This article was downloaded by: [University of New Mexico]On: 22 November 2014, At: 11:26Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

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Bridge Beyond the WallsCatherine Soehner MLS a b & Wei Wei MLS, MA ba Science & Engineering Library , USAb University of California , Santa Cruz, CA, 95064,USAPublished online: 22 Sep 2008.

To cite this article: Catherine Soehner MLS & Wei Wei MLS, MA (2001) BridgeBeyond the Walls, Science & Technology Libraries, 21:1-2, 87-95, DOI: 10.1300/J122v21n01_08

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Bridge Beyond the Walls:Two Outreach Models

at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Catherine SoehnerWei Wei

SUMMARY. Online access to databases, journal articles, and books hasresulted in less frequent contact with our users. As a result, librariansmust make greater efforts to reach out to their constituencies to deliverinformation about new resources, searching tips and techniques, andthe state of the library’s collections. This article describes and com-pares the success of two outreach events held by the Science & Engi-neering Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).Practical considerations such as a time, location, and faculty involve-ment are discussed. A new marketing tool is introduced which involvesperson-to-person contact to advertise events. [Article copies available for afee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mailaddress: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Marketing, faculty outreach, library events

Catherine Soehner, MLS, is Head, Science & Engineering Library (E-mail:soehner@cats.ucsc.edu) and Wei Wei, MLS, MA, is Computer Science Librarian(E-mail: wwei@cats.ucsc.edu), both at the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Bridge Beyond the Walls: Two Outreach Models at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz.” Soehner, Catherine, and Wei Wei. Co-published simultaneously in Science & Tech-nology Libraries (The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 21, No. 1/2,2001, pp. 87-95; and: Information Practice in Science and Technology: Evolving Challenges and NewDirections (ed: Mary C. Schlembach) The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.,2001, pp. 87-95. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth DocumentDelivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: docdelivery@haworthpress.com].

http://www.haworthpress.com/store/product.asp?sku=J122 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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INTRODUCTION

Advances in technologies and the Internet have taken library re-search beyond the walls of the library. The possibility of conducting lit-erature searches away from library in the office or at home is changingthe role of the academic library, as has never seen before. “Within theautomated architectures of proliferating technology we are sought afterfor our intellectual methods and communication model” (Herold 2001).Like all information professionals, the science librarians at the Science& Engineering (S&E) Library at UCSC are facing enormous challengesin helping library users meet their research needs and are exploring newways to promote library services. “In an information age, where infor-mation itself is key to performing work tasks, understanding howtelecommuting knowledge workers find, use, and depend on informa-tion is key to good management” (McInerney 1999). Including faculty,graduate and undergraduate students, the science population at UCSC isapproximately 2,157. The S&E Library holds drop-in orientations forits users each fall. In the earlier years, the attendance at these orienta-tions was considerable. However, in the last few years, the attendancehas declined and recently dropped to one or two people at each session,due to changing behavior regarding how users access library resourcesin this networked environment. Clearly, traditional methods to conductand market library services no longer worked well. Therefore, the S&ELibrary decided to bring events closer to users and try aggressive mar-keting techniques to reach out to its research community.

During recent years, the S&E Library has conducted outreach eventsbased on two different models specifically to connect with users aroundcommon issues. The first outreach effort was to provide a Science Me-dia Fair outside the library at the campus Sinsheimer Laboratories thatintroduced faculty and graduate students to recently acquired databases;the second was to hold the 10th Anniversary Seminar, “Scholarly Pub-lishing in Higher Education” in the S&E Library. The purpose of thisarticle is to compare these experimental models and to examine what ef-fect time, location, faculty involvement, promotional strategies, andpartnerships had on the number of people who attended each event.

SCIENCE MEDIA FAIR

“With the advent of online databases, other electronic resources, newmethods of document delivery, and access to information, the role of

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the academic library has begun to change. Students do not have to bephysically present in the library in order to access the library’s re-sources. The Internet has opened the resources of library to students andfaculty worldwide” (Simmonds 2001).

