July 29 , 2008
(Criterion 2.3.1)
Provide information on library facilities and services available to the engineering students and faculty. As appropriate, include comments on the following aspects as well as other pertinent information.
Describe the location of the engineering collections, sets of Canadian and foreign standards and design codes, reference services, database computer search capabilities and interlibrary loan services available. Indicate the hours when library facilities are available to engineering students.
Describe the study space availability, the total number of books and periodicals and the approximate number of acquisitions in the past three years. Indicate the amount of funding allocated to the engineering fields for library acquisitions in the past three years.
Provide a self-assessment of the current library facilities and services, including strengths and shortcomings, for the education of engineering students.
The Library collections for Engineering, Mathematics, and Science are housed in the Davis Centre Library in the William G. Davis Computer Research Centre. The Davis Centre, home to offices for most faculty members in the Systems Design Engineering Department and to some faculty members in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, is centrally located on campus and is accessible to other Engineering buildings through interior corridors.
Day |
Building Hours, Circulation / Reserves (Fall, Winter, Spring terms) |
Information Desk (Fall and Winter terms) |
Monday - Thursday |
8 am – midnight |
10 am – 7 pm |
Friday |
8 am - midnight |
10 am – 5 pm |
Saturday - Sunday |
11 am – midnight |
1 pm – 5 pm (Sunday only) |
Information desk hours are 9 am – 5 pm, Monday through Friday during the Spring term.
Building hours prior to and during exam periods are extended to 24 hours with the exception of 2 am to 8 am on Sundays when the Library is closed. Between terms the Davis Centre Library is open from 8 am – 6 pm, Monday through Friday and from noon – 6 pm on weekends. The Library is open on statutory holidays during the academic terms.
Reference assistance is available in person or by telephone at the Library's Information Desk which is staffed by professional librarians and specially trained library associates. Alternatively, UW students, faculty and staff may get reference assistance via e-mail and on-line chat available through the Ask a Librarian service (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/asklib/index.html) A pilot project to provide reference assistance using Skype is also underway.
Individuals or groups with more complex questions can consult their Liaison Librarian. A Liaison Librarian is assigned to work with each Engineering department and is knowledgeable about the subject matter and nature of the teaching in the department. The Liaison Librarian can be contacted directly by email or telephone if a personal visit to the Library is not convenient.
Liaison Librarians work with faculty members to help students develop the information competencies which are vital for lifelong learning. In consultation with faculty members, Liaison Librarians develop and conduct class specific information literacy sessions for undergraduate students. Lectures, hands-on instruction, and web pages support these activities as do the development of online modules and quizzes in the course management system (UW-ACE).
UW campus libraries also offer general orientation programs, workshops on database searching and using the Web. In addition, each fall the Library participates in a campus-wide orientation program for international students.
The decision to purchase Library materials for Engineering is the responsibility of the Liaison Librarians in consultation with the Faculty Library Representatives. Selection is guided by the Collection Development Policies which are developed by the Liaison Librarians in consultation with faculty members in each of the Engineering departments. Collection development policies are generally developed based on academic departments and are not normally created for interdisciplinary programs.
In response to user preference, the Library obtains resources in electronic format whenever it is possible and practical to do so. Some electronic resources are obtained directly by the University of Waterloo 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 UW 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 Engineering such as agricultural engineering, business, and international development.
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, patent databases, technical reports, catalogues of libraries around the world, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and style guides.
The following are some of the electronic resources of particular interest to Engineering:
The UW Map Library has an ever-growing collection of GIS data and environmental data available for use by UW faculty, students and staff.
Standards and Codes:
The Davis Centre Library has standards and codes from a variety of sources. We have full sets of some, such as those from ASME (Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code), ASTM and CGSB in print, and a few, such as the Canadian Standards and IEEE, electronically. There are many other cases where we have some but not all of the standards issued by a particular agency or association (ANSI, AWWA, BSI, DIN, & ISO); this selective collecting is due to volume, cost and demand. Building codes, both provincial and national are available in both the Davis Library and the Musagetes Architecture Library.
The Library’s print collections for Engineering are housed primarily in the Davis Centre Library. Access to the entire Library collection, as well as materials held by UG and WLU, is available through the Web accessible union catalogue known as TRELLIS (http://trellis1.tug-libraries.on.ca/).
The Library's automated circulation system allows users to charge out materials when the Library is open and to renew items online at any time. With the exception of reference materials and the current issues of journals, most of the materials in the Library’s collection circulate.
