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The mission of the Library Systems Office is to support the computer-related library information needs of Columbia University students, faculty and staff, to manage centralized library automated systems, and to provide technological support to library staff in order to enhance and improve their services to users.
It also has a key role in envisioning Columbia's Digital Library and in ongoing planning for campus-wide access to electronic information resources. Increasingly this involves close collaboration with Academic Information Systems and other campus computing groups, as well as coordination with colleague research libraries and national information standards and planning organizations.
More specifically, we seek to accomplish the following:
The overall level of service provided may be seen in some of the following milestones:
Since 1995, an increasing percentage of the Library Systems Office's efforts have also been directed toward development of LibraryWeb, an innovative Web-based system that will gradually supplant CLIO-Plus as the Libraries' component of the campuswide information system. LibraryWeb now includes links to over 100 reference databases, some 200 electronic journals, over 100 online books, thousands of art image and photographic reproductions, and other digital collections. In addition, LibraryWeb is becoming the primary publishing medium for all kinds of user-oriented information including help documentation, tutorials, internet guides, library policies and administrative information.
Library Systems manages and coordinates the LibraryWeb project, working with internal library committees and AcIS. It has become the focal point and delivery mechanism for introducing new technologies and information resources to students faculty and staff, and the basic interface to our growing digital library collections. LibraryWeb has also been a successful experiment in distributed content creation and in training and orienting many professional library staff members in the technology breakthroughs of the last serveral years.
Note that most public access to CLIO and CLIO-Plus and LibraryWeb is now through the campus network, rather than through dedicated terminal devices, so there has be a levelling off of the rate of growth of CLIO-only terminals since 1995 in favor of high quality color Xterminals with access to CLIO, LibraryWeb and the Internet.
In addition to workstations and servers, LSO of course purchases, supplies and maintains hundreds of printers, barcode scanners and other specialized electronic devices, along with a staff and student electronic training center with some 20 workstations.
The Novell servers are used to support: public access networked CD ROM workstations with some 30 reference tools and databases; specialize technical services and reference workstations; networked printing; and specially-configured staff workstations with traditional office tools, email, groupware, WWW browsers and Internet access.
Library Systems conducts and/or helps coordinate the overall library Internet Training Program, consisting of hundreds of sessions a year; LSO staff teaches more than 25 such courses directly, and works with other library staff in the preparation and scheduling of other courses. This kind of onling staff training and retaining is vital in order to master new technologies and apply them when assisting and training users of library information.
Library Systems staff participate in more than two dozen Library, AcIS and campus-wide committes, representing specialized library needs and contributing valuable perspectives from the broader world of information management and retrieval. Recent inititives have included development and coordination of the University's web home page, and the development of guidelines for the overall design and maintenance of ColumbiaWeb.
Library Systems staff contribute regularly and substantively to ongoing planning with other Ivy and research university libraries and professional and technical organizations to achieve this objective. Recent examples include: the RLG Digital Image Access Project, the effort to create an SGML implementation of USMARC, a project to allow direct user request of materials at Columbia and two other colleague institutions (CoPY), and the National Digital Library Program metadata / cataloging initiative.
Systems staff frequently contribute to national planning through publications and presentations at professional meetings.
In all of these activities, Library Systems draws on the skills of appropriate AcIS and AIS staff, as well as network and system resources available from those deparments, avoiding duplication of systems and services wherever possible.
Last revision:
02/27/99
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