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STANDARD 7: LIBRARY AND INFORMATION RESOURCES
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Introduction Description Appraisal Projection Attachments
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Introduction
Recognizing this, Yale University has long provided its students and faculty an extraordinarily resource-rich environment for teaching, learning, and research. The University’s libraries, museums, networking infrastructure, and academic computing service are a distinctive and critically important source of strength for the University. The Yale Library has for much of this century been one of the world’s greatest libraries. The constellation of Yale museums has but one rival in higher education. Yale aims for true distinction as well with information technology, which has come to occupy a key role in higher education. This report on Yale’s library and learning resources is necessarily brief, especially in its descriptive parts. Readers wishing to pursue specific topics should consult the many Web-based sources of information about the University’s library and learning resources. Attachment 1 identifies some key terms used in this report and associates them with appropriate Web sites.
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Introduction Description Appraisal Projection Attachments
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DescriptionThe Yale University Library provides readers with a collection of 10.1 million volumes (FY1998) and outstanding collections of manuscripts and archives, maps, government publications, sound recordings, visual resources, and other materials. The Library adds about 170,000 volumes to its collections annually, provides access to almost 2,600 electronic journals and 175 other networked resources, and responds to reader needs at forty-four service desks. Its staff of approximately 600 FTE at Sterling Memorial Library and twenty school and departmental libraries serves readers with a remarkable range of subject specialist knowledge combined with language and functional skills. As Attachment 2 shows, the operating budget of the Library in FY1998 was $47.2 million, with $16.4 million (35 percent of the total) spent on the collections. Spending on Library operations increased by 19 percent during the five years between FY1994 and FY1998; spending on the collections increased by 43 percent during the same time. The libraries occupy 768,800 net square feet of space and benefit from the focused attention Yale is giving to capital renovations. Since FY1995, the University has committed about $55 million to the renovation of the book stacks and some of the principal reading rooms at Sterling Memorial Library and to the construction of the new Gilmore Music Library and the new Library Shelving Facility. An expansion of the Beinecke Library’s shelving space is under way, and other major library renovation projects are in active planning. The Library attends to reader concerns about service through a variety of informal and formal means. Among the latter are advisory committees for several school and departmental libraries and the university-wide Advisory Committee on Library Policy, whose faculty and student members are appointed by the President. This committee has played leadership roles in winning campus acceptance of the Library Shelving Facility for infrequently used research material and in accelerating the pace of the conversion of the Library’s card catalog to machine readable form. Special collections of rare books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, recordings, etc. are a distinctive strength of the Yale Library. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Manuscripts and Archives department are the largest of these special collections, which embrace the Arts, Arts of the Book, Map, Medical, and Gilmore Music libraries as well. Each of the twelve undergraduate Colleges manages a library for the benefit of its residents. These college libraries are not affiliated with the University Library. They offer congenial 24-hour study space and modest collections responding to student reading interests. They also often provide computers used for both student applications and networked library and information resources. Information Technology Services (ITS) Yale’s Academic Media & Technology and its campus-wide high-speed communications network also provide extensive support for teaching, learning, and research. Academic Media & Technology staff number forty-seven FTE and forty FTE students; they work with an operating budget of $5.1 million. Academic Media & Technology aims to provide a solid and ubiquitous base infrastructure for computing in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which supports both widely used established practices for teaching, learning, and research and experimentation with new practices and technologies. Several specialized units provide direct support for faculty use of technology in