Undergraduate Library Services

in the 21^st Century

Prepared and Approved by the CQI Team on Library Services for the 21^st Century Undergraduate, and submitted to the Dean of Libraries, February 1997. Dr. James F. Klumpp, Team Leader.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Problem and Charge
• History of the Project
• Summary of the Report
• Changes in libraries, instruction, and students that will define education in the 21^stcentury
• Recommendations of the Report
• Siting Undergraduate Library Services
• Members of the Team
• Report of the Team
• Section 1: Students, Instructors, and Librarians in the 21st Century
• The Mix of Electronics and Print in the Libraries of the Future
• The Library without Walls
• Envisioning the Undergraduate Student in the 21st Century
• Envisioning Instruction in the 21st Century
• Envisioning the Undergraduate Librarian of the 21st Century
• Section 2: Recommendations
• Recommendations for the Institution
• Recommendation 1: Reaffirm the centrality of the library at the university's core
• Recommendation 2: Recognize the altered economics of information access
• Recommendation 3: Recognize the importance of human resources in the library of the 21st Century
• Recommendations to the Faculty
• Recommendation 4: Develop active and diverse programs to teach information literacy
• Recommendation 5: Recognize the increasing mutual dependence of librarians and faculty in the information age
• Recommendations to the Library: Reorganizing Access to the Library's Resources
• Recommendation 6: Design electronic sites as a first threshold to the changing configuration of library resources
• Recommendation 7: Design the physical layout of the library to integrate material in various media
• Recommendation 8: Institute "Square One Project Planning Centers" to assist students in accessing electronic resources and in integrating electronic and print resources into a research plan
• Recommendation 9: Reengineer the process for introducing products with the goal of integrating new products into the daily activity of patrons
• Recommendations to the Library: Renewing the Librarian/Faculty Relationship
• Recommendation 10: Strengthen cooperative relationships between faculty and librarians
• Recommendations to the Library: Reference Services for Undergraduates
• Recommendation 11: Recognize the unique needs of undergraduate students in using libraries
• Recommendation 12: Examine and reengineer the provision of reference services for undergraduates to recognize the altered demands of the information age
• Recommendations to the Library: Reserve Services for Undergraduates
• Recommendation 13: Move toward electronic reserve systems in which most reserves are accessible through controlled internet accounts
• Recommendation 14: Work with faculty to develop integrated resource websites for particular courses
• Section 3: Siting Undergraduate Library Services
• Findings Regarding the Current Undergraduate Library
• Siting Demands in the 21^st Century
• Evaluating Siting Options
• Creating the Consolidated Facility in McKeldin
• Recommendation 15: Create a consolidated research facility in McKeldin Library, open to all students, with service points that recognize the unique characteristics of undergraduate users.
• An Undergraduate Academic Center
• Recommendation 16: In consultation with and through support from the central administration, create an Undergraduate Academic Center to house day-to-day library services for undergraduates.
• Integrating the Library with the Academic Mission of the Campus

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Executive Summary

Problem and Charge

Second, a crisis in the funding of libraries at the university has deeply affected undergraduate services. In recent years, as material budgets remained flat and the cost of materials rose, the collections identified for undergraduate students have eroded dramatically. Mandated cuts in personnel have reduced services for undergraduates. These reductions have resulted in a steady flow of students away from the undergraduate facility in Hornbake Library into McKeldin Library in search of necessary resources. Space, staff, and collections in McKeldin are now being stretched to meet the demands of undergraduate users while distinctive undergraduate services housed in Hornbake are increasingly disconnected from their clientele.

Third, beginning with the Pease report in 1988 the university has engaged in a number of initiatives to improve the quality of its undergraduate programs. The most recent affirmation of that commitment is contained in the Strategic Plan approved in 1996 which establishes the strengthening of undergraduate programs as a top priority. Quality library services lie at the core of quality education. For centuries libraries have been the repository of the accumulated knowledge that universities seek to pass to new generations of students. But in this era, libraries also are the window on the world. Students at the university, and workers and citizens beyond, rely on libraries to negotiate the explosion in information made possible by the electronic age. More than ever before, using library resources to effectively and efficiently access information is a basic ability that our graduates must master.

History of the Project

Summary of the Report

Changes in libraries, instruction, and students that will define education in the 21^st century

The direction of changes in teaching will be toward a more permeable classroom wall. Instructors equipped with classroom access to electronic and interactive resources will bring more material into the classroom. Student learning will stretch beyond the classroom into assignments that call for students to interact with those same resources. The so-called "paradigm shift" from teaching to learning implies that the quality of a student's education will rest much more heavily on the quality of library services. Quite simply, poor library, poor undergraduate education.

The university does not expect large changes in the demographics of our students in the next two decades, but the world in which they live will leave them bringing an ever-greater variety of experiences to their college education. Many will continue to be commuters, others will live on campus. Some will come with sophisticated abilities to unleash the power of computers; others will have limited experience with electronics. All will find a quality education a more expensive investment; some will rely more than ever on university resources to assist with this cost. All will find more demand on their time as faculty require more group work, more projects, and more contact with the world beyond the classroom.

Recommendations of the Report

The second necessity is a renewal of the working relationship between instructional staff and the library. Instructors and library staff, both reeling under diminished resources, have learned how to do their jobs without the other rather than how to interact to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of each. The result of this estrangement is a limited engagement by our students into the rich resources of our library. In the coming years, more cooperation will help faculty succeed in bringing the advantages of the exponential growth of rich, accessible information resources to their students. Similarly, more cooperation will help librarians succeed in organizing the electronic threshold to bring our students ever more deeply into the information age. Through such cooperation, the tasks of each will be richer and easier; without such cooperation our undergraduates will be less prepared for the world they will meet beyond their diploma.

The third necessity is a reorganization of the provision of services to undergraduates by the library. Now is the time to redesign the services for the coming transformation to the new mix of electronics and print. We recommend that the reorganization center around perfecting three thresholds into the library's resources. The first threshold will be electronic. It will exploit the diffuse network of electronic resources increasingly available to provide remote access to the services of the library. Our recommendations urge that the library's efforts concentrate on developing electronic resources that are characterized by their ease of use and the richness of their content in guiding students into library collections.

