News From FondrenNews From Fondren
In November 1994, Information Systems and Fondren Library conducted a survey of the faculty to initiate a regular evaluation of our services. This report will cover only the results on the library portion of the questionnaire.
The current survey was a follow-up to a comprehensive survey of users of Fondren Library conducted during 1992-93. Questions covered only a few variables: what services are being used, what is the quality of the services, how well are our collections meet ing the teaching and research needs of the faculty, and how much are our electronic resources being used by the faculty.
Table 1: Years at Rice
Years at Rice # % Less than 1 21 10.6 1 to 5 years 53 26.6 6 to 10 years 33 16.6 11 to 20 years 30 15.1 Over 20 years 57 28.6 Missing 4 2.5When compared by division, the largest number of responses were received from Engineering, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. (See Table 2.) Unfortunately, the response rate from Humanities faculty was lower than that from other divisions and lower t han expected. Given the great concerns expressed by Humanities faculty about the library's collections, we will have to make a concerted effort in future surveys to contact more faculty in Humanities.
Table 2: Respondents by Division
Division # % Engineering 41 20.6 Humanities 29 14.6 Jones 18 9.0 Music 8 4.0 Natural Sciences 61 30.7 Social Sciences 40 20.0 Other 2 1.0
University Librarian, Beth Shapiro, demonstrates SIRSI Corporation's library system at the Information Technology Showcase held in Fondren Library on March 30, 1995. SIRSI's system will be installed in the library over the summer. (See article on
page 4 for more information.)
The most productive and revealing aspects of the survey were obtained from post-survey phone calls made by librarians and consultants to every faculty member who had written comments on the survey or who had rated our overall services as poor. More than 2 40 telephone calls were made; some faculty were called more than once if they had made comments about both computing and the library.
In many instances, the comments written indicated that the respondent did not understand a policy or was operating with misinformation. The follow-up phone calls made it possible for us to provide these faculty with current up-to-date information.
We assumed that our heaviest interlibrary loan users would be in the Humanities. Surprisingly, that proved not to be the case. (See Table 3.) Ninety-two percent of the Social Sciences respondents have used interlibrary borrowing services, compared with 75 % of the Humanities faculty. The survey results indicate that faculty from all divisions, not just Humanities, rely on other library collections to supplement what they can obtain at Fondren Library.
Table 3: Usage of Interlibrary Borrowing Services By Division
Division Users Non-Users Engineering 68% 32% Humanities 75% 25% Jones 59% 41% Music 57% 43% Natural Sciences 75% 25% Social Sciences 92% 8% Other 50% 50%
Faculty were also asked to indicate priorities for strengthening the collections, and suggestions were received on most forms. Library staff called each person who either made suggestions or who indicated the library was inadequate for his/her teaching. T he information obtained from the follow-up telephone calls has been used to develop a materials budget enhancement request.
Table 4: How is Fondren Library Doing Overall?
Rating % Excellent 13% Very Good 49% Good 31% Fair 4% Poor 3%
When faculty members who have not used specific library services were subtracted from the survey group, the rankings changed slightly. Of the faculty who use the book/journal collection, 70% rated expanding the collection as a high priority. Of that same group, about 50% rated reference desk service, library security, and reserve service as high priorities.
Richard Graves uses one of the library's circulating Powerbooks to enter data from U.S. census materials.
Response to the availability of
laptops for checkout from the Circulation Desk has been enthusiastic. Typical comments are: Wonderful! So cool! Great! Convenient! Keep it around! Within the first three weeks of this
new service, laptops have circulated 276 times.
Fondren Library's audiovisual
collection is growing by approximately 5 percent annually. All videos are listed in LIBRIS (by title, producer, etc.). If you wish to obtain a listing of all videos, type "k=videorecor
ding". Contact your subject librarian to request new audiovisual materials.
EconLit is being added to RiceInfo. EconLit, which indexes journals in economics, will be one of the FirstSearch databases.
Fondren Library is subscribing
to CD News--Houston Chronicle, a full-text electronic version of the newspaper. CD News will be on CD-ROM at the Reference Desk. It will cover the period from 1985 to w
ithin a few months of the present.
Fondren Library is subscribing
to Current Facts in Chemistry on CD-ROM. This heavily requested CD will also be available at the Reference Desk.
When patrons enter the library this fall, they will see a new face on LIBRIS. On March 1, Fondren Library concluded negotiations for purchasing the Unicorn Collection Management System, a library system provided by the SIRSI Corporation of Huntsville, Ala bama. The system will be installed over the summer and in place for the beginning of the fall semester.