teaching and learning. Among these are Instructional Computing Services, the Social Science Statistics Laboratory, the Engineering Computing Facilities, the Computer Science Computer Facility, the Internet Information Center, the Center for Language Study and Language Lab, and the Film Study Center. The new Digital Media Center for the Arts and the well-known Center for Advanced Instructional Media at the School of Medicine are two of the many other key resources, not part of Academic Media & Technology, for the integration of teaching and technology at Yale. Each semester approximately 400 classes (38 percent) use Academic Media & Technology facilities to post their syllabi on-line, post or collect assignments electronically, distribute class related materials, or otherwise use electronic techniques integral to the class. Other faculty use locally maintained servers for these purposes. Yale also provides a course Web page system as well as Web servers, file service, newsgroups, and more for the direct support of classes, student interest groups, and student life activities. The campus data network today supports 10 megabit per second Ethernet to offices, laboratories, and residences, with per-port switching beginning to replace shared topologies. Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) is available selectively where new construction and building renovation have replaced mid-1980’s telephone wiring with category 5 and above cabling. A pool of over 400 modems supports remote access. Access to the Internet is via TCG/CERFnet at 10 Mbps, while access to Internet 2 is via the vBNS at 45 Mbps. An analog cable television network with the capacity for seven academic channels was installed in the residences in summer, 1998. Academic Media & Technology and data networking are units of the campus-wide Information Technology Services organization of over 325 FTE, with a total budget of $45 million. ITS also includes Administrative Systems, Data Center operations, Telecommunications, and Support Services. Information Technology Services is guided and reviewed by a set of faculty committees anchored by the standing ITS Advisory Committee reporting to the provost. This committee reviews all significant policy issues (e.g. The Appropriate Use Policy and the closing of the computer repair unit). It also periodically reviews issues of service, priorities, and fees for services. Yale’s art and natural history museums provide further notable resources for teaching, learning, and research. They immeasurably enrich learning by providing students access to the unique artifact. Each of these objects bears witness to the creative spirit of humanity, or the creative potential of nature. Each object also calls upon our obligation to preserve the products of such creativity. The Yale University Art Gallery, founded in 1832, is the oldest university art museum in the United States. It has a collection of 80,000 objects, with particular strengths in American art and material culture, and a staff of 50 FTE. Its operating expenses were $6.4 million in FY1998. The Yale Center for British Art opened in 1977. It has a collection of 60,000 objects, with particular strength in 18th- and 19th-century art, and a staff of 55 FTE. Its operating expenses were $4.2 million in FY1998. The collection, the building, and the endowment that sustains the Center were entirely the gift of the late Paul Mellon, ’29. The Peabody Museum houses the results of the systematic collecting at Yale, since 1802, of natural history specimens for use in teaching and research. The Peabody Museum has a collection of 11 million specimens and objects and a staff of 54 FTE. Its operating expenses were $4 million in FY1998. All three museums function both as lively research and teaching centers and as public museums drawing tens of thousands of visitors every year. Taken together with the Collection of Musical Instruments, these museums occupy 289,000 net square feet of space. The Yale Center for British Art completed a major renovation of its building in 1999. Important parts of the Peabody collections will be housed in the new Environmental Science building, and planning is underway for a major renovation and expansion of the Yale University Art Gallery. Yale’s museums are one of its main points of contact with the New Haven, Connecticut, and regional communities. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library also has a significant presence in the life of the community beyond Yale. Collaboration Yale’s academic service organizations are engaged in vigorous ongoing collaborations. For example, the Library and ITS have jointly funded a three-year program to support innovative use of technologies in teaching, and library systems receive the benefit of ITS software engineering and data center management expertise. Additionally, the two art museums, the Library, and ITS helped found the Digital Media Center for the Arts and are participating in a campus-wide task force on digital imaging standards.