The first outreach effort was to provide a Science Media Fair outsidethe S&E Library at the campus Sinsheimer Labs. This event introducedscience faculty and graduate students to recently acquired databases.The Science Media Fair took place over a three hour time period duringwhich six half hour presentations were given on various S&E Libraryand Media Services products and services. The initial planning began inDecember 1999 with the creation of a Planning Task Force, which con-sisted of two representatives from the S&E Library and three represen-tatives from Media Services, a unit within the University Library. Acareful study was conducted to determine normal traffic patterns duringclass inter-sessions between the Sinsheimer Labs and other sciencebuildings, taking note of the placement of coffee carts and other obviousgathering places. The task force also made an effort to examine whenthe science faculty meetings and departmental seminars would be heldduring the Spring Quarter. The acquisition of this information was criti-cal to maximize attendance and minimize potential conflicts. Based onthat knowledge, the task force decided to schedule the Science MediaFair on Wednesday, April 6, 2000 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in theSinsheimer Labs conference room and lobby in order to maximize stu-dent and faculty attendance.

Partnerships with Media Services, science faculty, and a databasevendor added to the success of the event. In addition to participating onthe Planning Task Force, the Media Services Department had extensiveknowledge regarding Ethernet connections and was expert at setting upmultiple computers with access to the Internet in short notice. Theseskills were especially useful on the day of the event. There were a totalof six formal classroom presentations, each lasting 30 minutes. Threepresentations focused on S&E Library services and the other three pro-vided information on Media Services applications and products. Two ofthese sessions, EndNote and Classroom Multimedia Projects, were de-livered by faculty members. The former was presented by a professor ofchemistry who utilized EndNote databases for his research; the latterwas outlined by a faculty member who conducted multimedia projectswith the assistance of Media Services staff. Media Services also offeredClassroom Media Information and Distance Education classes and thescience librarians provided demonstrations on SciFinder Scholar andWeb of Science.

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While the six formal presentations were held in a conference room,the S&E Library and the Media Services staff also provided informal,online demonstrations of science databases and Media Services prod-ucts in the Sinsheimer Labs lobby area, which is located very close tothe conference room. Several workstations were set up and refresh-ments were generously provided by the Chemical Abstracts Service, themakers of SciFinder Scholar. As a result of this effort, 150 people par-ticipated in the event, many of whom were unable to find a seat duringthe Web of Science, EndNote, and SciFinder sessions. In the monthsimmediately following the Science Media Fair, we noticed an increasein the use of EndNote which was demonstrated by an increase in thenumber of questions at the reference desk and an increase in the atten-dance of EndNote classes. Additionally, chemistry graduate studentsand faculty increased their use of SciFinder Scholar as evidenced byquestions regarding the installation and use of the software. It was a re-warding experience for the attendees, and a truly successful experiencefrom the library’s perspective.

10TH ANNIVERSARY SEMINAR

May 2001 marked the 10th year of library services rendered from the“new” S&E Library building. Using the timing of this event as a corner-stone of our outreach effort, the Seminar Planning Group began to orga-nize a faculty seminar to be held within the S&E Library. Since theincreasing volume and escalating costs of scholarly communication areconcerns of both faculty and librarians, the Seminar Planning Group,which consisted of four science librarians, chose Scholarly Publishingin Higher Education as the seminar theme. Knowing that many of the li-brary’s journals were accessible online and no longer required a user toenter the library, the seminar provided an opportunity to focus attentionon the intellectual content of the library rather than the building itself.“The environment for scholarly information is expected to be highlyfluid for at least the next decade, as universities attempt to meet thechallenges of scholarly and scientific communication in the 21st cen-tury” (Vasanthi 2001).

Planning began in February 2001, and in the early stages of the plan-ning, the group engaged in many discussions concerning the topics to bepresented and the major issues related to scholarly publishing in highereducation. Due to the complicated planning process, an outline was es-tablished to aid communication among the Planning Group. Finally, the

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Planning Group decided upon and received confirmation from two out-standing speakers, known to be knowledgeable about the subject. Oneof the speakers, Paul Ginsparg, is well known among physics research-ers and was thus a potential draw for science faculty and graduate stu-dents. The second speaker, Catherine Candee, is the Director ofeScholarship at the California Digital Library and while she was wellknown to the University of California librarians, her program and its fo-cus were important concepts that the Planning Group wanted the facultyto become more familiar with as they considered the impact of thescholarly communication crisis.

