<p> Library Resources for History Program Review June 2011</p><p>Prepared by Judith A. Downie Humanities Librarian & Government Documents Coordinator</p><p>A. Introduction</p><p>The History Department and Library have enjoyed a close working relationship since the university founding. The library serves History faculty and students through its support of curriculum and learning through collections, reference, circulation and document delivery services. This report serves as an evaluation of current resources and services.</p><p>The following points have bearing to the Library Review (recapped from the Department Self Study):  History research has a heavy demand for primary source materials covering a wide range of time, geographic, and topic foci (p. 13)  Research instruction is incorporated into courses (pp. 6-9)  Enrollment numbers in History are down slightly in the past 5 years, attributed to the limitations on transfer students, a source of many History majors and retention issues (pp. 10-11);  Diversity in racial and ethnic background has increased by 6% in the past 5 years, leading to a broader variety of research interests (p. 10); and  Two tenured faculty positions vacated in recent years are being filled for 2011-2012 (p. 13) and are anticipated to have new needs for collection support.</p><p>Overall, the collection has grown through close collaboration of the History faculty and Humanities Librarian for print and media purchases and the addition of several online collections with corresponding increase in usage. </p><p>B. Collections</p><p>Collection development in this discipline is primarily intended to support the undergraduate and graduate History program’s curriculum. The collection covers the broad geographic history areas, including: General, United States, California, Europe, and World (especially Africa and Asia) as well as focused topic areas such as Women, Native American, and Civil Rights. The collection specifically supports teaching and student assignments for undergraduate and graduate students, and History faculty instruction. Emphasis is placed on materials supporting core courses and includes both historiographies, scholarly secondary, and primary source materials. Other subject bibliographers purchase materials that are also of use in historical research. </p><p>History students and researchers primarily use the portion of the library’s 300,000 volume print collection that falls in the Library of Congress call number classifications D-F. The table below describes the collection within these call number ranges in more depth. Materials of interest to history students may also fall into other classifications such as women’s studies (HQ), literature (P-PT), folklore (GV) and law (KF). History Monograph Collection (as of June 2010)</p><p>Call number and Subjects 2010 D 1-899 (General History) 3589 D area for History of Europe (all not included above) 6445 DE (Greco-Roman History) 127 DS (Asia and Middle Eastern) 5503 DT (African History) 1875 E 1-149 (Early Explorations of America and Native American) 3076 E 150-887 (African American and Hispanic American History) 10796 F 1-1170 (North American and local US History, emphasis CA) 5077 F 1200-3799 (Central and Latin America, emphasis on Mexico) 5478 TOTAL History collection (D-F) 43,128</p><p>While there is an overall increase in titles, several areas specifically need further strengthening, such as the Ancient History and African History areas. </p><p>Material types The history collection consists of books, journals, newspapers, maps, microfilm, and sound and visual media. The Library Archives, including realia, offers potential as a lab for students’ research and hands- on learning, but currently is not easily available due to staffing issues. </p><p>Books Collection efforts for books and other monographs focus on historiographical and analytical works and primary sources. The book collection has increased in size over the last five years due to collaborative efforts by the Humanities Librarian and History faculty. The dollar allocated for monographic materials (books and media) is not a fixed formula based on enrollment or other factors and can vary with the university budget allocation. There has not been an increase to accommodate the general rate of inflation so the purchasing power of the allocation has declined over time while our campus has grown. </p><p>Primary Sources California Lottery Grants have provided the funds to purchase two print multi-volume primary source sets during this review. These grants were written by the Humanities Librarian and sponsored by the History department. The Cambridge Ancient History (14 volumes totaling $4095) and Atlantic Slave Trade (4 volumes for $1092) are in the collection and provide Ancient and 19th century primary sources. While students regularly indicate their preference for online materials, faculty encourage students to investigate resources, regardless of format and in some cases, prefer the print versions available. </p><p>Serials and periodicals Historians continue to find print format journals of use and in some cases are the only format available. Digital titles are being bundled into high-cost electronic collections, with steep yearly price increases, limiting customization of our collection to our specific needs without extraneous expenditure. This bundling and need to eliminate duplicate formats eliminates faculty instructional design options and the means to accustom history students to disciplinary practice when the print is discontinued as well as leaving the collection vulnerable to the holdings decisions of the aggregation supplier. Further difficulty in building and maintaining a sufficient collection is reinforced by the current library policy, driven by economic necessity that any request for new journal titles to be added to the collection can be accommodated only by canceling an equivalent dollar value of other titles in the same discipline. </p><p>Magazines for Libraries is a standard source for identifying key journals recommended for library collections. Of the 13 recommended journals for history, the Cal State San Marcos library collection has all but one title (History News), including all the basic academic journals recommended. This publication admits to a primarily general American history focus, so extra effort is made to consult with non-US history faculty for recommendations on title collection and retention in their areas (eg., Middle East, African, and Native American history.) </p><p>The databases purchased in support of History curriculum are listed here. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of history research, almost all of the library’s 160+ databases may be useful. Indexed databases have crosslinking software (GET IT) to available full text. </p><p>History Databases</p><p>Journal Title Index/Full Text Publications begin</p><p>America: History and Life Indexed 1964- Historical Abstracts Indexed 1973- JSTOR Full Text 1838- Project Muse Full Text 1993- Gale World History in Context Some FT current Handbook of Latin American Studies Indexed 1935- HAPI: Hispanic American Periodicals Index Indexed 1970- Military & Government Collection Some FT 1975- </p><p>Primary Sources Databases (all Full Text) Dates Covered Accessible Archives 1728-1900 African American Newspapers 1827-1998 American State Papers 1789-1838 Archive of Americana 1789-1980 Documenting the American South 1734- Hispanic American Newspapers 1808-1980 Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 1600-1970 In the First Person 1930-current Indian Question (CD ROM) 1780-1970 Los Angeles Times 1881-1986 Making of America (Cornell) 1850-1887 Making of America (Univ of Michigan) 1850-1877 Making of the Modern World, Part I & II 1450-1850 New York Public Library Digital Collection 1800-1969 New York Times Historical Collection (Newspaper) 1881-2006 Sabin Americana 1500-1926 Times (London) Newspaper 1785-1985 US Congressional Serial Set 1817-1980 Victorian Women Writers’ Project 1830-1910 The recent move of America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts from ABC-Clio to EbscoHost had no noticeable impact on use, continuing to be the gateway tools to researching historical literature.</p><p>Funded by the cancellation of duplicate formats and some end-of-year funds, there were several significant additions to the journal/newspaper digital collections during the period of this review. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, United States Congressional Serial Set (documents and maps), African American Newspapers, and Hispanic American Newspapers were all added and see robust use. Very recent additions to the digital collections are Making of America and Sabin Americana. </p><p>Microforms Historians continue to rely on access and use of microform materials. The CSUSM Library holds government documents, several major newspapers, and some periodical backfiles in this format. Students clamor for all materials to be digital for ease of use and ‘anytime anywhere’ access. In support of access and use the library we have obtained the New York Times and Los Angeles Times to replace our microfilm, but further acquisition/replacement of other titles (the San Diego Union Tribune for one) are on hold due to cost and availability issues at this time.</p><p>Online Resources An active effort is being made in the adoption of free online resources due to the continually increasing variety and amount of digitized primary source materials. Appropriate and well-designed collections are included in the library catalog and course guide pages to provide students with recommended materials, and increase discovery through relevant subject headings.</p><p>Government Documents Government-generated information from Federal, State and international producers is a rich resource for students, faculty and community users of the library. Much of this content supports historical research with little or no direct cost to the university. Federal and California State publications are collected on a depository basis and records to online materials are included in the library catalog for ease of discovery. The library is a 25% selective Federal Depository library, up from 9% in 1999 with an emphasis on electronic format. Collection selection is based on the curricular needs of California State University San Marcos, but the materials are available for local community use. There is no other federal or state depository collection within 30 miles. Government documents are available through the fee-based databases: Lexis Nexis Academic and US Congressional Serial Set. Additional access is through free government-provided search tools. </p><p>Media Materials The Media Library has 801 videos and other media in the D-F call number range, up from 660 in the 2004 review. Use of these videos has increased both from the move to the permanent library space to a more fully-equipped Media Library and the introduction of Video on Demand (VOD) to enable faculty to link students to online access. Dr. Patti Seleski of the History Department was particularly instrumental in the implementation of the VOD media delivery system by being the first instructor to use the service and provide feedback on its implementation. </p><p>Gifts Gifts are accepted conditional to library collections policy. As historical research finds older materials particularly useful, many older publications are accepted to round out topic areas that were