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Introduction Description Appraisal Projection Attachments
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AppraisalThe extraordinary strength of Yale’s libraries is reflected in Attachment 3, which reports key library statistics and ratios for Yale and other ARL libraries in New England, and for other top-ranked ARL libraries in North America. These data come from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) statistics for FY1997. For each of these key inputs, Yale ranks 2nd through 4th among all North American research libraries. It stands 2nd or 3rd in the ranking of the ratios of these inputs to the number of students served, and 6th through 9th in the ranking of the ratios of these inputs to the number of faculty. Favorable rankings in per student ratios reflect the Library’s high initial rankings combined with a student body at Yale equal to only 59 percent of the median number of students at ARL institutions (see Attachment 4). Lower rankings in the per- faculty ratios reflect a faculty at Yale 41 percent larger than the median number of faculty at ARL institutions. Whether measured in absolute terms or in relation to the students and faculty served, the Yale Library is clearly top-ranked both in New England and in North America. Attachment 4 presents some key services of Yale’s libraries and the ratio of the service counts to the number of Yale students and faculty, as appropriate to the service. Yale’s service counts and ratios are compared to the median figures for all ARL libraries. These data suggest that library presentations in support of classroom instruction approximate the median of such presentations in ARL libraries. Reference and circulation transactions and items borrowed on behalf of readers at Yale are significantly higher than the median of such services at other ARL libraries. Much lower reserve circulation activities at Yale probably reflect the self-service reserve arrangements at the Cross Campus Library, our principal reserves operation. These figures suggest that the Yale community makes unusually heavy use of its libraries. While the Yale Library performs well by almost all key measures, four major concerns have required focused attention in recent years. First, with only 50 percent of its bibliographic records available online, Yale lags far behind other North American research libraries. A $15.1 million retrospective conversion program formally begun in FY1997 will make all of the Library’s bibliographic records available online by FY2002. Second, it has been many years since existing shelving could reasonably accommodate collection growth. The new $5.4 million off-campus Library Shelving Facility solves this problem by providing space and state-of-the-art preservation conditions for infrequently used research material. The facility opened in November 1998, and vigilant care is being taken to ensure that its collections remain fully and easily accessible to readers through a one-day or less delivery standard. Third, the decades-old need for proper library space for Yale’s music programs was finally met with the opening of the magnificent $11 million Gilmore Music Library in September 1998. Fourth, and most important, poorly controlled temperature and uncontrolled humidity changes in the Sterling Memorial Library book stacks had become major hazards to the long-term preservation of the collections. These conditions were dramatically reversed with the commissioning of sophisticated environmental controls for the Sterling book stacks in 1998, as the centerpiece of the $38 million Phase I renovation of Sterling. Information Technology Services Attachment 5 describes the recent history and current academic technology environment at Yale. Through its comprehensive student residence hall network, through its substantial number of cluster computers (including 24-hour access at fourteen locations), and through a host of other measures, Yale provides outstanding technical infrastructure and services for student and faculty use. A reasonable appraisal metric for higher level services is progress on strategic program goals as reflected in usage data over time. Having achieved the goal of ubiquitous student access in Yale College to computing and network services, attention is now focused on promoting faculty access to computing and network services as well as improving systematic support for faculty who wish to use technology to enhance teaching and learning.
When first surveyed by the Faculty Support Program, the History department had twenty-one University owned computers, 25 percent of which were more than four years old. Among its forty-two faculty, less than one-third were connected to the network. In initial conversations, many faculty were uncertain of the value of a networked machine. Working with an ITS/Library grant, the department identified bibliographic management software and other relevant applications, and faculty quickly embraced the potential. In the first year the program added and upgraded sixteen machines to be full-function networked computers and added sixteen connections. Today, there are a total of forty-one connections and thirty-three university-supplied computers less than two years old. As soon as faculty in History obtained their machines, they began to want to use this technology in their teaching—driving demand for materials development, classroom presentation capability, and more. This pattern has been repeated across Arts and Sciences departments: the Faculty Support Program is not only providing personal productivity technology to faculty, but is also an essential precursor to systematic use of technology in instruction. Substantial challenges remain to be faced in the Faculty Support Program, including training issues, the uneven quality of support provided by casual staff, and the security and complexity of advanced workstations used in the sciences. But, much improved departmentally centered planning, standard solutions to common problems, and a strong support management structure hold the potential for improved performance. Early responses from faculty suggest the program is warmly welcomed, but this is clearly a program that will take several years to develop fully.
