Philosophy, Religion and Theological Studies Discussion Group
June 29, 2008
Ted prepared an agenda which we followed (kind of!)
1. selected note taker
2. everyone introduced themselves
3. Products, Databases, Resources
LibGuides: Several members are currently constructing guides. Since there is a ‘community’ link available to authors, it facilitates sharing of information and sources.
Poeisis: Database that offers smaller press and society journals online, but the library must have a subscription to the journal in print.
Philosopher’s Index: Database is not comprehensive but offers select literature as building blocks for new thought.
Ebsco/American Antiquarian Project: Project availability in 2009. They will be offering historic American periodicals (1693-1876) that include sermons and church notes. These will be sold as collections with a one time cost.
Reference Universe: mentioned as a way to promote print collections.
Guide to Reference:
4. Collection Analysis Tools: OCLC and Resources for College Libraries
Member discussed varied experiences with each and compared costs. RCL doesn’t pick up superseded editions.
5. Collection Development
Gifts: Large collections are costly to process, house, and manage. OCLC provides processing services. Discards can go to Better World Books or booksontherun. Some member libraries are able to sell used books or unwanted gift books as fund raisers. Ebay is a way to sell rare books to raise money for the library (or to locate rare titles to buy).
Move to electronic rather than print: partly to address space issues, partly driven by faculty preferences. There was a discussion of the stability of electronic sources and the group expressed trust in JStor and Project Muse but not other aggregators. Many libraries have stored JStor –held print off site or relied on agreements to make certain one copy exists for a consortium. Other options include not binding JStor titles pending discard once they are included in the database.
Faculty Relations: be vocal, know the chair of the department, be open to suggestions. An issue for some libraries: faculty have figured out that requesting a book for reserve that the library doesn’t own will mean it gets ordered from another part of the budget. They are working the system
Media Requests: Most have noticed a decline in requests.
6. Instruction
Graduate Students: renewed focus on guiding to the sources they learned as undergrads in a new system. For older returning graduate students instruction introduces them to sources that are new to them.
Workshops for Faculty: Names such as “Resource Update” work better than “Faculty Workshop”
7. Blog Value?
Ted will check on the upcoming ALA Connect that may offer blog space to groups.
8. Colin agreed to co-chair with Ted. Group discussed inviting vendors or speakers to meetings such as ATLA when we meet in
Respectfully submitted,
Debbie Gaspar
