TABLE OF CONTENTS

PACE chooses Lehigh!

Blackboard Teams LX

Navigating Information Literacy

LTS Connections Guest Editor and Index

LTS Staff New Locations

Countdown to the Close (May 11th)

Digital Library Grant

LTS People

WiFi for Off Campus Students

Linderman Launch

The "Partners for the Advancement of Collaboration Engineering Applications" (PACE) program formally announced last month that Lehigh was accepted into their elite partnership program whose goals include integrating math-based applications into the automotive Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) process. To this end, the PACE Partners: GM, Sun Microsystems, EDS, and UGS, along with other industry contributors and supporters provide software, hardware, training, and other contributions to the PACE institutions located throughout the world. The donations of software, hardware, and training already total as one of the largest corporate contributions to the University.

Library and Technology Services has been working closely with the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics department, and the Integrated Product Development and Design Arts programs to evaluate, acquire, and install software packages including Altair Hyperworks, MSC (Adams, Nastran, and Akusmod), LSTC LS-DYNA, and the Alias Maya suite and AutoStudio. Other software donated by UGS includes Unigraphics (NX3), Solid Edge, and Teamcenter Engineering, most of which have been part of the engineering curriculum for many years, but are now all available through PACE. Fluent/Gambit software is available for limited classroom use and for student projects based upon approval. Additional benefits of the PACE program include generous training opportunities for faculty and students on all of the software packages, periodic hardware and software offers from HP and Sun Microsystems, and the opportunity to work closely with partners at GM to foster an already strong relationship.

Teams LX is a new building block available from within Blackboard which promotes collaborative learning. The Teams LX feature makes it easy for groups to create and jointly edit shared web pages. In addition to editing content, users can provide feedback and comments on posted material. Instructors can use Teams LX to incorporate problem-based learning strategies into their courses.

The ability to gauge individual contributions within group projects is a challenge for instructors. The built-in evaluation tools in Teams LX provide the instructor with information about individual contributions, as well as views of all the prior versions of the site. This allows instructors to observe their students' entire creative process and export these sites for future use.

There are two ways that the feature can be used in a course: a "Team Course Site" and a "Teams Group Site." In "Teams Course Site" students can edit and comment on a shared resource. For example, students can build an ongoing resource list. A "Teams Group Site" allows student groups to work on problem-based learning assignments. Student groups can organize and present their work as an interactive web page Teams LX can be used to

Evaluate a web site, product, etc.

Develop a unit or lesson plan

Develop a marketing plan

Solve mathematical problems

Analyze a reading passage

Evaluate product design

Interpret art images

Teams LX provides a great opportunity to rethink how and where student collaboration can take place. This feature allows students more flexibility and creativity in their contributions through Blackboard. For more information contact an Instructional Technology Consultant.

Librarians and information technology consultants from LTS have been working for the past two years to develop a program that will respond to faculty concerns about the research skills of their students as well as new Middle States Commission standards and guidelines for information literacy. The working group consists of librarians, Roseann Bowerman, Jennifer Heise, Jean Johnson and Kathe Morrow; Instructional technology consultant, Judd Hark; and Megan Norcia, a post-doctoral fellow from the Council on Library and Information Resources.

The working group has held meetings with faculty and other library professionals to meet the goal of addressing students' information literacy needs in a way that will fit within the Lehigh curriculum and be satisfying to this generation of learners. As part of these efforts, the group created a new website Navigating Information at Lehigh University (http://www.lehigh.edu/library/infolit/) modeling the research skills and core competencies students should develop.

In June 2004, the working group administered a research skills assessment to incoming first-year Lehigh students; the assessment results appear on this website. Intended to help focus the development of tools and tutorials to bolster student research skills, the survey uncovered that only 63% appear to have the necessary background and skills for readily accessing information. Only 41% are well aware of the ethical use of information; but 73% demonstrated the ability to critically evaluate information.

Guided by these results, the Information Literacy working group has developed seven tutorials like Plagiarism-proofing your Courses, with suggestions for faculty to reduce plagiarism while enhancing student engagement. This document draws on examples of practices from Lehigh faculty members who share their strategies and assignment designs. All this material is accessible from the Navigating Information at Lehigh website which will serve as a central repository as this effort grows and evolves. Stay tuned!

LTS Connections Guest Editor and Index
By Sue Cady, Director, Admin & Planning

Now you can search in the new online index to LTS Connection. Located at www.lehigh.edu/lts/connect directly underneath the LTS logo, the index provides access by issue, article, subject, or keywords in article titles. Try searching by keyword "digital."

During the Linderman renovations, staff below will relocate to E.W. Fairchild Martindale Library & Computing Center this spring. For new room location information visit   http://www.lehigh.edu/ir/admin/staff/ltsdir.html

*Permanent relocations

Countdown to the Close (May 11th)
By Sue Cady and Sharon Wiles-Young

In early March plans were finalized to move the entire Linderman Library book collection out of the building and into remote sites during the renovation. This will improve the conditions under which the collection is housed, ensure reliable delivery of requested items, and eliminate time-consuming internal book moves during the project.