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Introduction Description Appraisal Projection Attachments
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ProjectionNew technologies for scholarly communication provide a nearly dizzying array of information resources at the same time that they pose major new challenges for teaching and learning. The particular challenge on which this report focuses is that of making the new technologies and information resources a powerful part of undergraduate education at Yale. In the classroom and outside it, on the network and in the wide variety of learning spaces that Yale creates for its students—from library reading rooms to residential college computer clusters and museum gallery space—faculty and students are coming together with information specialists and collection curators to shape vital new pedagogies. The University Library and Academic Media & Technology nurture a close partnership, recognizing that there is much to do and much to discover about what makes for effective teaching and learning in this new environment. The Projection section of this report presents a description and appraisal of the unusually rich information resource environment for Yale College students, as well as a projection of how that environment for learning will be strengthened over the next few years. The Yale Library is more than an extraordinary resource to be used in study and research. It is also an active agent of instruction, especially among Yale College students. This section discusses the impact of the Library’s existing instructional program, describes instructional initiatives now underway, and notes two other matters needing specific attention. It reports the initial steps being taken by the Library to strengthen the appraisal of its instructional activities. The Library offers instruction through orientation tours, daily reference desk exchanges with hundreds of students, and numerous general sessions on library and networked information skills. Beyond these efforts, the Library is focusing on the development of its World Wide Web presence and on course-related instruction as strategically vital elements in its instructional program. These activities aim at helping students to master the increasingly complex worlds of print and electronic publications and are particularly responsive to student and faculty interest in rapidly expanding online resources. The Yale Library maintains about 12,000 indexed pages, in hundreds of Web sites, that can be reached from its home page. Students find here not only customary information about library collections and services, along with electronic forms for using these services, but also a rich array of heavily used guides to scores of disciplines and sub-disciplines. These guides set out an intellectual and bibliographic roadmap to each discipline; they point to key online resources available beyond Yale; they introduce readers to pertinent professional societies, government agencies, and the like; they sometimes offer guidance on research methodology and the use of primary resources. In effect, the Web enables the Library to deliver assistance at the time and point that students seek it. The Web is now the Library’s most powerful means of supporting students who wish to take command of their own learning by engaging with the resource-rich environment that Yale offers them. The Library also devotes substantial effort to course-related instruction, which helps students make more effective use of the Library for an entire course of study. Such instruction responds to needs clearly articulated by both students and faculty. Faculty responses to an appraisal questionnaire used by one large library unit in the Fall of 1998 indicate that about half of the faculty who requested instructional sessions did so for the first time, while half had involved librarians in their teaching before—often quite frequently. A remarkable 97 percent of the respondents said they would recommend such instruction to faculty colleagues. Almost all the respondents attended the class in which the librarian participated, and 90 percent reported learning something new themselves in the class. Ninety percent of the respondents reported favorable or highly favorable comments from their students. Perhaps most importantly, 96 percent of the respondents (or 68 percent when non-responses to this question are counted) attributed some or substantial improvement in student performance to library instruction. With such striking indicators of favorable impact, and with strongly expressed interest from the Advisory Committee on Library Policy (led in this matter by its student members), the Library has self-consciously strengthened its course-related instructional activities in recent years. Aside from targeting freshman and sophomore courses that enroll large numbers of students, and students writing undergraduate theses, the Library is also pursuing a set of new ventures meant to complement and strengthen established instructional programs. These initiatives, which are likely to bear fruit over the next five years, are:
The Library recognizes the inherent difficulty of assessing any instructional activity, especially one that is ancillary to the core disciplines at Yale. But anything less than the most thoughtful development of the Library’s instructional services will undercut its resolve to help students make full use of the resource rich environment that informs teaching and learning at Yale. Beyond these initiatives already underway, there are two areas where the Library should join with other University agencies to improve instructional support. These are:
Information Technology Services Substantial increases in provostial financial support, combined with generous alumni and corporate donations, have greatly expanded the scope of ITS support for faculty and students. Such support is targeted across three domains that might be viewed as an “academic technologies pyramid.” At the top are programs focused on innovation, experimentation, and assessment of new technologies and pedagogies, typically involving a small number of pioneering faculty. In the middle, effort is focused on developing and testing generalized tools and services accessible to a larger number of faculty. The base of the pyramid consists of ubiquitous, robust, and low unit cost services demanded across the faculty and student body. Several intrinsic conditions make technology planning particularly challenging: the rapid pace of technological development and obsolescence, the false or premature promise of some new technologies, the difficulty of assessing the educational effects of any innovation, the high unit costs of deploying technology at or near the leading edge, and the substantial costs of providing increasingly sophisticated computing expertise and support. In this dynamic environment, the University must constantly assess its absolute and relative investments in innovation, generalization, and infrastructure. What can a student newly enrolled in Yale College expect to find in place today, and what strengthening of his or her technology environment for learning can be expected in the next few years?
