Charter
CQI Team on Undergraduate Library Service
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Providing Library Service to the 21st Century Undergraduate
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The electronic age has raised issues for libraries about changes, if any, required in their service to
their clientele. At UMCP this has occurred at a time when tight budgets have changed the nature
of services provided to undergraduate students through the Undergraduate Library facility. This
team seeks to examine services to the undergraduate student of 2010, and assess the implications
of such a vision on services now and in the near future.
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Need to Address Undergraduate Library Service:
The library has always been at the core of student life for undergraduates. In the new information
age, libraries face new challenges in fulfilling their traditional role. The undergraduate of the 21st
century will not simply have more information available to him or her, but will face a vastly more
complex task in accessing and integrating information and knowledge. Access to information and
to libraries will be diffuse with electronics opening up possibilities of remote and often non-institutional contact. Locating knowledge will become increasingly complicated in the face of the
exponential growth in information and myriad selection of media. Integrating this expanded base
of information into current and past knowledge will require new sophistication in accessing
multiple media. Libraries, which have organized and provided access to knowledge in the age of
print, will be just as central in shaping the 21st century student's access to the expanded world
woven from page and screen.
The University of Maryland has a long history of focus on undergraduate library service marked
today by the undergraduate services centered in Hornbake Library. Even without a challenging
future, these services would be in crisis. In recent years, as material budgets remained flat and the
cost of materials rose, the collections for undergraduate students have eroded dramatically.
Mandated cuts in personnel have reduced services for undergraduates. These reducations have
resulted in a steady flow of undergraduates away from Hornbake Library into the McKeldin
facility in search of necessary resources. Space, staff, and collections in McKeldin are now being
stretched to meet the demands of undergraduate users. Distinctive undergraduate services housed
in Hornbake are increasingly disconnected from their clientele.
These difficulties come at a time of great change in libraries. The computer age brings new and
complex demands for library materials, services, and instruction. Far from ushering in cost
savings, the new age presents increasing capital and maintenance expenses for the equipment
needed to operate in this new information environment, and escalating costs for acquiring or
accessing diversified collections. For the undergraduate student, new challenges are presented by
the increasingly important and more complicated information world that affects their success
beyond the university. Now is the time to envision the library's place in the undergraduate
education of the 21st century.
Recognizing the decline in the conventional undergraduate library at UMCP and the necessity and
opportunity for better, modern library services for undergraduates in the new century, the
University Library Council requested a rethinking of future undergraduate library services at
UMCP.
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The team will consider the role of the library in undergraduate education. That consideration
should describe the changing nature of the information world and the library's role in it. The team
should identify current strengths and weaknesses in fulfilling that role. The team should outline a
plan to set necessary changes in place. In short, the team's goal will be to rethink and redirect the
library's functions -- service, collection, and instruction -- to prepare the library for the student of
the 21st century.
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Final Presentation Expected by:
October 1996
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Resource Issues and Parameters:
In performing its work, the team should take cognizance of:
- UMCP's multiple missions as a graduate and research institution as well as a provider of
undergraduate education.
- potential physical sites for providing services and housing collections.
- related services provided by other units within the institution (e.g., the computer science
center).
- other services provided to undergraduates by the current Hornbake site.
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Dr. Anne MacLeod, Acting Director of Libraries
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Prof. James F. Klumpp
Dept of Speech Communication
2122 Skinner
301-405-6520
jk44@umail.umd.edu
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- Linda Coleman, English, Freshman Writing Program
- Trudi Hahn, Public Services, Library
- Sheri Parks, American Studies, Undergraduate Studies
- Allan Rough, Non-Print Media, Library
- Charles Striffler, Electrical Engineering, College Park Scholars
- Jorge Velarde, Undergraduate Student.
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Dr. George Dieter, Jr., Director of CQI
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Revised by Team, May 28, 1996