The WebCat interface offers the same powerful search engine as the regular SIRSI interface; therefore, searches for author, title, keyword, and subject headings are still available. In addition, WebCat features point-and-click movement between screens an d records. When a record is displayed, the author, title, and subject headings are displayed in blue, the color for hyperlinks. Clicking on such a link launches a search for all records that contain that subject, author, or title.
If you would like an early look at WebCat, it can be located on the World Wide Web at http://www.sirsi.com/. Simply follow the pointers given at that address. If you have difficulty, ask at the Reference Desk, or conta ct Kay Flowers.
Each year Fondren Library supports the Hazel G. Creekmore Symposium through the acquisition of books dealing with the theme of the conference. These materials are added to the Creekmore Memorial Curriculum Collection, which provides area teachers and Rice students and faculty with professional resources related to teaching. The collection is supported by a gift of Houston Endowment Inc. to the Center for Education.
Multicultural education was the subject of this year's Creekmore Symposium, held on March 21, 1995. Jacqueline Irvine, professor of urban education at Emory University, was the featured speaker.
Spring 1995 has been a busy semester for the Electronic Studio (ES), the educational development group of Information Systems. Students are using courseware developed by faculty with support from ES in six courses. Courses in history of art, architecture, history, and religious studies are among those using Electronic Studio projects. Over the past two years, increased network access and user-friendly software have made the use of online resources simpler and more widespread. Currently, most ES projects a re developed as World Wide Web (WWW) resources; students use Netscape or Mosaic to access the courseware.
Dr. Van Helden lectures on Galileo to students in History 333.
In recent months a sensational murder trial has absorbed the time and attention of the media and a large segment of the American population. At the beginning of the century the murder of William Marsh Rice captured people's attention in a similar fashion. Martin L. Friedland's new book, The Death of Old Man Rice: a True Story of Criminal Justice in America, examines Rice's death and the murder trial which followed. Using documents from a collection in the Woodson Research Center (WRC), Friedland analyzes in detail the case which was of such importance to the future of Rice University.
Archival material used for Martin Friedland's book.
Much of the trial was spent in proving that the will Patrick claimed was written by Rice in 1900 was, instead, a forgery by Patrick. Captain James A. Baker had drafted a will for Rice in 1896, which left the bulk of Rice's fortune to the founding of an In
stitute (later Rice University). The 1900 will left most of Rice's money to Patrick for a charitable foundation; this was seen as the motive for Patrick's masterminding of the murder of Rice.
In 1986 Friedland contacted the Woodson Research Center to find out what materials were available. Through the following eight years, Friedland corresponded with the WRC staff and visited Rice twice to examine more closely parts of the collection. Friedla
nd even hired a handwriting expert to reexamine the handwriting samples in the WRC collection that had been used in court to prove Patrick's guilt.
The materials that Friedland found useful for his book included scrapbooks of news clippings from all the major newspapers of the early 1900s, copies of samples of William Marsh Rice's handwriting, and extensive documentation from the legal firms engaged
by the Board of Trustees of Rice Institute to support the prosecution. The collection in the WRC contains information on the original lawsuit disputing the will of the second Mrs. Rice (which was the case that drew Patrick's attention to the Rice fortune
), the murder trial of Patrick, and the subsequent cases that followed the settlement of William Marsh Rice's will of 1896.
Fondren Library has many sources of legal materials, including federal and selected state court decisions and federal and Texas statutes and regulations. These resources are not readily apparent in LIBRIS if you are not familiar with legal research. This
article discusses some of the major legal resources.
State court decisions are published in regional reporters. The Southwestern Reporter: Texas Decisions (S.W. and S.W.2d) records Texas state court decisions. Decisions from California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Wyoming,
Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Alaska are found in the Pacific Reporter (P. or P.2d). The North Eastern Reporter (N.E. or N.E.2d) contains decisions from New York, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Massachusetts.
Often you will have the name of a party but not the citation for a case. Fondren Library has several case name tables for Supreme Court opinions that list cases alphabetically by name and give the citation. For recent decisions see Decisions of the Unite
d States Supreme Court: Cumulative Case Table. We also have several citators, known as Shepard's, which are used to find later cases that have relied on, modified, or reversed a particular decision.
The library also has numerous books and journals that cover legal topics. The Index to Legal Periodicals may be used to identify law review articles on a given subject. All of the law reviews in our collection are listed in LIBRIS, as are legal treatises
and books. These articles and books discuss court decisions and provide citations to cases that you may want to review.