Tentative plans for the distribution of the collection are for the 700s and 800s (fine arts and English literature) to be relocated at the expanded Library Materials Center on the Mountaintop campus, a state-of-the-art facility with a small user area. The bound journals and remaining monographs are slated to move to facilities rented from Lafayette College; some music books will be moved temporarily to the Music Library in Zoellner.

The "mini-Linderman" collection (near the help desk on the main floor of Fairchild Library) will consist of Linderman books, bound journals, newly cataloged books, and refernece materials selected by faculty.

Faculty members can recommend books for mini-Linderman online by April 30 at http://www.lehigh.edu/lts/ linderman.request.html.

Faculty and grad students should check out books and take advantage of the extended renewal period.

Contact the help desk or Roseann Bowerman (x83053) or Kathe Morrow (x83041) for help.

Media Production will close for the Linderman renovation, relocating to the breezeway level of the Mart Wing of Fairchild Library. No production services will be available in June; limited services will be re-established in the summer. The Media Center (Fairchild Library, 370) will continue to offer scanning and color printing. In August there will be a grand reopening of the new (and renamed) Digital Media Studio, with updated video and digital photo studio spaces, and a new computer lab emphasizing digital media resources. Contact Elia Schoomer (83058 ens0) for information about service availability, scheduling, alternative service providers, etc.

Library and Technology Services Digital Library was awarded a Library and Technology Act planning grant from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Libraries. This funding will allow us to lay the groundwork for a digital project based on our area's industrial history.

Beginning in May, Lehigh and collaborating institutions will begin materials selection and work to build an outline for web presentation of these resources. With an emphasis on industry and society, materials will highlight the period from nineteenth-century boom through twentieth-century decline, as well as our ongoing community readjustment.

The effects of coal, canals, railroads, iron and steel on Bethlehem's industrial development and how these industries converged in an industrial community is a story of local, regional and national importance. The historical resources that exist collectively among partner institutions will allow the Digital Library to tell this rich story in a way that will be both useful and engaging.

Read about this and other digital projects-in-progress when you visit the Digital Library Team site (http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu).

LTS People

Debbie Henritzy and Lisa Luchini of Telecommunications Services were both honored with Lehigh's Tradition of Excellence award.

Rob Weidman, Digital Library Technical Coordinator, and Julia Maserjian, Digital Library Project Coordinator, gave a poster session on digital projects-in-progress at the ACLCP and ACRL/DVC joint meeting on March 18th. Rob also presented Lehigh's experience developing digital collections during the "Digital Collections: Celebrate Digital Access with CONTENTdm" product forum at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Boston.

Roseann Bowerman contributed an appendix entitled "Source Materials in Administrative Law" to the newly published third edition of The Legal Foundations of Public Administration (March 2005, Rowman & Littlefield) by Lehigh emeritus professors Donald Barry and Howard Whitcomb.

Jean Johnson, Kathe Morrow, and Roseann Bowerman will be presenting a poster session at the April 2005 national conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries on the topic "Login and Love It: Library Involvement in Lehigh's Portal."

For his work with the registrar's office where he collaborates on integrating functional and technical perspectives to solve daily problems, Ron Wagner (Senior Projects Specialist, Enterprise Systems Implementation) was featured in John Savarese's article, "Enterprise Technology Management >> Do You Know a Crossover Pro," Campus Technology Magazine (March 2005).

WiFi is being touted as an appropriate broadband solution because the other typical options—DSL or cable— aren't readily available everywhere and won't support a mobile communications environment. In theory an entire community could be covered with a single network which would permit authorized users to be connected to the network anywhere they live, work, or move about within that community.

In an attempt to develop new services for off-campus students, LTS is partnering with PPL Broadband (www.pplbroadband.com) to determine the feasibility of providing wireless broadband Internet services to students in areas of South Bethlehem. The goal of the project is to determine how reliable wireless service is in residential and commercial neighborhoods, how useful the bandwidth will be to college students, how dense the coverage must be to provide good service, and how well the provider can support customers.

PPL Broadband offers WiFi service, clustered around where many off-campus Lehigh students live. The service became available in February and is being offered free to 200 off-campus students who will provide feedback on the service. The cost of the service during the trial period, which extends through May, is being borne by Library & Technology Services, the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, and PPL Broadband itself. If the trial works well, it is likely to be extended to greater portions of South Bethlehem and offered as a primary Internet option for off-campus students, perhaps as early as Fall 2005.

"A Better Place TO BE a book and a person" is the theme of the campus-wide Linderman Library Launch scheduled for 4pm, Thursday, April 21, on the front steps of the Library. Refreshments and intermezzo music will follow a symbolic groundbreaking, as Linderman pauses after its 1878 and 1928 "acts" to begin its third act as a renovated space.