The second threshold is physical: the door to the newly constituted central campus facility -- McKeldin Library. The task for the new library is to deploy its staff and services in a way that maximizes the patron's ability to effectively and efficiently negotiate the new mix of electronics and paper. Many points of separation in the current system -- undergraduate facilities versus graduate facilities, general use collections versus special collections, electronic medium versus paper medium -- must be reorganized into integrated pathways into the new library. We anticipate that this reorganization would include consolidation of many undergraduate services into McKeldin and opening that facility for full utilization by undergraduate students. Necessary to the success of this consolidation is recognizing of the unique needs of undergraduates, both in training staff and in redesigning McKeldin's physical space.

The third threshold is pedagogical: an entry point into the full resources of the library from ongoing instructional activity. On a campus where access to information and knowledge resources is an increasingly important skill in graduates, instructional contexts integrating electronic resources should include a threshold into the library. The third threshold would be a prominent feature of an information literacy and user education program to introduce undergraduates to the resources of the library.

Siting Undergraduate Library Services

To that end, we recommend two major siting changes in the library system. First, we recommend that McKeldin Library be transformed from primarily a graduate library into a central campus library serving the needs of all researchers, undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Although many undergraduate students already use the McKeldin facility, their presence has overloaded the facility. So, our recommendation is that McKeldin be reengineered to become the primary site. This will involve extensive planning and some renovation of the McKeldin facility.

Second, we recommend development of an Undergraduate Academic Center to include many day-to-day library services. We envision this facility as attracting into a central campus location the interdisciplinary and extra-disciplinary learning that defines the best in a vital university. Here students would find the resources for their classroom preparation including both individual and group study space, electronic resources for connection to the university computer network and the libraries, supplementary lectures and symposia opportunities, and planning centers for projects required in their classes. Here the student of the 21^st century would find instruction in information literacy and library use. In addition, the services necessary for instructors to redesign their teaching to incorporate information resources would be concentrated in the center. The library component of such a facility would include the third threshold for undergraduates into the enriched McKeldin site where collections and services of the former undergraduate library would be consolidated as the home of the central university library. The center should become a core of learning at the university, a crossroads where students and faculty find facilities that improve the quality of the undergraduate educational experience. Our report recommends specific services that we find appropriate to such a facility.

Our report provides direction for a dramatic revitalization of the place of the library in the education of UMCP undergraduates. Our recommendations call for administration, faculty, and librarians to each contribute to the revitalization. The library we project -- accessible through electronic, physical, and pedagogical thresholds -- will enhance the participation of our students in the information age. Not only is such a revitalization central to improving the quality of undergraduate education, but it is an essential improvement if our university is to prepare its undergraduate students to become effective workers and citizens in the 21^st century.

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Members of the Team

• Dr. James F. Klumpp, Associate Professor of Speech Communication, and Team Leader
• Dr. Linda Coleman, Associate Professor of English, and Director of the Freshman Writing Program
• Dr. Trudi Bellardo Hahn, Manager, User Education Services, University of Maryland Libraries Division of Public Services
• Dr. Sheri Parks, Associate Professor of American Studies, and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies
• Allan Rough, Head, Nonprint Media Services, University of Maryland Libraries Division of Public Services, Hornbake Library
• Dr. Charles Striffler, Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Director, College Park Scholars Program on Science, Technology, and Human Values
• Jorge Velarde, Senior majoring in Biological Sciences
• Dr. George Dieter, Director of Continuous Quality Improvement Program, UMCP, Professor of College of Engineering, and Team Facilitator

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Report of the Team

Section 1: Students, Instructors, and Librarians in the 21st Century

The Mix of Electronics and Print in the Libraries of the Future

• Libraries of the future will be a blend of electronics and print. As new media have been introduced through the twentieth century -- microform, sound, video, and now CD and digital -- the book has remained the center of our culture's storehouse of information and wisdom. We cannot foresee a total electronic library anytime soon, if ever. Print remains a superior medium in many ways: portability, relatively more permanent and inexpensive storage, and an easier medium to access. Electronic materials, however, have added other conveniences: immediacy, remote access, and new search techniques. The electronic media will change libraries more thoroughly than did audio or video, but libraries of the 21st century will remain a blend of print and electronics.
• The blend of electronics and print will change the human approach to libraries. We are convinced that a good way of thinking about libraries of the 21st century is as a triangulation of electronics, print and human intelligence. This is also a way of saying that the human problem of the 21st century is not becoming familiar with electronic resources but developing ways to negotiate the blend of print and electronics. In organizing the new blend, teaching the new complexity to users, and assisting with mastery of expanded resources, the human element will be increasingly important.
• Electronic libraries will require investing more of a university's resources, not less. Any belief that the current shortcoming of the UMCP library's print collection can be compensated by skipping immediately to an electronic world will so distort the priorities and needs of our library as to leave the campus unprepared for the coming age. Computers cost more than the human arm that pulls books off a shelf, licenses for unowned material more than subscriptions. The obvious advantage would seem to be in storage, yet estimates are that electronic storage is sixteen times as expensive as print after considering all the ancillary costs.

The Library without Walls

• Remote access. Libraries will need to conceptualize the client connecting through remote access, not as a pre-user, but as the primary client. The resources housed within the walls of the building will be an extension of the primary interaction. Generally, the typical pattern of searching the library's catalog from a remote location before entering the library building will be expanded and remote computers will become a much richer threshold into libraries. At UMCP, our campus community already has electronic access to many of our library's resources. Our library's home page is just beginning to give a glimpse of the sort of threshold that will mark the coming century.
• The multi-site collection. Libraries in the new century will be a door to the holdings of other libraries and to commercial publishers and vendors. Some arrangements will be extensions of current arrangements such as the cooperative ventures of the many campuses of the University of Maryland. Cooperative arrangements, however, will expand far beyond localized networks. Libraries in the next century will be required to devote scarce resources to contributing to such multi-site collections as well as merely accessing the resources of others.

In many ways, the library building's most important function in the 21st century will be to house the people -- the librarians -- who will assume increased importance to students and their instructors.

