Content area
Full Text
Digital cameras have come a long way in the last few years, and so have library technologies. Our ILSs and OPACs give us wide-angle services like consortium resource sharing or macro features such as robust limit/sort functions that provide exactly the search picture we need. Over the last decade, many of our content delivery services have gone digital, and some, such as enhanced course reserves products, are new to the market. The best digital library services, like the more powerful cameras, have given us options and integrated solutions that allow us to do more than we thought possible just a few years ago. Like with many digital solutions, life becomes easy when you download your photos and share them. But when you download proprietary content, the lenses often take you into copyright red eye.
Establishing Our Settings
As head of customer services at Kelvin Smith Library (KSL), the main library at case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, I manage many of the front-line and behind-the-scenes services. I'm also the administrative liaison and collaborator on campus for new service models and implementations and am a contact for inquiry, marketing, and public relations for the library. In addition, I represent the university on the OhioLINK InterCampus Services Committee, where we oversee consortium services and recommend policies. These roles offer me many opportunities for increased dialogue with the academic community. When people ask what my title encompasses, I mention these roles and add that, in keeping services in focus and adding new ones, I love helping to put the "wow" in libraries.
It's an exciting time to work in a research university environment and to be involved with so many great technologies. Since I report directly to university librarian Joanne Eustis, I'm also able to work with senior management as strategies are developed and implemented. In addition to policies, new services, and new visibility for the library, copyright awareness is one of the focuses of my job.
When it opened in 1996, KSL was known as "the library of the future." In many ways, it was. First, KSL is a spectacular space, with 40 percent of its square footage dedicated to people, rather than the previously customary 7 percent to 8 percent. KSL also consolidated campus libraries and...