Environmental Scan - Political Science/Legal Studies/Public Administration: Support

Introduction

Scan & Surveys indicate that this department does use the library both online and in person heavily.  Both students and faculty indicated an appreciation for the library collections and services. 

• Need to actively solicit instruction sessions each semester
• Try to attend a departmental faculty meeting to mention resources/services for faculty and students and solicit any feedback, subject to departmental approval (they only meet once each long semester)
•  Also plan to work with one of the senior faculty in the department to compile a departmental history of Political Science from earliest days to the present.  Work has begun on gathering data for this project.  Work will be ongoing from this point forward until complete.  Project carried out with faculty member, subject to their availability and access to resources. 

Begin Roving Reference service in September, subject to departmental approval

Actively market the events of the Scholarly Communications team to department via e-mail or departmental visits throughout the year. 

Also, all workshops offered by the library.  There was expressed interest in Endnote and Author's rights via survey comments.  Also interest in learning about linking to library resources. 

Suggestion was made on the survey that we digitize the "Discourse in Democracy" whiteboard comments in the department.This was discussed with Chair and Liaison and it was determined that this material was intended to be ephemeral and was not appropriate for digitization.  

Some faculty in department heavily involved with IR.  Several more vitas have been submitted for inclusion as a result of outreach efforts over the summer.  

Plan to e-mail faculty via the departmental liaison and remind them of instructional services in early August.

Instruction sessions for Political Science increased a bit last year but, we need to make more effort in this area to market the service. 

Follow-up conversation with faculty (after the survey) indicated some frustration with students using  automatic export tools for citations.  and citations still not being correct.  Need to investigate further.  Is this a Refworks training issue  or, is this a problem with database export into Refworks?  Would another method be better?

The department has a healthy collection development budget which is mostly spent on monographs.  One anomaly for this department is that they divide the library allocation on a per faculty basis each fiscal year.  Tenure/tenure track faculty are given a larger amount than Lecturers or non tenure faculty.  Each faculty member has that amount to spend on library materials each year.  This is an internal departmental procedure.  The library is not involved in this process.     Faculty requests are then submitted by department staff on behalf of faculty via ORS for librarian approval.

The librarian then approves requests (along with those of students and staff that come in) on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

Money is always spent by targets either by librarian or via faculty requests.