Appointed by West Virginia University Provost Gerald Lang to be the new dean of West Virginia libraries, Frances O’Brien comes to WVU in a time of change.

New facilities are being built and the budget is being increased. O’Brien is thrilled.

“I was impressed by a number of things,” O’Brien said. “The new building program, with the renovation of Evansdale, the all-site storage facility, the addition to expand the Wise Library, is a promise by the campus to support the library.”

O’Brien said she likes what WVU President David Hardesty and Lang say about being a student-centered University.

“I think it is a good setting for the students,” O’Brien said. “I hope it will be a responsive library with rapid access to information.”

O’Brien, with 26 years of experience under her belt, said she feels that it is those years of experience that will help her in her job.

“I feel that my credentials are a pretty good match for the job,” O’Brien said. “I have experience in technical services, public services, administration and all in similar sized institutions.”

She has worked at the University of Tennessee, Virginia Tech, the University of Delaware, the University of Georgia and most recently served as deputy university librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“I am familiar with the kind of work that goes on at a flagship institution,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien said that she will not come in to change for the sake of change, but would rather find out what the strengths are within the library and then begin her work.

“I talked to people during my three-day campus interview,” O’Brien said. “The agenda for the future is something that we all as a staff need to start work on.”

For the future, O’Brien sees herself running two libraries.

“Any academic library today runs two libraries, one involved with research and academic materials and the other involves electronic resources,” she said.

O’Brien added that in her lifetime, libraries will not be required to make sure that there is not just an on-site collection that meets the students needs, but also a library that provides access to materials not in Morgantown.

In her previous role, O’Brien oversaw 45 branch libraries that reported to her, as well as being responsible for public service, technical services and budget oversight.

O’Brien was pleased that Lang was providing an additional $250,000 for her permanent base budget but said she feels that the library should be run in an efficient and economical way.

Although some students are not aware of it, Colson Hall has made a leap into the 21st century by creating an electronic reserve system where students can access documents via the Internet, eliminating the hassle of making a trip to the library.
To access the system, students can go to the West Virginia University Libraries homepage (www.libraries.wvu.edu) and click on the link to the e-reserve.

However, not just anyone can access a professor’s reserved readings. The professor must first ask Colson to put his or her articles on electronic reserve and the professor must give their students the password to access the readings.

The reason the readings can only be accessed by using a password is because of the copyright law, which prohibits use of information without crediting the author.

“We just can’t put these readings on the Internet and let anyone have access to them,” said Carroll Wilkinson, department head of Access Services. Using the password to view the readings ensures limited access to the general public.

According to professor of history Mark Tauger, putting reserved readings online can help raise overall performance in classes, since students feel that the service is much more convenient than going to Colson Hall to copy the information.

Tauger uses e-reserve for his History 220 class and has noticed that students seem to be doing better in the class.

“The students seem to be reading the material more now,” he said. “I appreciate Colson getting the service prepared efficiently and quickly.”

Frank Fragomene, a junior history major, has been using e-reserve for Tauger’s class.

“It keeps me from having to walk to Colson Hall all the time, and I can read these articles at my leisure,” he said.

So far, the process has proved very easy to use. As of last week, 139 professors had reserved readings on e-reserve, according to Wilkinson. Most professors who use e-reserve are located on the downtown campus, but a few were at the Health Sciences Center.

Stats for student hits on the e-reserve site were very high, Wilkinson said.

During the spring 1999 semester, which was the first semester e-reserve was fully operational, Colson Library mailed out a survey to professors who were using e-reserve in their classes to be completed by the professors and their students. Of the 255 responses received by Colson Library on overall satisfaction with e-reserve, 151 were very pleased with the service, according to the survey.

The process of putting the reserved readings onto the Internet for access via e-reserve is simply scanning the hard copies of the readings into a computer. The images are saved in PDF format, just like a picture would be.

The downfall to the process, however, is in the PDF formatting itself. On older computers, the images’ download and print time is sometimes slow.

Despite the drawback, many teachers still see the new system as beneficial.

“The plus side of the service is that it is accessible to students anywhere,” political science instructor and doctoral candidate Rebecca Klase said. She uses e-reserve for her Political Science 140 classes. The remote access to reserved readings saves students on the Evansdale campus, as well as on the downtown campus, a trip to Colson to check out materials.

Professors and instructors can refer to the WVU Libraries Web page for faculty guidelines on getting their reserved readings online or call Colson Hall at 293-2640.

After being lead by interim dean Myra Lowe, West Virginia Libraries have a new permanent dean, Frances O’Brien.

Effective June 16, O’Brien will take over for Lowe, who has served in an interim role since last July. Lowe took over for Dr. Ruth Jackson, who stepped down in July of 1998.

O’Brien, who currently serves as the deputy university librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has also served as director of administrative services at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, as well as working at the University of Tennessee Library, the University of Georgia, the University of Delaware and Virginia Tech

She is a member of the American Library Association, and has authored articles on library personnel issues.

O’Brien will be responsible to oversee the $30 million dollar expansion of WVU Libraries facilities, including $21 million to be spent on a new addition that will house paper volumes and information technology. It will also house computer centers. It will be built in front of Wise Library and will be completed in 2001.

Other projects that she will be responsible for include the Evansdale Library, renovation of the the Wise Library to support the West Virginia Regional History Collection and a new repository facility.

O’Brien was unavailable for comment, but WVU Provost Gerald Lang, who made the final decision, was, and he described O’Brien as an individual with “a high level of competence with regard to the oversight of WVU libraries as they evolve into the mix between electronic and printed resources.”

“She is also very patron-oriented, and she will work to provide high level services to our faculty and students that can use those services to further engage in their own personal scholarship,” Lang said.

Before she was selected, O’Brien and all other candidates, were on campus for meetings with library faculty, staff and administration and also meetings with WVU administration and deans.

“All candidates had to interview with various components of the campus,” Lang said.

He made his final decision using input from the search committee with the faculty and staff input, as well as reference checks.

“There were a couple of very strong candidates,” Lang said. “The search committee did a good job of making a difficult choice for me.”

Lang said that he feels comfortable with O’Brien taking over the post.

Interim Dean Lowe takes over her previous position after O’Brien takes over on June 16.