The Digital Library: Issues and Challenges for the University of Calgary
By Bennett Thomas. Library Review, Vol. 64 Iss 8/9 pp. 533 - 551Introduction
Family Digital Library. The groundbreaking for the physical facility was in April, 2006, but the planning continues and the projected opening was for the fall semester of 2009 (Senger, 2007), but was finally completed in 2011 at a cost of $203 million. The purpose of this paper is to focus on major issues involved in setting up a digital library, as identified in a search of the literature, and to use this background for interviews and discussion regarding the plans for the digital library at the U of C.
The present writer will use the definition for a digital library that is given by Witten and Bainbridge (2003, p.xxvi): “We define digital libraries as focused collections of digital objects, including text, video and audio along with methods for access and retrieval, and for selection, organizing and maintenance.” The paper will begin with a description of the targeted users. It will discuss user expectations for the digital library, which are often focused on the distributive function of the library to provide rapid and easy access to resources such as licensed e-journals and e-books. It will then explore issues related to the productive function, the digitization of collections. According to Witten and Bainbridge, it is this later function that defines the digital library. Finally, the paper will address the question: What purposes does digitization of collections serve?
Targeted users: post-secondary students
The MacKimmie Library, the University of Calgary’s old main library, had not been expanded since l974 and was meant to accommodate l5,000 students, slightly more than one-half of the present number. However, the TFDL building was envisioned as a multiuse facility that includes an office for Student and Academic Services, an office for IT, a unit for Libraries and Cultural Resources (formerly Information Services), the new home of the Nickle Arts Museum, and the Teaching and Learning Centre (formerly the Learning Commons), complete with its video-conferencing division. The U of C states that this will free up l0,000 square metres of space in strategic locations elsewhere on campus that will be used for other purposes, but of course it means less potential library space (University of Calgary, 2006).
Whereas some digital libraries are also “virtual” libraries in terms of their physical presence, the Taylor Family Digital Library is to become the heart of the campus. The lead principal for design Bill Chomik (2006), an architect with Kasian Architecture Interior Design and Planning Ltd, envisioned a building that meets the functional demands of the programs involved, is a design that is open and accessible to the entire campus, and adheres to such principles of sustainability as maximum use of natural light. The TFDL, of course, also incorporates the most state of the art technology into its design, including electronic touch-screen wall displays to help visitors find their way around.
Chomik points out that the Taylor Family Digital Library is one of a very few physical libraries to be built with the central focus on the digital aspect:
Although educational institutions in North American such as Harvard, Cornell and Carnegie Mellon have made significant in-roads into the development of digitization as a communications tool for teaching and learning, their libraries remain essentially ‘virtual’. Very few physical libraries focusing on the digital medium as the central design driver have been built. There are, however, two digital libraries with specific aspects that move most closely to the model contemplated by the University of Calgary; The Johnson Center at George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia (http://jcweb.gmu.edu/), and The Knowledge Centre (http://knowledgecenter.unr.edu/) at the University of Nevada (currently under construction). (Chomik, 2006, p. 2).
The Johnson Center is one-stop shopping that along with the library includes a multi-purpose ballroom, food court, and retail outlets. It is similar to a community square. The Knowledge Centre at the University of Nevada will provide a hightechnology environment that focuses on digital communications and collaborative learning. The University of Calgary plans to combine the features of both, the one-stop shopping with the high-technology facilities, into what is now being promoted as the first building in Canada to be specially designed for a digital library.
In promoting the new library building, the U of C suggests that it “streamlines operating costs by consolidating a variety of student services in one building thereby allowing funds to be redirected to support other learning initiatives” and that it provides “new and renovated facilities that enable the repurposing of space elsewhere on campus for other academic uses. . .” and that it “improves functional efficiencies by releasing space in strategic locations on campus . . .”(University of Calgary, 2006) It appears that naming the project “Digital Library” becomes an up-to-date focus for extensive renovation and construction.