active before the founding of the university. Collections relevant to History are some of the highest volume donations and the Humanities Librarian reviews all gifts for relevance to collection and research needs. </p><p>Archives The History Department has expressed interest in involving students in the Library Archives as a possible research and hands-on learning experience. Due to library staffing scenarios, it is a future goal. </p><p>C. SERVICES</p><p>Library Hours Library open hours during the semester:</p><p>Monday to Thursday: 7:00am–9:00pm Friday: 8:00–5:00 Saturday and Sunday 10:00pm–5:00pm</p><p>Total of 79 hours per week Hours an Information Assistant is on the Research Help Desk: 99 hours (some double-staffing) Hours a librarian provides on-call research assistance: 39.5 hours </p><p>Off Campus Access to Collections Students have access to the library’s electronic resources and finding aids off-campus as well as on campus. The library maintains Internet links to other Web sites, research guides that support specific courses, and general information guides to help with library research. The library’s search engines include cross-linking software to full-text sources. </p><p>The CSUSM collection is supplemented by the regional consortia of San Diego area libraries (San Diego Circuit.) Using the Circuit, students have access to a combined union catalog of five million titles representing the University of California San Diego, San Diego State University, and University of San Diego, as well as the San Diego County Library collections. Materials are delivered to the campus within 1 day on weekdays. The library funds this service to provide material that is out-of-scope or that the library would otherwise not be able to purchase.</p><p>Students have access to an electronic reserve system for material electronically scanned and placed on reserve to supplement textbook readings (E-Res). Interlibrary loans of articles, books, dissertations, and microforms can be requested and delivered electronically or by mail to distance education students.</p><p>Instruction Library instruction is designed so students graduate as information literate students and lifelong learners. The California State University San Marcos Library Information Literacy Program (ILP) is recognized nationally for the quality and extent of its library instruction and is incorporated into many courses on the campus. The student learning objectives are based on critical thinking skills in that the student will know: when research is needed; how to access; how to evaluate; and how to use information ethically and legally. The Humanities Librarian and History faculty collaborate for course-specific library resource instruction. The gateway course to the History major (HIST 301: Research Methods) requires librarian-provided instruction as part of the instruction schedule (p.8, History Department Self Study). Additional instruction sessions are arranged based on the History faculty’s determination of need. Several semesters have recorded exceptional contact hours and/or student numbers, generally due to successful outreach to adjunct faculty, with large enrollment lower-division courses. If, as the Self Study suggests (pp. 11-12), the HIST 301 class is opened to a broader range of students, requiring more sections, this will require the ILP program to provide additional resource instruction. </p><p>Courses and Student Numbers in Library Resource Instruction Note: This chart is for course count, not contact hours (many courses will have multiple 75-minute sessions.) </p><p>FY Courses Students 04/05 16 463 05/06 15 332 06/07 16 387 07/08 8 170 08/09 13 329 09/10 7 143 10/11 10 308</p><p>The overall decrease in librarian-provided instruction can be attributed to the reduction in course offerings, especially seen in the 09/10 year during the CSUSM furlough. There is some impact also due to reliance on adjunct faculty hires as research in the library literature provides evidence this instructor category is less likely to schedule library resource instruction. </p><p>The library home page provides links to web pages customized to individual course research requirements in order to support in-class resource instruction. Eighty-five pages were created for librarian-led sessions and in addition, twenty-two courses over the period of this review were provided course support web pages, without in-class instruction. This occurred either because the class was online only, scheduling conflicts, or the instructor assumed/knew the students had all ready had HIST 301, and needed limited additional help.</p><p>An online History subject guide was created to provide basic guidance in finding and using library resources. The guide offers a number of tabs based on information formats. The Primary Sources tab has been viewed 3077 times in one month (April 10-May 13, 2011) and is the third most followed link in the library web site. The subject guide is located at: http://library.csusm.edu/subject_guides/subject_guides/history/online_primary.asp </p><p>During 2006-07, the Humanities librarian tested online course instruction using Mediasite with two History faculty (Dr. Darel Engen and Dr. Ann Elwood.) This is a campus-funded hardware/software package combining image recordings of instructor and computer with voice and hyperlinking features. While advantageous for asynchronous viewing (students) and re-usable components (librarian), the lack of interactivity at point of need contributed to the decision to not continue using this tool. Other disciplines continue to use this tool and CSUSM won a national award for innovative use of the product. Research Consultation Research consultation for library users is based on a two-tiered system modeled after a system developed at Brandeis University. Students trained in library research methods and customer service assist library users with general questions and limited technical troubleshooting. Reference librarians are on call to provide expert research assistance. Students are encouraged to meet with subject- specialist librarians for in-depth research assistance. Email reference service was introduced in 2003, followed by instant messaging in spring 2008. The latter has proven to be especially popular. </p><p>Research Consultation Statistics by Humanities Librarian Data for consultations provided by other librarians or during research on-call hours is not available.