Annual Report
2002-2003

Public Services 2002-2003

Reference, Interlibrary Loan,
Library Instruction and Reserves

The impact of serving students from inside AND outside the library's walls is greatly felt in our public services departments. In each subsection of this report, we focus on how we are changing to meet external demands for library services.

Reference

While the demand for traditional reference services has remained steady, the phenomenal growth our electronic services has been pushing us to respond and evolve at an extremely accelerated rate. Our single greatest challenge in this developing environment is keeping both the librarians', and our patrons', technical skills and knowledge up to date.

In response the needs of our off campus users and the growing trend to offer reference titles in electronic format we have been converting our traditional reference collection from print to internet accessible formats.

Electronic access to these materials have made them infinitely more accessible and usable for both librarian and patron alike. However, because many of them are not offered as single titles but part of amalgamated products, they aren't identified by their once familiar titles but are lumped into a broad subject database with its own unique title. The challenge in these cases is to know which database contains the individual resources needed.

For example:

Print Title	Amalgamated Database Name
Masterplots	Magill on Literature
MLA International Bibliography	Gale Literature Resource Center
Contemporary Authors	Gale Literature Resource Center
United States Code Annotated	Westlaw Campus
Federal Register	Westlaw Campus
Market Share Reporter	Business & Company Resource Center

In order to respond to our users' need for help using these products remotely, we have instituted a number of virtual services. These services are brought together in our "Ask a Librarian" web page. With Ask a Librarian, we offer users the opportunity to phone, chat and email us with their questions and problems with library services. While email is quite well established, the possibilities of real time service utilizing chat service is still in pilot project status.

Ask a Librarian 2002-2003
Email questions	133
Chat Sessions	2

 

Interlibrary Loan

Although the number of requests for materials not owned by the library has remained relatively stable, the number of requests submitted online through our forms on the web site have increased. Twenty-eight percent of requests from VC and UHV users are submitted online.

Interlibrary Loan Requests
	Requests	Filled
Books requested for VC/UHV Library patrons	510	470
Periodical Articles Requested for VC/UHV Library patrons	1,902	1,852
VC/UHV Library books requested by other Libraries	2,169	1,380
VC/UHV Library periodicals Articles requested by other Libraries	699	489
Total Requests	5,280	4,191

*requests unfilled reflect, for the most part, items which do not circulate

Library Instruction

Library instructors provided 57 classes in library training reaching over 1,671 students. To provide online instruction to remote users, 5 new study guides were prepared and all study guides were updated. Library staff will be working in the next year to add more instruction to our web site.

Reserves

The provision of electronic reserve items allows instructors to set assigned reading for online classes. During the 2002-2003 year, the library provided 697 electronic reserve items for Victoria College and University of Houston-Victoria instructors.