It was clear that partnerships would again add to the success of theoverall seminar planning and implementation. Five campus officeswere approached for their support and all agreed to be sponsors of theevent. The Division of Natural Sciences, the School of Engineering andthe Office of Research contributed funds for the speakers. The Univer-sity Library and the Librarians Association of the University of Califor-nia, Santa Cruz Division provided refreshments and equipment neededfor the success of the program.

The seminar took place from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on a Wednesday inthe later spring when it would not conflict with other science facultyevents. Since it was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the S&E Library,the seminar was held in the library’s Current Periodicals Room. Targetedto the science faculty, graduate students and librarians, the speakers de-livered their presentations on the topics of New Methods of ScholarlyCommunication and Scholarly Communication and E-print Archive. Thetopics were right on target and brought many science faculty members to-gether in the S&E Library for the first time, at one single event. The suc-cess of this seminar was a truly collective effort with all S&E Librarystaff helping out in some way during the day of the event. The results ofthese actions were to be stimulating and encouraging.

COMPARISONS

If attendance is considered to be the measure of success, then it isclear that the Science Media Fair was more successful than the 10th An-niversary Seminar. While there were many differences between theevents, two factors seemed to have influenced the overwhelming atten-dance at the Science Media Fair: location and timing.

The Science Media Fair was held in the Sinsheimer Laboratories in aconference room and lobby area where a coffee cart is stationed and

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which was, therefore, a typical meeting place for students and facultyduring lunch. Holding the Fair near offices and labs aided attendancesince it required less effort for our target audience to find their way tothe event. Additionally, Sinsheimer Labs is an area with which many ofour faculty and students are intimately familiar and, as a result, it pro-vides a level of comfort that they may not have experienced with the li-brary, especially if they perform most or all of their library researchaway from the library building.

Timing was another critical factor that contributed to the increasedattendance at the Science Media Fair. As mentioned earlier, the ScienceMedia Fair was held near a coffee cart, a space where faculty and stu-dents find food, coffee, and a place to eat their lunch. Since the Fair ranfrom 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., the event capitalized on the usual trafficflow of the area.

Timing seemed to work against the 10th Anniversary Seminar. First,the date and time were selected to accommodate the speakers ratherthan to capitalize on a known open time in faculty or student schedul-ing. Second, there was an unexpected loss of electricity two hours priorto the event during a year of scheduled blackouts in California. Whilethe lack of electricity lasted only an hour, it was sufficient to bring intoquestion whether or not the event would continue as planned. Addi-tionally, such a disturbance in a workday could easily change a person’smind about whether they would attend an event later in the day.

Considering the factors of location and timing, it would seem that the10th Anniversary Seminar was doomed to failure. However, the atten-dance of approximately 60 people at the Seminar and 150 people at theScience Media Fair leads one to believe that there were similar factorscontributing to this common success: partnerships with other libraryand campus offices, inclusion of faculty in the program, and an asser-tive promotional strategy.

As described earlier, the planning groups for the Science Media Fairand the 10th Anniversary Seminar embraced and established partner-ships at the early planning stages. For the Science Media Fair, the Me-dia Services staff partnered with the science librarians on the planningtask force and through their functional tasks. The success of the 10thAnniversary Seminar was also achieved by partnering with key campusoffices such as the Division of Natural Sciences, the School of Engi-neering, and the Office of Research. Through their financial and promo-tional support, the S&E Library was able to bring two outstandingspeakers, librarians, faculty, and students together to discuss the impor-tant issue of the economics of publishing research results.

