Standard Seven: Library and Other Information Resources

Description

Library

Wesleyan University Library consists of three facilities: Olin Memorial Library, the Science Library, and the Art Library. Olin Memorial Library was built in 1928 and underwent its most recent expansion in 1986. It contains collections in the social sciences and humanities, as well as Special Collections & Archives and the World Music Archives. The library has been a federal government depository since 1906 and currently receives 30% of the government documents produced in print. Many library functions such as Interlibrary Loan, Acquisitions, and Cataloging are centralized in Olin. 

The Science Library is in the Exley Science Center, built in 1970. It contains collections in the sciences and the University’s DVD/video collection. Compact shelving holds bound journals in the sciences, older monographs classified using the Cutter classification system, and closed storage for Special Collections & Archives. The Art Library is in the Davison Art Center and contains the most-used books in art and architectural history, photography, and studio arts. It also provides reserve materials for many courses in Art & Art History. The Art Library has been at capacity for 20 years—approximately 1,000 volumes are transferred to Olin each year to create room for new books.

The library has extraordinarily broad and deep collections of monographs and periodicals for a liberal arts university of Wesleyan’s size. In the past ten years the number of library journal and database subscriptions has increased over 300%, from 3,483 to 10,883. Of these, 89% are electronic and include new kinds of material such as images and data sets. 

The library has an expanding virtual presence that provides access to a variety of electronic resources and library services. Links to these and other information are available through the library’s web site. The online library catalog, Caleb, is no longer the only portal through which to access library resources. Links to electronic databases and indexes are provided through an open-source application implemented in 2009; the coordination of print and online journal holdings is through Serials Solutions. Most of the library’s electronic resources are available to the Wesleyan community from off-campus through an EZ proxy server. Reference services are available in person, via phone, email, and Meebo chat. 

The CTW Consortium – consisting of the libraries of Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University – have shared physical collections and an online catalog system for over two decades. In recent years CTW has negotiated shared licenses for a number of online applications and resources. CTW has also explored how best to coordinate the building of the libraries’ combined print and electronic collections. As part of a recently completed Andrew W. Mellon grant project, CTW implemented a successful consortial electronic book purchase-on-demand program, which the libraries are now funding from their acquisition budgets. 

Within Wesleyan, the library and ITS have worked together on a number of projects: most notably the implementation and development of Wesleyan’s Digital Commons institutional repository, WesScholar; joint conversations with faculty on their experiences with ITS and the library; and the implementation of the MISO survey to gauge student and faculty satisfaction with information technology and library services. 

Information Technology Services

The mission of Information Technology Services (ITS) is to support the Wesleyan community in its use of information technology for teaching, research, and administration. To this end, ITS partners with nearly every administrative and academic department on campus, providing and supporting core infrastructure – the network, desktop and mobile computer systems, servers, databases, printing, and facilities. ITS provides expertise in planning, developing, building, and maintaining new web-based services and websites – as well as user training and best practices advice on all aspects of computing. Also, ITS advises academic units on WesScholar, the planning and support of computing and computational services for research and instruction activities, the planning and installation of computing labs and media-rich classrooms, and general user training and desktop support. The ePortfolio system, which provides web access to a large array of services for faculty, students, and staff, exemplifies the broad scope of ITS collaborations.

ITS is divided into five subunits, each with its own director: Academic Computing Services, Administrative Systems, Auxiliary Services, New Media Lab, and User and Technical Support Services.

Academic Computing Services staff oversee instructional and research support, computing and digital media resources in classrooms and computing labs across campus, and multi-media support for special events. Also, faculty and staff receive support on Mac and PC from Desktop Support Services, which works in conjunction with Academic Computing to provide a full spectrum of hardware and applications support.

The Academic Computing Managers (ACMs) serve as faculty liaisons and are housed in proximity to the academic division they support, although actual department and program-level responsibilities sometimes cut across divisional boundaries. For the most part, ACMs are generalists and provide similar services to each of their assigned divisions, most importantly just-in-time software training for faculty on nearly any sort of general or pedagogically-oriented computing topics, including Microsoft Office, Moodle, Turningpoint, digital media tools, Google Apps, and the use of new web-based presentation, bibliographic/reference management, and social networking platforms. Depending on the skills of individual ACMs, they may also provide support with statistical or computational software. The ACMs visit faculty offices to train them on their own computers, and provide the same support to academic department administrative assistants, graduate students, and other academic staff. More specialized computing support is offered by the High-Performance Computing Cluster administrator in ITS and by tutors and support staff of the Language Resource Center, Quantitative Analysis Center, and Scientific Computing and Informatics Center, which all report to Academic Affairs, but work closely with ITS.

