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Collection Development and Access Plan:
Neag School of Education
Prepared by Francine DeFranco,
December, 1999. DRAFT: For review by the School of
Education.
Contents:
I. Department Profile
II. Current Library Expenditures in Support of
Education
III. Current Patterns of Information
Service
IV. Emerging Choices
I. School of Education Profile
A. Factual Background
Degree programs:
The School of Education offers a variety of degree programs including:
- Integrated Bachelors/Masters (IB/M) in Teacher Education
- Master of Science in the following areas:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Educational Leadership (including Adult
Education)
- Educational Psychology (including Gifted and Talented
Education and Special Education)
- Kinesiology (Sociology of Sport, Biophysical Science of Sport, Exercise and Leisure Science)
- Sixth-Year Diploma in Professional Education
- Doctor of Philosophy (all departmental areas)
Statistical Information (Fall 1999) Faculty:
75
Undergraduate Majors: 239
Master’s Candidates: 454
6th Year Diploma 167
Doctoral Candidates: 427
The Neag School of Education is a University of Connecticut priority program. Recently, The Neag School of Education received twenty one million dollars, the largest financial gift to a school or college of education in the country. This will be matched by more than three million in state funds to bring the total to more than twenty four million dollars. This generous gift will be used to support endowed chairs, scholarships, graduate assistantships, faculty and staff professional development activities, and venture capital funds to initiate new outreach efforts.
In the 1998 Strategic Plan, the Neag School of Education identified five key strategic areas and recommended focusing resources on the these initiatives:
- Educating Learners At Risk
- Improving Workforce / Professional Development
- Improving Health and Wellness Across the Life Span
- Changing the Metaphor of Education to Emphasize Inquiry
- Informing Leadership and Policy Initiatives
B. Special Characteristics of the Community
Both the undergraduate and graduate programs are centered at the Storrs campus. Additionally, courses are taught at the Greater Hartford and Stamford campuses. Bilingual education and administration courses are taught at the Greater Hartford campus. The Educational Leadership department conducts courses to support the Ph.D. and UCAPP programs at the Stamford campus. Several courses from educational psychology and educational leadership departments are conducted using distance learning technologies. The masters program in educational media and technology is conducted largely via the Internet.
Although most programs are centered at Storrs, many faculty and most students are not resident.Faculty and most education students are not resident. Remote access to library materials is very valuable to these users. Networked electronic indexes, abstracts and full-text resources are already being used regularly despite a less than optimal proxy server system. Expanding electronic access to core journal literature in education and related disciplines is our next challenge.
II. Current Library Expenditures in Support of Education (FY 1999/2000)
The base budget for monographs and journals for FY 98-99 was $42,000 allocated approximately between $16,500 for books and $25,500 for journals, serials, and continuations. Licensed electronic access for education and education-related materials, such as ERIC and Sports Discus, total approximately $5,100. In addition, education students regularly make use of resources acquired in support of business, psychology, and other campus programs such as PsycInfo, Sociological Abstracts, Dissertation Abstracts, ABI Inform, and Dow-Jones Interactive. The Libraries' support for resources beyond the education budget are provided through the Libraries’ networked services allocations.III. Current Patterns of Information Service
A. Special Characteristics of the
Literature
Citation analysis of the literature of educational research
suggests that a typical pattern of references is: 65% journals,
25% books, and 10% association publications and government
documents. Both formats provide access to historic and current
information. Although the accent is on current information, older
materials remain important to faculty and students conducting
research, writing grants, and fulfilling course requirements.
Increasingly, electronic access to discipline specific indexes /
abstract tools, databases, full-text journals and electronic data
sources are becoming important to accomplishing research and
academic efforts.
The strongly applied nature of much educational research requires that our library provide good access and delivery options for both masters and dissertation research done elsewhere. Reports of government funded research, which constitute the bulk of the "grey literature," or ED segment of ERIC, are important for the same reason.
The prominence of psychosocial instruments, tests, and measures is also characteristic of the education literature. The library actively collects material about these tools and the issues raised by their use, but has generally been prevented from owning and distributing the instruments most in demand. We are hoping that the terms under which such materials can be provided to student researchers will become more straightforward in a web environment. We would welcome advice from faculty concerning our role in this area.
Much literature important to education students is produced in areas primarily associated with other disciplines. Examples include: materials on research methods and analysis, subject content areas such as mathematics, reading, and science, psychology and psychopathology, human development, sociology, health, nutrition, music, art, and management. The education liaison tries to stay in regular communication with liaisons collecting in these areas to assure that the interests of education students are not neglected.
B. Collection Development
1. Areas of Focus
Faculty research areas vary. Prominent research areas and
curricular themes include: gifted and talented education;
educating women and girls; integrated mathematics and science
education; adult education and training; bilingual education;
learning theories; cultural and ethnic issues in education;
cognition and instruction; sports marketing; athletic training;
and exercise physiology.
Some policy oriented and comparative work on education in other societies is collected in support of interests in such topics by Arts and Sciences faculty but research literature conducted outside the United States is not generally acquired except in response to direct user request. Higher education has been de-emphasized, in response to its removal from the education curriculum. Selected materials continue to be acquired to support campus wide interest in issues before the university. Selected advanced level textbooks, topical handbooks, and non-research materials are selected on a case by case basis. Psychological and personality tests, general textbooks, examination preparation materials, curriculum materials, dissertations, children’s literature, and student (K-12) textbooks are generally not collected.
2. Acquisition Strategies: Monographs
Yankee Book Peddler (YBP), the Libraries’ established
approval plan, delivers current books and materials. This vendor
covers all university press and most trade publishing produced or
actively distributed in the United States. Publishers who refuse
to discount to YBP, or produce less than 5 titles per year are
not covered. Additional materials produced from publishers beyond
the YBP approval plan as well as videos are ordered directly.
