Annualreport webversion

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

LIBRARIES a look back 2013–14

Sir James Dunn Law Library

We have quiet stacks and study spaces to allow for contemplative thought and study.

W. K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library

Five libraries work together to provide the best in library service to more than 18,200 students in 180 degree programs.

Sexton Design & Technology Library

An important component of the services we deliver is providing access to new technologies

Atrium, Killam Memorial Library

MacRae Library

Access to information, qualified staff, and social learning spaces rounds out the Dal Libraries experience.

Dalhousie Libraries:

Your partners in academic success As University Librarian at Dalhousie, every day I see evidence of the vital role that libraries play in a 21st century university education. The Dal Libraries are vibrant and well-used, providing students with access to the expertise, resources, technology, and study spaces they need.

Our students have more information available to them than any previous generation, but this avalanche of information can pose a challenge. Students need information literacy skills to evaluate this abundance of information so they can determine which sources have value, and just as importantly, which ones do not. The research assistance offered by our professional staff is needed now more than ever. This assistance and expertise is combined with scholarly resources, carefully chosen by subject specialists working in concert with faculty. In each of Donna Bourne-Tyson, our Learning Commons, we offer up-to-date and disruptive University Librarian technology, to ensure adequate access to resources, to increase productivity and to develop important information and technology literacies. Students also need inspiring surroundings, for quiet study and collaborative learning, and they spend countless hours in the Dal Libraries reading, sharing ideas and writing.

We place great importance on assessment and evidence-based decision making. Feedback is actively solicited and we respond to library users’ suggestions, concerns, comments, and questions. We maintain open lines of communication through our comment boards, social media accounts, blog, and through face-to-face interactions with library users. We conduct an extensive survey of students and faculty using LibQUAL+ (a standard survey format used in libraries internationally) to determine how we’re meeting the needs of the university community. We also have a Student Advisory Committee made up of library staff and students, which gives students the opportunity to discuss their library-related needs directly with staff who can respond in the moment. In addition to input from our community, we are increasing our capacity to use data analytics to guide the choices we make for our users.

A look at plans for 2014–15 • increased support for students using OWL (Blackboard/BbLearn); • additional study spaces for students; • planning and construction on the Wallace McCain Learning Commons and the Collaborative Health Education Building Learning Commons; • an increased level of consultation with faculty and students regarding collection development; • planning to increase resources and services to support indigenous studies; and • increased student engagement activities throughout the academic year.

Dalhousie Libraries:

Your partners in academic success This past year we have strengthened the alignments between the librarians, library staff, and the Libraries’ organizational structure to nurture the potential of all staff, and to grow the capacity to deliver existing services and new offerings in digital scholarship, research data management, and scholarly communications. The Dal Libraries include five libraries and the university archives, and organizationally also include system-wide units focusing on IT, HR, Communications, Budget & Facilities, Access Services, Learning & Curriculum Support, Resources, Discovery, and Research & Scholarly Communication.

The Dalhousie Libraries strengthen the university’s learning and research communities by encouraging innovation and strategic partnerships. We play a key role in the success of our students, faculty, and researchers, and actively support the academic mission of the university.

All of this is possible because of our people—the exceptional Dal Libraries staff who work tirelessly and enthusiastically on behalf of our users.

Donna Bourne-Tyson University Librarian, Dalhousie University donna.bourne-tyson@dal.ca

Give a gift with lasting effect The Dalhousie University Libraries welcome monetary gifts as well as gifts of print, manuscript, digital, or electronic material, and other “gifts-in-kind” that enrich and enhance existing collections and support the instructional and research programs of the university, or deserve consideration because of uniqueness, importance, or intrinsic value. To inquire about monetary donations to support the acquisition of library materials for the Killam, Kellogg, or Sexton Libraries, contact stephen.harding@dal.ca; to donate to the Sir James Dunn Law Library, contact diane.chisholm@dal.ca; and to donate to the MacRae Library, contact elaine.macinnis@dal.ca