Court decisions are available through the Internet at gopher and World Wide Web sites. Recent Supreme Court opinions are found on RiceInfo and at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/supct.table.htm
l; full-text searching is available. Decisions of the Third and Eleventh Courts of Appeals may be found at gopher://ming.law.vill.edu/11/.Fed-Ct/.Circuit/.3d/ and http://www.law.emory.edu/11circuit/index.html.
Legal research may seem complicated if you have not done it before. If you need law-related materials, please ask for assistance in the Government Publications and Special Resources area in the basement of Fondren Library.
The Document Delivery and Fee-Based Services Department has expanded service to undergraduates. While formerly interlibrary borrowing was available to undergraduates only with a faculty advisor's signature, all undergraduates may now request loans and c
opies of material not held in the Fondren Library collection. There is no charge to students for this service.
Reference staff will help students to evaluate resources available in Fondren Library before requesting materials from Document Delivery and to be selective in determining the materials needed from outside sources. Students should be aware that copies may
take up to two weeks, and books may take three weeks or more to obtain. There may be situations where they will be better served by going to another local library to copy or to obtain a book through our on-site borrowing program.
In the fall, undergraduate students will be offered instruction in the composition of complete citations and the effective use of Document Delivery services; meanwhile, assistance is available at the Reference Desk or Interlibrary Borrowing.
Published three times a year, in the Spring, Fall and Winter.
Editor: Elizabeth Baber (baber@ricevm1.rice.edu).
Newsletter committee: Jean Caswell, Barbara Halbert, Joe Hatfield, Kerry Keck, Barbara Kile, Kay McStay, Charles Schwartz, Jane Segal.
Photographer: Betty Charles
News From Fondren is a copyrighted publication of the Fondren Library, Rice University. All or part of
News From Fondren may be redistributed, with appropriate credit.
Statements of fact and opinion appearing in News From Fondren are the responsibility of the authors and do
not imply the endorsement of Rice University.
New Conclusions
Friedland reached some intriguing new conclusions through his research. He believes that the valet might not have killed Rice after all; Rice may have died of natural causes instead.
Legal Resources in Fondren Library
Amy Spare, Head, Government Publications and Special Resources, spare@is.rice.edu
Finding Court Decisions
The easiest way to find a court decision is to have the case citation. All the decisions of a particular court appear in chronological order in one set of books called a reporter. The citation gives the name of the reporter, volume number, and page numbe
r for that particular case. For example, the citation for the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education is 347 U.S. 483--that's volume 347 of the reporter for the Supreme Court, United States Reports, page 483. Federal Court of Appeals decisi
ons are found in the Federal Reporter (F. or F.2d or F.3d), and federal district court opinions are found in the Federal Supplement (F.Supp).
Finding Cases on a Particular Subject
When you are interested in how courts have interpreted a specific law, an annotated statute will be helpful. For federal annotated statutes use United States Code Service. Texas state annotated statutes can be located in Vernon's Texas Codes Annotated and
Vernon's Annotated Revised Civil Statutes of the State of Texas. These sources are arranged by code section; the text of each section is followed by brief descriptions of court decisions on that section and the citation for that case.
In response to questions generated by the article "Private Support of Fondren Library" (see Winter 1995 issue), the gifts and memorials form is reproduced here. For more forms call the Friends of Fondren office at 285-5157.
Document Delivery for Undergraduates
Una Gourlay, Head, Document Delivery and Fee-Based Services, gourlay@ricevm1.rice.edu
Fondren Library Locations and Frequently Called Numbers
Reference 285-5113
(1st floor Fondren Library)
LIBRIS Access Via Modem 527-6070
Brown Fine Arts Library 527-4832
(3rd floor Fondren Library)
Business Information Center 527-6062
(1st floor Herring Hall)
Circulation 527-4021
(1st floor Fondren Library)
Fondren Express 527-8101
(Basement Fondren Library) ext.2869
Government Publications 285-5483
(Basement Fondren Library)
Interlibrary Loan 527-8101
(Basement Fondren Library) ext.2284
Reserve Desk 527-4021
(1st floor Fondren Library)
Woodson Research Center 527-8101
(1st floor Fondren Library) ext.2586
Semester and Holiday Library Hours
For information about regular and holiday hours, call 527-4800
News From Fondren
Vol.5 no.1, Spring 1995
Fondren Library, Rice University, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX, 77251-1892, 713-527-4022