Books and journal articles not owned by the UW Library but held by UG or WLU may be requested through TRELLIS. Books and copies of journal articles are delivered to faculty, staff and students within three working days. The cost is of these services are 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 such as books, journals and copies of superseded standards and codes. In keeping with the University’s research intensive status, an agreement among the TUG libraries provides opportunity to retain last copies of this low-use material in perpetuity. The agreement can be found at:
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/irmc/last_copy_agreement_sept06.html. As with material from UG and WLU, books and copies of journal articles housed in the Annex are made available to faculty, staff and students within three working days. The cost is absorbed by the Library.
Books and copies of articles from print journals will be sent, upon request, to students living some distance from the campus. With the exception of return postage for books, the cost 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 UW faculty, students and staff, as well as 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 UW community through the Library's participation in consortial 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 has embedded linking technology (SFX) into research databases which allows users to link directly from the database to the UW Library full text electronic journal subscription or to the TRELLIS catalogue record for holdings and call number information. The Library also provides access to the bibliographic management software RefWorks.
UW 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 University of Waterloo has depository status for Canadian Federal and Ontario government publications. Also available to members of the UW academic community are the data holdings of the Tri-University Group Data Resources (TDR) (http://tdr.tug-libraries.on.ca). This data service provides Web access to sources such as the Canadian Census, Statistics Canada surveys, and the data holdings of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery (ILL) service provides faculty, students, and staff with books, copies of journal articles, theses, and government documents from libraries (other than TUG) within Canada and abroad. The UW Library uses the 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.
The UW Library also uses the CISTI Source current awareness and document delivery service (http://source.cisti.nrc.ca/index_custom.html) from the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information to provide copies of articles from journals not held by the UW Library or available via document delivery from the University of Guelph or Wilfrid Laurier University.
Canadian university libraries extend in-person borrowing privileges to students, faculty and staff from across the country. Graduate students, faculty and staff are entitled to borrowing privileges at participating libraries (http://www.coppul.ca/rb/rbindex.html).
The Davis Centre Library has a seating capacity of 908. Study space is available in areas designated for silent study, at group study tables and in any of the 13 bookable study rooms. Wireless internet access is available in the Library and 110 Internet connection drops throughout the Library provide additional Internet access for students using laptops. The Library provides laptop printing from these wireless and wired connections. Students have access to 39 express workstations and another 39 public workstations in our Information Commons. All Library workstations provide access to MS Office, Internet and library software and are connected to the networked printing system.
| Number of books in:* | ||
| Engineering, mathematics, & sciences | 199,583 |
|
| Engineering | 70,026 |
|
| Number of current journals in:** | ||
| Engineering, mathematics, & sciences | 6,510 |
|
| Engineering | 1,297 |
|
*The numbers listed above for Engineering are a subset of the numbers reported for Engineering, mathematics & sciences. The totals have been generated by counting books and journals in the Davis Library according to their Library of Congress classification. This approach allows us to assess our collections based on the subject of the items held in our collections. Items with call numbers that are classified or further subclassified in the G, HA, HG, Q, R, and T call number ranges may be of interest to Engineering students. We have reported items in our collections with these Library of Congress call numbers as the number of books/journals in Engineering, mathematics, & sciences. Engineering materials are often classified with “T” call number ranges and this is what is represented above for the Engineering subsets.
**Current journals may be purchased by a Liaison Librarian using individual library funds or they may be purchased through the central Electronic Resources library fund. Titles purchased through the Electronic Resources fund are available in an electronic format. Journals purchased using individual library funds may be print and/or electronic.
| Books* | 2002/2003 |
2003/2004 |
2004/2005 |
2005/2006 |
2006/2007 |
2007/2008 |
| Davis Library | 4,300 |
4,188 |
3,411 |
4,477 |
4,660 |
3,709 |
| Engineering | 706 |
673 |
675 |
861 |
844 |
740 |
| Journals** | ||||||
| Davis Library | 1,469 |
1,354 |
1,190 |
1,180 |
N/A |
798 |
| Engineering | 422 |
384 |
321 |
318 |
N/A |
217 |
* Davis Library totals include items (both print and electronic) purchased by fiscal year through the individual Library funds for Engineering, Science, Math, and Applied Health Studies. The Engineering totals include items purchased specifically through the Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Management Sciences, Mechanical Engineering, and Systems Design Engineering funds. A number of resources of interest to Engineers have been transferred over time from individual Library funds to a central Electronic Resources Library fund when access has been switched from print to online access. These resources include SPIE, IEEE/IEE Electronic Library, and the ACM Digital Library. Electronic resources are often purchased as packages of the publisher’s entire list of titles, and include titles in many subject areas. As a result, the number of publications available to students, within the Library and from any computer, has actually grown.
