LIBRARY WORKSTATION Research Articles

The library computer lab transforms into a “thinking lab”

PurposeThe purpose of this column is to examine the process for the transition of library computer labs into “thinking labs”, where existing library workstation space can be reallocated to provide more flexibility, freedom and creativity for the library patron.Design/methodology/approachLiterature review and commentary on this topic that has been addressed by professionals, researchers and practitioners.FindingsThe transition of library computer labs into “thinking labs” is an initiative where library planners can experiment with ideas and concepts in library design to provide the most effective user experience through a “fresh perspective”.Originality/valueThe value in exploring this topic is to propose that library planners and designers create space unlike traditional designs to provide patrons with a more transformative thinking, learning and creative library experience.

Socioeconomic Indicators Associated with First-year College Students' Use of Academic Libraries

The purpose of this study was to examine whether a wide variety of socioeconomic indicators were associated with first-year college students' use of academic libraries in six areas: checking out books from general circulation, reading electronic books, using online reference librarian services or speaking with a peer research consultant, logging into an electronic journal, using library workstations, or logging into a database. Data were drawn from 5133 first-year students attending a large, public research-extensive university in the upper Midwest of the United States. The results suggest that first-year students from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds are less likely to utilize libraries in nearly all areas. Some mixed findings also emerged suggesting that socioeconomic indicators such as hours spent in employment each week, living situation, and family are not uniformly predictive of students' use of academic libraries.

Use of Library Services Can Be Associated with a Positive Effect on First-Year Students’ GPA and Retention

A Review of:
 Soria, K. M., Fransen, J., & Nackerud, S. (2014). Stacks, serials, search engines, and students’ success: First-year undergraduate students’ library use, academic achievement, and retention. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 40(1), 84-91.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.12.002
 
 Abstract
 
 Objective – To investigate the degree of relation between first-year undergraduate students’ library use and their academic achievement (measured by cumulative GPA) and first- to second-year retention. 
 
 Design – Quantitative data obtained from library systems combined with regression analyses.
 
 Setting – A large public university located in the United States of America.
 
 Subjects – The study included 5,368 non-transfer first-year students, with a total of 5,162 students retained for the final sample. 
 
 Methods – Data on 10 library usage variables were collected using student logins to library databases and websites and analyzed using SPSS. These variables included logins to databases, use of electronic books and journals, chat reference questions, and workshops signed up for, among others. There were 2 separate regressions utilized to predict students’ cumulative GPA by these 10 types of library use. Two separate logistic regressions were utilized to predict first- to second-year retention by the same library usage variables.
 
 Main Results – 81.9% of first-year students used at least one library service. Overall, students who used their academic library’s services and/or resources once or more during an academic year had a higher average retention rate and GPA compared to their peers who had not used the library. It was found that four library use areas, including book loans, database logins, electronic journal logins, and library workstation logins, were positively associated with students’ GPA. Database logins and library workstation logins were positively associated with retention. Each of the models used to predict either student GPA or retention by library use were found to be statistically significant.
 
 Conclusions – The study suggests that there is a positive and significant relationship between a number of library activities and students’ GPA and retention. The effect size of these activities upon the primary outcome variables of GPA and retention is small, though this is logical considering the one-time use of a library service is unlikely to meaningfully influence one’s academic success. Other non-library factors in the student experience must be considered.

Stacks, Serials, Search Engines, and Students' Success: First-Year Undergraduate Students' Library Use, Academic Achievement, and Retention

Like other units within colleges and universities, academic libraries are subject to increasing internal and external pressures to demonstrate their contributions to institutional goals related to students' success. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between first-year undergraduate students' use of the academic library, academic achievement, and retention. Results of ordinary least squares regressions predicting first-year students' cumulative grade point averages (GPA) and logistic regressions predicting students' first-year to second-year retention suggest that students who used academic library services and resources at least once during the academic year had higher GPA and retention on average than their peers who did not use library services. The results of two separate regressions predicting students' GPA by 10 different types of library use suggest that four library use areas were consistently and positively associated with students' GPA: database logins, book loans, electronic journal logins, and library workstation logins. The results of two separate logistic regression analyses suggest that logging into databases and using library workstations were actions consistently and positively associated with students' retention. Additional results predicted by students' use of services at least one time and by one-unit increases in the frequency of library area uses are discussed.

From Electronic Library to a Learning Center in the Academic Library: Integrating Traditional and New Uses in the Library Workstation

Questionnaires and computerized observations were used to measure purposes for visiting the academic library and uses made on its workstations. The research was done among 1004 users in Israel. The findings show that non-library uses are the major activity on academic library workstations and that libraries with large number of workstations are more exposed to this trend. It appears that non-library uses support learning.

