Electronic Reserves on the Gettysburg Campus:
The Electronic Reserves system at Gettysburg College is based on the idea of providing library reserve materials in an electronic form that can be delivered to students across the World Wide Web. These materials are normally standard paper reserves that are manually scanned into a computer for electronic storage and delivery.
Electronic Reserves were first offered on the Gettysburg College Campus in the second half of the 1997 Spring semester. This was a trial system to test the proposed implementation and software. The pilot project involved a total of five departments and six classes. Use, based on informal discussions with faculty and review of access records were limited, but the system itself functioned as expected.
In the Fall Semester of 1997 the Electronic Reserves system was made widely available. Currently there are seven departments and thirteen classes actively utilizing the system.
Proposal:
This study will determine the effectiveness of Electronic at Gettysburg College and whether the quality and level of service provided is sufficient to meet the current needs of the users and what changes and improvements should be made to obtain maximum benefit from the system.
Purposes:
- Determine why did students use the system.
- Determine why students did not use the system.
- Determine Student usage patterns for Electronic Reserves
- Compare usage of system with time required and expenses incurred in acquiring, scanning and organizing materials.
- Determine if current system meets the needs of both faculty and students
- Determine what improvements or changes need to be made to the system.
Methods:
This study will use a telephone and electronic survey mechanisms to judge user response to the ER system and its overall effectiveness. Including, but not limited to issues such as: computer ownership; accessibility;
The study will also be able to access and compile large amounts of data on usage based on a variety of factors including, but not limited to: academic status; class year; gender; major;
There is a unique opportunity to complete such a study because electronic reserves are delivered on the Gettysburg Campus through the use of a new, secure web based system (CNAV). This tool provides the unique ability to access more information than would normally be available to a reserves package and will allow for a much wider variety of studies and comparisons to be made.
Other Areas of Study:
- Relationship of computer ownership to ER usage
- Usage patterns for ER
- Hardware, software and network issues related to ER usage
- ER usage compared to traditional reserve material usage
The Curriculum Navigation Project (CNAV):
CNAV is a web based computer system that has been designed for the students, faculty, staff and administrators of Gettysburg College. Its primary purpose is to foster communications between these different groups as well a providing a central source of information for the campus. The tool is comprised of a number of highly specialized and customized search engines that allow similarities to be drawn between courses, events, people, groups of people and variety of miscellany. Student can log into the system in a matter of a few minutes review their class schedule, find upcoming events they would be interested in, access their transcript and financial records, and access on-line Electronic Reserves.
The implementation of electronic reserves on the CNAV system was conceived as part of a larger plan to provide students with one central location to gather information about their current and future courses. With CNAV students have the ability, on one web screen, to access all the relevant information about their courses including: instructor name & email; class rosters including photos; profile of class based on major, minor and interests; course home page; course syllabus; course reading list; electronic reserves. In order to maintain copyright compliance the ability of students to view reserve materials is restricted to those students currently enrolled in the designated class. This information is kept up to date on a daily basis via updates from the colleges main computer system.
See also: