• Annual Report Home
• Message from the University Librarian
• Introducing TRELLIS
• We've passed the 7 million mark
• The challenge and promise of electronic journals
• Building our collections
• Notable gifts
• Providing excellent service
• Priorities for the coming year

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• Return to Annual Reports

Annual Report 1997/98

Providing excellent service

Though the Library is operating with fewer staff members than we had a few years ago (145, down from 186 in 1993), we continue to work hard to provide students, faculty, and staff with the right information when and where they need it, and in the format they require.

In the past year, 50,000 books were added to the collections. More than 4,000 students attended library user education sessions, including course-related workshops designed and implemented by librarians in collaboration with faculty members to meet students' specific research needs. We provided 45,000 informational consultations and recorded the use of 650,000 items in our collections, as well as 25,000 interlibrary loan and document delivery transactions.

Trends in library usage

Photo at right: Newly acquired adaptive technology makes it possible for Library users with disabilities to work more independently than ever before

• During the past fiscal year, use of Library's electronic reference service (ASKLIB) more than doubled.
• Interlibrary loan and document delivery transactions increased by more than 13 per cent, continuing a five-year trend that has seen such activity increase 106 per cent since 1993-94.
• In 1997-98, 1,673,477 users passed through the turnstiles.

Bold new initiatives

In the past year, a number of new services were introduced in collaboration with our TriUniversity Group of Libraries partners. The most visible of these-the new TRELLIS system-allows users to search the catalogues of three university libraries and to connect directly to remote electronic resources through links built into the catalogue records. Other TUG initiatives included:

• the TUG Article Retrieval Service, which allows users to request articles held at one of the partner libraries electronically
• TUG Data Resources, a Web-based service that provides quick and easy access to electronic data from organizations such as Statistics Canada
• the TUG Journal Index, which offers access to selected electronic indexes and abstracts at the three member libraries
• a TUG table of contents service with a document delivery feature which offers access to a collection of 14,000 recent articles, primarily in the areas of science, technology, and medicine

And many small improvements

In every area we continue to make gains, big and small. Users can now use their WatCard at self-serve photocopiers in the Library, and testing has begun on a WatCard-enabled system that would allow patrons to print jobs from public workstations. A new remote authentication service has been introduced which provides distance education students with access to restricted electronic resources at the Library. The micro collection area in the Davis Centre has been reconfigured to improve safety and traffic flow. To improve efficiency, we've reorganised the entire print collection of reference books, indexes, and abstracts in the Dana Porter Library. These are just a few of the many initiatives aimed at improving service that the Library has undertaken in the past year.

Next: Priorities for the coming year

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