Administrative Systemsⁱ works with offices across campus to support the processing and data needs of the University. Administrative Systems supports PeopleSoft Human Resources, Payroll, Benefits, Student and Financial Systems, PowerFaids Financial Aid, Millennium Fundraising, iModules on-line community, Events Management System (EMS), Web Calendar, Blackboard OneCard, as well as a number of smaller systems. Additionally, Administrative Systems has partnered with campus offices to write applications to support student/faculty self-service (course registration, drop/add, major declaration and certification, curriculum development, grade entry, international study applications), employee self-service (benefits open enrollment, compensation management, goal setting and performance reviews) and outreach to prospective students and alumni. Database services, data warehousing, and reporting are supported by Administrative Systems.

Auxiliary Servicesⁱⁱ maintains a repair center for the University’s fleet of computing hardware and printers. Wesleyan uses a self-maintainer model and is reimbursed for warranty repair on covered hardware. Out-of-warranty equipment is also repaired in house, avoiding the need to outsource service requests. Students, faculty, and staff also have access to the repair center on a time and material cost-basis. Most campus technology purchases are made through Auxiliary Services’ Technology Store. The Technology Store, located in the Usdan University Center, has 1,800 square feet of retail space. Also in the Usdan University Center is Cardinal Print and Copy, a full-service electronic print shop. High-speed color copiers and large format printers are available to support the printing needs of the campus.

Wesleyan Station, the campus postal service, is also under Auxillary Services. It is housed in the Usdan University Center and handles all package and mail distribution for the campus and campus telecommunications.

The members of the New Media Labⁱⁱⁱ web group and video staff support many administrative, academic, and student-generated projects. NML staff attempt to stay ahead of the ever-changing digital media landscape as they assist faculty, staff, and students with trouble-shooting and questions regarding digital media. The video staff often provides instruction for camera and camcorder use, tapeless video cameras (SD/flash drives), equipment purchase recommendations, and instruction on how to transfer and format footage to computers for viewing, editing, and distribution. This web and interactive media support is expanding to assist with the use of social media as well, including troubleshooting issues with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, rss feeds, and Wordpress blogs.

Technical and User Services, formerly under two different directors, is now combined into one unit with a single director, but continues to be divided into two groups along the lines of the former organizational structure. The Technology Support Services (TSS) staff maintains all of the equipment and provides support to the other divisions of ITS that run volumes of applications handling all aspects of the University, both scholarly and operational. Enterprise systems such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), email, file and print services, collaboration tools, course management, and web publishing all run from the data center. Staff are on call to support these systems 24/7.

The Windows System Group, Unix Systems Group, Operations, Network Administration, and Data Center operations are all part of TSS, which is the foundation for ITS operations. Additionally, the Unix Systems Group maintains the operation of a High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC).

The acquisition of the shared high performance computing facilities was funded by two NSF Major Research Infrastructure awards, the first in 2006 for $190,000, and a second in 2010 for $298,736. Additional University support is provided in the form of systems administration, software acquisition and support, and routine maintenance. An advisory committee handles policies and procedures related to use of the HPCC.^iv The HPCC user base is primarily Physics, Math, Chemistry, Biology, and Bioinformatics, but use is expanding to such social sciences as Sociology and Economics.

Students with some expertise in IT manage and staff the HelpDesk, open 58 hours/week to provide both hardware and software support to the student population. This group of students is also helpful to ITS in terms of testing and vetting system changes and announcements.

Consultation for ITS is provided by several different sets of campus constituents. Divisional computing committees collect faculty and staff input on academic computing issues and initiatives in each division. The Academic Technology Advisory Committee (composed of faculty, library staff, Academic Affairs, and ITS) provides guidance on larger initiatives such as budget cuts, the recent course management system migration, academic website redesign and planning, and the implementation of WesScholar. The Wesleyan Student Assembly has a standing ITS advisory committee that meets at least twice a semester.

Appraisal

Library

COLLECTIONS: As libraries purchase fewer resources and subscribe to more, the size of the library’s collections is becoming less important than the amount of use they receive. For the past several years the circulation of print materials has gradually declined (down 25% between 2005 and 2010). The use of electronic resources, not surprisingly, is almost twice that of print circulation, and has shown a steady increase over the past several years (an 18% increase for electronic reserves from 2005–2010, and a 13% increase in the use of major electronic journal packages). In many subject areas^v electronic reference works and journals are as usable (and more accessible) than their print counterparts, and students and faculty generally prefer the electronic version. The library now subscribes to the electronic version of journals whenever possible and has weeded several thousand volumes of bound journals for which there are now electronic alternatives.

