Cheng Library Welcomes You Back with Changes to Enhance Your Experience and Expanded Resources to Support Your Research A Message from the Dean of Cheng Library, Dr. Edward Owusu-Ansah Dean of Cheng Library Dr. Edward Owusu-Ansah Cheng Library, with an articulated vision to be “central to the accomplishments of the University and valued for its leadership on campus and throughout the state,” has taken a significant step toward expanding available information resources to the William Paterson community through a model that leverages collaboration and resource sharing with other sister schools. To do so, we joined New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rowan University, Stockton University, and The College of New Jersey to collectively adopt a state of the art library services platform that allows for better management of our growing electronic resources, as well as analog collections, in an effort to provide seamless access to an expanded information base. This solution allows the students, faculty, and staff of the five institutions to borrow from each other’s physical collections on any site, or have the items delivered to any campus. While this is still a long way from a cooperative collection development model that would allow participants to intentionally develop their collections with the coordinated efforts necessary to avoid duplications, it is still a promising beginning to what can become an even broader collaboration among academic libraries across the state of New Jersey. It is a recognition of the fact that “The closer that libraries and librarians work together, the more they can accomplish on behalf of their communities” (Bailey-Hainer, Beaubien, Posner, and Simpson, “Rethinking Library Resource Sharing: New Models for Collaboration”). So, as you begin your library searches this year, you will see a new interface and search a much broader collection of books and media. If we do not own an item, you can pick it up from any of the four other campus libraries if you are away from campus and close to that location, or have the item delivered to Cheng Library for pick up. The clean look of the discovery interface makes for an uncomplicated approach to searching, while the limiters that pop up with the results of a search provide opportunities to further refine and zero in on the most relevant items. This simple approach belies the complexity of resources searched, which are the full breadth of physical and digital assets available to library users at William Paterson University. The library services platform supports versatile curation and integration of all formats, and inclusion of content from the university’s digital repository, managed by the library. Since the implementation is recent, only completed over the summer, we will continue to work on improving your experience with structure and content. Please help us serve you better by bringing your observations to our attention. A friendly librarian is always on hand. You will also observe some color additions on the main floor to enhance the aesthetics of the building and see the familiar faces that continue to support your academic success. You will see new faces from the Academic Success Center (ASC) that moved into the library this summer. This arrival of a critical academic support unit into the learning support entity that is the library provides synergistic advantages that will serve our students well. For where else should a unit with the declared mission “to facilitate the accessibility to academic resources that addresses both cognitive and developmental needs of the diverse student body” be physically located if not in a library that aspires to be “the academic knowledge center of William Paterson University”? As Steven Bell notes, “As collaborators, academic librarians already work with residential life, student services, career centers, and other academic and social support staff to contribute to any effort to meet students where and when the need for help arises” (Bell, “The Whole Student”). Now, our proximity should promote closer collaborations and better outcomes for students, with an environment and support systems that they will find seamless and complementary. And as an announcement, please remember that tutoring commenced September 16. Here at your library, we will continue to explore ways to improve our students’ learning experience in the hope of facilitating their success. We will continue to explore collaborations toward that end. We encourage our classroom colleagues to engage us in the information literacy training happening in their content areas. In the past academic year, library instruction classes totaled 308, a 6.9% increase from the previous year, and librarians provided 301 non-reference desk research consultations. Other accomplishments included following up on the library’s 2017/2018 extensive weeding and space enhancement project with thorough shelf reading and inventory of virtually the entire collection. Cheng Library continued its expansion of electronic collections by adding new nursing and e-reference titles, providing access to several nursing periodical back-files acquired through one-time purchases with perpetual ownership rights, and activating a subscription to the Kanopy video streaming platform with requests mediated to ensure fiscal sustainability. Outreach to faculty and availability of an online submission form resulted in 420 items on print and electronic reserve, a nearly 30% increase over the previous year. Library oversight of faculty submissions to open access journals continued, workshops were conducted during Open Access Week, and funding for six successful applications were processed. Outreach to adjunct faculty was intensified with positive outcomes. Work continued on the addition of content to the WPSphere institutional repository, and the coming year will see significant structural and content enhancements with improved discoverability. The Library collaborated with the Office of New Student Experience to offer a five-week series of information literacy-based webinars, introduced the use of an interactive whiteboard in the Amy Job Classroom for the training of teacher candidates, and piloted a Civic Literacy Initiative offering WP LEADS Civic Engagement badge credits for students who participate in library sponsored or co-sponsored programs and activities. It continued the popular 24/7 service in the last two weeks of the fall and spring semesters, and conducted the LibQual survey, which measures user-satisfaction with library services based on desired user interactions with the library, user perception of library employees, and perceived effectiveness of library spaces. We again invite our user community to tell us how we can do better. Welcome back, and have a most rewarding semester! September 22, 2019