EL production support: procedures and tools

Presents a case study of the Library Technology Group Helpdesk at the University of Wisconsin covering the procedures, methods and tools used to support workflow efficiency and productivity. Shows how some of these assist the internal operations of the helpdesk as a technical support centre and service resource for library staff campus wide whilst others are used directly by library staff and departments in their daily work but are supported by the helpdesk. Provides a technical overview of remote reloading of electronic library workstations.

Evaluating IAIMS at Yale: information access.

To evaluate use of information resources during the first year of IAIMS implementation at the Yale-New Haven Medical Center. The evaluation asked: (1) Which information resources are being used? (2) Who uses information resources? (3) Where are information resources used? (4) Are multiple sources of information being integrated? Measures included monthly usage data for resources delivered network-wide, in the Medical Library, and in the Hospital; online surveys of library workstation users; an annual survey of a random, stratified sample of Medical Center faculty, postdoctoral trainees, students, nurses, residents, and managerial and professional staff; and user comments. Eighty-three percent of the Medical Center community use networked information resources, and use of resources is increasing. Both status (faculty, student, nurse, etc.) and mission (teaching, research, patient care) affect use of individual resources. Eighty-eight percent of people use computers in more than one location, and increases in usage of traditional library resources such as MEDLINE are due to increased access from outside the Library. Both survey and usage data suggest that people are using multiple resources during the same information seeking session. Almost all of the Medical Center community is using networked information resources in more settings. It is necessary to support increased demand for information access from remote locations and to specific populations, such as nurses. People are integrating information from multiple sources, but true integration within information systems is just beginning. Other institutions are advised to incorporate pragmatic evaluation into their IAIMS activities and to share evaluation results with decision-makers.

Do workstations work too well? An investigation into library workstation popularity and the “principle of least effort”

Library workstations, with their colorful screens, menu options, databases, CD-ROMs, and other bells and whistles, lull users into trusting that they provide one-stop reference shopping covering all time periods for everything from journal citations to technical reports and patents. The Library has promoted workstation access and ease of use to the point of luring patrons away from other, possibly more appropriate, print indexes. In turn, have these workstations, aided by the “Principle of Least Effort,” changed the nature of how research is performed in academic libraries? A number of statistical data point to increased dependence on workstations at the Chemistry Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These and other statistics are examined to determine the changing nature of library research. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hypermedia and library instruction: The challenge of design

Imagine being able to provide instruction for using online catalogs, indexes, and CD‐ROM databases at library workstations or integrated into online catalogs and CD‐ROM indexes. Hypermedia offers new and exciting opportunities to provide this type of instruction by addressing “frames of learning,”—offering text, simulation, graphics, sound, and movement = many ways to learn.

Macintosh Workstations

Library Workstations as Revolutionary Tools. Computers have been described ad nauseum as having a revolutionary effect on Western society in the elimination of mundane tasks, reduction of paper records, and sheer speed in handling repetitive calculations. Although there are those who would argue with these claims, thousands of computers routinely handle everything from switching traffic signals to controlling the positions of satellites in orbit to manipulating millions of bibliographic records.

Macintosh Workstations

Creating a Bibliographic Workstation for Scientists and Engineers. A library workstation, in its simplest form, is a computer that provides access to bibliographic information transparently in spite of its myriad forms. The conceptual kernel of this workstation is, more or less, a machine designed by, and for the use of, librarians and their staff, obstensibly to care and feed a bibliographic database. Suppose we expand our ideas on this particular kind of computer in order to invent a special species that will meet the demands of a critical clientele, for specialized literature.

Macintosh Workstations

The New Macintoshes as Library Appliances. Can an information appliance be a library workstation? Can a computer that is low‐cost, easy‐to‐use, and relatively fast for its price also crunch data, manipulate text, invent graphics, and respond to sound? If a CPU is designed for consumers can it also work in libraries? Or should librarians resign themselves to the hands of specialists, those who argue that the best machine to handle bibliographic files is large, complex, and expensive?

Macintosh Workstations

LIBRARY WORKSTATIONS AND THEIR SOFTWARE: PLATINUM'S BIBLIO‐TECH FOR THE MACINTOSH. Applications over the last half decade designed specifically for libraries and their workstations have of‐ten been expensive, erratic, and frustratingly inadequate in providing solutions to daily routines for library staff. Librarians in turn have switched to the more difficult but less costly option of using off‐the‐shelf, commercial software in libraries, modifying applications for their own purposes. As a result, the history of software usage in libraries over the past five years essentially is a story of template creation and inventive reprogramming on the part of librarians and their staffs to create easy‐to‐use yet effective tools.