The New Generation of Post Secondary Student Users and the Hybrid Library
For anyone who uses the Information Commons or other facilities at the Taylor Family Digital Library, the access to most licensed data bases and other digitized materials is freely available. The major digitized collections are also available off-campus on the World Wide Web. The licensing agreements on these collections limit off-campus access to people who are identified as University of Calgary library users, but on-site access is available to anyone, according to University of Calgary librarian Claudette Cloutier. “Any member of the public is more than welcome to come in on-site to view our digital books. They would have to get an IT login and password for our machines, because they are password protected, but yes, anybody can walk in and use the resources.” It should be noted that the University of Calgary has been offering digital library materials since 2001.
In providing information to everyone, the University of Calgary is moving toward the goal of a democratic society. However, it also extends the number and variety of potential
users in regard to age, education, and computer skills, which may impact on design of the interface and metadata. The more user-inclusive the new digital library becomes, the greater the challenge. “Designing for universal access is much more difficult than designing for specific populations,” according to Marchionini, Plaisant, and Komlodi (2003, p. l20).
A number of writers have noted the change in user expectations for the physical library. Lesk (2004, pp.48-49) points out “a split between the collection of information and the user services.” He states that most libraries in the United States now have online catalogues and some kind of electronic reference tools. However, during the transition period “Librarians noticed that when perhaps 1/3 of their catalogue was online, students quit bothering to search the older cards.” This raises the question of how many digital and analogue services will be duplicated, and will a number of new library staff be required? The potential result is a hybrid library with duplication of many services offered by the same staff.
Most of the TFDL’s collection is listed on its online catalogue, but it has a card catalogue on the third floor, something you would not expect to see in a so-called digital library. Cloutier explains that this card catalogue is used specifically for the TFDL’s Visual and Performing Arts Collection, which is used to locate specific descriptions and reviews for individual works of Canadian art and music. But she says the TFDL plans to replace this with an online catalogue as well.
Since members of the regular staff are also producers of digital collections, this is what Kara defines as: “Mainstreaming--the integration of processing, support, and service for digital publications into core functional activities.” (Kara, 2004, p.25). It is the approach used by the Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University and is the least disruptive since the original staff members have been retained over the years.
Gradually, as library staff members have left from the Mann Library, five Information Technology support staff have been added. The IT staff members have some training in library work and are required to do a number of hours of library work each week in order to better recognize the problems and work out solutions appropriate to the library situation and its users (Kara, 2004). According to Cervone (2006, p. l09), attention also should be given to human-computer interaction studies because it is critically important in providing library IT support to: “consider how the ‘average’ person will use and interact with the system.” As at Cornell, Information Technology support is located in the U of C library. According to an e-mail interview with Jackie Bell, program director and a spokesperson for the Digital Library, the IT library support has some training in information and library resources.
Cloutier states that assisting users in the use of electronic resources is a high priority for the Taylor Family Digital Library. “We’ve got a very busy integrated services desk on the main floor of this library. We don’t tend to focus on Google. We focus on the research databases that we acquire on very specialized subject areas.” She adds that on any given day they have a number of students who come to the desk needing research assistance for their courses. So the integrated services desk shows them how to determine
their topic, how to choose keywords, what databases might be the most appropriate to look for materials in and anything else they need to know about the library’s electronic resources. The amount of time involved for each student could be anywhere from just 20 minutes to up to two hours depending on the student’s needs.
A problem with the hybrid library, which utilizes combined analogue and digital methods, is the expense of purchasing duplicate copies of hard and electronic materials. Providing paper journals and magazines is particularly expensive in terms of subscriptions and library space. And who will be reading them?
Cloutier says the TFDL continues to acquire print materials, but overwhelmingly prefers to acquire digital ones because of the increasing demand from users for digital content that can be viewed on their laptop computers and other portable electronic devices. She adds that whenever the TFDL purchases a printed book or journal, it always sets out to acquire the digital version as well.
When all of the printed books and journals were moved out the MacKimmie Library, the most widely-used publications were moved to the TFDL through a specially-built overhead corridor that connects the two libraries. The rest of the MacKimmie library’s print collection was moved by truck to the U of C’s new High Density Storage Library (HDL), located several miles away from the U of C’ s main campus. Cloutier states that this collection had not been reduced in size. It had simply been moved. She adds that anyone who wants to obtain a book from the HDL can go to the U of C online library catalogue, click on the “Place Hold” button next to the desired item, enter the user ID or Pin on his or her University of Calgary “One Card” and in two or three days the book will be delivered to the TFDL for the user to pick up.