It will take several years for academic e-books, however, to become as usable and accessible as electronic databases and journals are now. Today the library provides access to such e-texts as Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), ebrary, Springer e-books, and others. Wesleyan continues to explore the consortial purchase of e-books with our CTW partners, including alternative models such as purchase-on-demand and short-term loans.^vi

The library’s holdings (print and electronic) have increased substantially over the past ten years, but the number of easily discoverable resources that the library does not own – journals, databases, images, video, and audio – has increased exponentially in that same period. This is reflected in the library’s interlibrary loan (ILL) statistics. In the past 10 years the number of ILL items received has increased 181%: from 6,095 in 2000 to 11,054 in 2010. Much of that increase occurred in the first five years; in 2004–2005 the number of ILL items peaked at 13,771 (including books, dvds, and articles). The library uses a variety of systems to satisfy ILL requests and has successfully done so over the past ten years without an increase in staff.

Microfilm and fiche are still the only formats available for some newspapers and primary source material. There are also many video and sound recordings that are available only in a physical format such as DVD or CD. The library continues to maintain equipment so that these materials can be used, but it is increasingly difficult to find technicians to do repairs and sources for replacement parts. 

The library has added extensive resources for many new areas of teaching at Wesleyan such as Middle Eastern Studies and the College of the Environment. ITS and the library worked together to provide a stand-alone workstation at Cheshire Correctional Institution for off-line access to the library’s catalog and JSTOR index. These are used by inmates enrolled in Wesleyan’s Center for Prison Education program. 

Library selectors have worked to balance the needs of new and existing programs while staying at or under budget. In 2007 the library conducted a serials cancellation review, relying heavily on usage data to determine which electronic resources might be cancelled, and cutting to a minimum the number of journals received both in print and electronic form. The Collection Development Coordinator restructured monographic fund allocations based on circulation and expenditures over a five-year period, combined with publication data by classification provided by our primary monograph vendor. The library continues to review and cancel print subscriptions that duplicate electronic holdings when the electronic subscription is comparable in content and usability. Our Acquisitions & Electronic Resources Librarian has saved the library tens of thousands of dollars in recent years by comparing consortial deals for expensive packages and by tough negotiating with vendors.

Great progress has been made in expanding access to Wesleyan’s “hidden collections” (materials that have not yet been described or categorized in an online catalog or database). Catalog records have been added for individual items in large sets, Special Collections & Archives collections (such as the Nathan Comfort Starr Collection of Arthuriana) have been cataloged, and more than 100 online finding aids for archival collections have been added using Encoded Archival Description. Scores & Recordings and Cataloging staff have worked together to streamline the cataloging of unique recordings in the World Music Archives. There is much work still to be done to make Wesleyan’s hidden collections accessible, however, and both Special Collections & Archives and the World Music Archives are pursuing grants and gifts to catalog and make accessible specific collections of rare material. 

STAFF AND ORGANIZATION: The library has continued to adjust its staff and organization to meet new opportunities and challenges, and is working now to create internal processes that make these self-assessments a normal part of its operation. In 2007, as a result of an internal review by library consultants from R2 Consulting, the library decided to convert the vacant position of Collection Development Librarian into a Systems/Discovery Librarian who could identify, adapt, and install library applications to improve library services and access to resources. Collection development functions were distributed among the librarians, and although this has been not been entirely successful, the implementation of new and improved library applications by the Systems/Discovery Librarian has been of tremendous benefit to Wesleyan students and faculty. 

In response to the global economic crisis in 2008, Wesleyan implemented early retirement programs that resulted in the library losing 2 librarian positions (out of 17) and 3.5 FTE bargaining unit positions (out of 20). Librarians and library staff worked together to determine how to reorganize and redistribute responsibilities while minimizing the effect on library services. In fact, the alignment of librarians’ selection responsibilities with the academic departments with whom they liaise actually improved communication with faculty. Although this reorganization was difficult at times and created strain in some library departments, it has on the whole been successful.

SYSTEMS AND SERVICES: The library’s extensive and effective programs of Personal Research Sessions (one-on-one appointments in which a student meets with a librarian for research guidance) and class instruction continue to grow; challenges brought on by these programs include the sheer volume of requests, especially in some disciplines, and the need to develop some form of assessment to measure the effectiveness of instruction. In March 2005, the faculty added “information literacy” to the list of essential capabilities for Wesleyan students. Librarians work closely with faculty to design and support instruction that includes information literacy. Many of the FYI (First Year Initiative) courses for Wesleyan first-year students now include library instruction and assignments that draw on library holdings and build information literacy skills.