Information Technology Services devotes few resources specifically to ongoing measurement of resource utilization or to the formal collection of faculty and student views on the adequacy and effectiveness of services. ITS expects to work closely with the Library’s Service Quality Improvement Council to improve its formal assessment activities. Digital Media Center for the Arts Yale’s Digital Media Center of the Arts opened in November 1998. It is described here as exemplifying Yale’s determination to bring digital technologies powerfully to bear on teaching and learning. The Center responds to the belief that traditional disciplines such as architecture, graphic design, music, painting, photography, sculpture, and set design will all find an enriching and sharable voice in the digital language of the computer. The DMCA invites students and faculty to work collaboratively in moving beyond the traditional boundaries of their disciplines. In its inaugural year, the Center has provided support and seed grants for ten faculty and student projects in the arts, ranging from virtual exhibitions of student art and architecture to music and dance performances and to rehearsals and productions involving Yale faculty and faculty from universities abroad. The Center is working with the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art to provide virtual access to their collections. It also sponsored a well- known artist and an impressive roster of distinguished speakers. Just as the Center has encouraged new partnerships within the University, it also promises to provide Yale a venue to partner with other leaders in the arts. The Digital Media Center for the Arts should become one of the University’s most visible and exciting sources of innovation in the next decade. Conclusion
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Introduction Description Appraisal Projection Attachments
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Undergraduates typically arrive at Yale with considerable technical sophistication and
enthusiasm for computer technologies. What they find here is a more robust
networking capability than many have experienced before, museum resources
unmatched in North America except in a number of large cities, and world-class library
collections and services. The core experience of learning at Yale is fundamentally
defined by this bringing together of students of extraordinary potential, distinguished
faculty committed to teaching, and wonderfully rich resources for learning. A recent
Yale College graduate testified to the personal importance of the resource part of this
formula for excellence when sending the Library an anonymous gift. The student wrote:
“Sterling Memorial Library was my second home while I was in college. . . and I
continue to think with fondness and a touch of longing of the immense collections
available there. Keep buying great books!” These resources—so important to this student and countless others—are the fruit of long and distinguished traditions of collecting at Yale. As Wilmarth S. Lewis, himself one of Yale’s great collectors, wrote in The Yale Collections, “culture and collecting are inseparable; collecting is the storing up of civilization that mankind may see and study and love man’s great works of all ages and the works of nature as well” (New Haven, 1946, p. x). Yale College students grow in an environment that is informed by centuries- old traditions of collecting, by new technologies, and by a vital commitment to innovation in teaching and learning. This aspiration always to improve, supported by distinguished collections and powerful new technologies, ensures to students at Yale the chance to see and study and love the splendors of nature and the great works of humanity.
LINKS TO STANDARDS: | S1 | S2 | S3 | S4 | S5 | S6 | S7 | S8 | S9 | S10 | S11 | Links To S7 Attachments: | Attachment 1 | Attachment 2 | Attachment 3 | Attachment 4 | Attachment 5 | |
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Introduction Description Appraisal Projection Attachments
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