PRESENTATION A4

ENHANCING E-RESOURCEFULNESS

Meg Boness
University of Western Sydney Library, NSW

Academic libraries spend many millions of dollars on electronic resources yearly, but are such resources utilised as well as they might be? Do they provide the 'bang' for the 'buck'?

In 2007, UWS expended $5.5m in providing access to 75,500 e-journals and 32,300 e-books. This significant body of scholarly 'e- information' did not uniformly appear to receive the use we believe it warranted, albeit with very high acceptance amongst the student body of particular resources.

Analysis of usage confirmed that clients were using a limited selection of e-resources for research, and anecdotal evidence indicated this same small selection of resources was also used to support teaching preparation for undergraduate courses. There appeared little evidence of awareness by academic colleagues of suitability of purpose, and minimal representation of library offerings in the University's Learning Management System (LMS).

To test these assumptions, a pilot project was undertaken.

Initially 100 academic staff were surveyed, and their LMS sites examined. Analysis of results confirmed our worst fears - academic staff had little knowledge of the wealth of resources available to them.

The need to raise awareness of our scholarly e-information collections was clear.

How to achieve this?
An extensive programme involving active participation by vendors, Library staff and the academic community was launched, ultimately leading to heightened awareness and understanding of UWS' e-collections, evidenced by exponential growth in the inclusion of such resources in unit outlines, the LMS and teaching preparation.

This paper examines how both projects came together, lessons learnt and where to next.