48 · Survey Results: Survey Questions and Responses
appropriate to support interdisciplinarity and cross-cultural studies and tracking trends in area/global studies
curriculums.
Like everything else, we are trying to collect much more electronically, and with the current economy we are trying to
maintain laser-like focus on the research, teaching, and learning needs of our community.
More public service, especially instruction, but also in-depth reference. Need to know about copyright in the US and
in area of expertise. Need to know a variety of technologies. More work with faculty on projects, supplying both
technological and content expertise.
Most resources, especially those published in non-Western countries, are still primarily in print. Although there are some
born-digital materials that need to be collected, our institution is actively working out local electronic hosting issues for
a service to be launched this year. Large general electronic journal packages pose a challenge because our area studies
user communities are relatively small, compared to those of traditional disciplines, so our titles may be dropped when
their use data are low. It is a challenge to collect what our users need for their research and instruction.
Much more emphasis on acquiring electronic resources as they become more available, plus digitization in this area.
Our Area Studies subject librarians closely monitor trends in publishing in their respective countries. We have acquired
electronic publications when available for Latin American Studies, Islamic Studies, Tibetan Studies, African Studies, East
Asian Studies, South Asian Studies, and Slavic and East European Studies. The majority of our acquisitions for Tibetan
Studies has been in electronic format for East Asian Studies, a large percentage of our collection for Chinese Studies is
in electronic format.
Our Global Resources Librarians’ roles are evolving similar to traditional subject librarians. We’re moving more toward
assessment of content beyond standard selection process.
Our global resources staff must be technically skilled to manage digitization projects.
Service to readers has always been important but has become even more so in the hybrid print/digital environment.
The biggest push is toward more digitization efforts, and cooperation with international colleagues on joint projects.
The changes have not been uniform for all librarians and world areas at our library, but here are some of the trends:
1) A number of librarians have become increasingly involved with digital project development and management, as
well as prospecting for grant funds to support those projects. These activities have required the librarians to develop
skills ranging from grant-writing and project management to specialized information technology skills. 2) Librarians
must spend more time attending to various licensing and rights issues surrounding new commercially available digital
global resources, since language barriers make it impractical for the library’s central licensing office to understand and
negotiate these. 3) Due to continued budget cuts, some of our librarians, particularly for West European studies, find
themselves drawing more and more heavily on open source materials available online and facilitating access to these for
their campus user groups.
The emphasis is certainly less on print monographs than it once was. Many of our world areas, like Latin America,
Africa, and many Slavic countries, do not publish large numbers of electronic materials. We do need to keep track of
developments within the US print world. A big part of our job is to educate our administration on the digital divide
within the world, and explain to them why electronic products and digitization is not forthcoming from other parts
of the world. Our administrators want to use circulation data to reduce monograph budgets. We discovered that our
material does not circulate much during the first five years, but after that circulation goes way up. Our role vis-à-vis
selection of monographs has become precarious. Because we have always been engaged in instruction and outreach as
well as selection, we have not seen much of a change in our role in those arenas.
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