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The inclusion of two faculty members from the UCSC campus in theScience Media Fair and the inclusion of a well-known physics professorin the 10th Anniversary Seminar added to the attractiveness of both ofthese events. It gave the impression that each of these events was notjust focused on library related matters, but a program with relevant in-formation impacting the everyday teaching, learning, and research ac-tivities of the University and a program supported, attended, andproduced by respected faculty. While it might be easy for librarians todespair about the idea that a faculty member is necessary to make ourinformation attractive in an academic setting, we must begin to realizeand embrace that libraries are a service industry. Many service indus-tries use similar advertising techniques to hook their customers. If amarketing technique works, the technique doesn’t make our informa-tion less legitimate, it just makes us intelligent marketers, using strate-gies that work to continue success as defined earlier: increased atten-dance.

PROMOTION STRATEGIES

A marketing plan was developed for both models. Both plans weresimilar in that they consisted of several publicity components includingdesign of promotional material such as posters, pencils given away onthe day of the event with the S&E Library name and URL, flyers distrib-uted to the science and engineering departments, and Web-based pro-motional announcements to campus publications. Another promotionalmethod was to e-mail announcements using active e-mail lists for sci-ence faculty, graduate students and the entire campus. Lastly, it wasalso important to note that using refreshments as a promotional tool def-initely helped to attract a great number of people to these events.

All of these efforts involved typical marketing techniques and whilethey contributed to our success, there was another marketing tool usedthat we believe tipped the scales to increase attendance beyond our ex-pectations for both events. One of the most assertive methods used tomarket the events was to have a librarian and a staff member hand de-liver flyers door-to-door and office-by-office right before and duringthe events. The library would not have had such a large turnout for theScience Media Fair were it not that a science librarian walked aroundprior to each half hour session to faculty and graduate students’ officesand labs encouraging them to attend. Similar efforts were made whenpromoting the S&E Library 10th Anniversary Seminar that was held in

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the Current Periodicals Room of the library. On the day of the seminar,two science librarians and a library staff member spent an hour walkingthrough science offices and labs recruiting attendees. When the electric-ity had gone out two hours before the event, a librarian walked aroundagain to make sure that faculty, staff and students knew that the eventwas still going to happen and to re-invite them to the Library for theevent. These Herculean efforts increased the number of attendees in away that more passive marketing tools had not in the past, such as ourexperience with drop in library orientations.

CONCLUSION

“An immense amount of extremely valuable information is in exis-tence if only one knows where to find it and how to deliver it” (Herold2001). It is clear that in this digital age, the personal touch is appreciatedand garners attention. While it takes more time and a very outgoing per-sonality, the results are extremely gratifying. People want and expectmore personalized service and seem to respond positively when theyget it.

The theme of personalized services is repeated again in the variablesof timing and location. When the time and location were convenient tothe students and faculty, they were more willing and able to attend. Re-quiring the users to come even the short distance between the sciencebuildings and the library was enough to deter many of them. An asser-tive library marketing plan and event invitations delivered door to doorby the library staff was definitely a true asset to the success of these twooutreach models.

The impact of telecommunication and changing nature of work hasaffected library’s delivery methods. In order to achieve the outcomesrequired in this changing environment, the S&E Library has beensearching for new ways to reach out to its faculty and student popula-tion. This means that the library has to create a range of teaching andlearning strategies and provide technologies beyond the library walls, ina variety of locations such as in the offices and the labs, or at dorms andhome, at a time most convenient to its user. The barriers and challengesto the successful implementation of informational services can be over-come by forging cooperative partnerships, employing cooperative plan-ning, focusing on strategic timing and last but not least, adding apersonal touch.

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REFERENCES

Herold, Ken R. 2001. Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information. Library Phi-losophy and Practice 3(2): 2.

McInerney, Claire R. 1999. Working in the Virtual Office: Providing Information andKnowledge to Remote Workers. Library & Information Science Research 21(1): 1.

Simmonds, Patience L. 2001. Usage of Academic Libraries: The Role of Service Qual-ity, Resources, and User Characteristics. Library Trends 49(4): 626-627.

Vasanthi, Christina M. 2001. Changing Environment of Academic Libraries:End-User Education and Planning Strategies for Libraries in India. Library Philos-ophy and Practice 4(1): 4.

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