DA Redesign Ideas
From booktorrent
Create a Statistical Account of Website Usage.
Reason:
- How do we know that our on-line website is successful?
- Do we know if a user is experiencing problems?
- Do we know if the problems are being fixed in a timely manner?
- How many people are accessing our website?
- What are the most popular/unpopular links?
Results:
- Librarians and other faculty can observe statistical data for analysis and use it as a means to create new funding and or improvements to keep up with the continuous change in digital technologies.
- Librarians and technical staff will be provided with more food to ponder, and room to improve.
Moving the Rare Books Collection Upstairs
Pros:
- Instant visibility could create new interest in our library.
- Monitoring the rare book section could be taken over by the reference staff personnel instead of the archive personnel. *There are more reference personnel than archive personnel.
- Opening the room that currently houses the rare books collection down stairs could potentially open that room up for a digital processing archives section and training room for archival/digital archival instruction.
- Scanners and digital audio and video conversion equipment could be aligned in their respective areas in the new room allowing both room to move and room to give training on the equipment.
Cons:
- Having the reference or other non-archival staff maintain the rare books collection. Giving more burdens to upstairs library staff.
- Moving the rare books room video monitors and cameras, hooking them back up, and placing the monitors in an appropriate available place accessible to staff designated.
- Where to move the current writing center? The writing center could be moved down to one of the training rooms located on the current rare book room level.
Our current archive location has no advantages to either staff or visitors. Being housed in the basement creates a dungeon feeling and has dungeon qualities. The archive storage rooms have flooded in the past and many things have been ruined beyond repair. Too many things have to be stored on the floor for lack of shelving or other space which leaves these items vulnerable to not only moisture but kicking or scraping as people walk by, and constant moving from place to place when searching for things.
When visitors or researchers wish to use either the rare books room or items that have been collected into the archives there is no place for them to actually use what they seek. At present, any item taken from the archives for study must be monitored by an archivist staff member or associate. The only available room someone can use to peruse requested archived items is the rare books room. This is a significant problem for the staff. Because the archives room and the rare books room are two separate rooms, the staff member must sit in the room with the visitor until they are finished, or the staff member must sit in the archives room, watch the video monitors, and look through the window to monitor the visitor. Because all visitors must be monitored while using any archived material or rare book it is necessary to have an available space that is both separated from the larger public areas and close enough for staff to be able to continue working at their jobs at the same time they are monitoring a patron.
Moisture is a constant problem for both paper materials and old video or audio tapes, and is one of the major causes of unsuccessful digital format conversion. Even though the storage rooms and rare books collection are monitored with a humidity device which is set at 50%, over time many things become either too expensive to convert or can no longer be read by the equipment because the tapes stick to the heads. Relocating the archives to a less moist area would alleviate some of these problems and before moving there are some other things that one should consider when approaching a large scale move.
Things to think about:
- Is the area free of excess moisture and flooding?
- Will the humidity equipment monitors and system have to be moved, and what will that involve?
- Do the video monitors and equipment have to be moved, and what will that involve?
- What will be involved in moving the archive rolling stack shelves, and all of the other archived items housed below?
- Should the video/audio storage room be left where it is? Why? Why not?
- Does the new area afford a separated area for students to conduct research with archival items and for staff to appropriately monitor those people?
- If moving the archives to a higher traffic area, will the staff and associates be able to conduct their regular work as well as tend to visitors?
- Should a move happen would archives want to create displays and marketing or promotions of items, and embrace new business because of a more accessible area? In other words, how would this affect the job descriptions and duties of our current archival and library staff?
- If only the rare books room and collection were moved to a higher trafficked public area, what staff or departments would be responsible for monitoring it?
- What department’s budget will be responsible for paying for any moves or remodeling?
- Will this require a re-write of staff duties and will salaries be adjusted to benefit these new responsibilities?
However daunting the obstacles seem, the benefits of moving the archives to a more publically visible area could potentially reap large rewards for the library department.
With digitalization of archive material, and a new off-site repository, the Evergreen archives are entering a collected digital library system with many current members. With Northwest Digital Archives our school will now incorporate its current archive web-site into a new web-based format standard which administrators feel will not only improve our archive’s public accessibility, but enrich the content that was not available in our previous format.