Envisioning the Undergraduate Student in the 21st Century

• Patterns of library use. The student of the 21st century will be an information seeker who begins his/her use of the library from a home desk, a classroom, or perhaps even an automobile. The computer will provide the first threshold into the library's services. The student will learn to choose among the resources of the library-without-walls. S/he will cross the second threshold -- the front doors of the library building -- at a much later stage in his/her work. Where to acquire information, how to assess the quality of information, and how to integrate information into an intelligent product will be as important in differentiating the success of a student as the quality of writing or speaking is today.
• Computer literacy. We expect the average student of the future to be more computer literate. Computers will touch lives in so many ways that various computer techniques will be common knowledge. Nevertheless, we anticipate that there will continue to be a broader range of competency in entering students than has characterized earlier technologies of literacy. The university cannot assume a level of computer literacy but must provide opportunities to upgrade such literacy in undergraduate students.
• Economic barriers. Universities have traditionally provided support to assure equal access to their resources regardless of the student's economic circumstances. Potential inequalities multiply in the information society of the 21st century. Already on the horizon is a fee-for-service system for information. Hard copies of electronically accessed journal articles, articles now available in print, can soon be provided to students at a per-page cost. New delivery systems require renewed efforts to avoid economically differentiated access to information.
• Technical barriers. We cannot ignore the barriers that today complicate and frustrate the use of campus computers. Taking a book from a shelf is still easier than accessing campus computer resources. Students find full computer labs. Internet connections to university computers are too unreliable to fully integrate internet resources into teaching. Access to the university's network from remote locations is restricted by excessive demand in evening and weekend hours. We do not address solutions to the barriers, but we believe that the failure of the university to address them will deny our students opportunities in the 21st century.

Envisioning Instruction in the 21st Century

• Multi-media presentation. The instructor of the 21st century will have a wider variety of media available for instruction. Where in the past a classroom session may have established an agenda for students beyond the classroom -- a trip to the museum to view an image -- more and more such resources can be brought into the classroom. The advantages of media in the classroom that have been developing for a number of years can accelerate as the computer allows greater access to the storehouse of knowledge. The computer's development of hypertext logic makes the possibilities of multi-media much broader.
• Fluidity in the form of instruction. The single minded commitment to lecture has long ago given way to a variety of classroom activities. Teaching today involves new methods including increasing project-oriented courses, more group projects, and projects extending the classroom into the surrounding society. We have also found an increasing emphasis on working with primary data and students learning to process that data into meaningful conclusions. The team heard reports, for example, of the increased use of special collections by undergraduates. Courses in business, writing, speaking, journalism, and other disciplines are increasingly using data much newer than that available in printed materials. In the next century, we anticipate increased fluidity in the form of teaching. The normal class oriented calendar and classroom site will begin to give way to greater variety of scheduling and siting of learning.
• Multi-disciplinarity. Academic divisions into departments and even colleges are becoming increasingly permeable throughout the curriculum at College Park. For example, the University's strategic plan identifies an emphasis in policy studies that combines work from departments throughout the institution. Programs such as the highly successful College Park Scholars program identify intellectual clusters that combine the resources of various departments.
• Reorganized teaching staffs. Typically, today's classroom is assigned to the single teacher with responsibility for the education of his/her students. When team teaching exists, it involves either a coequal arrangement of two faculty members or an arrangement of a faculty member and teaching assistants who serve as extensions of his/her control. In the new century, the university and the faculty will need to adapt to new arrangements. Teaching will typically involve the active integration of activities, information, and technologies. Some describe the more typical arrangement of the future as involving the faculty member as content expert leading a team that includes a technology supervisor and a learning resources coordinator. Coordinating the classroom will become a more complex task that will require new arrangements of personnel.
• Focus on Learning. Many of these trends have begun to replace a vision of education in which faculty transfer their knowledge to students with a more interactive paradigm of learning -- a vision of the student acquiring knowledge through a process in which faculty are a central resource. In such a university, an environment in which students have the fullest access to the information and knowledge resources of our age is critical to the quality of the students' education.

Envisioning the Undergraduate Librarian of the 21st Century

• Organizing information access. The triumph of librarianship in the age of the book has been to organize a vast amount of print data through bibliographic sources, and library system innovations as simple as the call number and card catalog have provided intelligent access to the wealth of knowledge contained in the book. Today the internet world lies beyond the computer screen, much of it unorganized and thus inaccessible to the user. Library-based electronic products are already superior in organization to the more voluminous but unorganized internet. Organizing these new resources into accessible form will be an important task.
• Evaluating information quality. The screen of editors and bibliographers that evaluated authors' products and constructed the collection of the library has been circumvented by the advent of the internet. Although certainly advantages inhere in this more open access, concerns for quality come to the fore. The skills of evaluating the quality of data and product is a skill students must master. Librarians will be key in that effort.

The result of these two skills and the reconfiguration of the library described above provides an altered picture of the activities typical of public service librarians.

• Increased time for training. The products that librarians must know and be able to access will expand beyond the walls of the library. The increase will be exponential. In the short run this expansion will be complicated by the number of command structures for accessing products. A portion of time of a public services librarian must be devoted to incorporating new products into their usable knowledge.
• Priority on a computer threshold to library resources. Academic libraries have always produced bibliographies on particular subjects reflecting the knowledge of their reference librarians. This activity will cease to be a convenience and become a necessity. Furthermore, these activities will need to be mounted on the library's web page, kept current, and become the gateway to resources. Such bibliographic work should not simply provide access to the electronic resources, but should present the integration of print and electronic.
• Increased interaction with instructors. Instructors will increasingly need librarians to assist in mastering available resources on the subjects of their courses, to assist in enriching classroom presentation, and assist in designing assignments that fold new sources of information into their students' learning. In turn, librarians evaluating material and preparing specific aids to subject matters will increasingly require the knowledge of faculty in evaluating the quality of resources. The result will be a fuller and more interactive relationship between librarians and faculty.

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Section 2: Recommendations for Undergraduate Services

Recommendations for the Institution

Recommendation 1: Reaffirm the centrality of the library at the university's core

The record of past UMCP administrations has not resulted in a library system commensurate with the quality of the remainder of the university. Our team has logged many weaknesses in current undergraduate services in Hornbake Library: a large but dated book collection, a serials collection that no longer serves basic undergraduate needs, too few reference librarians working a reference desk that is open too few hours. These conditions are largely driven by budget considerations. Furthermore, we can find no evidence that these shortcomings are induced by enhancements of other parts of the library at the expense of undergraduate services. The diminished quality traces to the general problem financing the libraries.

