Using New Tools but Keeping the Old A collaborative approach between a University's Academic Technology department and the Library to enhance access to electronic materials

Terry Ballard  Associate Professor and Automation Librarian – Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut.

Part 1- Making a Library Training course that works in and out of Blackboard  Evolved out of adding tutorials to Blackboard for instruction in use of the OPAC  2003, the library adapted the University of Texas TILT program – an information literacy tutorial.

We liked the program but found the registration process cumbersome for the assessments at the end of each section, so we adapted the TILT tests and added them to our Library Instruction class in Blackboard.

We substituted many of the original graphics with our own images.

Freshman English students would be enrolled in the library "course" in Blackboard, and follow a link to the test in each module. Professors who wanted could have the test scores sent so that the student could get credit for completing "QUILT." Each Spring, English students are automatically enrolled in the library course, and regular usage was logged.

The end of each module provides a link to our own test in Blackboard or, ungraded, to the original files from the University of Texas.

The user can now take the test – inside of Blackboard, and still connected to QUILT

Team effort  This project was possible due to the coordination of efforts between the English department, the library, and the programmers in Academic Technology. Rosters were given to the programmers so they would know which students to add to the library “class.”

Part 2 – creating an interactive bibliography  Most English 102 classes at Quinnipiac involve studying the novel Frankenstein. We identified a number of articles free on the web or in library-owned resources. There was a need for a master bibliography of articles about Frankenstein with links to online resources.

We began by finding all articles about Frankenstein in MLA

We then began exporting the citations to RefWorks, a bibliographic manager

EBSCO has a mechanism for direct export to RefWorks

The references were automatically sent and saved in alphabetical order

Finally, the bibliography is downloaded into an HTML file, in MLA format

The citations in the resulting file can now be checked for full-text availability by library workers.

Leading to the final product

Finding linkable information  Library workers searched for full-text versions of these articles free on the Web or in databases that the library subscribes to. For chapters in books, they checked the online catalog, and linked to that record when available.  The bibliography found an audience immediately in and out of Quinnipiac.

Part 3 – Adding OPAC access to an art image collection  In 2004, the library, at the behest of the Academic Technology department, purchased a selection of 1000 jpg images from Saskia, a company that photographed artworks from the world’s great museums, and licensed the images for educational uses.

First solutions  Initially, the images were copied from the CD-rom and added to MasterFile, a content management program that runs in tandem with Blackboard. This made the images available for addition to Blackboard for teachers who looked for the images.

Problems with that  To reach the level in Blackboard where you can begin to browse the images, you’ve clicked 12 times

More problems  Only professors in the art program would be likely to see this, since students and staff members at the university could not get in to the MasterFile portion of Blackboard. Faculty in other departments could potentially see these, if they browsed in the Art folders, but MasterFile is still mainly a tool for power users, and hasn’t been entirely rolled out.  The library was interested in expanding the potential audience for Saskia.

The solution  Early in 2005, the solution presented itself. At that time, library faculty members discovered that the 970 fields in marc records that had been used to add Table of Contents information could take any HTML commands. This gave the library the option to add links to chapters in ebooks, images and tables.

This had the potential to alter drastically the marc display in a web-based catalog:

The new plan for Saskia  Add the Saskia images to a server that needs login and password to access. Enable access to the entire university community.  Create marc records that display a thumbnail with links to the controlled directory for the full images.

The final result looked like this:

The password prompt appears even when the user is on campus

The images now come up in the same search that retrieves books about an artist