Important Library Updates for Spring 2018
Titles being considered for deselection, Spring 2018.
We have a number of important updates from Penfield Library to share with SUNY Oswego faculty and staff:
- New Library Personnel
- Liaison Changes
- Deselection Project - Faculty Input Requested
- SCOPUS Access Ending Feb. 2018
1. New Librarian Faculty and Professional Staff
We welcome three new faces to Penfield Library this semester:
- Juan Denzer, Discovery Services Librarian
- Morgan Bond, Resource Sharing Librarian
- Bryan Schuff, Part-Time Special Collections Assistant and Part-Time Reference Librarian
If you see someone you don’t know at the Research Help Desk, please stop by and introduce yourself.
2. Liaison Changes
With the recent changes in staffing – retirements and new librarians joining our ranks – we have made some changes to subject-area liaison matches. Your liaisons will be reaching out to you, but you can also check your current liaison on the revised list available from the faculty services page of the Library website. With a few exceptions, liaisons will now assist with both collection development and instruction. You’ll notice that a few subject areas have multiple liaisons indicated – feel free to contact one or both and we’ll connect you with the best person to partner with you to achieve your goal.
This spring, a group of librarians will be conducting faculty focus groups and researching alternative liaison models. Expect to hear more about this in early spring. In the meantime, if you have ideas for alternate ways to structure successful connections and collaborations between librarian faculty and classroom faculty, feel free to let us know.
3. Deselection Project
The Library will be working on a number of projects over the next ten years that will require us to evaluate the contents of our print collection. Some of these projects include making the book stacks ADA-compliant, migrating to a new SUNY-wide library automation system, increasing the percentage of the collection available to online users, developing new spaces and services, and bringing other learning partners into the building so we can collaborate to support student success.
Library collections are dynamic - ever changing and evolving to meet the needs of current academic offerings and respond to changes in users and formats. Library collections are also increasingly about access rather than ownership, as we are able to supplement our local collection through interlibrary sharing and access to an ever increasing body of digitized materials. Deselection (also known as weeding or discarding) is an integral part of the collection management lifecycle. Librarian faculty and classroom faculty both have important roles to play in the selection and deselection stages of the lifecycle.
Librarian subject liaisons will identify potential titles for deselection and work with classroom faculty to review lists of items. Criteria for deselection include: relevancy, condition, past circulation, and discipline-specific criteria. Lists of items identified for deselection will be made available to all faculty on the library webpage and through the subject liaison librarian. Items agreed upon to be retained will be retained. Items approved for deselection will be removed from the library collection and repurposed whenever possible (shared with other institutions, donated to Better World Books, etc.).
What we need from you: The first group of items under consideration for deselection are titles published from 1920-1940 that have not been checked out since 1999. The list is arranged by subject area. We encourage you to review the titles in your subject area. Contact your liaison librarian if you see any titles that you feel should be retained in the library collection. All input is needed by March 9, 2018.
4. SCOPUS Access Ending February 2018
Access to SCOPUS will cease at the end of February 2018. SCOPUS is an abstract and citation database of worldwide, peer-reviewed literature in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts & humanities.
We have had access to SCOPUS through a SUNY-wide license funded through the SUNY system office (no cost to us) and had this listed on the Penfield Library website as a “pilot through 2017.”
The SUNY Libraries Consortium, the coordinating group for all SUNY libraries, evaluated several ways the cost of the resource might be allocated across the campuses, but ultimately determined that the cost was too high to continue the subscription system-wide. Some campuses may choose to subscribe to SCOPUS at their own expense, but this is not an option for us at this time.
Conclusion
If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact Sarah Weisman, Library Director.