Many programs have been instituted to improve undergraduate education at UMCP. Yet, a crucial element that contributes to the quality of the education of every undergraduate -- the library -- has atrophied. The recent enhancement of the quality of undergraduate programs at UMCP will be limited if our students are not educated to fully access the expanding resources of the information age. That cannot happen without strong libraries.

Action: The central administration's recent commitment to address the needs of the library must necessarily be fulfilled. Specifically, we urge that the administration:

• Examine the erosion of the budget of the UMCP campus libraries. Although our focus has been on undergraduate services, we note a trend for undergraduates to use all campus libraries and not to confine themselves to particular parts of the collection. Addressing the collection needs of undergraduates requires addressing the overall quality of the library.
• Support programs targeted to improve the quality of library and information use by the UMCP graduate.

Recommendation 2: Recognize the altered economics of information access

• Libraries will increasingly purchase licenses for resources rather than achieving ownership of material. Until stability is achieved in the small market for these licenses, their cost is likely to be high.
• Electronics will not replace print resources. This is partially true because paper is a superior medium for many uses including browsing and intensive study. The tendency to produce hard copy of materials from electronic sources testifies to this preference. But, the problems also go to the economics of the new electronic resources. Providers of electronic products speak in terms of "shelf life." They anticipate, for example, that scholarly journals provided electronically will only be available for a rolling period of years defined by their frequent usage. Paper or microform remains the best method of preserving these resources for future use after the electronic "shelf life" has diminished. Thus, the university's role as a storehouse does not end, but is reconfigured.
• The new systems of "libraries without walls" mandates that major universities be contributors as well as users. The wealth of internet based resources -- for example, the finding aids of a remote university's special collections -- enrich our library's resources with minimal additional cost, but require that our library support similar efforts. An economic system for such arrangements -- essentially a reorganization of libraries from building centered institutions to multi-building, multi-university, virtually located facilities -- is still not fully developed. Our contribution cannot wait for that stability to develop.
• The electronic age requires initial capital investment in machines and in space alterations, and continued funding for maintenance and upgrade.
• Finally, times of rapid change such as libraries face in the next two decades are seldom marked by high efficiency. False starts and backtracking are often required and dramatic decreases in the cost of products made more efficient are often offset by new and more expensive products. A university that only permits its library system to pursue "proven" technologies will always have last decade's library.

Action: The university's administration must work closely with the library to provide fiscal support in a period of great change. The administration must encourage rapid commitment to innovation and unlamented abandonment of eclipsed technologies. The administration should identify its library as a primary site for the changes that the new information age will bring to the institution.

Recommendation 3: Recognize the importance of human resources in the library of the 21st Century

One of the primary places where deficiencies exist in the current undergraduate services is in personnel. The staff providing undergraduate library services have decreased fifteen percent from FY91 to FY97, a cut only slightly higher than the library as a whole. The result has been decreased reference hours, and longer delays in services throughout the system. Yet, successfully bringing our undergraduate students into the information age will increase, not decrease, the demand for library staffing. Organizing information resources, training users in a new diversity of products, teaching students to evaluate new sources of information, and integrating new information products into the daily routine of instructors and students are activities that require human resources.

Action: The administration should authorize additional positions that support provision of services to undergraduates and that support programs to adapt the library to the new mix of print and electronics.

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Recommendations to the Faculty

Recommendation 4: Develop active and diverse programs to teach information literacy

Action: The teaching of information utilization skills should be enhanced through multiple strategies.

• We recommend greater emphasis on teaching information literacy to undergraduates. This instruction should include: how to define an information need, how to construct a search strategy relevant to the need, how to carry out a search according to this plan, and how to critically evaluate the quality, accuracy, and currency of the information retrieved.
• Instructors should become familiar with new information resources and incorporate preparation to use those resources into their teaching.
• A one-credit add-on option should be available for courses with a research project as a course requirement. The add-on would award credit for students working with a faculty-librarian team to enhance their information skills in conjunction with their course project.
• Faculty should cooperate in publicizing information literacy programs sponsored by the library.

Recommendation 5: Recognize the increasing mutual dependence of librarians and faculty in the information age

In the coming years, faculty who establish closer integration of library services into their classroom will increase their ability to respond to the new forms of information that can enhance teaching as well as student performance. New modes of presentation based on rapid access to electronic resources can add visual and activity dimensions to teaching. Student assignments can access the library-without-walls to connect students with more primary data. The number of products to accomplish such changes is increasing so rapidly that keeping current on the latest additions is difficult.

Action: We recommend that faculty become proactive in bringing advances in library resources to their undergraduates:

• Working with librarians, faculty should proactively engage new products introduced into the library that enhance learning in their areas of specialization. Faculty should work with the products to know their potential and limitations and should introduce their students to such advancements as a major objective of their teaching.
• Consultation with librarians should be a normal activity in preparing a course, including working together to develop assignments that require students to employ library resources.
• Faculty and librarians should jointly develop subject aids to enhance undergraduate students' access to the faculty member's area of expertise.

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Recommendations to the Library: Reorganizing Access to the Library's Resources

Recommendation 6: Design electronic sites as a first threshold to the changing configuration of library resources

• Traditionally, the front door of the library has been thought of as the threshold into the library system. Upon entering, patrons are channeled to a desk . Access to the catalog is nearby. For many students today, a visit begins beyond the walls of the library at a computer terminal accessing the library's website and the electronic Public Access Catalog (PAC). The challenge is to provide those accessing the library's resources beyond its doors with the resources to begin their project, resources often now provided only on-site by information and reference staffs.
• Traditionally, the systems through which the library has directed patrons -- including most prominently the library's catalog and reference services -- have located materials owned by the library and available within the library's walls. Only with the electronic PAC has this restriction been broken -- the holdings of the University of Maryland System libraries are now contained in a single catalog. The need in the next decade will be systems that direct the student into the vast array of resources beyond the library's walls but accessible through its systems.
• Today, even the PAC complicates access. Current procedures to change data bases within the PAC become a barrier to free use of resources. Information to evaluate various data bases is unavailable through the PAC. Instructions for using data bases available on the PAC or LAN stations are bewilderingly diverse. Electronic library resources have been slow to introduce new technologies that ease the use of computers as access points.