In assessing the different expectations of the new “Generation Y” that have grown up with the computer, Gardner and Eng (2005) did a survey in 2003 of l, 267 University of Southern California undergraduate users of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Library that was ten years old at the time of the study. Given limitations in research design, the authors suggest that their findings and observations be viewed as a case study, but they cite other writers who have observed the same trends. Gardner and Eng found that 12 % of the undergraduate respondents came to the Leavey Library to use print journals and magazines.
The TFDL will need to decide if the number of users warrants the continuing cost of paper subscriptions. In this decision the planners will need to consider other users beside Generation Y. Seniors and others who are not students may be among the minority who use the paper format. The democratic aspect of providing this service free of charge to anyone is an expectation established by history. Although it is not true of the U of C, the sociological implication of limiting access to “the haves” of society through restrictive use of online subscriptions has received attention, as well as the content of the digitized materials. It is argued that “greater attention needs to be paid to the concerns of marginalized members of society in the evaluation of digital libraries” (Bishop, et al., 2003, p. l64).
Generation Y Users and the Physical Library Facilities
For Generation Y respondents in the Leavey Library study, important reasons for coming to the library are to use a computer for class work (6l.3%) and for using the computer for personal reasons (5l %). Only 36.3% of respondents to the paper-based survey of eight questions used the library to check out a book. The majority own computer laptops and like working from their dorm room or home, but they also expect to go online when they physically visit the library. The respondents were least satisfied with the amount of individual and group study space even though the library had already sent 20,000 books into storage to make room for a second Information Commons within the span of ten years. Although they had l80 computers available, they wanted more (Gardner and Eng, 2005).
The majority of Generation Y students indicated that they came to the library to study alone (80.6 %) but over half also liked to study sometimes in groups. There appears to be a new emphasis on team work and group learning. The Leavy collaborative workrooms are often completely booked (Gardner and Eng, 2005).
The present writer finds that the experience of the planners of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Library at the University of Southern California is very similar to the experience of the planners of the University of Tilburg Library in the Netherlands. The libraries were both ten years old in 2003, with the Tilburg motto being “the library of the future today” (Collier, 2004). The library serves a student population of 10,000 today, and after its construction was considered a model library to visit because it provided 400 computer study places, a major innovation for the period, just as the Learning Commons with computers was innovative for USC.
As with the case of the Leavy Library at USC, expansion of work places and storage of library materials occurred within the ten-year period. The Tilburg Library found it necessary to put 7,000 linear metres of journals into storage in order to increase the number of individual work places, besides converting a third of the entrance level into an e-learning facility (Collier, 2004). This demand for more computer work places is also noted in public libraries. The Toronto Reference Library has a lineup for the 92 Internetequipped computers (Mahoney, 2007)
At Tilburg University Library, as at USC, the growing expectation of students to work in groups and the increased noise level is being reported:
At Tilburg University we can see students working in ways for which the building was not designed, clear trend toward working in groups around a PC, more informal approach, even a preference for working in a noisy and bustling environment (Collier, 2004, p.234).
A new learning centre at Tilburg is in process. With changing expectations, Collier suggests that it is important for a library to retain the spirit of innovation.
Student feedback is important in determining how to move ahead in change and innovation. After listening to student demands, the University of Arizona Library has extended its hours into a week before and after regular terms. It also has two new presentation rooms where students can prepare for job interviews as well as class presentations. The equipment includes computers and digital video interface with bigscreen monitors for viewing one’s presentation (Swedlund, 2006).
The planning committee for the Taylor Family Digital Library had included both student and faculty representation. With plans to accommodate a possible enrolment of 35,000 students in the future, the new library was expected to allocate a large amount of floor space to study area and computers, based on the experience of the USC Leavy Library that serves the undergraduates on a campus of 30,000 students as well as the Tilburg University Library serving a total of 10,000 students. Tilburg began with 400 computers in l993 and needed to increase the number. It should also allocate space for study in groups, based on the experience of these universities.
