Original Concept Paper

The Agricultural Information Center will be the human interface on the information highway and serve a hub in an information system that will include the W.T. Young Library and beyond. The facility will incorporate some traditional library functions with an active training program in the use of electronic resources in the field of agriculture. Included in the Center will be a microcomputer lab, current periodicals area and reading room with a small working ready reference collection, individual carrels, group study and meeting rooms, and a staff area.

The staff of the Center will provide the guidance and expertise necessary to function well in today's complex information system. The training area will be used to work with clients to provide instruction in the information sources appropriate to their needs. Assistance will be given to students to enable them to find their resources efficiently and to train them to become knowledgeable library users. The training emphasis for faculty and staff will be on how to access information sources from the desk top. The general public could also be served on site or indirectly through their local library using the technology.

Center staff will monitor developing products and provide training seminars to faculty and staff. They will serve as a resource in accessing products both on and off campus, and assistance in interfacing the electronic system from office or home will be available. Training Cooperative Extension personnel to tap into and effectively use the system from their counties will be provided in a more aggressive manner. Training opportunities for research personnel in off campus facilities will be more intensive.

Agriculture Information Center staff will continue to select library materials in the subject of agriculture and continue to interact closely with the College of Agriculture in order to keep abreast of agricultural information needs at the University and throughout the state. Products and services will be developed in the Center to further this effort.

Features of the proposed facility include a microcomputer lab to allow electronic access to programs, teaching aids, library products, and Internet resources. Included in the lab will be an interactive electronic classroom. Students will be able to work on projects between classes or to gather sources of information for an assignment. Course reserve materials will also be available.

A traditional reading room will provide seating and a small browsing area of current journals and a small working collection to provide quick, ready reference. It will be an inviting space that will be conducive to studying and contemplation. Additional individual carrels will provide a quiet environment and be equipped with network connections to serve the needs of the graduate students. The group study/meeting rooms also will have network connections and will be able to access the Young Library's media distribution system.

The current facility opened in 1964 to meet the needs of the College of Agriculture. Departmental collections were consolidated to reflect the interdependency of subjects in the science. Today, the agricultural researcher must use materials from all areas of science and the student in agriculture must be able to keep abreast of current issues as well as use resources in many disciplines. Teaching has moved from strict discipline tracks to general issues based courses as a preliminary to subject specialty. Students are required to use traditional library resources, electronic resources, and work together to discuss, write and communicate what they have found. Graduate students and faculty need access to the traditional library materials as well as electronic resources and services. Training in all areas is required to prepare our students to go out into an information based society and to help our faculty, staff, graduate students, and extension personnel keep up within their various areas. Today's information system requires interaction with traditional books and a number of computer systems worldwide.

Renovation of the Agriculture Library to the Agricultural Information Center would begin in the summer of 1997. Book materials would be moved to the Young Library and the book stacks and wall removed. The construction would begin on the microlab training room and group study rooms for completion in the fall semester of 1997. Work would then begin on the staff offices and the reading room with moving of the service desk between the fall and spring semesters of 1997/98. Work would then begin on the private carrels and would be completed by the end of spring semester 1998. The renovation would be completed by July 1, 1998.

The Agriculture Library occupies 9845 square feet in the Agricultural Science Building under wet laboratories. The space is well located for public access and use by students but not conducive to the storage of valuable library collections. The emphasis of the space is on storage of and access to a valuable agricultural collection. The book collection occupies 75% of the current space, staff areas 10% of the space and reader space occupies 15% of the facility. In 1985, a reading room was constructed to afford some measure of quiet in the facility. The reading room is a mixture of books stacks and tables and is separated from the desk area by a wall. The lobby area of the library houses six work stations that provide access to various electronic products and has the information desk where reference services and circulation are provided. The reference collection is in one section of the reading room. Microform equipment and the VCR are at the back of the library. The Agriculture Library currently employs 13 FTE of staff.

The primary service group for the Agriculture Library are the faculty, staff, and students both on and off campus of the College of Agriculture. The Agriculture Library also fills the agricultural information needs of the rest of the University of Kentucky campus and because of its Land Grant mission, the Commonwealth of Kentucky as a whole.

The Agriculture Library offers a wide array of services. We currently circulate books, answer reference questions, develop the electronic information components for the general courses, offer subject specific information literacy training on demand, provide electronic bibliographic access on site and training for using sources off site, offer course reserve, do materials selection, provide document delivery for off campus materials, act as a liaison between Communications Services and the Computing Center for our clientele, and provide tables of contents of journals to e-mail boxes. The Agriculture Library provides technical services support in cataloging and acquisitions to the Biological Sciences Library. There is also an information service in the Gluck Equine Research Center.

Most of the current services would continue. Responsibility for the technical support for the book collections in Agricultural and Biological Sciences collections would go to Young Library. Materials selection and order function would remain with the Agricultural Information Center as well as the technical support for the electronic products and services. Training would be expanded in the undergraduate curriculum to move beyond the general courses. Integration of information into the courses would also be done with the capstone courses in the College of Agriculture. Course reserve would remain in the facility with book materials being borrowed from other libraries. Articles would be scanned into a datafile and these articles could be accessed from any networked computer workstation. Technical support would be offered in helping clientele interface from Agriculture to the mainframe and for our extension offices around the state and other off campus clients. Support would also be offered for Geographical Information Systems by identifying spatial files and creating access to them. Support would also be given to electronic products developed by the College of Agriculture. Support to extension personnel would be broadened and access to electronic files of particular interest to extension would be incorporated into the electronic collection. A description of the services of the Agriculture Library and proposed services of the Agricultural Information Center appears in Appendix I.

The current facility would be converted to client space as opposed to book space. All stacks and walls would be removed and the existing space would be divided into six functional areas. The microlab space would occupy approximately 2400 square feet of space in the southwest quadrant of the library. Approximately 600 square feet of this space would be allocated for a training area which would be open for student use when not in use for training. Group study rooms would occupy approximately 900 square feet along the south wall of the quadrant. Individual carrel and locker space would be provided along the north wall of this quadrant.

The northeast quadrant of the existing facility would be allocated to the reading room and lobby space. Approximately 1700 square feet of space along with windows of the east side of the facility would be furnished with a mixture of lounge and traditional library furniture and would be an enforced quiet area. The lobby space would include copiers, microform equipment, lounge furniture, and dedicated NOTIS terminals. The service desk would be at the west end of this area.

Staff space would occupy the southwest quadrant of the facility with access to all areas and to the outside for movement of equipment. The space would provide work space for all staff as well as a common area and space to house and work on equipment. A map of the proposed facility appears in Appendix II. A description of the current and of the proposed staffing and functions appears in Appendix III.