The following is a summary of University of Waterloo Library information resources and services in support of the undergraduate and graduate programs in the School of Planning prepared by Margaret Yuen, Liaison Librarian for Planning.
Material is collected to support learning, teaching and research to the PhD level in Planning with emphasis on:
The decision to purchase Library materials for Planning is the responsibility of the Liaison Librarian, in consultation with the Faculty Library Representative. Selection is guided by the Collection Development Policy, which is developed by the Liaison Librarian in consultation with faculty members in the School of Planning. Materials are obtained in a variety ways including firm orders, open orders, approval plans, and subscriptions.
The Library obtains resources in electronic format whenever it is possible and practical to do so. Some electronic resources are obtained directly by the Library and some are obtained through membership in the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). Access to and use of electronic resources is generally governed by licence agreements with the publisher or vendor.
The Library, along with the libraries of the University of Guelph (UG) and Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU), is a member of the Tri-University Group of Libraries (TUG) consortium. Collections from the University of Guelph and Wilfrid Laurier University enhance the depth and breadth of local materials available in subject areas of interest to Planning. In particular, the University of Guelph has an extensive ecology collection which is of interest to environmental planning.
The Library’s print collections for Planning are housed primarily in the Dana Porter Library. But, some of the ecology material is located in the Davis Centre Library which houses the science, engineering and math collections; and some of the design collection is housed in the Musagetes Library in Cambridge. Access to the entire Library collection, as well as materials held by UG and WLU, is available through the Web accessible tool known as PRIMO (http://primo.lib.uwaterloo.ca).
The Library's automated circulation system allows users to charge out materials during the hours that the Library is open (every day most weeks, with some closures between terms and during the Christmas break) and to renew items online anytime. With the exception of the current issues of print journals and reference materials, most of the material in the Library’s collection circulates. Faculty, graduate students and staff may borrow most monographs for a term at a time. The usual loan period for undergraduates is two weeks.
The Library also delivers to faculty, graduate students and staff copies of print journal articles from any of the uWaterloo library locations, and from the libraries of the affiliated and federated colleges and universities. Faculty, graduate students and staff may also place holds on books from any of these libraries for pickup at any of the libraries’ circulation desks. Books and journal articles not owned by the Library, but held by UG or WLU, may be requested by faculty, all students and staff through Primo. Items will be delivered to uWaterloo within three working days. The cost of these services is absorbed by the Library.
In partnership with UG and WLU, the Library owns a facility, known as the Annex, which is used to house low-use research material. In keeping with the University’s research intensive status, the TUG libraries ensure that a last copy is maintained in perpetuity, through the Preservation of Last Copy Agreement. Items housed in the Annex will be delivered to uWaterloo within three working days. The cost of these services is absorbed by the Library.
The primary tool for accessing electronic resources selected by the Library is its Web site (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca). This site organizes and provides access to licensed resources available to only uWaterloo faculty, students and staff, as well as select Internet resources freely available to anyone. The site also provides access to electronic resources hosted by the OCUL Scholars Portal program (http://www.scholarsportal.info/index.html) and available to the uWaterloo community through the Library's participation in consortia purchasing through OCUL.
In addition, many of our electronic resources can be found through a search of Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/).
The Library uses linking technology (SFX) to enable users to link directly from research databases to the Library’s full text electronic journal subscription or to the catalogue record for holdings and call number information. The Library also provides access to bibliographic management software (RefWorks).
uWaterloo faculty, students and staff may access electronic research databases and full text electronic journals from off-campus via the Library’s Proxy Server / Connect from Home feature.
The Library has purchased, or subscribes to, a range of electronic resources including research databases, full text journals, monographs, numeric data, and government publications. In addition, the Library identifies and provides access to select material freely available through the Internet. Such material includes open access journals, catalogues of libraries around the world, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and style guides.
The following are some of the electronic resources of particular interest to Planning.
Urban Design Collection
With the School of Architecture and the architecture collection’s move to Cambridge in 2004, part of the urban design collection, also of interest to Planning, was transferred to the Musagetes Architecture Library. At that time, the Planning book budget received one-time funding from the Faculty of Environment to duplicate some essential titles for the main campus. In addition, the Planning book budget received an annual increase to address this ongoing need, which together with some recent changes in approval plan profiles has helped to enrich the urban design collection on the main campus.
uWaterloo users can request books from the Musagetes Architectural Library to be delivered to the main campus within three working days. The low number of titles requested for delivery from the Musagetes Architectural Library to the main campus, from May 2010 to December 2011, show that the urban design collection on the main campus meets the need of the School of Planning.
Also available to members of the uWaterloo academic community are the data holdings of <odesi>, OCUL’s digital repository for social science data (http://odesi.ca). <odesi> provides web access to resources such as the Statistics Canada surveys and datasets, including the Canadian Census, through the Library’s membership in the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) and Canadian public opinion polls. Access is also available to the data holdings of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/)
The Dana Porter Library now houses the Geospatial Centre. Its geospatial and cartographic collection has a geographical focus on the local area and adjacent Ontario counties. The collection includes geospatial datasets on topographic data, census data, municipal planning data, nation-wide Canadian street data, and orthoimagery for southwestern Ontario. Web access to some of the geospatial data is available through the OCUL’s geospatial data discovery tool, Scholars GeoPortal.
