Report for the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies on Library Resources for History
2006
3.1 Library Resources
[Note: Library reports for each of the three universities appear as Appendix 2]
The Tri-University Group of Libraries (TUG)
Since 1995, when a formal agreement was signed by the presidents and chief librarians from the universities of Guelph, Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier, the three libraries have collaborated on a number of initiatives. The agreement set a general goal that the libraries should work towards integrated access to collections and services. Nearly a dozen years later, the partnership is still active and strong. Participants in the Tri-University Graduate Program in History have reaped the benefits of this collaboration. Below is a brief description of the main TUG activities.
- TRELLIS, the union catalogue of the universities of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier, and Guelph libraries. TRELLIS contains the records of approximately 8.5 million items.
Faculty, graduate students, and staff from the three universities can search and request items identified in TRELLIS. Items will be delivered to the library specified by the patron, or in the case of journal articles, to a campus address. Requests are filled within three business days.
- Electronic Journals
This jointly-maintained database allows users to locate ejournals licensed to their institution. Patrons can use various searching options to identify ejournals of interest, including title, keyword, or phrase searching, combining keywords in an advanced search, or a browsable subject or alphabetical list. Ejournals are also listed in TRELLIS.
- Annex (http://www.tug-libraries.on.ca/info/annex/annex_info.html)
The Annex serves as a repository for the TUG libraries' less-used library resources. It is located at: 110 Malcolm Road, Guelph, Ontario. All the items in the Annex can be requested by patrons to be delivered to a TUG library of their choice.
- TUG Data Resources Service. (http://tdr.tug-libraries.on.ca/)
This central web site is where shared numerical data are mounted and maintained. Patrons can search for and retrieve large numeric data files over the internet. Data sets obtained by the libraries include collections of survey results from Statistics Canada, and a number of surveys from international sources.
- Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL)
The TUG Libraries are all members of the Ontario Council of University Libraries. The primary purpose of this group is that of realizing advantages through sharing, cooperation, and the negotiation of consortial purchases and subscriptions to materials. Current OCUL initiatives include:
* Collaboration in the purchase of collections and materials from vendors.
* Scholars Portal: an electronic archive of resources that have been purchased or are subscribed to provincially or nationally. Scholars Portal can be searched in its entirety allowing a single point of access to high-quality published research from a broad range of disciplines.
* Inter Library Loan (RACER): Rapid Access to Collections via Electronic Requesting is currently used by OCUL for Inter Library Loan.
* “Get It @” (SFX): the “Get It @” function, available in most electronic indexes or abstracts (such as Historical Abstracts or America History and Life), means patrons are a single click away from either the electronic text or holdings and call number information from TRELLIS.
* RefWorks: a web-based bibliographic management service that allows patrons to create their own personal database of references.
Information Resources Management Committee
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June 14, 2007