Cloutier says the TFDL has around 300 computer workstations that students can use to access everything they need for their coursework, including Blackboard, their course management system, to user office productivity software such as PowerPoint 4 and readings they may need for their classes. The TFDL has state of the art interactive electronic wall displays in its study rooms as well.
For the TFDL much attention had been given to providing space for study in groups (New U of C digital library, 2006). There are training and seminar rooms and video conference and distance learning facilities. “If you look at the University of Calgary, it is a commuter campus so most of our students commute on to campus every day and are here for the entire day,” Cloutier explains. “And so, given the nature of their studies here at the University of Calgary now, they need to have a space where they can sit down during the day, work with either the library resources or the online materials that they need to work with for their courses and their coursework.”
There was also a lot of importance put on mobile and comfortable furniture to facilitate the creation of informal groups. “The furniture itself is moveable, so students, especially in the learning commons which are the first and second floor, can change some of the furniture around to suit their learning needs. And we’re just better able to take advantage of the technology in the building and new technological advances. It’s actually really important”, says Cloutier. She says that a big difference between the old library and the new one is the interior space itself. “It’s a very inviting space, a very open space full of natural light.” She adds that there are 1800 seats in the new building, each one of them is wired for portable computers and other personal electronic devices, which was never possible in the MacKimmie Library.
Generation Y and Food and Beverages in the LibraryThere is now the expectation for food and beverages in the library, an expectation that is being met by many university libraries, including the TFDL, which has a coffee shop. Perhaps Chapters and other successful bookstores promoted the expectation (Mahoney, 2007). Besides the convenience, it makes the library a more social experience to have cafes, snack bars, or at least snack vending machines in specific areas if there is concern over preserving collections.
As already mentioned, there has always been a goal to make the Taylor Family Digital Library a pleasant place to visit. In the 2006 e-mail interview with Jackie Bell, she said that the new library “is intended to be much more than a traditional library. . . The building and atmosphere are being designed to foster collaborative work, individual research, as well as social interaction” (See Appendix for interview questions addressed to Jackie Bell).
The Influence of the Internet and Google on Student Use of Library Reference Services
Although students want to have the campus library open for study, visits to a physical library to make use of traditional reference services are in decline. Gardner and Eng (2005) found that a small percentage of student respondents came to the Leavy Library for computer assistance (2.l%) and for reference assistance (l2.6%). This confirms a 2002 survey of the information habits of American college students in which 75% of the respondents said that they are successful in finding the information needed for their courses, and two-thirds trust their own discrimination regarding what constitutes good material from the Web (Online Computer Library Center, 2002).
There appears to be a gap between instructor expectations and the students’ choices regarding resources. According to Johnson and Magusin (2005, p. 81), “there is a sense of crisis in academia that the Internet is ‘dumbing down’ the quality of work that students are submitting and is increasing plagiarism.” They believe that standard evaluation criteria of online materials need to be introduced to students by both instructors and librarians, and that library helps in research needs to be well publicized.
The Educational Testing Service, a New Jersey non-profit organization would agree that more education regarding student evaluation of online materials is needed. The Testing Service asked 10,000 high school and college students to evaluate a set of Web sites in the fall of 2005. Nearly half of the students failed to judge which Web sites were best in terms of being timely as well as objective and reliable. The project manager, Terry Egan, believes that this digital-literacy assessment indicates the need for education in use of digital resources, particularly since many students depend on googling and may access inappropriate materials. (Fadel, 2006).
Griffiths and Brophy (2005) found that many students were confused about the criteria for quality materials. For example, only 26% agreed that it was important to have refereed materials. Since the students were given the option of saying “yes” after the term “refereed,” it is possible that many answered “no” because they did not know what it meant. The respondents were almost equally divided on whether materials should be
“reliable.” The researchers state: “it became clear that common definitions of what is meant by quality electronic resources could not be assumed.”