Wesleyan undergraduate theses from 2008 to the present are currently available electronically via WesScholar, as are some faculty publications and profiles. A library-ITS committee was created in 2011 to explore the further development of this system. In 2011 the library began systematically archiving instances of the University’s web presence using Archive-It, a service provided by the Internet Archive. However, archiving other types of electronic documents continues to pose a serious challenge: at this point the library does not yet have a mechanism to ensure historical continuity for the University’s data sets, electronic archival records, or faculty data.

The library has begun using a variety of systems both to manage internal processes and to provide services to patrons. The library participates in LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe), in which instances of many electronic resources are archived as insurance against a vendor failure or other situation in which a resource is no longer available. In 2011, the library contracted with the Internet Archive to use Archive-It to systematically archive instances of Wesleyan’s web site. In 2008, the library began using LibGuides to produce online finding aids and research guides. In 2008, the CTW Consortium outsourced the hosting of the library’s online catalogs to ExLibris, having determined that ExLibris hosting would be more efficient and cost-effective than local hosting. 

In 2009, the library used ethnographic techniques to determine how students navigate the library’s website and those of other academic libraries. The findings were used to design a new library website that better met the needs of our undergraduates. Although this website design was replaced in 2011 by a new design that conformed to the University’s new template, the new library design was heavily influenced by the findings of ethnographic study.

SPACE: In the past several years the library has installed compact shelving in the Science Library, weeded many print volumes of journals available in JSTOR, culled multiple copies of books, and reduced the Olin reference collection by half. With budget reductions and the growing availability of books in electronic format, the library now adds about 13,000 print books a year as opposed to 17,000 ten years ago. Nevertheless, space for the library’s physical collections continues to be a challenge, and a major weeding project is underway that will reduce the monograph collection by 60,000 volumes. 

Many faculty, however, have expressed concern about the prospect of weeding books and how it might affect the library’s ability to support the wide-ranging work of students and faculty. This concern has sparked a campus-wide discussion of the role of the library, the changing nature of collections, and the future of academic and creative work at Wesleyan. The library has used its project blog, the faculty forum email list, and conversations with individual faculty members and students to conduct this discussion, which continued through the spring of 2012. A newly reconstituted Library Faculty Advisory Committee now provides advice on how to work with faculty on library-specific projects.

The weeding project will make possible the incorporation into Olin of the Art Library in 2014, which will reunite the art collections in one place and provide appropriate working spaces for students and faculty using art materials.

In 2005 the library, ITS, and the Student Academic Resources Network (SARN) opened the Information Commons, an innovative study space and help center adjacent to the Olin Library reference desk. Originally intended to be a “one-stop shop” to help students with their academic support needs, the Info Commons has become a place for technology and research assistance, with a convenient and popular study space. There is a satellite office for peer writing tutors near the Info Commons that is very popular as well. 

The library’s Conservation Lab, renovated and enlarged in 2009, repairs, conserves, and preserves Wesleyan’s physical collections. The Conservator of Collections is internationally known and has recently conducted workshops in Nigeria on preserving Islamic manuscripts using materials available locally. In the lab, she selects and carefully trains the students working with her, and several have gone on to internships at the Smithsonian and elsewhere.

Information Technology Services

Technological advancement outpaces the ability of most organizations to adapt and upgrade their infrastructure in line with changes in the consumer environment. The pressure to be innovative is tremendous, and our response can have an impact on how prospective students view Wesleyan. The key to success is identifying those changes that are likely to be long lasting and sustained while not getting distracted by fad technologies that might divert resources unnecessarily. Leadership is also a pending issue. The process of considering integration of ITS and the Library kept ITS from having a full-time director for two years; new leadership is needed to make decisive changes as technology moves forward.

Many new instructional technologies have been adopted since the 2007 self-study. Echo360, a classroom lecture recording system, has been installed in four classrooms, and the Turningpoint personal response system (i.e., clickers) is also available for use.

Echo360 was purchased in 2005 and has been used most heavily by large introductory science courses, but also by some language instructors and by instructors who wish to record a lecture outside of class time. Recordings of classes can be made available through Moodle shortly after class ends. Access to this system permits students to review course materials before exams and to revisit difficult concepts introduced or discussed in class. Echo 360 was introduced as part of a study of lecture recording (by several different means, not just Echo360) in which the Office of Institutional Research provided assessment and a final report on usage and its effects on student attendance. In this study, the positive learning outcomes outweighed concerns over decreased attendance.

