The growth in electronic library resources hasn’t slowed traffic at the McGoogan Library.
“Even with all of the electronic services we deliver, our gate counts are not going down,” said Nancy Woelfl, Ph.D., director of the UNMC McGoogan Library of Medicine. “Individuals still look to the library as a physical place.”
During the 2001-02 fiscal year, 225,716 visitors entered the McGoogan Library, and there were more than 1.7 million visitors to all University of Nebraska libraries. (Love Library at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Schmid Law Library at the NU College of Law, University Library at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Ryan Library at the University of Nebraska at Kearney).
During that same time, McGoogan Library logged nearly 1 million connections to its electronic resources out of 8.5 million for the entire university system. The McGoogan Library staff provided nearly 2,000 articles to NU users through interlibrary loans and more than 8,700 of the 15,500 articles delivered systemwide to Nebraskans outside the university.
The library’s Consumer Health Information Resource Service (CHIRS) provides free health information to Nebraska residents, which helps them communicate with their health-care providers and make informed decisions about treatment for a diagnosed illness. The CHIRS Collection contains more than 900 authoritative health books for nonscientists.
Academic libraries face a variety of challenges, Dr. Woelfl said, from providing service 24 hours a day, seven days a week to increasing financial costs. The cost of materials and licenses are increasing and there are limitations imposed by the U.S. copyright law’s fair use provision, which grants libraries, in a given five-year period, free access to five interlibrary loan copies of a journal article. Once a library has exceeded its five copies, it must pay royalty fees, which are unregulated. These costs, which are largely absorbed by the library, range from $15 to $65 per article.
“The ways of providing service have changed and the tools have changed, but the librarian’s role of helping users navigate the knowledge base has not changed,” Dr. Woelfl said.
UNMC administrators have been very supportive of the library, Dr. Woelfl said. “They understand where it fits in the picture of professional practice and have given us tremendous financial support over and above the state allocation,” she said.
The library’s state support, which has declined, is approximately $2.6 million. Other UNMC programs, such as the EPsCOR BRIN grant, have helped finance electronic licenses, benefiting the entire campus. Without their funding, Dr. Woelfl said, the Cell and Nature “families” of journals would not be available through the library.
Although the number of paid subscriptions and books purchased declines each year, Dr. Woelfl said the alumni association’s annual giving campaign is a “Godsend” because it helps buy needed books.
As the state faces continuing financial limitations, the McGoogan Library staff is exploring creative ways of getting around them. While the library must look at passing on some of the unrecovered interlibrary loan charges it has absorbed, the staff is undaunted and committed to finding ways of carrying out the library’s mission to provided a robust flow of information to NHS, UNMC faculty, students and staff as well as Nebraska residents, Dr. Woelfl said.