Action: The library website coordinated closely with the PAC should become the primary threshold into the library's services. The goal should be to provide students with assistance to design strategies for their research, guiding them into the library's building with specific needs identified. Much of that work is now underway. We recommend that the work proceed with the following priorities:

• Ease of use. For example, the library should move with all due speed to establish a graphical user interface (GUI) PAC with a easily learned standardized interface and maximum capabilities. The usefulness of both the website and the PAC would be enhanced by hypertext access to particular entries in the PAC from the website, and vice versa. Other universities provide hypertext from the PAC to floor maps that locate material physically in the library.
• Integration of resources. PAC and website should be designed to facilitate the integration of print and electronic resources, licensed and owned resources, and to locate resources efficiently and quickly.
• On-line reference assistance. For example, well designed materials that incorporate typical staff-student interactions into electronic form through the use of branching techniques and other interactive strategies in website design should enhance the services provided beyond the library's walls. Such strategies to supplement personal assistance can increase the efficiency of reference services.
• Subject guides. Guides that include evaluative information on print and electronic resources provide rich resources for assisting students in locating basic material on various subject matters. In addition to the general subject guides, the library reference staff should work cooperatively with faculty to develop guides for specific courses and course assignments.
• Facilitating student use. The library should recognize that some students will continue to be apprehensive about use of computers and the computer threshold. The front door of the library will continue to be a second threshold. The library should develop assistance for students in using the website threshold.

Recommendation 7: Design the physical layout of the library to integrate material in various media

Action: The library should work toward providing more integrated location of resources around subject matters. This implies distributing workstations with electronic access throughout the print collection. The distribution of VICTOR terminals offers a model.

Recommendation 8: Institute "Square One Project Planning Centers" to assist students in accessing electronic resources and in integrating electronic and print resources into a research plan

Actions: We recommend that the library establish a center identified as a place where undergraduates can begin their project with assistance in developing a strategy for their research. The center staff should carry students through the formulation of a research plan and refer more advanced questions to the reference desk. The center should be designed specifically to meet the needs of undergraduate users although not restricted to them.

Recommendation 9: Reengineer the process for introducing products with the goal of integrating new products into the daily activity of patrons

Actions: We recommend that the library examine its procedures for introducing new products from evaluation of products to their integration into the daily use of patrons.

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Recommendations to the Library: Renewing the Librarian/Faculty Relationship

Recommendation 10: Strengthen cooperative relationships between faculty and librarians

Yet, faculty and librarians each possess knowledge important to the other in the new information environment. Increasingly faculty will require information specialists to assure that their teaching contains the latest in information resources on the subjects they are teaching. Such mastery will be dramatically easier if librarians are available to assist in the task on an ongoing basis.

Action: The library should adopt specific measures to strengthen the library-faculty relationship.

• Reevaluate the bibliographer-liaison link as the primary avenue of library-faculty relationship with particular attention to strengthening the mutual commitments of faculty and librarians to each other.
• Reevaluate job descriptions among librarians with specific responsibilities to undergraduate services to strengthen the cooperation between these librarians and faculty in identifying undergraduate needs specific to courses, developing specific strategies for teaching information literacy skills while meeting these needs, and conducting ongoing assessment of the library's undergraduate services. For example, librarians might be involved directly in developing information given to students outlining research paper assignments. Evaluations distributed in conjunction with the handing in of such assignments may provide valuable data on the quality and appropriateness of undergraduate services.
• Develop programs to incorporate faculty expertise into building subject guides. Such guides ought incorporate recognition to both librarians and faculty who work on the project.

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Recommendations to the Library: Reference Services for Undergraduates

Recommendation 11: Recognize the unique needs of undergraduate students in using libraries

• "They do not yet have the sophisticated research skills needed to exploit the research library's potential.
• "They are intimidated by the complexity and size of a large library system.
• "They are often reluctant to ask for assistance in the use of a library.
• "They are unaware of the many services and resources which are available in university libraries."

These coincide precisely with the problems that we heard from undergraduates in our focus groups.

These problems are most obvious in a reference service. In the library of a research university, perhaps no librarian's task is as difficult as the reference librarian. In rapid order questions may come from advanced faculty researchers whose knowledge of library resources in their specialties are as thorough as the librarian's, and from the new undergraduate asking how to find a book on the shelf. Understanding the question being asked, assessing the knowledge of the patron who asks the question, and deciding the sophistication appropriate in the action is a difficult task.

No problem in their library use surfaces as frequently in focus groups of undergraduates as fear of approaching the reference desk for assistance, and no complaint comes as freely as encountering what is perceived as hostility or scorn from a librarian when a question is asked. At the same time, no library experience is as warmly recalled by undergraduates as a reference librarian who listens to the student's question, provides clear and understanding suggestions, and remains patient through follow-up questions when unforeseen barriers are discovered.

We suspect that two factors at UMCP exacerbate the frequency of this student response. First, the distinction between Hornbake and McKeldin libraries often turns on their identities as the "undergraduate" and the "graduate" libraries. Our focus groups' undergraduates report a frequent feeling of being unwelcome in McKeldin. We have heard anecdotes of comments made by staff and patrons of McKeldin indicating that undergraduates are "in the wrong library." Although we cannot verify the validity of the comments or their interpretation, students report comments from the reference staff in McKeldin that they interpret in this way. Second, there is a distinction reported by reference librarians in the UMCP system between "specialists" and "generalists." Naturally, the specification of specialities channels the work of reference librarians into narrower circumferences of knowledge. We believe that generalists are often more important in assisting the undergraduates. Yet, undergraduates frequently reach levels of specific need that require specialists. Few undergraduates can perceive this distinction among reference staff.

In general, undergraduates report greater satisfaction with the helpfulness of the staff at Hornbake, but frustration that the advice they receive there often leads them to McKeldin where follow up questions require a return to Hornbake or starting over with another reference librarian at McKeldin.

In addition, undergraduates report the difficulties resulting from limited hours in a reference department. Perhaps no service of the library is as important to undergraduates learning information literacy skills as available reference services at crucial times. Yet, reference services are unavailable during many hours that the library is open. A substantial portion of our undergraduate students work and commute in patterns that shift their library use outside standard working hours. Although the library has often recognized these patterns in open library hours, it has not recognized the extension of the need to reference services.