The TurningPoint personal response system is available for use by any course on campus. Faculty can ask students to purchase a clicker for their course, or instead, for ad hoc use, borrow a set of clickers from ITS (ITS has two sets of 100 clickers). Clickers introduce an active component to lectures. Students use their clicker to “vote” for answers to multiple choice questions posed by the instructor, and summaries of the responses can be used to generate discussion, peer-tutoring, team-work, and the like, even in a large course such as introductory physics for non-majors (i.e., Physics for Future Presidents).

A more recent trend in instructional technology at Wesleyan is the pedagogical use of new media, such as digital storytelling and podcasting. Digital storytelling is the use of video and audio to produce rich narratives about a subject of interest, or as a form of reflection; podcasts are short recordings that can be presented together as a serial work on a specific subject matter. For example, in Iris Bork-Goldfield’s “German Culture Today” course, students create digital stories (narrated in German) to introduce the viewer to their hometowns. In his “Nationalism” course, Peter Rutland asked students to produce short video case studies of nations or regions not covered by the syllabus. He conveyed high expectations for the script writing and limited the videos to 10 minutes in length. The students praised the assignment and reported that they learned from each other’s work. Podcasting examples include Suzanne O’Connell’s “Science on the Radio” course, where students produce half-hour public science shows for the “Lens on the Earth” broadcast on WESU, the campus radio station. The students research a subject, write a script, then record and produce an episode. Similarly, Ishita Mukerji’s “Light and Life” course produced podcasts in place of research reports, and these are also scheduled to be broadcast on WESU. Both digital storytelling and podcast assignments combine research, writing, performance, and reflection, and help students develop skills in public communication.

High-definition projectors have been installed in several classrooms heavily used by Art History courses. The improved quality of projected images has led most of the Art History faculty to begin adopting digital formats, moving away from their long-favored 35mm slides. This transition is far from complete, but there is enough confidence in the digital formats and display quality that the Art History faculty are backing a project to digitize their primary teaching slide collection. The Library and ITS are collaborating with the Art History slide library on this important transition.

The NML video staff digitized and/or edited approximately 200 video excerpts for 11 faculty members to be used as part of their class materials this year; however, this type of request has been on the decline over the past three years. Requests for large format printing and scanning, primarily for faculty projects and student poster sessions, have decreased over the past two years, perhaps as a result of easier access to digitizing tools and student and faculty use of more born-digital materials.

During the summer of 2010, ITS migrated the campus off Blackboard (an expensive, commercial course management system) to the free, open source platform Moodle, a much more flexible and efficient system. Students and faculty express satisfaction with the new platform, and it is now used in more than 50% of all courses, up more than 10% from Blackboard. Confluence wiki and WordPress blogging platforms previously used primarily by ITS are now used by some instructors for courses, registered student organizations, researchers, as well as academic and administrative departments for internal communication. WesFiles, introduced in 2008, is our Xythos file-sharing platform on which every campus user has a home directory, and it is used by many courses, departments, campus committees, and research labs. The Wesleyan Media Database, developed by ITS in collaboration with the Art & Art History Department and the Library, has proven to be a valuable repository for faculty to store and present digital images used in teaching. We continue to upgrade and improve this important system. ITS also collaborated with the Library on a recent study of student satisfaction with the iPad platform and electronic texts in courses.

A number of ITS initiatives have addressed cost-effective service. A large-scale shift to virtualization technologies, for instance, has reduced energy consumption. Data center virtualization, moreover, has changed the way ITS does business. Servers can be deployed rapidly, ITS can sustain an environment with multiple test and development servers while not increasing the cost of hardware, and eleventh-hour requests for dedicated servers can be accommodated in a matter of hours instead of days.

Modest progress has been achieved with desktop virtualization. The initial ambition to replace the majority of physical desktops with virtual ones has been modified. With desktop virtualization, of course, deployment is a key benefit: virtual desktops can be deployed in less than an hour. With our Citrix environment, users have greatly enhanced capabilities to access their desktop from anywhere off campus, a functionality we will be encouraging and advertising more in months to come.

The biggest successes have been with administrative staff and student employee computers. The thin client hardware has more than twice the life of a physical desktop and half the cost. Additionally, virtualization allows us to provide remotely executed desktops with specialty applications that may be OS specific or have license restrictions. We are now embarking on an environment that will allow students to launch virtual machines with software for which they would typically need to go to a physical lab.   

Problems have arisen, however, when central storage configuration has not been sufficient to support the demands of virtualization. This has resulted in performance lags and systemic issues that have a direct impact on users, particularly with the introduction of virtual desktops. System administrators embarked on a complete storage redesign that has improved performance and allowed ITS to realize cost savings. The full redesign will not be complete until mid to late 2012.