**The counts for number of journals subscribed to in 2006/2007 from individual library funds cannot be verified at the time of the submission of this report. The information will be forwarded as soon as it is available.
|
2002/03 |
2003/04 |
2004/05 |
2005/06 |
2006/07 |
2007/08 |
Books |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Davis Library |
$394,166.05 |
$405,208.75 |
$356,338.32 |
$451,542.89 |
$369,119.29 |
$355,557.02 |
Engineering |
$117,974.32 |
$112,667.22 |
$100,419.31 |
$127,149.47 |
$97,565.58 |
$115,213.11 |
Journals |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Davis Library |
$1,018,295.88 |
$920,961.04 |
$594,196.72 |
$631,083.00 |
$648,308.03 |
$606,425.14 |
Engineering |
$238,715.01 |
$235,570.89 |
$123,879.37 |
$135,194.12 |
$137,521.30 |
$125,363.14 |
Total |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Davis Library |
$1,412,461.93 |
$1,326,169.79 |
$950,535.04 |
$1,082,625.89 |
$1,017,427.32 |
$961,982.16 |
Engineering |
$356,689.33 |
$348,238.11 |
$224,298.68 |
$262,343.59 |
$235,086.88 |
$240,576.25 |
*These totals represent the amount spent through the individual Library funds only. Many current subscriptions for journals previously paid for by Engineering library funds have been transferred to the Electronic Resources library fund resulting in a decline in expenditures from the individual engineering funds. The table below shows the Electronic Resources Fund expenditures.
Electronic Resources |
2002/03 |
2003/04 |
2004/05 |
2005/06 |
2006/07 |
2007/08 |
$2,527,384.00 |
$3,904,830.00 |
$3,897,065.00 |
$4,080,737.00 |
$3,979,878.00 |
$3,759,856.00 |
Overall, the information services available to students and faculty are excellent. In a 2006 Library Satisfaction survey, 79% of Davis Library users agreed that “the Library and staff met expectations for an excellent University Library”.
A new inventory and security system based on a one-tag RFID system has been installed in the Library. RFID tags have been added to items in our collections and as a result the self checkout process has been streamlined and new security gates have been installed in the Library.
For some time now, most indexes and abstracts have been available electronically, and the Library provides access to over 13,000 electronic journals. In the past several years the Library has been able to increase journal holdings by purchasing large packages from publishers mainly through our participation in consortial deals through OCUL and CRKN. In the 2006 Satisfaction Survey, Davis Centre Library users ranked their satisfaction with electronic resources (research databases, ejournals, e-books, etc.) as 2nd in a list of 16 library resources, services, & facilities.
To this point, we have been able to meet the majority of our user’s expectations reasonably well with funds allocated to individual engineering departments but the needs of a full programme such as Nanotechnology Engineering are such that we will require an increase in the base budget if we are to acquire materials to adequately support these new programmes and continue to meet expectations of our existing users.
We would like to provide online access to a wider selection of standards (such as ASTM or SAE) and handbooks (such as those from CRC ENGnetBASE and NANOnetBASE) but these products charge subscription and ongoing access fees that exceed the capabilities of our budget. Similarly, while Engineering has benefited from consortial and block purchases of ejournals there are new electronic resources coming onto the market and we will only be able to afford these resources if we have new money on an ongoing basis.
The Library has benefited in the past from a donation by a retired Engineering faculty member and this money was used to purchase the electronic version of the Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and a 1 year trial of the Knovel Engineering collection. In addition, the Engineering students provided funding for a 1 year trial of the Knovel Chemical Engineering and Chemistry collection.
An estimated 5,000 people enter the Davis Library daily and during the fall and winter terms and the facility is often full to capacity during the day and through the evening hours. When asked in the Satisfaction Survey mentioned above to rank the value of 16 library resources, services, & facilities, users of the Davis Centre Library ranked library hours first, library environment (noise, temperature, lighting, ambience, etc) second, and study space third. When asked how satisfied they were with these library resources, services, & facilities, Davis Centre Library users ranked Library hours first but study space fell to 10th in the satisfaction ranking and Library environment fell to 12th. While we are actively improving the quality of study space in the Library through renovation projects, replacement of study carrels, etc., we do not have enough room in the Library to provide additional study space to meet student demand and the crowded conditions make it difficult to address library environment issues such as noise and ambience. To increase the amount of study space in the Library, we would need to reduce the book and journal backrun collections, build an addition to the Library, or additional study space would have to be constructed on campus.
Prepared by:
Anne Fullerton, Liaison Librarian for Chemical Engineering
Doug Morton, Liaison Librarian for Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Management Sciences
Leeanne Romane, Liaison Librarian for Systems Design Engineering
Reviewed by:
Jennifer Haas, Head of Information Services and Resources, Davis, on behalf of Susan Routliffe, Associate University Librarian, Information Resources & Services and Mark Haslett, University Librarian.
July 29, 2008
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