Numbers speak: May 2013 - April 2014 2.7 million views

47,127 requests

on the Dalhousie Libraries website, libraries.dal.ca

processed through Document Delivery & Novanet Express

over 1.5 million people through the doors

275 resolved

36,114 computer problems solved

700 faculty profiles

copyright issues

at the Killam and

drafted in DalSpace

Sexton Help Desks

1,191 tweets

125,265 registrants

496 models

from @Dal Libraries

supported in online learning through OWL (Blackboard/BbLearn)

printed on the 3D printers

20,594 reference questions answered

509 inquiries

2,683 questions

answered by the Archives

answered by the GISciences Centre

@michael_smit When I'm off campus and find an article with no full text, I click this magic button, and @DalLibraries rescues me. @MichelleSwab Love this use of old card catalogue at MacRae Library @DalLibraries [in reference to reusing a card catalogue for the seed lending library] @tfortyrant thank you night owls @DalLibraries

Twitter chatter

@ n_crozier There are times when I love that @DalLibraries gives me access to online journal articles. Friday night at midnight is one of those times.

What we offer In addition to five libraries serving students, faculty, and the community, we have many specialized services.

The Geographical Information Sciences Centre (GIS), located in the Killam Library, provides support for Geographic Information Sciences research and teaching. It is the largest GISciences library facility in Canada. Our GIS Centre also manages Atlantic Canada’s largest holding of paper maps and atlases.

The Dalhousie University Archives is the largest university archive in Atlantic Canada. Its holdings include a vast collection of Dalhousie materials, as well as a labour archive, multimedia collections, shipping archives, a Nova Scotia theatre archive, and a Canadian historical map and print collection.

The Copyright Office helps faculty and students understand copyright rules regarding the educational use Sexton Design & Technology Library of materials for online teaching, photocopying, and film performances.

The Copyright Office provides an eReserve service for faculty, which is an option to have links to licensed e-content added to reading lists and uploaded to the online learning management system with copyright clearance obtained if necessary. Staff from the Copyright Office also regularly offer public presentations for students and faculty about copyright issues.

The Library Information Technology Team provides IT assistance to students via Help Desks, access to technology in all libraries, access to online resources both on and off campus, and support for the university’s online learning management system. We were the first academic library in Canada to offer 3D printing, which is available at four of our libraries. We also have a 3D scanner and a large-format printer.

The Research and Scholarly Communications Team provides digital publishing services for open access academic journals. The Digital Scholarship Initiatives (DSI) Committee provides access to the intellectual output of the university through the administration of the institutional repository, DalSpace.

Master’s and doctoral candidates are required to deposit their theses and dissertations here, and faculty members are encouraged to deposit open access copies of their work

Killam Memorial Library

What we offer in the repository if allowed by the terms of their publication agreements. The Research and Scholarly Communications Team has also drafted over 700 faculty profiles in DalSpace, to create a searchable, university-wide representation of faculty, including publications and areas of research. The Research and Scholarly Communications Team also provides safe storage of research data in two service streams: data archiving and current project data.

The recently launched seed lending library, Seeding Ideas, provides access to a collection of non-hybrid, non-genetically A drawerful of seeds as part of the seed lending library modified seeds that can be borrowed by at the MacRae Library. members of the community. Those who borrow from the seed library grow the seeds, enjoy their harvest, and leave a few plants unharvested so they will return to seed. The seed borrower then collects those seeds and returns them to the seed library. The collection contains more than 80 varieties of seeds for edible and ornamental plants. Seeding Ideas is the first university-funded seed lending library in Canada and is located in the MacRae Library.

Other services include Document Delivery (an interlibrary loan service), data extraction, bookable study and meeting spaces for groups, research assistance, thesis binding, and literature searches and systematic reviews.

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

This year, the Dalhousie Libraries continued to develop innovative services, offering makerspace workshops in partnership with the Halifax Makerspace group, opening a seed lending library, and expanding 3D printing services to three more of our libraries.

Some big projects we’ve undertaken this year include the completion of a digitization project of the Nova Scotia Medical Bulletin (1922-1993); the completion of the migration of all fall term online courses at the Agriculture Campus from Moodle a look back to Bblearn (ongoing for winter courses); and the beginning of 2013–14 the digitization of the Elisabeth Mann Borgese papers in the Dalhousie University Archives, a collection of international importance. The digitization project has been largely funded by a generous $100,000 donation to the Archives from Nikolaus Gelpke, a former student of Mann Borgese.