Last year ITS made progress on one of its most visible challenges.  Students expected the level of service that home broadband provided and were becoming increasingly frustrated with the campus service. Complicating the situation further, Wesleyan had been purchasing bandwidth entirely from the state network, CEN (known for its robust architecture, exceedingly high up time, and outstanding service), but the cost had become prohibitive. Bandwidth requirements reached a critical mass in 2009–2010. Wesleyan responded in two ways: leveraging the higher education network in Connecticut to put pressure on CEN to be more competitive and pursuing a commodity provider. Ultimately, both avenues proved fruitful as CEN dropped rates and Wesleyan was able to obtain a low-cost 1GB circuit from a commodity provider. As such, access to Internet2 and other institutions connected via CEN will continue uninterrupted. We now have adequate bandwidth likely to satisfy our student demands and academic needs for the next 2-3 years based on usage and rate of growth over the last year.

For several years, Wesleyan provided wireless access on an open unsecured connection relying solely on Network Access Control for authentication and registration. While this was convenient, as sniffing technologies became easier to access and use with less skill, the need for an encrypted network became increasingly apparent. During 2011, Wesleyan decommissioned the unencrypted wireless and migrated to a WPA2 Enterprise encrypted network for faculty, staff, and students as well as a low level WEP encrypted network for guests. Using 802.1X for authentication, ITS ensured that access was as seamless as possible while still protecting the users. Nearly all of the student population relies exclusively on wireless access. This is becoming increasingly true, though not nearly at the same rate, for faculty and staff who are using more mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones for business applications. Wesleyan has committed to improving wireless saturation in all academic buildings and residence halls.

The single greatest networking challenge for Technical Support Services is Wesleyan’s housing environment, which includes approximately 150 single and multi-family homes within a two-mile radius of the central campus. Most of these homes lie outside the fiber perimeter of the campus. Running fiber to these building has been explored twice in the last decade, but the cost has been high and long-term viability of such an investment questionable at best. Wesleyan has instead relied on commercial providers for Internet access to these locations. The actual service from these providers, however, has ranged been marginal to poor, and this has necessitated ITS intervention and extensive support for what was supposed to be an outsourced service. Students are frequently inconvenienced and unhappy, but Wesleyan’s ability to resolve the problem is limited. In the past six years, the network team has twice investigated other wireless solutions to address the issue, but the available technologies were inadequate. Wireless technologies have since advanced, however, and Wesleyan is once again looking to newer solutions to address these issues. The increase in Wesleyan’s bandwidth should allow for easy absorption of these residences should the right technology be located.

Improving the user experience at Wesleyan is a focus. ITS prides itself on its decentralized support model—departments have an assigned desktop support specialist, and faculty have an assigned liaison—instead of a centralized help desk model. Users have very high expectations with regard to response time, and our ability to deliver more often than not only increases that expectation.^vii

The University’s homegrown electronic portfolio is aging. Once a model portal environment, the ePortfolio needs evaluation to determine next steps. While the portfolio has served as the means for single-sign on for most services, newer protocols that allow for federation (authentication across multiple systems or organizations) are making this older means of entry less attractive.

One notable change is the proliferation of mobile devices. For several years, managing smartphone use by the Cabinet and other higher-level administrators presented hurdles for desktop support because the campus did not did not have a standard for models or platforms. Now, of course, the entire user population expects easy access from multiple devices, and this is presenting challenges within the constraints of a secure environment. In 2011, ITS developed the University’s first mobile device application. The mobile version of the Wesleyan website launched on in October 2011, and additional mobile applications are being rolled out in 2012.

The Event Management System (EMS) is a relatively new service that gives faculty, staff, and students the ability to see room features and availability and to request rooms and performance spaces across campus. EMS is integrated with class schedules and the University Calendar. As part of the scheduling request, faculty, staff, and students can specify food, facilities, technical, and recording support. EMS allows us to fully utilize University spaces and coordinate support and event publicity.

The emergency communication system, BlackBoard Connect, allows Wesleyan to reach the campus community quickly in the event of an urgent emergency.

For management of the hiring process of faculty and staff, Wesleyan has adopted PeopleAdmin. Through PeopleAdmin, hiring managers and human resource recruiters can create and approve job posting, rate candidate applications, and easily distribute resumes and cover letters. Candidates can upload resumes/CV’s, cover letters, and other supporting materials.

Financial Services has implemented the Wesleyan Financial System (WFS), a PeopleSoft/Oracle System that distributes fiscal responsibility to departments and office across campus. With its variety of modules, a sophisticated workflow infrastructure and paperless financial record keepers, the WFS implementation is a major step forward in maintaining the financial equilibrium of the University.