As mentioned earlier, the TFDL prefers to focus on its specialised databases rather than Google. “They are indexed differently and contain different content,” says Cloutier. “Certainly the content in our databases may also be indexed in Google, but with our students we also connect through to the content that we’ve purchased. So through a third party software, when they are in a database and they find an article that’s appropriate for them, in most cases they can connect right up to that article.” This is supposed to give more precise search results than by using Google alone.
More students prefer using Google than using online library catalogues. Griffiths & Brophy (2005) studied the searching practice of UK students and report that 45% used Google regularly, and another 9% used Yahoo as their first choice in doing a search. Only l0% of the students used online library catalogues.
Even when using Google, Griffiths & Brophy (2005) found that a third of participants failed to find information, and 35% said that searching was difficult. The relative ease in using Google over using library databases and systems appears to be the underlying factor in choosing it. They suggest that education in library searching is needed. Griffiths & Brophy (p. 552) also suggest that: “As service providers and developers, it is crucial that we learn lessons from those commercial search engines that dominate students’ use and embed those lessons into academic resources that students can find and use easily.”
This is confirmed by another study by Brophy and Bawden (2005, p. 510). By using case studies, they compared Google with the library systems for searching and arrived at the following assessment: “The main discriminating factors seem to be quality (favouring library systems) and accessibility (favouring Google). Coverage also favours Google, although both systems are needed to achieve anything approaching comprehensive recall.” At present, the authors believe that usability by the students will usually win over quality, but that it may not remain an issue in the future: “as search engines like Google . . . acquire more ‘academic’ content, and as library system interfaces take on the look-and-feel of search engines. In effect, the systems will merge. . ." They do not discuss what forms this predicted merging will take in the future. Pomerantz (2006) sees Google Scholar as enabling libraries to provide quality resources to new user communities through shared electronic cataloguing, with the goal of 100% availability of information.
Whereas some librarians visualize the Google search engine as supplementary or as a model for interface development, others regard Google as a competitive challenge. Pace (2003, p. 34) states that “Google has presented an immense challenge to both libraries and library automation vendors.” Johnson and Magusin (2005, p. 84) suggest that “there is the risk that students will use only what they can find quickly and in full text through Google Scholar and skip the visit to the library.”
Creative Marketing of Library Reference and Resources
The University of Calgary Library is aware that digitizing materials and making them easily accessible is only part of the process of facilitating research. Providing online aids for obtaining the most reliable sources and other guidance for evaluating and using the digitized materials is important, but at the same time there needs to be research on the best methods of getting the message through to more students. Although many students from Generation Y do not seek research advice, perhaps there are creative ways of offering it successfully. For example, Harvard University started a “Roving Librarian” project to bring librarians with laptops and reference information to places on campus where there were remote users (“Reference on the Road,” 2005).
Online Aids for encouraging the Use of Library Electronic Resources: The Experience of Athabasca University
For help in using library resources, Athabasca University Library has found that students prefer online tutorials. It has designed a number of tools to help students become competent users of digital materials. Johnson and Magusin (2005, p. 38) suggest that “By directing their students to library pages as a cure for too much ‘googling’ faculty can reinforce the idea of a library, whether it is virtual or physical, as a gateway to research.”
For students doing library activities in remote locations, Athabasca’s Digital Reference Centre is provided. It includes free use of dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, maps, directories, and data and statistical sources. It also includes subscription-based products, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Athabasca’s Digital Reading Room has been organized as a knowledge database that is multidisciplinary. The public can access many of the digital reading files, but for licensed or copyright-cleared materials one must log in as a registered student.
The Help Centre at Athabasca is accessed from the main library page. Faculty and librarians have created online help and research guides with examples relevant to studies at AU, both for the undergraduate and graduate programs. There are help sheets for Internet searching, guides for obtaining journal articles from the AU Library, lists of help pages for writing papers that include citing and references, help sheets for logging into databases and other subscription-based resources, as well as help in using the library catalogue.
AU Library’s Links by Subject is an annotated resource list that should be valuable to the student researcher, but are the majority of students making good use of the library resources? An assessment found that a large number of Athabasca students are taking a single course to fulfil requirements of their home institutions, and some fail to realize that electronic materials from the library are even available, a problem of awareness and navigability of the library Web site that is now being addressed (Johnson & Magusin, 2005).