Macintosh Workstations

OOP, GUI, AND LIBRARY WORKSTATION SOFTWARE. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) recently awarded large grants to the University of California and Pennsylvania State University jointly to link the massive bibliographic databases of both institutions together, in spite of varying hardware platforms and geography. At the workstation level, the University of California will create interfaces based on DECwindows, a form of the X Windows interface. The online bibliographic systems of Berkeley and Perm State handle 200,000 to 300,000 requests per week, and currently run on an IBM 3090 in California and a DEC VAX 9000 system in Pennsylvania. This interest in bibliographic interfaces has grown rapidly in the last few years thanks to hardware developments putting more computing muscle on the desktop for librarians, their programmers, and ultimately their patrons. Recent manifestations of graphic interfaces have appeared in many libraries as HyperCard shells built as intermediaries to mainframe bibliographic software. This grant by DEC indicates that this sort of work on graphic interfaces in libraries and the system offices on campuses has not gone without notice by major vendors. With the recent explosion in the number of graphic interfaces, it is important to review these tools and their basis in object oriented programming (OOP).

Macintosh Workstations

Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) processors represent a different way to design a CPU for a workstation. They are not magical elixirs to supercharge a personal computer into a mainframe; rather, they are simply a different approach to handling information. RISC design has already affected the architecture of more traditional CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) processors and will continue to do so well into the next decade. Given the wealth of software written for CISC processors and the pau‐city of RISC shaped applications, combined with the usual lag in software development behind any hardware breakthrough, a full‐fledged RISC library workstation may not appear for some time. Nevertheless RISC has earned a great deal of attention since its practical birth at IBM in 1976 by John Cocke and its pursuit in academic circles at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1980s. Bom from the simple idea of devising a way to complete a computer instruction in a single cycle of a processor, RISC architecture has been called the de facto standard of the next decade for workstations by some and a mere fad by others. Will these chips replace CISC processors entirely? Will they have an impact on library workstations? And will they ever appear in one form or another in the Macintosh? With RISC processors available from MIPS Computer Systems, Motorola, and Sun, and RISC‐based computers produced by Apollo, Sun, Everex, Hewlett‐Packard, and others, RISC is certainly a harbinger of the future of processors in workstations. The market for RISC‐based worksta‐tions is heating up as some manufacturers — Sun, DEC, Data General to mention a few — battle for customers by lowering prices and raising performance.

NeXT and the Library Workstation

Considers what the NeXT computer can offer libraries as an alternative to conventional mainframe‐PC‐terminal systems for sorting, storing, and displaying bibliographic information. Discusses the NeXT computer hardware, software, the idea of a library workstation, and the promise of the Digital Librarian utility. Surmises that, despite criticisms of cost, NeXT offers the possibility of a transformation in the way bibliographic information is handled by both patrons and staff.

LIBRARY WORKSTATION AND PC REPORT Volume 5 Issue 10 1988

“In your October 1988 issue (Vol.5, No.9) you advise people making hardware decisions to purchase existing PC architecture rather than switching to the new OS/2 Micro‐Channel architecture. You correctly point out that the new hardware and software will be more expensive and that there is currently little software to take advantage of the new architecture. In your recommendation you state the following: ‘The proper time to switch, if ever, is when there is a super hardware package you just have to have which runs only on the new machines. If you want to switch just for the sake of it, it makes more sense to try a Macintosh than a PS/2.’

LIBRARY WORKSTATION AND PC REPORT Volume 5 Issue 9 1988

As a terminal hooked to a mainframe utility, the typical PC is an excellent example of a Trojan Horse. Although extremely versatile, these machines are perfectly capable of acting as dumb as the terminals they replaced. Many of them do. Nevertheless, they sit and wait for you to do something innovative. Through your own expertise or daring spirit, you may have placed a hard disk on the terminal, perhaps tried a few other programs such as word processors or maybe even a spreadsheet. Over time the terminal became a little smarter, capable of more and greater activities.

LIBRARY WORKSTATION AND PC REPORT Volume 5 Issue 8 1988

Library Workstation and PC Report, founded in 1984 as M300 and PC Report, was the brainchild of Allan Pratt, then at the University of Arizona. Pratt, the founding editor of Small Computers in Libraries, had a hunch that OCLC's introduction of the M300 workstation was going to call for much hand‐holding and specialist advice and information for librarians. He was right. M300 and PC Report had a subscribership well before the first issue was mailed to readers. And it remains a growing publication to this day.

LIBRARY WORKSTATION AND PC REPORT Volume 5 Issue 7 1988

On June 2, IBM introduced a new top‐of‐the‐line computer system, enhancements to an older machine, and price cuts on several of its more expensive models.