Initiatives undertaken by ITS have greatly improved Wesleyan’s public presentation. At the end of 2008, Microsoft stopped supporting Microsoft FrontPage, the website editing system. In January 2009, the New Media Lab web team was charged with researching and implementing the website migration and redesign project, and staff ultimately selected Cascade by Hannon Hill as the new content management system. As of January 2012, more than 170 of the 270 University websites under the Wesleyan domain are in development or have been migrated to Cascade. Of the 270, 12 websites have been moved into University Relation’s iModules content management system, which is a vendor-hosted solution.

In addition to the on-going redesign and migration process, NML continues to support day-to-day requests from University staff and faculty on Wordpress site setups, header designs, newsletters, and specialty website development, such as the Faculty Bookshelf, Video Aggregate, Faculty Syllabus, and Athletics video page. 

The primary objective for the video production and post-production team within NML over the past two years has been to improve the visual (broadcast) quality and professionalism of Wesleyan video programming and to streamline the process of video production and distribution. This was accomplished by one-on-one training with student videographers and student video editors, improving the quality of production equipment (to HD), and streamlining compression and distribution process.^viii

For alumni outreach, Wesleyan has recently implemented WesConnect, an iModules-based online community. WesConnect features a Facebook tie-in, pre-defined and user-defined groups, and an alumni directory. In addition, University Relations will manage events through the WesConnect with the goal of integrating Wesleyan’s online presence with events. Also in University Relations, a new business intelligence and dashboard tool, Visual Analyzer, has been implemented. It allows University Relations to analyze fundraising trends and establish goals as well as follow-up with individual parents and alumni.

Wesleyan students play an integral part in determining the direction of many of ITS’s services. Students interact with ITS through employment in the student-run ITS HelpDesk, Instructional Media Services, and the New Media Lab, and also in an advisory capacity through the Wesleyan Student Assembly’s ITS Advisory Committee.

The ITS HelpDesk provides testing and feedback for changes that affect student computing. Students on the HelpDesk are informed in advance of the general population and are often early adopters. Some specific examples include the Google Apps migration in January 2009 and the adoption of a new antivirus program and deployment for student use in 2010. These students receive more information about the state of technology and hear in detail many aspects of how the IT organization works, and this “give and take” of information contributes to a good working relationship.  

Another important contribution by ITS student staff is the new Wespregame program. Broadcast prior to the live webcasting of sporting events, it features interviews with coaches and athletes, weekly highlights, and much more. Wespregrame was created by ITS student staffers Mike Yoshida ’13 and Lionel Nyange ’12, both of whom work in Instructional Media Services and Special Events support. The program harnesses student videography skills and ITS resources to organize, shoot, produce, and broadcast its athletics material. The program was designed from the ground up to be not only an outlet for Wesleyan student creativity, but also to spread awareness of Wesleyan’s athletics program and its athletes’ achievements.

When the position of director of ITS became vacant in late 2009, Wesleyan decided to consider redefining the position, given the open question of more deeply integrating ITS and the library. In order to explore this question in depth, a search for a new director was put on hold, and the Vice President for Finance and Administration (who was ITS director here until 2005) added “interim ITS director” to his portfolio of duties. Many faculty were skeptical of the idea to hire a “chief information officer” who would supervise both ITS and the library. A concern was that academics would become a lower priority than technology in a merger of ITS and the library. An ad hoc committee of faculty, librarians, and ITS staff was formed to study the organization at other institutions and make recommendations for Wesleyan. That committee did not achieve consensus, and the primary outcome was to retain the existing organizational structure. The process demonstrates Wesleyan’s approach to institutional effectiveness: We explored new ideas even through controversial; the community held broad, transparent discussions; and we invited multiple experts to offer divergent experiences from other institutions. Further discussion is underway to determine how to improve services in both the library and ITS.    

Projection

Library

In the library, numerous projects have been undertaken to make the online catalog more complete and accurate. In 2014, after the weeding project is complete and the Art Library has been incorporated into Olin, a long-overdue inventory of the collections will be implemented to ensure that the online catalog accurately reflects the library’s holdings. There are also some “hidden” collections not yet represented in the online catalog; these are being cataloged on an ongoing basis. 

The library, which struggles with the high cost of scholarly journals, supports the open access movement. In the fall of 2011, the library began a campus discussion of open access issues that we hope will garner support among students and faculty for a formal open access resolution by the end of the 2012–13 academic year, in which the faculty will commit to publishing in open access journals whenever possible and to depositing their publications in WesScholar. The library and ITS will be exploring other ways to provide journal, conference, and other locally produced content via WesScholar.