With these changes, and having the archives department placed in a more pleasing area, library staff would be able to conduct trainings for students who do not know about our archive catalog, and show them that it houses much valuable material. It would also allow students to observe archive staff doing their work, such as converting audio or video histories into digital formats, restoration of paper books, and the processing stage of newly acquired archive materials. Without having to create a program or class, students could see these processes in passing. This could potentially develop into students volunteering at any stage of the archiving process just because they had an opportunity to see it in passing. If it isn’t common knowledge already, the processing and conversion stages of archiving are extremely time consuming. There will always be processing to be done and never enough staff or volunteers to complete the constant incoming flow of archival materials.
Other ideas that may bring new business or activities to the library
Also see: Other Ideas or Upgrade Stuff
New Computer Training:
The Goal:
- To help students and faculty learn how to use the library catalog and how to find books, videos, CD’s, collections, articles, and other library materials.
The Guts:
- Implement a monthly training that incorporates the different Programs available to take each quarter. Each interested Program could commit to 1 hour of attendance a quarter within the library to have an expert library staff conduct a simple training on what resources are available and how to access our library stuff. We could call the training:
- "Using The Evergreen State College Library" or "The Library Computer Catalog" or “My Program Needs The Library”.
The Requirements:
- Free admission always
- Registration required
- Faculty need only submit a scheduled time request and a list of current students in their class
- With an active schedule of training times available at the library and on-line, solo students who are not involved in a current program that takes advantage of the training can add their name to any scheduled list to attend any training.
- Advertisement for trainings will be covered by the school newspaper.
A Different Kind of Training:
- To overcome some of the knowledge gaps in our library staff due to new technologies and methods being introduced in the twenty-first century library world, it may be beneficial for all staff members to try to take advantage of the exceptional experience and expertise of the different departments affiliated with the library and its staff to benefit itself.
The Action:
- Have each current staff member provide at least one training session in his or her area of expertise (e.g., circulation, reference desk, cataloging, digital formats, photo copying, technology like web or metadata, archiving, etc.).
The Results:
- Even if a staff member has some experience in a particular area, they still get training from a current staff member. This ensures that everyone has the same foundation of knowledge on which to build. Also this would be good for work-study students and new employees. Share the knowledge.
Switching It Up For A Day:
- Require the Technical Services staff to work either at Library Reference, Telephone Reference or at the Circulation Desk, depending upon their job titles.
Reason:
- Because of this unique exposure to public services, the Technical Services staff has considerable insight into the needs of the public, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the library catalog.
The Results could be:
- A better organization of its homepage, which is overloaded with information. It is simply too overwhelming for any users who have already been frustrated after hours of Googling.
Implement New Aspect To Old Programs:
The Guts:
- Instead of holding regular seminar classes for some programs on campus, turn those seminars into book clubs to be attended at/or within the confines of the library itself.
Benefits:
- Giving the student’s access to the library staff and its reference materials can only enhance the learning experience.
- Using the library as a resource meeting place, it is possible then to arrange book author meetings, schedule plays or other viewing events that would be related to the book of current interest.
Training Content and Advertisement:
- Use informal discussion, hands-on examples, whether online or in print, which correspond to the book selection.
- When preparing for meetings have students select library items (books, journal articles, video or music clips) that might be relevant to the topic.
- Have the school newspaper cover the story as a headline to promote library successes and to gain future business.
Where
If all the stacks from upstairs were to be moved to open that area up, desks with computers arranged in a semi-circular arrangement could be made, like an auditorium. The built in posts could act as a projector holder to point the projector at a moveable or portable screen. This arrangement allows a small class to focus on the trainer/instructor and screen without having to face an actual wall. The upstairs could be cordoned off with moveable walls or sections or just placed towards the far end away from other crowds and individuals trying to use other library areas. But--could be a potential for noise problems and outter interferences.
Using the gov. docs room for training is a great idea.
The basement S-U-C-K-S for archives. It is prone to hazards like floods and moisture and gives the archives an ugly visual of being in a "tomb" full of cobwebs and old junk nobody wants to hear about.
I like the idea of moving the archives to the sound and image room. I also like the idea of marketing archives as a resource.
Not a new idea, but MORE OUTLETS are needed if we want to attract more library business. What's the point of spending a bunch of money on resources if nobody can access them?
Possibly accquiring an Espresso Book Machine as mentioned on the Information Networks, Databases and Projects page under (1.2 Espresso Book Machine)
