INFORMATION FOR
It’s another year and the continuation of old journeys, new hopes, renewed attention to many things old and new that we look forward to resolving in 2025 and beyond. The challenges of doing more with less as we aspire to higher levels of attainment, while daunting, grows increasingly plausible. The promise of open educational resources as mechanism for reducing textbook costs and providing some financial relief to students is gaining traction at William Paterson University, across the board. Disciplines and colleges that only a year ago provided no low-cost or free course materials have made significant progress and over a third of all courses offered at the University provide students with free or low-cost textbook options. That is an achievement that librarians truly appreciate. Grounded in the professional ethos of unfettered end user access to information and knowledge, Cheng Library faculty librarians and staff applaud all the teaching faculty, departmental, and college activities that have made this possible. We hope for and look forward to further gains for our students.
Cheng Library continues to assure all participants, teaching faculty in particular, of the ability and willingness of librarians to provide support in smoothening the path to adoption of open educational resources and putting together course material packages that lower or eliminate cost for students. Colvard, Watson, and Park ("The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics") note: "In regard to measures of student performance... several studies suggest that courses that have implemented OER result in higher student grades ... higher pass rates ... or lower failing and withdrawal rates ... than courses that do not use OER materials." This is a good reason to pursue such a solution for our students, besides the obvious financial relief open educational resources offer. To continue critical conversations on the importance and benefits of open educational resources to student success and educational costs, the Library will be hosting a Faculty Open Educational Resources Forum in its auditorium on April 10, 12:30-2PM.
Joseph Nitecki aptly notes (in John F. Henry and Peter Spyers-Duran eds., Austerity Management in Academic Libraries, p. 43): "Although neither positive nor negative thinking will by itself turn scarcity into abundance, a negative attitude will intensify the misery of trying to survive austerity’s deprivations while a positive posture will stimulate the search for practical solutions to economic retrenchment." With the growing cost of library materials and concurrent shrinking of the materials budget, Cheng Library has adopted innovative approaches to collection development that leverage the power of the Internet and the many good quality resources available for free to put together a carefully selected body of academic and research resources from a combination of critical proprietary sources and high-quality open-source materials. The expanded pool of resources thus assembled are available through the library’s discovery layer. The weeding of dated books and those with less relevance to the research, teaching, and learning happening at the University as well as demand driven acquisitions that better reflect actual rather than anticipated use have ensured quality, veracity, and timeliness. Curation of proprietary and open access materials within an industry leading and effective library resources platform with a flexible discovery layer has improved structured access to a wide range of content.
In 2020, Cheng Library had a collection of 241,495 physical books, 389,736 e-books, 118,690 print and 300,627 electronic periodical titles, and 91,039 streaming media. By 2024, that collection stood at 230,951 physical books, 1.22 million e-books, 118,790 print and 383,919 electronic periodical, and 90,635 streaming media titles. In five years, our dedicated group of library faculty and staff had improved availability of information and knowledge content available through the library’s discovery layer by some 79%. This impressive achievement is not intended to promote a resilience narrative that perpetuates the notion that doing more with less is desirable or sustainable in perpetuity. It is merely to acknowledge that in moments of institutional stress creative thinking can focus minds and activities on viable options to promote short-term sustainability as we work toward long term resolution of the stresses that ultimately impede progress. Resilience at Cheng Library has been a demonstration of good institutional citizenship and commitment to the educational goals of William Paterson University.
This spring semester, the Library continues with its robust library instruction program, inviting all faculty to request library instruction for their classes, tailored to their specific needs. In their study of more than 10,000 students over a four year period, Rowe, Leuzinger, Hargis, and Harker ("The Impact of Library Instruction on Undergraduate Student Success: A Four-Year Study") observed of the participants in the English course in their study, that "those who received library instruction were nearly three times more likely to pass than those who did not." Many other studies have shown a positive correlation between library instruction and student success. Cheng Library faculty hope to emulate and replicate those outcomes in collaboration with their WPUNJ classroom faculty colleagues. Furthermore, recognizing the importance of offering students a basic understanding of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on learning, Cheng Library faculty will be providing a customized lesson for all first-year students in the Will.Power 1020 course this spring. Focusing on the strengths and shortcomings of generative AI as a research tool, the goal is to help students understand the ethics and challenges of AI for a more nuanced engagement with such technologies.
The spring semester also brings us the Library’s traditional celebration of University authors who published scholarly and creative works in the preceding year. This year’s University Authors Reception will be held on April 29, 3:30-5PM. The occasion to honor the scholarly and creative productivity of William Paterson University faculty and staff will be augmented by an earlier forum of faculty on the same day, 12:30-2PM, to discuss topics related to the research and creative process in celebration of the umbrella event Explorations, which supports and honors research, scholarship, and creative expression at WPUNJ. Combining discussion of the process and issues in the development of scholarly works and creative expressions with acknowledgement of those who are engaged in such activities, April 29 will be a day of celebration, exchange of ideas, and exploration of opportunities.
These are some of the ways in which your Library will be serving you and the University this year. Please engage us and share your ideas on how we can serve you better.
Happy New Year!
