DuPont-Ball Lihr
STETSON
[UNIVERSITY
NEWSLETTER Fall 2009
Message from the Director
It has been a busy fall again, as our new
President, Wendy Libby, and Academic Vice-
President Beth Paul hit the ground running after
taking office in July. While we have all felt the
loss of our recently named Chancellor, Doug
Lee, who died suddenly in August, Wendy and
Beth have moved quickly to establish working
groups to make recommendations for the
university's future.
The library has been dealing with change for
some years. Some of our responses to the
challenges of students' changing learning
patterns, financial exigencies, and the
expanding role of our library in presenting the
university to the public are described in this
newsletter.
A long-time library supporter and advocate, who
asked to remain anonymous, became a
Facebook
subscriber some
time ago. In
addition to keeping
up with friends and
family, he also
keeps up with his
Stetson fraternity.
When he saw one of those current students
complaining on Facebook about slow computers
in the library, he called and offered to fund
replacement of most of our valiant six or seven
year old computers. Eleven high-end computers
were ordered and installed some weeks ago,
much to our students' delight, and he just funded
the purchase of four more. This kind of alumni
involvement with our current students is
invaluable, as the alumni provide experienced
advice for current students and also provide for
some of their academic needs - the perfect
example of campus/student/alumni
communication, thanks to the new social media.
Although our library is not open 24/7, we are
increasingly able to provide research resources
for our students and faculty at any hour and from
any place, thanks to our electronic collections.
In addition to the full-text journal databases
funded with university allocations, your gifts
have made it possible for us to offer much more.
Some of our science-major alumni may
remember seeking information by going through
hundreds of volumes of Biological Abstracts.
Several years ago we replaced our current print
subscription with the electronic version, but for
older information, the print volumes were
necessary. Thanks to the Sandra Stetson
Martinuzzi Endowment, we replaced those
hundreds of volumes by purchasing the
electronic backfile. Now students can find
information with one search in the database.
Quite a change, and the space gained can be
better used.
Last spring we negotiated a lease for Ebrary
Academic Complete E-Book Collection, more
than 42,000 books which are now available for
our students, faculty, and staff at any time. This
lease is supported by income from the Library
General Endowment.
Through a new collaborative outreach with our
Independent Colleges & Universities of Florida
(ICUF) Library Group and the Florida Center for
Library Automation of the State University
System, we just signed a license with Springer
Publications to add more than 700 scientific and
social sciences journals to our permanent
collection and to give access to an additional
1,000 titles. This is a rich research collection
which we could not have afforded without this
collaboration. Gift funds gave us the flexibility to
move quickly with the decision and to take
advantage of the proposal.
Watch in the spring for other great resources
added through our collaboration with the Stetson
College of Law Library.
Betty D. Johnson, Library Director ([email protected])