The Geospatial Center also has a collection of printed maps and atlases, ranging in geographical extent from the City of Waterloo to foreign countries around the world, and aerial photographs for various parts of southwestern Ontario.
The Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery (ILL) service provides faculty, students and staff with books, copies of journal articles, theses, and government documents from libraries within Canada and elsewhere. The Library uses OCUL’s RACER Web based interlibrary loan system (http://racer.scholarsportal.info/vdx/index.html) to facilitate ILL access and service for users. With minor exceptions, the cost for this service is absorbed by the Library.
Most Canadian university libraries extend, at no charge, in-person borrowing privileges to faculty, students and staff from across the country. Faculty, students and staff are entitled to borrowing privileges at participating libraries (http://www.coppul.ca/rb/rbindex.html).
Drawing from the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents’ Guidelines for University Undergraduate Degree Level Expectations and the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education the Liaison Librarian for Planning develops information literacy-related activities and materials, in consultation with faculty. These include the development of online modules, research guides and screencasts as well as the preparation of classroom sessions and outcomes-based workshops for students in the program. It is intended that the sessions and workshops may complement, or take the form of, assignments students complete as part of their course requirements. Depending on the nature of the assignments and the instructors’ expectations, these activities focus on introducing, reinforcing, or mastering key aspects of information research.
Similarly, drawing from the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents’ Guidelines for University Graduate Degree Level Expectations and the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education the Liaison Librarian for Planning develops information literacy-related activities and materials, in consultation with faculty. These include the development of online modules, research guides and screencasts as well as the seminars and outcomes-based workshops for students in the program. These sessions support graduate students completing their literature reviews, comprehensives and graduate information research endeavours as part of their degree requirements and complement faculty mentoring in the same areas.
The Liaison Librarian for Planning is available for consultation with individuals or small groups of students. He or she may be contacted directly in person, by phone, and by e-mail if a personal visit to the Library is not convenient. The Librarian also develops and maintains an online subject guide for Planning (http://subjectguides.uwaterloo.ca/planning).
Reference and geospatial assistance is available in person or by telephone at the Library's Information Desks, which are staffed by professional librarians and specially trained library associates. Alternatively, faculty, students and staff may get reference assistance via e-mail and online chat available through the Ask a Librarian service (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asklib/index.html).
The Library also offers general orientation programs including tours, workshops on research skills, and seminars for students. In addition, each fall, the Library participates in a campus-wide orientation program for incoming students, including programs specific to international students and students with disabilities.
Faculty, students and staff may keep abreast of new services and developments in the Library by reading news @ your library (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/newsatlib/), an electronic newsletter prepared periodically.
Table 1. Summary of Expenditures – Planning
Year |
Journal Expenditures |
Book Expenditures |
Approval Plan Support |
Total Expenditures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2005/2006 |
$18,205 |
$24,135 |
$8,250 |
$50,590 |
2006/2007 |
$21,945 |
$25,350 |
$7,530 |
$54,825 |
2007/2008 |
$21,415 |
$26,665 |
$8,955 |
$57,035 |
2008/2009 |
$17,710 |
$9,475 |
$7,090 |
$34,275 |
2009/2010 |
$15,985 |
$25,745 |
$18,555 |
$60,285 |
2010/2011 |
$17,235 |
$23,320 |
$9,115 |
$49,670 |
2011/2012 |
$19,255 |
$32,000 |
$9,010 |
$60,260 |
TOTAL |
$131,750 |
$166,690 |
$68,500 |
$366,940 |
The drop in book expenditures and approval plan support for 2008/09 was the result of a temporary, and partial, freeze on monograph purchasing imposed because of the significant decline in the value of the Canadian dollar in the fall of 2008, and the consequent drop in the Library’s purchasing power. The freeze was lifted in May 2009. The one-year anomalous increase in approval plan support in 2009/2010 is the combined result of temporary adjustments to the approval profiles and the variations in publishing patterns.
Electronic resources, such as Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management, Journal of the American Planning Association, and Journal of Planning Literature are purchased from the Electronic Resources library fund. Materials acquired for other departments, such as Geography and Environmental Management; Environment and Resource Studies; Biology; and Sociology are also of interest to Planning.
I believe that a high level support for Planning has been provided by the Library, both in information resources and services.
More detailed information, including lists of print and electronic journals purchased for Planning and the number of monograph titles in subject areas of interest to Planning, can be provided on request.
I would be pleased to discuss the Library's holdings and services with the appraisers at the time of a campus visit.
Margaret Yuen, Liaison Librarian for Planning
Reviewed by Susan Routliffe, Associate University Librarian, Information Resources and Services for Mark Haslett, University Librarian.
Collection Development Policies can be found online on the Library Web site (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/irmc/collectionsmanagement.html).
The Preservation of Last Copy Agreement is available online (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/irmc/last_copy_agreement_sept06.html).
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