California State University
Dr. Gordon Smith
Senior Associate, Information Technology Policy and Analysis
Office of the Chancellor

A. Introduction

The libraries of the California State University produced in 1994a comprehensive strategic plan designed to prepare for the educationaland information environments anticipated for the 21st Century. That plan, titled Transforming CSU Libraries for the 21st Century, identified as its first and foremost strategy asystem of linking and integrating for easy access the full rangeof information resources available in all the CSU and other librariesas well as resources of the Internet. CSU libraries were facingfrozen or declining budgets combined with prodigious increasesin the rate of publication and in access methods to the expandinginformation cosmos. A new and innovative use of technology wasseen as necessary to leverage the size of the CSU and its existinginformation resources in order to continue to meet the informationneeds of students and faculty.

The Unified Information Access System (UIAS) initiative that arosefrom this strategic planning responds to a vision for the 21stCentury that assumes that CSU students and faculty will interactwith each other and with information using pervasive technologythat will enable every student and every faculty member to access,retrieve, display, and manipulate a vast array of recorded knowledgeand information. The barriers of space-physical location of student,faculty member, or information-are expected to disappear, as wellas the barrier of time.

In this vision, the 21st Century CSU campus library will be thehub of a full-service information and instruction network designedto facilitate the delivery and use of recorded knowledge and information.This transformation is expected to change teaching, styles oflearning, and modes of scholarly communication in response toa rapidly changing educational environment and an increasinglydiverse student population. Using the services offered by theCSU libraries, every student will be able to take full advantageof the electronic information age without regard to backgroundor economic status.

B. Problem Statement

The Institution

With 340,000 students, more than 37,000 faculty,and two million alumni, the California State University is thelargest system of senior higher education in the country. Itis comprised of 23 campuses and six off campus centers throughoutthe state. As measured by several dimensions, it is one of themost diverse systems as well. Campuses range in size from 400students at the California Maritime Academy to 30,000 studentsat San Diego State University. Campuses are both rural and urban,commuter and residential. Two campuses are polytechnics, andone, CSU Monterey Bay, recently opened as a converted army base.

Diversity also characterizes the student population. More than a third of CSU's students are working adults who attendpart time. The average age of undergraduates is 24.6 years. Ethnic diversity is high; students from non-white groups compriseroughly 50 percent of CSU's enrollment. The latter trend is upwardsas evidenced by comparison with the non-white enrollment of 28percent in 1984.

The CSU is governed by a board of trusteesand a systemwide administration in the Office of the Chancellor. Despite appearances, however, academic and fiscal decision makingis highly decentralized. Presidents have been granted both authorityand accountability for carrying out the mission of their institutionswithin the budget allocated by the trustees. In this climateof campus autonomy, systemwide cooperative initiatives must demonstrateclear benefits to each individual campus; participation, for themost part, is voluntary.

Despite campus autonomy and diversity in academiccultures, CSU libraries have a long tradition of cooperation. That tradition made possible the development of the 1994 strategicplan which set forth a common vision and specific strategies infive goal areas: information resources, instruction, human resources,infrastructure, administration and funding. The Unified InformationAccess System initiative is the principle strategy of the informationresources goal area.

The Situation

CSU libraries must increasingly rely on alternatives to traditionalownership of information resources to meet the needs of studentsand faculty. Limited acquisitions budgets combined with staggeringprice increases over the last several years have resulted in massiveserial cancellation projects. By the mid-1990s, CSU librarieshad been forced to cancel collectively over 15,000 periodicaland serial subscriptions. Purchases of books dropped from 460,000in 1987 to 320,000 in 1996, this despite a steady increase intitles published during that period.

The ever-increasing complexity of the information environmenthas exacerbated the pressure on library budgets as well. In additionto straining to retain essential subscriptions and acquire importantbooks, CSU libraries have had to respond to demands for accessto expensive bibliographic and full-text databases such as LEXIS-NEXIS. Rather than supplanting the older information formats, new andemerging resources must be added to the library's array of existingresources; acquisition and access costs expand rather than shift.

The explosion in sources of information, dramatically illustratedby the World Wide Web in particular, has also strained the library'seducational and public service capabilities. Librarians struggleto help students make sense of the vast array of resources, aneffort made more difficult by the increasing tendency of studentsto do their research online without ever setting foot in a libraryor asking for guidance from a librarian. Librarians are scramblingto develop programs of instruction in information competence toequip students with the skills to select, obtain, evaluate anduse information.

Finally, the demographic changes of the student population inCalifornia, and the CSU's planned response to those changes, arean important component of the situation facing its libraries. Not only will libraries be required to serve students with increasinglydiverse backgrounds and learning styles, they will be forced toaccommodate a change in the basic means of delivery of highereducation. By the year 2005, CSU is projected to enroll at least70,000 more students than it does today. With no funding expectedto build or expand campuses capable of handling such growth, the CSU will increasingly rely on educational and information technologiesto create a "distributed" learning environment for itsstudents. Libraries will face the challenge of delivering libraryservices and instruction to students who may never visit a campus.

Strategic Significance

The situation described above, and CSU libraries' response toit, presents a model for voluntary collaboration by a large numberof campuses in applying information technology through strategicplanning. In the process of crafting a strategy, library administratorsand Chancellor's Office staff worked through the natural tensionbetween centralization and campus autonomy to find the right balanceto permit development of a cohesive approach to responding tooverwhelming change.

Another element of significance is the innovative nature of theapproach sought by the libraries. Several pieces of the overallunified access system envisioned had been developed and implementedat other institutions, but none had yet achieved the full rangeof functionality seen as needed to respond to the CSU's situation. This proved to be significant when approaching vendors as candidatesfor partnering, and it proved significant when seeking fundingfrom the CSU system. Applications of technology seen as creativeand "leading edge" are of considerably more interestto top administrators and to vendors seeking new products to marketthan are traditional solutions.

On a more fundamental level of strategic significance, the applicationof technology through the UIAS will leverage the combined informationand professional staff resources of 22 libraries to provide ahigher level of service than would be possible if each continuedto function separately.

Objectives: Desired Outcomes

The Unified Information Access System project seeks to developa dynamic and comprehensive tool for student access to informationresources, for resource sharing among libraries, and for guidanceand instruction in navigating the complexities of the expandinginformation environment. The UIAS is defined as a single, easyto use, integrated, and coherent computer-based user interfacewhich provides direct online access to or delivery of:

• print resources described in CSU Libraries' Online Public Access Catalogs and described in catalogs of libraries beyond CSU;
• print resources described in other bibliographic/abstract databases such as periodical indices;
• digital resources, including text, image, video, and multi-media;
• Internet-based resources including those on the World-WideWeb;
• guidance in the use and evaluation of information resourcesincluding access to self-paced information competence instruction.

The UIAS will be dynamic both in its ability to respond to therapidly changing information environment and in its ability torespond to the needs of the individual student. Students andfaculty will access the UIAS via a standard Web browser suchas Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. The browser clientsoftware will be linked by the UIAS gateway server on each campusto the library's patron datafile. This linkage will not onlypermit authentication for users accessing licensed databases,but will also permit librarians to customize the interface fordifferent categories of users. A faculty member, for example,could be presented a sequence of screens entirely different fromone designed for a lower division undergraduate.

In summary, the desired outcome of the UIAS project is the creation of a powerful information access and educational tool that can meet the academic information needs of CSU students and faculty, a tool that is available anytime and any place.

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