Actions: We recommend review of current reference services for undergraduates by a team including a wide spectrum of reference staff and users, with particular attention to developing strategies to overcome these barriers to undergraduate use. Particularly, we recommend that reference services meet the following criteria:

• Systems of reference services ought recognize the need for generalists experienced in working with the special needs of novice users.
• Systems of training and evaluation targeted specifically at the needs of undergraduates should be a part of reference services.
• Staffing of the reference desk should expand to approximate the open hours in the library.
• The current triage system for reference organization should be evaluated, its weaknesses and strengths identified, and specific strategies to improve the system developed and implemented. Among the elements evaluated should be training of personnel to identify the level of need, signage to help patrons negotiate the system, and the system of barriers that controls the flow of patrons through the system.

Recommendation 12: Examine and reengineer the provision of reference services for undergraduates to recognize the altered demands of the information age

• Undergraduates often require very simple help in using computer based products. These simple, but repetitive questions are an inefficient use of reference librarians' time. Often the students sense the frustration of reference staff required to answer such questions.
• Undergraduates express frustration with oral answers to questions about computer based products, finding demonstration of the product a more effective form of assistance. Yet, reference staff properly resist having to leave the reference desk and walk to computer terminals to demonstrate simple skills.
• Both undergraduates and reference librarians report the difficulties of the latter in mastering all the new products that are arriving rapidly into the electronic world.

Actions: Current reference services should be evaluated and reengineered with the following examined:

• Procedures to train students in using computer data bases. For example, reference should explore greater use of interactive guides to train students in the use of particular data bases. Peer assistance has been used for teaching command structures and answering questions about specific products in the computer center.
• Procedures to train reference librarians in new products before their introduction to patrons. The need for time for such training must be recognized. If mastery of the broad range of products is an impossibility, alternatives must be developed. No student should be informed that they must return at a specified time to receive basic assistance in using one of these products.

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Recommendations to the Library: Reserve Services for Undergraduates

Recommendation 13: Move toward electronic reserve systems in which most reserves are accessible through controlled internet accounts

Actions: Electronic reserve systems should be implemented. Paper reserves will remain necessary for some material, but the advantages of an electronic system in providing access beyond the reserve room, simultaneous access by several students, and greater efficiency of staff use suggest a high priority on its implementation.

Recommendation 14: Work with faculty to develop integrated resource websites for particular courses

Actions: Our vision transforms reserve librarians from processors of information into proactive partners in creating effective reserve sites.

• Reserve librarians should work with faculty to construct course-specific integrated resource sites.
• A reserve system that would place whatever materials faculty wished to have on reserve limited only by copyright restrictions should be implemented.

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Section 3: Siting Undergraduate Library Services

We do not wish to deviate from the focus on services because we believe that the most important improvements required are improvements in services. Nor do we wish to abandon our emphasis on the need to plan for the future because we believe that too much emphasis on today's problems will leave us unprepared for tomorrow's. Nevertheless, services require siting and matters of physical space are important constraints on the achievement of satisfactory and up-to-date facilities. And we will end up in the future configuring our service sites in relation to the space problems that we face today. In this section of the report, therefore, we address questions about current service sites and the siting of undergraduate library services required in the 21^st century.

Findings Regarding the Current Undergraduate Library

• The facility is currently substandard. The collection is large but generally of poor quality. The periodical collection has been diminished to the point where it is no longer a meaningful site for research. The reference collection has shrunk to the point where the reference staff cannot fulfill their mission to undergraduates. The reserve room is the surviving effective unit but is using equipment so old that it cannot now be updated.
• The facility has no apparent collection policy. The team is not at all certain that a viable method of separating "undergraduate" and "graduate" or "research" collections is possible. A sound collection policy would establish a duplicate collection built around a particular mission. Duplicate collections have been largely sacrificed in the current fiscal crisis.
• Utilization of Hornbake Library is diminishing except for the reserve services (and the Nonprint Media Center which is not organized as part of the undergraduate facility). The turnstile count at Hornbake decreased 30% between 1989 and 1995, and 5% between 1992 and 1995. From 1992 to 1995, loans from the Hornbake collection diminished 40%, volumes reshelved declined by a third. The decline in different kinds of reference questions during that period ranged from 15% to 90%. The only healthy increase in use during this time was the nearly 50% increase in reserve use. Students report that going to Hornbake to research for a course project is useless since the material they need will not be found there. Students soon decide simply to begin their work in McKeldin, thus bypassing services designed to improve undergraduate use.
• The erosion in the quality of Hornbake and uncertainty about its future has created discernable erosion of morale among Hornbake staff. We also observe related problems at McKeldin created by the combination of the historical "undergraduate/graduate" distinction between the two facilities and the feeling of being overrun by undergraduate students who "belong" at Hornbake.
• Structural and fiscal forces within the UMCP libraries have resulted in the weakening of the undergraduate library. We do not mean to imply that anyone has consciously pursued the erosion of undergraduate services. But natural pressures common in a research university have resulted in decisions that have had an adverse effect. Fiscally, logical decisions to eliminate duplication in collections have left the undergraduate library collection so eroded as to destroy its usefulness. Decisions to meet staff cuts where openings existed, however logical in the short term, have left services for undergraduates seriously eroded. Structurally, the long ago designation of McKeldin as the "graduate" or "research" library has led to priorities that adversely affect undergraduates streaming into that facility which was never designed to meet their needs. Although we do not believe the erosion in undergraduate services was intentional, no safeguards were in place to recognize and halt the erosion before it became a crisis. The current state of Hornbake serves as an object-lesson as we plan for the future, a warning of how forces at work at UMCP can undercut the best of plans for undergraduate services.

At the same time, our investigation indicates key strengths of today's undergraduate facility:

• Among the reasons students mention for going to Hornbake are: (1) more welcoming reference services, (2) study space, (3) reserves, (4) nonprint media, (5) the WAM lab, and (6) a needed book is checked out of McKeldin. Periodicals and the book collection are seldom mentioned as a reason to go to Hornbake.
• One of the primary strengths of the current Hornbake facility is its study space. On a campus with far too little quality space for our large proportion of commuter students to study, a quick tour of Hornbake will reveal the centrality of this function. Group study space is particularly important and heavily utilized.
• Students report a sense of ownership over the space at Hornbake. Here, they report, they know that the services are provided with their needs in mind. The linking of the space with undergraduate students is an important element in its attractiveness to undergraduates.