Publishers and professional association catalogs, such as NASSP,
AERA, APA, NCTM, NCTE, and ASCD, are reviewed for additional
research and video materials. A full list of covered publishers
is available on the Libraries’ home page at: /ris/ypbpub.htm
3. Acquisition Strategies: Journals
The library maintains a strong collection of education journals
on site. Electronic resources such as InfoTrac, Academic
Universe, JStor, and Dow-Jones Interactive provide
full-text access to some education and education related
journals. However, much of the journal literature critical to
education research and study is not yet available in full-text
format. Because the core journal literature of education comes
from a wide range of largely not-for-profit publishers, the
switch to electronic provision may not occur as fast as we and
our users would like. Titles we currently have in full-text can
be identified through both HOMER and the Libraries’
"Full-text journal locator" at: http://norman.lib.uconn.edu/FullText/.
Links from electronic databases such as ERIC and
PsycInfo, to the cited articles in full-text, will begin
to appear for selected publishers.
4. Acquisition Strategies: Non-print and Miscellaneous
Materials
Videos, conference proceedings, dissertations, and some state and
federal reports may also be relevant to academic and research
needs in education. The selection and purchase of these materials
are made in collaboration with faculty who indicate a need and
expect to use such materials for research and instruction.
C. Access Development
1. Bibliographic Infrastructure
The major indexing and abstracting services for education are:
ERIC; PsycInfo (Psychological Abstracts); Dissertation Abstracts;
Sociological Abstracts; and ABInform (business and corporate
training information). All are available electronically inside
the libraries across campus and to authenticated community
members wherever they may be. Current awareness services, such as
UnCover and the SDI service available through Current Contents,
provide faculty and students with bibliographic updates critical
to their research. Links from the Libraries’ home page
or /currentaware/curraware.html
as well as the Resources in Education page /research/bysubject/educ.html
connect to these sources.
2. Electronic Journals, Books, and
Data
User enthusiasm and economic incentives have caused the library to embrace electronic only access to commercial as well as non-profit journal packages. With the subscription year that begins in January 2004, if a cost savings is available, the libraries are generally converting journal subscriptions that currently bring us both print and electronic copies to electronic-only provision.
We are making this change on a publisher-by-publisher basis. Many of our electronic journals do not come directly by license from the publisher, but instead through aggregator products such as Lexis-Nexis Academic, Dow-Jones, InfoTrac and Wilson Web. The arrangements between aggregators and publishers are constantly in flux. Only when titles are available through multiple aggregators, in a complete and reasonably current version will the cancellation of print be considered.
We have resisted going electronic-only up to now because of concerns about long-term, archival access. Commercial publishers cannot be relied upon to archive their content once the prospect of additional sales approaches nil. Although a solution is far from in place, we believe that technologies now under examination, with funding from the National Science Foundation among others, will yield solutions whereby the largest research libraries will undertake the distributed archiving of digital content in all our interest. We expect that even the largest commercial publishers will, ultimately, cooperate with such an arrangement.
One of the primary goals in the immediate future will be to identify the journals for which we have a subscription but not electronic access, and attempt to add said access. Often the stumbling block for doing so is the license agreement. Additionally, many of the society journals are only now being made available electronically. Often, online access to these titles is free with a print subscription. Retaining access to the already respectable menu of online journals provided by the Library is an ongoing library goal although this effort is becoming increasingly difficult. Because of unsustainable inflation of scholarly journals, electronic only access may be increasingly viewed as a viable option. The question of permanent access to reliable archives of this material is not yet resolved, making such a switch a risky venture.
Furthermore, electronic journals can be hot linked to web based indexes like Web of Science, and the electronic resources listed above. Additionally, the Library’s electronic journal locator, eCompass, facilitates the identification of specific e-journal titles "owned" by the Library (i.e., accessible via the University internet domain, ".uconn.edu".)
3. Document Delivery / Interlibrary
Loan
Document delivery and interlibrary loan accommodate the need for
materials beyond on-site collections and full-text database
resources. Information generated by the use of document delivery
and interlibrary loan will increasingly inform our decisions
regarding both new journal acquisitions and collection
development priorities.
The Interlibrary Loan statistics for 1998-1999 for education faculty and students are:
Total Requests: 843
Faculty: 10%
Graduate Students: 90%
Books: 42%
Journal Articles: 58%
IV. Emerging Choices
The field of education will continue to rely on both books and journals to support academic and research pursuits for both historical and current information. Increasingly, electronic access to full-text electronic resources, particularly for access to current journal information, provides faculty and students with information when and where it is needed. As more education journals become available electronically we will be forced to consider relying exclusively on the electronic version of some of these titles.
Statistical data on many education issues at all levels is currently available from the National Center for Educational Statistics http://nces.ed.gov/index.html. Access to digital data sets in areas relevant to education research, such as poverty, employment, federal and state budgets, and ethnicity, race, and gender has become increasingly important. We will collect electronic data in these areas, in collaboration with other relevant disciplines, where robust software is available to permit the both distributed access and downloading of data into standard spread sheet applications.
The Neag School of Education, as a result of sound strategic planning and generous financial support, is positioned to change and develop as a nationally recognized program. The Libraries are concerned that no additional funds are likely to be made available to us to respond to new initiatives at the School. If we are to move into new collecting areas, we must find the resources be re-examining our existing commitments. We cannot make such a transition without the cooperation and close collaboration of the faculty. This shared responsibility provides the best hope for continued provision of information requisite to support a nationally recognized program and its faculty, future teachers, and researchers