and in­ 3Dennis Lindberg, Vermont State Colleges L i­ brary Assessment Report (Waterbury, Vt., 1983). 4Eileen Chalfoun, “Off Campus Library Ser­ vices Com munity College of V erm ont,” in The Off-Campus Library Service Conference Proceed­ ings, Reno, Nev., October 23-24, 1986, p.61. dexes provide a starting point for students begin­ ning a search. Classes in research and writing skills are held in these reference library spaces. The next piece is reference. Direct reference ser­ vice is provided to students scattered around the state by means of a WATS line into the office of the College’s library coordinator. No fee is charged to students for this service, now in effect for two years. Another electronic library service which the College provides is telefacsimile transmission of in­ formation from seven site offices to four state col­ lege campus libraries. Students are encouraged to use serials’ indexes to locate bibliographic data, and then request journal articles which are sent di­ rectly to them. During the first semester of opera­ tion (with three FAX machines in use), approxi­ mately 200 requests were made to Vermont State Colleges’ libraries for information, and print m ate­ rials were sent to students for research purposes at no direct cost to them. This service is illustrative of the continuing effort toward library cooperation among the five Vermont State Colleges. A third step is I.R.I.S. (Instructional Resource and Information System), a newly developed com­ puter program designed to assist the College’s in­ structors in sharing successful and exciting teach­ ing techniques, classroom m aterials, exercises, books, videos, films, filmstrips, journal articles, bibliographies, and guest speakers. Each site office library is equipped with a microcomputer, printer, and software to enable instructors to access infor­ m ation at their convenience. F ortunately, the amount of information contributed to the system has grown so quickly that plans must now be made to m aintain a central storage system accessed from each site through the use of modems. I.R .I.S. has been particularly useful in providing a continual stream of new teachers each semester with m ateri­ als and methods in a systematic and convenient way, and in helping them to lose the sense of isola­ tion endemic to working in a non-campus college. Finally, of special interest is a bibliographic in­ struction m anual, Biblio–tech, planned and w rit­ ten by CCV staff in 1985 especially for students in a non-campus setting. All students are encouraged to purchase a copy of the manual to help them with their own degree planning, and with courses hav­ ing a research component. The book covers topics such as retrieving and using information, helpful hints for conducting research, information search strategies, computers in the library, research ter­ minology, and library research facilities. The book is addressed to students and allows them to follow the steps in careful research without the strict guid­ ance of an instructor.5 The College’s Coordinator of Research and In­ form ation Services has been the orchestrator of 5Dennis Lindberg and Elieen Chalfoun, “Devel­ opm ent of Off-Campus Library Services in the Vermont State Colleges,” in The Off-Campus L i­ brary Services Conference II, Knoxville, Tenn., April 18-19, 1985, p. 123. April 1987 / 183 these various library services, and bibliographic in­ struction has been a challenge. During the aca­ demic year, orientations and workshops are held at site offices around the state to explain the College’s library system. Specific courses in research and writing are listed in the college catalog and ar­ ranged for students. Staff development days are held on a yearly basis. Site coordinators work with instructors to incorporate research objectives into course descriptions and plan formal library in­ struction periods for students each semester. BI re­ mains the largest goal in the library planning, and the staff continues to experiment with ways of pro­ viding information electronically without sacrific­ ing the value of close human interaction and the serendipity of traditional library browsing. Until three years ago there was very little re­ source sharing among the Vermont State Colleges libraries. Interlibrary loan was available from the Vermont Departm ent of Libraries and most often took from two to three weeks for delivery of books. Times have changed dramatically, and 1987 finds all five of the state colleges working together on the tasks of collection development, a joint serials list, increased use of online searching, retrospective conversion, a joint online catalog, and a common policy for online searches. When the Governor cut the computer ribbon in December, many librarians’ hearts beat just a little bit faster knowing that the plunge into the world of “electronic libraries” was imminent. For Commu­ nity College of Vermont, it means that for the first time in its history, students will be able to access the online catalog from any site office, and then re­ ceive materials directly. It is expected that this phase of the library project will be available to CCV students by fall 1987. The truth of the matter is that the College could not have come this far without a little help from its friends. ■ ■ ALA candidates on ACRL The three candidates fo r A L A vice-president/president-elect share their views on academic and research librarianship. R e c e n tl y the ALA presidential candidates were asked to give some thought to ALA/ACRL relations and academic librarianship in general for this spe­ cial C&RL News feature. Their statements may aid you when you vote for ALA officers on this spring’s ballot. Linda Anne Dougherty: My recollection of academic libraries is very much based on my school days at Indiana Univer­ sity where I worked in both the Undergraduate Li­ brary and in the Law Library. Point of service li­ brarians who have been active in the ALA Library Instruction Round Table have told me of their con­ cerns for the future of academic libraries. The mission of academic libraries can be no dif­ ferent from that of any library—we all must serve our communities, providing the greatest access to all. I value “halls of residence libraries,” and I be­ lieve that undergraduate collections and staff can provide a special teaching resource to the “entry level” college student. These ideas relate to my con­ tention that a librarian’s involvement with lifelong learning ties us into a continuum of learning. Those of us interested in user education know that the ac­ ademics have clearly led the way in this discipline. We do have to question, however, if we wait to ed­ ucate only the college-bound how elitist and nar­ row our instruction has become. Within academic