Siting Demands in the 21^st Century

• Greater consolidation of research services. We described a blurring of the line between the collections needs of undergraduates and others as undergraduate assignments become more sophisticated and utilize more information resources. Separation of collections used in intensive research projects into undergraduate and graduate sites should therefore be abandoned.
• Computers for library access. For many, the first threshold into the library's collections will be computers. If this first threshold is properly developed, an undergraduate site should provide adequate computers to insure that all students have remote access to the newly computerized library services.
• Study Space. We believe that the needs for study space will increase, particularly the need for group study space. We recognize that such facilities need not be located in library space, but such space is commonly a feature of undergraduate libraries and is a feature of today's Hornbake. Study space will also need to be wired for connections to electronics.
• User education. In the information age, services that offer information literacy and user education are an essential part of the library. Some such services will be provided to students as part of their ongoing intensive research projects; some will involve programs and classrooms to house instruction on the subjects. In both cases, a clearly designated site associated with user education is a must if students are to develop these skills that will be expected of well-trained university graduates.
• Incorporating information resources into teaching. We have called for greater cooperation among faculty and librarians in bringing the expanding resources of the print/electronic age into the classrooms. This cooperation will require a site where faculty can develop such materials and sites where faculty-librarian cooperation can bring students into more immediate contact with the library.

We would summarize these needs by noting a distinction between students' intensive or research needs and day-to-day intellectual needs. For intensive use, their need is for a consolidated research site that provides full access to the resources any researcher requires with special attention to their unique needs as less experienced library users. For day-to-day use, their need is for a a familiar and welcoming environment that sites a more general range of services from study space to instructional programs.

Evaluating Siting Options

• In McKeldin and Hornbake the library system has two large spaces separated by enough distance to make coordinated use of the facilities difficult.
• Currently space for the library collection is extremely tight. The addition to McKeldin Library has been absorbed in the few years since it opened and the library is currently operating at 95 percent of full capacity.
• Decisions on siting require decisions that transcend our team's charge to examine undergraduate library services. We recognize that our recommendation to devote space to undergraduate needs displaces other functions of the library. Decisions on priorities among these functions must be left to others, although we confess concern based on the past treatment of the undergraduate library.
• Decisions on siting require attention to the details of estimation and design of square footage which is not an expertise that the team could master within the time that it deliberated.
• Additions to physical space require considerable lead time and arrangements for capital investment. They are thus less pliable in response to problems.

The team, therefore, considered our recommendations on spacing in terms of the benefits to undergraduate students. We anticipate that further deliberation will be required on these matters, fitting our recommendations within the framework of the various space needs of the library system. Within the constraints established by these factors, the team presents the following recommendations.

Creating the Consolidated Facility in McKeldin

Recommendation 15: Create a consolidated research facility in McKeldin Library, open to all students, with service points that recognize the unique characteristics of undergraduate users.

• Combined reference services must be preceded by careful planning including participation by reference librarians from both current facilities and specifically designed to recognize the unique needs of undergraduates as reference users.
• The physical layout of McKeldin needs to be altered to accommodate the increased clientele. This is particularly required in the online catalog, reference, and automated reference services areas. Principles of simplicity of navigation appropriate to less sophisticated library users should govern signage and layout.
• The layout should include stations such as the Square One Project Centers we describe in Recommendation 8 that offer identifiable sites for undergraduate assistance.
• The effects of eliminating the twenty-eight day checkout period on materials moved from Hornbake should be considered. Undergraduates report that missing material because of the long checkout periods as one of the disadvantages of McKeldin.
• Specific programs of training and reorientation should be provided to replace the ethic of the "graduate" library in McKeldin with the ethic of a combined service site. Systems of service need to develop awareness of the broader range of users now served in the facility, the variety of their needs, and the sensitivities required to serve them.
• Systems should be put in place to ensure the interests of undergraduate users in collection management. The consolidation of collections should eliminate unnecessary duplication, but must also recognize the unique needs that undergraduates place on a combined collection. This includes the need for more material written specifically for undergraduate readers and more summaries of knowledge in subject areas. In addition, the consolidation should recognize the increased physical strain on a collection used by a much more numerous clientele.

Consistent with McKeldin Library's mission as the central campus research library, the consolidated site for undergraduates should concentrate on providing services that guide students through research projects.

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An Undergraduate Academic Center

Recommendation 16: In consultation with and through support from the central administration, create an Undergraduate Academic Center to house day-to-day library services for undergraduates.

Our vision of an Undergraduate Academic Center creates a facility that draws upon the strengths of the current undergraduate facility in Hornbake, offers a site for the day-to-day library services that we identified as needed by 21^st century undergraduates, provides a site where librarians and faculty can come together to provide instructional services to undergraduates, and expands the scope of services in such a site to create a central crossroads for academic life on the UMCP campus. The team envisions a site filled with the broad range of activities where members of a university community find the excitements of the mind and systematic inquiry. When we invited faculty to submit comments on the library, articulate members of the instructional staff expressed the wish for a central place where the intellectual life was celebrated and nourished without regard to specific subject matters. We seek to meet such a wish.

An academic center has particular attractiveness on the Maryland campus. As on all university campuses, our undergraduates' classes are scattered. The student union provides a central focus for entertainment and general lifestyle activities. But there is no central site around which the academics of the undergraduate experience revolve. No characteristic of the current Hornbake facility is as prominent in its success as the provision of study space for students. The nature of the Maryland undergraduate student body requires a place on campus conducive to study. This need promises to grow as more course-related activities require students to work together on projects. Where should this space be located? That it is located in a library facility seems to us a positive statement to and about our undergraduate students.

