The Information Commons

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Report on the Impact of the Information Commons
(Prepared July 2004 by Diane Graves, University Librarian)

Introduction: 

After a whirlwind summer of construction, the Coates Library Information Commons opened for business at the start of the school year in late August 2003, thanks to a most generous grant from Mr. and Mrs. Robert T. Priddy of Wichita Falls, Texas.   

Our goal for the project was to provide a space that would put the library back at the intellectual center of the campus. We wanted to create “academic social space” for students who wished to benefit from the experience of group and collaborative study, and we wanted to emphasize the value of the library as a place to develop and strengthen students’ information literacy skills.

Information literacy refers to one’s ability to identify an information need, seek appropriate information sources, use technology to locate and use the information, and prepare the information for publication or presentation.

At the end of its first year, we can report that the Information Commons has been an unqualified success.

Data:

Comparing academic year (September-May) 2002-2003 (pre-Info Commons) to 2003-2004 (after it was complete), we found a number of increases in common measures of library success.

Circulation of library materials overall increased 2%.  While this is modest, any increase in the use of library collections is significant, especially when circulation had been declining approximately 8% annually for the past five years or so.

Use of the building went up 14.56%, from a door count of 361,152 in ‘02-03 to 413,741 in ‘03-04.  This increase reflects the number of people who came to the library during the course of the academic year.  It’s a good indicator of how the library is perceived as a place of study.

Searches in electronic resources jumped from 167,577 to 261,776, an increase of 56.21%.  Librarians at Trinity agree that this is one of the most significant measures of the Commons’ success.  One of our challenges has been to lead students away from Google as a sole source of research information.  This remarkable jump in electronic resource use reflects a much higher awareness of the vast array of high-quality resources available to our users. 

Instruction increased almost 39%. The number of library instruction sessions offered (almost all of them in the Technology Training Room—room 310—in the Info Commons) went up 38.36%, from 73 in ’02-03 to 101 in ’03-04.   Faculty have appreciated having a dedicated space for hands-on instruction in the use of technology and library research.  Faculty members who have brought one class for an instruction session tend to be repeaters. They see the impact of the commons and the instruction session on their students’ work.  

The number of students taught in those classes increased 58.04%, from 1,263 to 1,996.  This was one of the goals we stated in the grant proposal—we wanted to make the library a center of research instruction again, and it appears we’re well on our way.  Most first-year students (we estimate over 85%) have exposure to the information commons and the library through these class sessions, and that will pay off as they choose a major and focus more deeply on subject-specific resources and research techniques.

Reference questions rose 5.81%--an increase for the first time in years.   The new design and intent of the Information Commons Help Desk made the library’s reference service more obvious and approachable than it has been in a long, long time.  That feature, along with the increase in library exposure through instruction sessions, has made students more at ease with the library faculty, which in turn made them feel comfortable seeking additional one-on-one assistance.

Sharing our success:

We are still glowing from the success of the Commons.  We have had a number of visitors from other schools come to see it. It will be a showcase during the Oberlin Group annual meeting in early November, when the group convenes at Trinity.  

(The Oberlin Group is an organization of the library directors at 75 top private liberal arts institutions. Member libraries are at highly selective institutions with strong endowments and an emphasis on undergraduate research. Among its members are prestigious colleges such as Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams, Smith, Wellesley, Wesleyan (CT), Bucknell, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Grinnell, Carleton, Davidson, Washington & Lee, Colorado College, Reed and others.)

What’s next:

As we build on the success of the Information Commons, we are implementing a number of new services that tie in nicely with the Commons as a place. This fall, we are testing a virtual reference service, that will allow students to use “chat” technology to pose questions and seek reference help.  We are implementing a service called RefWorks that allows researchers and students to create virtual folders of their research work, and then convert those materials into a bibliography that can be appended to a paper or presentation.

This summer we are implementing an Open URL-resolver, which allows students using an online index to link directly to any full-text version of an article cited—whether the index provides full-text access or not. Finally, we are exploring federated search products that allow Google-like searching across a number of subject-specific or general research databases.

Our goal now is to continue to build on the energy of the Commons as a dynamic, welcoming place for students and faculty to study, work and learn.