Our mission at the University Libraries is to be a destination for research, learning, and friends. This statement reflects our strategy for library programs, services, collections and a user-friendly persona. This fundamental strategy supports student pursuit for academic success and faculty endeavors in the creation of new knowledge, classroom instruction, and enhancement.

Library information technology is the thread that connects all of our activities. Its application continues to change libraries and the ways people use libraries, its services, and collections for research, teaching, and discovery. Best practices require the use of the best technology available so that students and faculty can conveniently retrieve quality information and data for their scholarship.

Dr. Arthur Hafner, Dean of University Libraries, recently appointed an eight-person task team to research and identify new library technologies that will expand access to the breadth and depth of the many digital resources that are in the University Libraries that faculty and students may have not yet discovered. Our vision is to acquire and deploy efficient and cost-effective off-the-shelf technologies that will bring full-text, high-quality resources directly to student and faculty desktops.

For example, through link resolver technology, students and faculty are directed to the full-text sources most readily available in the University Libraries. Link resolver advances convenient utilization of resources and eliminates students and faculty from having to check directories and guides to determine if the library owns a retrieved item. This allows more time to develop and study the resources and to engage in collaboration for classroom study, projects, and research.

Another library technology that the task team will explore is a federated search engine. This technology allows students and faculty to search across multiple academic databases in the same search, streamlining the search process for discovery and retrieval of new and relevant results for classroom teaching, learning and enhancement.

The University Libraries’ integration of technologies continues to transform how students search, discover, and learn as well as how faculty can invoke new teaching models.

For more information or to share your comments, contact Dr. Arthur W. Hafner, Dean of University Libraries, AHafner@bsu.edu or (765) 285-5277. This essay is based on a piece that appeared in the Library Insider 3(6):1, June 2005