</p><p>FY # of students 04-05 87 05-06 111 06-07 130 07-08 116 08-09 195 09-10 154</p><p>The proposal to open the HIST 301 course to more students, as discussed in the History Self-Study, will increase the number of research consultations corresponding with the need for more instruction as noted in the Instruction discussion. As both functions are provided by the same library faculty, this will have a noticeable impact without more resources and hires in professional and staff library positions. </p><p>Book Circulation The number of books checked out by students and faculty varies significantly each year. Overall circulation has decreased which may be attributed to the greatly increased availability of resources online, both books and articles. Hard copy materials continue to be a high-use item in History as students and faculty find print books useful even as they increase their use of Internet resources.</p><p>Reserve Readings Materials can be submitted electronically and placed in password-protected files linked through the library web site (E-Res) or Cougar Courses (Moodle-based Course Management System) or physically checked out at the Access Services and Media Services desks. The number of History courses and use consistently represent the second-highest users (Sociology is first.)</p><p>For ease of access, amounts permitted by copyright may be scanned and made accessible electronically through the electronic reserves system (E-Res). Electronic reserves have been available since 2000 and have seen steady increase in adoption and student use until 2008-2009 in which the Cougar Courses CMS was introduced, resulting in a slight drop in usage. Faculty may now embed links to articles and other materials in the Library databases themselves, rather than having them scanned into the library system. Data on access to library materials through this route is anticipated as a future enhancement. </p><p>ILL Activity Reports Interlibrary loan (ILL) services provide a valuable way to acquire titles the library does not own, particularly material that is out-of-scope for our collection. A review of titles requested via interlibrary loan is conducted yearly for suggestions of books and journals to add to the collection. </p><p>The numbers of ILL requests for History students and faculty have remained relatively constant since the 2004 program review averaging 500 requests each year with one exception of 2008-09 which recorded 770 requests. This striking increase coincides with the second year of the History Master’s program which doubled enrollment from its 2007 inception and may have driven some increase in requests. While research needs are being met by the use of San Diego Circuit, successful cross-linking software implementation in the databases, and materials added to the physical collection, CSUSM history researchers continue to find themselves traveling to other universities for materials they need. </p><p>For the past five years, most interlibrary loan requests have been for journal articles, roughly 10 articles to every to 1 book. This significant change in loan activity which previously emphasized books is attributed to students being able to self-serve book requests using San Diego Circuit. </p><p>The majority of ILL requestors are students – both graduate and undergraduate. Turnaround time can be critical for this population since students often need to receive materials quickly in order to meet their assignment deadlines. The ILL service’s average turnaround time has maintained an average 6 days. </p><p>Graduate Thesis As of June 2011, there are five graduate History theses shelved in the library collection, marking the beginning of the History Master’s at CSUSM. The library has a Thesis Reviewer on staff to work with all graduate students in preparing their materials for submission to the library. </p><p>Once added to the collection, these may be searched by traditional access points such as subject, author, and title. An additional access point not found in many library catalogs is a ‘genre search’ on the phrase ‘CSUSM Thesis—History’ and quickly identifies any theses from the History program.</p><p>Due to the digital orientation of the History program, these theses present particular challenges in shelving and archiving the results of the students’ research. The recent hire of an Institutional Repository Librarian will offer opportunities to develop access to these theses. </p><p>D. Summary</p><p>The library collection has expanded in the period of this review, but continues to struggle to meet History researchers’ needs. The new Master’s in History program has increased demands on the existing collection, especially in the primary sources category, for materials available for digital projects. Sets and newspapers which are in microfilm need replacement with digital versions as these materials are not well-indexed and do not support research well. Any expansion in the History Program will need corresponding expansion in Library budget and personnel in order to maintain service. </p>