LIBRARIES

We have reorganized and restructured our workforce to create new areas of responsibility for current staff, to more effectively address ongoing fiscal restraints. Through internal appointments and retirement replacements, we now have an Associate University Librarian for Research & Scholarly Communication, a Digital Archivist, a Digital Scholarship Librarian, a Collections Strategy Librarian, a Learning & Instruction Librarian, and managers for the areas of Acquisitions & Metadata, E-Resources Access & Subscriptions, and System-Wide Resources. These new areas of

responsibility have allowed us to be more responsive to users’ needs.

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

The Dal Libraries take part in a number of community events, both on-campus and in the broader community, including supporting Dalhousie’s Pink Day to raise awareness against bullying; marching with Dalhousie in the Halifax Pride parade; promoting One Book Nova Scotia, a provincewide unity reading program; and participating in Food for Fines, a Novanet initiative a look back that collects food and donations for food banks in Nova Scotia 2013–14 from the university and college libraries. We’re also proud of the fact that we won a Dalhousie Healthy Workplace Award this year, thanks to an active Health & Wellness Committee and participation from the Dal Libraries staff in various healthy-living initiatives such as yoga classes and a skating party.

LIBRARIES

We invited faculty to learn more about some of the services we offer them and their students through a half-day of lightning sessions called Libraries UnZipped.

Before and during exams, we extend the hours at all five libraries and keep the Killam Library open until 3 a.m. as part of our popular Night Owls service.

Models printed on the 3D printers, available in the Kellogg, Killam, MacRae, and Sexton Libraries.

Every summer, the libraries hire interns from the School of Information Management at Dalhousie.

The interns take on diverse projects, some that we would otherwise not have time to do. Last summer, they conducted a study that looks at publication and citation rates of law faculty across Canada, analyzed data from 2013’s LibQUAL+ survey, assisted researchers with systematic reviews, created video tutorials, developed a virtual tour of the library, migrated accession records, revamped the LibGuide design, cited and then uploaded more than 350 faculty profiles to DalSpace, and digitized a long out-of-print agricultural text of local importance. At the end of the summer, the interns present their projects and accomplishments to a group of peers, library staff, and faculty at an annual event called Summer Shine.

Students in the GISciences Centre, Killam Memorial Library.

In the past year, we’ve seen refurbishments to the Sir James Dunn Law Library, the Killam Memorial Library, the Dalhousie University Archives, the Sexton Design & Technology Library, and the MacRae Library. We are constantly improving our spaces to meet the evolving needs of students.

The Dalhousie Libraries are proud members of Novanet, a consortium of Nova Scotia university and college libraries; CAUL, the Council of Atlantic University Libraries; and CARL, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.

If you have questions or comments about the Dalhousie Libraries, please get in touch with us. Our contact information appears on the next page.

Get in touch MacRae Library

Killam Memorial Library

The MacRae Library is the largest repository of agricultural resource material in the Maritimes. It is also the home of Seeding Ideas, the first university-funded seed lending library in Canada.

Dalhousie University’s largest library. With a million books and 40,000 journals, its collections cover the Faculties of Science, Arts & Social Sciences, Management, and Computer Science.

135 College Road, Truro Agricultural Campus (902) 893-6669

6225 University Avenue, Halifax Studley Campus (902) 494-3617

Sexton Design & Technology Library

W. K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library Serving the faculties of Dentistry, Health Professions, Medicine, and health professionals

The Sexton Design & Technology Library has a varied collection of resources for engineering, architecture and planning. The space is bright and comfortable with a terrific view of Halifax

5850 College Street, Halifax Carleton Campus (902) 494-2479

3rd Floor, Buildings A & B, 1360 Barrington Street, Halifax Sexton Campus (902) 494-3240

Sir James Dunn Law Library

Staff Directory

Occupying four floors in the Weldon Law Building with bright, comfortable space for study and research.

util.library.dal.ca/Directory

6061 University Avenue, Halifax Studley Campus (902) 494-2124

vimeo.com/dallibraries Staff of the Dalhousie University Libraries

youtube.com/user/DalArchives @DalLibraries

/dallibraries /dalhousiearchives /kellogghealthscienceslibrary /killammemoriallibrary /macraelibrary /DalSextonLibrary

Credits Photographs by Marlo MacKay, Nick Pearce, Laura Warren, and Dalhousie University Photography Services Layout by Marlo MacKay and Laura Warren Text by Donna Bourne-Tyson and Marlo MacKay

libraries.dal.ca