As the library provides a greater number of resources than ever before in a greater variety of formats, it is becoming more and more difficult to organize these resources so they can be efficiently accessed and used. The library, in close collaboration with ITS, our CTW partners, and others, will continue to explore ways to make resources easy to find and use. CTW now finances link resolvers and similar software in addition to the online catalog. With the advent of an expanding number of library-specific applications, the CTW Future of the Catalog committee is looking into sharing the cost of applications such as a new catalog interface and web discovery tools, and will make a recommendation to the CTW library directors by the end of the 2011–12 academic year.  

The library is experiencing a similar problem in organizing internal data on its thousands of electronic resources and has not yet implemented an electronic resource management system (ERM). But the increasing variety, complexity, and sheer number of electronic resources will soon make an ERM imperative. The library is beginning to evaluate systems with a view to acquiring and implementing an ERM by the end of 2014.

Information Technology Services

The University has aggressively begun developing a Student and Academic Affairs Data Warehouse. The goal of the data warehouses is to ensure clean data in our transactional systems and fuel data-driven decision-making, as well as to simplify and standardize official University reporting.

As there are no standing IT-oriented faculty committees, gaining full participation by faculty is often the biggest challenge for establishing a committee’s influence. For example, Division I (Arts & Humanities) was at one time represented by two separate IT committees, one for Arts and one for Humanities, but there has been no Humanities committee for many years, although efforts are being made to reconstitute it. Improving faculty participation in ITS oversight is a priority.

Building up the collaborative relationship between ITS and the Library is an important goal for the coming years. To this end, Academic Computing and the Library have begun planning a new service “superstructure” and web presence on campus for support of digital research and scholarship, to be followed by a similar undertaking focused on teaching and learning. The new web presence for these services will exist outside the departmental websites for the Library and ITS and provide one-stop-shopping for information related to research, publishing, conference planning and hosting, teaching, and learning. Services and resources relevant for a particular activity will be presented together, even though individual services are still offered separately by ITS, the Library, and other offices like the Quantitative Analysis Center, the Scientific Computing and Informatics Center, Academic Affairs, and Events and Scheduling.

In an effort to help meet Wesleyan’s increasing need to distribute content using mobile technologies, our web administrator and web developer will continue to evaluate mobile authoring tools and methods to allow for the maximum efficiencies of resources while meeting expectations of our user base.

One mobile app currently in development for Admission is a University walking tour devised specifically for mobile devices that will enable a user to walk around campus, identify buildings, streets, and landmarks through the device’s GPS system. This project will serve as a springboard for other mobile apps and can be used as a basis for smaller, more targeted programs such as finding dorms or even classrooms. 

In fall of 2012, we will begin a paperless Admission Office project, allowing admission deans to read applicant folders on-line. This will streamline the review process and alleviate the need to print and handle paper applications, saving both paper and support staff time. In the summer of 2013, the Deans, Financial Aid, and Registrar Offices will build on the paperless Admission Office project to create digital student folders that will follow students through their Wesleyan careers.

From 2011–2013, the switch infrastructure will be replaced with a new core that handles a much higher-rate backbone, likely 10GB. Wesleyan is attempting to stay ahead of the bandwidth demands that increased multi-media and two-way video brings. Additionally, Wesleyan is phasing in a Voice over IP solution. A new building opened in 2012 featuring a VoIP system that integrates with the University’s current phone system. Eventually, the entire phone network will transition to VoIP.

Institutional Effectiveness

Library

Through conversations with faculty regarding their experiences with the library, through ethnographic study of the ways students navigate the library website, through the library’s project blog and the faculty forum listserv, and through the library’s ongoing internal process of self-assessment, the library maintains a dialog with its constituents about the effectiveness of its services. The “weeding” project is a particularly apt example of transparent discussion of a sensitive topic, leading to improved institutional effectiveness.

While the library continues to receive more than 95% approval ratings in Wesleyan’s senior survey and collects extensive amounts of data about the uses of its collections, librarians are still exploring ways to effectively assess all aspects of the library’s instruction program. The library is working with faculty and the academic deans to determine how to effectively and unobtrusively assess library instruction outcomes.

Information Technology Services

Evaluation of current and future needs led Wesleyan to substantially improve campus bandwidth and to provide campus-wide, secure wireless access. A realistic assessment of resources led the University to defer upgrading service to single and multi-family homes in the campus vicinity, though advances in wireless technology may provide a solution to this vexing problem. In collaboration with the Library, ITS will be participating in the 2012 MISO Survey, which will furnish quantitative assessment data on student, faculty, and staff interest in resources, satisfaction with services, and suggestions for services not currently offered. Because feedback from users has historically been anecdotal in nature, provided through ITS staff and committees that meet too infrequently, the MISO Survey should enhance institutional effectiveness.

 

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