Effective Practices in Academic and Research Librarianship

The Friday Harbor Library is the library for the UW's marine lab located in the San Juan Islands. The librarian for Friday Harbor is only at the library at the beginning of each quarter and half time in the summer. We have therefore developed a number of electronic tools and resources to help the remote users in the Labs feel more connected to the resources of the Seattle Campus.

This tool, the "virtual reading room," came about after we had moved to a heavy reliance on electronic journals after several rounds of cuts to the print subscriptions. And while the idea of having easy electronic access to core journals sounds desirable in the abstract, the actual transition has not always been an easy one. Researchers reported that serendipitous browsing of the new print journals often leads to new and unexpected research directions. There was therefore some concern that reliance on an electronic format would mean losing this opportunity for browsing. This, plus a casual comment by a researcher that he would find it useful to have a more visually oriented interface for electronic journals, sparked an idea for a "virtual reading room" for electronic journals.

The "virtual reading room" is a graphical list of over 80 high-use e-journals. Only 35 of those titles are also current print subscriptions, thus clearly demonstrating how e-journal subscriptions have significantly improved access. The format of the "virtual reading room" is that of a display periodicals shelf. Graphics of the journal covers are linked to the electronic subscriptions. Links were also provided to those journals with SDI or table of contents services. The available date ranges are indicated, as well as whether the journal is currently available in print. All of this information is available through the online catalog, but not in this highly visual format. This type of hand-crafted page would be unmanageable with a larger collection, but works with a specialized audience and a limited number of journals.

• The virtual reading room provides an additional "gateway" into the UW's electronic journal collection. This collection also represents the core journals used by students and researches at the Labs. Including the SDI links for each journal coupled with the visually oriented interface is meant to help to emulate the seredipitous browsing associated with print journals.

Except for the time associated with creating the page and regularly checking the links, there was no additional cost to provide this service to the Friday Harbor Library.

The short version of the UW Libraries' Mission Statement says, "The University of Washington Libraries enriches the quality of life and advances intellectual discovery by connecting people with knowledge." This practice is directly connected with this mission by connecting people with knowledge in a way they find more accessible. It also supports our values regarding service by "anticipating and meeting user needs and by providing reliable information, discovery methods and tools."

Usage can be measured by using a counter for the web page to determine the level of use.

As the comfort level of users for electronic formats rises, there may be less of a need for a hand-crafted page like this one. However, when you have a large institution, with thousands of journal subscriptions available and constantly changing portals into the electronic formats of journals...having a page with the core collection for a specialized population of distant learners may be a very desirable tool to keep current. The page must be constantly checked for changing links, as are all pages which connect to rapidly changing content.

This practice could be transferred to other subject-based pages for specialized populations. It also sparked a lot of interest amongst other librarians for marine labs, as they also have remote users and a small number of core journal subscriptions. For more than 100 or so titles, it would become unmanageable.

This tool was created in direct response to articulated needs by researchers at the Friday Harbor Labs. As a librarian who is very comfortable with the common ways of using our electronic resources, this seemed like a very redundant tool and I was actually reluctant to craft the original page. Because of this, the response to the virtual reading room was quite astonishing. Students, faculty and researchers at the Labs have all expressed their support for this type of visual interface for the electronic journal collection and asked that it be maintained as a regular tool for the Labs. Although users already had access to the journals highlighted in the virtual reading room, we better served these patrons by listening to their percieved needs of how that information could best be provided.