Building a viable facility

In recommending creation of an Undergraduate Academic Center, we recognize both that many universities have successfully established undergraduate facilities and that Maryland is ending a period when we have failed in the same task. So, the team has attempted to assemble a list of elements that we believe would shape a successful undergraduate facility:

• A clearly defined mission statement. The mission statement must fix the facility's identity and its contribution to undergraduate education. The mission should not be tied to the curriculum -- that is, to specific courses or level of courses. Instead, we believe the mission statement should identify the particular characteristics and needs of undergraduate students that the facility seeks to address. This mission statement should be a prominent element of all planning and of ongoing operations of the facility.
• Promotion of the facility's mission. Clear advantages and uses of the facility must be identified and promulgated to guide the objectives of patrons and the provision of services by the staff. The mission of the facility should be communicated to students in campus visits before matriculation and during orientation. Library information literature, user instruction, websites, and all other opportunities should help locate the services of the facility.
• Identifiable management structure. The unit must be governed under a management structure that can commit to and build around its unique mission statement. Units in the undergraduate facility, in short, should be more than extensions of comparable units in McKeldin.
• A faculty constituency. Maintaining the quality of a separate undergraduate facility requires that the library identify a specific faculty constituency who will generate support for, and help to shape the character of the facility. The group might be identified by their participation in the undergraduate curriculum, but support of the undergraduate facility must extend beyond a particular curriculum.
• A constellation of services. The facility should provide a wide range of services that draw students into the facility. This may include services beyond those narrowly identified as library services such as group study space, computer facilities, symposium and colloquium programs and other attractions. Perhaps the key in planning is a "town center" analogy of bringing many heavy use facilities into proximity to create a lively space in which each benefits from the synergy of all.
• Preparing undergraduates to use the full library system. We recommend that the mission statement identify one of the objectives of the facility to be preparing students for use of the main campus library in McKeldin and the system's branch libraries. The existence of an undergraduate center should not identify McKeldin as a "graduate library." Normal expectation should be that by the time of completing their undergraduate degrees, students will be capable of fully mastering the resources of the entire system. In short, the undergraduate facility would serve as a third threshold into the library's services for undergraduates and as the primary site for preparing students to use the full system.

Contents of the Undergraduate Academic Center

We have identified the current strengths of the undergraduate facility in Hornbake. Starting from this base we would expand the activities in the Undergraduate Center to make it a magnet for undergraduate students. Many of these programs extend beyond traditional responsibilities of libraries, but this extension is essential to create the central academic site on campus with a cluster of heavily used library services at its core. There is considerable room for discussion about what facilities would be appropriate to meet this vision. We would point, for example, to the following:

• Highest priority on study facilities. Current study facilities retained or even elevated and expanded. We believe that the current trend toward more group study and group projects will carry into the future. Current group facilities are heavily used and such facilities will need to expand. The need in individual study areas is for quiet study. The UAC should become a primary site for group and individual study on campus.
• Internet Connection Facilities and WAM lab. The Center should feature a facility for easy connection to the internet. This should be provided in conjunction with retention or even expansion of the current WAM lab facility. In addition, selected group study facilities should be equipped with internet access to facilitate integration of resources into group study, and individual study areas should be wired for student's laptop computers.
• Undergraduate reserves. The reserve facility should be maintained and upgraded to include computer access.
• An Information Literacy Teaching Center. The Center should contain the primary site for teaching information literacy and training students in library and information use. This site should include programs to assist faculty in introducing information literacy into their classroom including cooperative programs described in our earlier recommendations.
• A third threshold to campus libraries. A threshold facility designed to bridge the student into the full resources of the library collection. A prominent feature of the facility should be the central complex for teaching information literacy and library instruction skills. This third threshold is distinguished from the other two by its location in the high activity academic center and its direct connection to instructional facilities. It should be particularly appealing to relatively new users of the library and those beginning more extensive projects for the first time. In addition, the computer facilities needed by students who cannot otherwise take advantage of the first threshold would be located in the Center.
• Magnet facilities. We believe the Undergraduate Academic Center should be user friendly. We endorse installation of a coffee bar, a listening room, and other facilities to bring students and faculty into the center as a central site for campus activity. Facilities should be configured to encourage the Center as a place to linger and read. The coffee bar at Border's and similar bookstores might be a model. Lockers for commuter students might be another important magnet. These facilities should establish the center as a primary focus of study between classes and during time on campus for commuters, and a primary destination for academic related activities in which the entire campus participates.
• Current serials. The periodicals section of McKeldin Library is usually filled with those reading newspapers or the most recent popular magazines. These "drop-by" readers and the collections that draw them should be located in the Academic Center, freeing space in McKeldin for those conducting more intensive research.
• A magnet book collection. The book collection in the Academic Center should be small and focused toward attracting students to the facility. This collection could, for example, contain an area of "new acquisitions" now housed near the periodicals desk in McKeldin, a collection of "classics" continually in print that provide background knowledge at the confluence of disciplines, and books recently reviewed in New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book Review, and similar sources. This collection should not be tied to specific courses, but should be a rapidly changing collection where patrons find what is new and exciting in the world of print publishing.
• Colloquia and Symposia facilities. An elegantly appointed space for a wide range of academic activities such as poetry reading, book signings, first year book presentations, or any colloquia of interest to undergraduate students. The budget for this facility should include funding for a speaker program.
• Interactive Classrooms. Another of the advantages of the current Hornbake facility is the classrooms available on a reservation basis for the use of advanced information activities such as nonprint media and internet connection. Such classrooms containing the latest in technological capability should be a feature of an Undergraduate Academic Center. Laboratories similar to the AT & T and IBM teaching theatres ought be located here.

Locating the Undergraduate Academic Center

The location on campus of the UAC is less important to the team than providing a site for the services provided there. The demands on McKeldin Library seem too great to locate the facility there without eroding our vision considerably. We would urge exploration of the space freed at Hornbake by the consolidation we have proposed and by the departure of the Music Library. At the same time we recognize that the consolidation may well squeeze some facilities out of McKeldin, and Hornbake will be the largest space on campus for them. We would urge exploration of other options beyond the constraints of current space. For example, several non-library academic services for undergraduates such as career planning, individual studies, and Letters and Sciences are located in the office space adjoining Hornbake Library. Should such linkages be exploited to reconfigure the building to include those services into the UAC? Since our vision of the UAC contains facilities that are not directly library facilities, questions of siting the facility would seem appropriately addressed in cooperation with central administration.

Integrating the Library with the Academic Mission of the Campus

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