Monthly Archives: May 2017

Results of the Technology Loan Service Desk Survey

by adowning

student using tech loan kioskThe Library conducted its first formal survey of users of the technology loan service desk from April 23 through May 18, 2017.  We received 173 responses.  The winner of the $20 Amazon gift card incentive was Brenda Kuang.  We were pleased to see that overall satisfaction with the service is high with 96% of respondents reporting being satisfied or very satisfied.  We were also pleased that two-thirds of users reported waiting times of 2 minutes or less, while 92% of borrowers were served in 5 minutes or less.

However, we also learned quite a bit about what needs to be done to improve the service for our students.  Based on the responses, we commit to doing the following:

  • Install additional software: Adobe Creative Cloud, statistical software, video editing, Chrome, etc.
  • (Re)Enable Printing on the Baruch Network: This was available until we postponed an upgrade of our print management system.  We will make wifi printing active on all the laptops again.
  • Add equipment to loan:  Phone and laptop chargers,  headphones, mice, cameras, microphones, etc.
  • Upgrade equipment: We are replacing many units with newer models over the summer.
  • Increase the Number of MacBooks and units that loan for 3 days.
  • Continue to reduce waiting time: We are looking into additional staff and streamlined procedures.
  • Expand Self-Service: We are purchasing a new loan kiosk for the Library and an additional, larger one for the 6th floor computer lab.

The technology loan service is among the most heavily used services of the Newman Library with over 50,000 loan transactions recorded between February and May 2017.

 

 

 

Launch of Platform for Baruch’s Student Authors

by adowning

The William and Anita Newman Library is pleased to announce the launch of Academic Works, a new online platform for showcasing the scholarly and creative work of Baruch students and faculty.

This service provides students with the opportunity to make their works of scholarship freely available online for the world to view and download. Not only is each work given a stable, permanent location on the web, it is also indexed automatically by Google Scholar and CUNY’s OneSearch system, thereby increasing the likelihood of easy discovery by searchers around the world. Since the launch of CUNY Academic Works at several CUNY campuses in 2015, hundreds of faculty and students have uploaded more than 14,000 items into their local campus collections.

Interest from scholars and students globally has been amazing: there have already been nearly 600,000 downloads of items from the CUNY collections. The launch of Academic Works at Baruch College is part of our effort to highlight the scholarship of our students. This new digital showcase, which already includes over 70 undergraduate honors theses, will soon include student posters from Creative Inquiry Day. For more information, please see the library’s guide to the service.

On a related note, the Newman Library is planning an exhibition of published works by Baruch students in fall 2017. Students who are interested in having their work considered for inclusion should contact cio@baruch.cuny.edu.

 

Academic Works Launched at Baruch

by adowning

The William and Anita Newman Library is pleased to announce the official Baruch launch of CUNY Academic Works, a service that expands the reach of the scholarly and creative output of our faculty and students. This service provides members of the Baruch community with an online platform where they can make their works of scholarship freely available online for the world to view and download. Not only is each work given a stable, permanent location on the web, it is also indexed automatically by Google Scholar and CUNY’s OneSearch system, thereby increasing the likelihood of the work being discovered easily by searchers around the world. In our soft launch phase at Baruch this spring, we already uploaded over 200 items (articles, book chapters, honors theses, etc.), including more than 60 publications by Dean Aldemaro Romero Jr., and have seen those items downloaded seven thousand times by users from more than one hundred countries.

Since the launch of Academic Works at several CUNY campuses in 2015 hundreds of faculty and doctoral students from across the university have uploaded more than 14,000 items into their local campus collections. Interest from scholars and students globally has been amazing: there have already been almost 600,000 downloads of items from the CUNY collections.

In the fall, the library will offer a workshop for faculty about how they can use CUNY Academic Works to boost their scholarly profile and reach a wider audience. Details for this event will be announced in August. For more information about CUNY Academic Works, including instructions on how to upload items to the Baruch collections, please see the library’s guide to the service.