PANITZA LIBRARY
Annual Report 2014/2015
Panitza Library plays a key role in the educational and research process of AUBG. In
2014/2015 academic year, the Library continued to transform its collections, facilities,
and services in response to significant changes in both the University and the information
environments, and to ensure that the Library contributed to the achievement of the
University’s objectives as effectively as possible. The Library built strong electronic and
print collections in a cost-effective way, and provided quality information resources and
services in support of the educational and research needs of AUBG community.
Resources
Panitza Library acquired and provided access to a diverse collection of print and nonprint information resources directly aligned with the University’s academic priorities.
The Library staff continued to collaborate with faculty members to build a collection
responsive to the University’s education and research needs. A wide range of print and
electronic resources were reviewed or trialed for potential acquisition, including
monographs, new databases, e-journals, and e-books packages. Despite the impact of the
global financial crisis and a tight University budgeting environment, the library staff’s
efforts to increase the resources through seeking external funding, negotiating discounts
with vendors, and establishing consortium agreements enabled AUBG Library to further
enlarge its collections. The number of items in the physical collections increased slightly.
However, the growth in electronic resources was over 10% and the proportion spent on eresources was above 60%. Increasing prices of scholarly publications have been a
challenge to the collection development. The total number of purchased print books is
1,027 titles while the generous contributions from our faculty, students, and friends
allowed the Library to add 329 individual and institutional donations to its collection. All
acquired materials were cataloged and their bibliographic information, presented in the
new RDA cataloging standard, is available in the online catalog. More effective
collaboration with faculty was implemented by involving them in the selection process of
new titles. The Book selection project gained popularity and a greater number of the
faculty recommended new acquisitions. The enhanced faculty-librarians communication
and partnership helped to build a more focused collection that supports the current
University curriculum. This is proved by the analysis of the circulation of the newlypurchased books, which showed that 50% of them have already been checked out until
May 2015. Special attention was paid to the latest electronic formats of scholarly
communications that complement on-site materials. Free trials of electronic databases
were arranged, the patrons’ feedback was analyzed, and the databases evaluated, which
resulted in subscription to new electronic resources. Due to changed circumstances and
faculty preferences, we cancelled Balkan Insight and EBSCO’s Business Source
Complete and subscribed to ABI/Inform Complete, which gave our community highly
needed new content and reports. Thanks to our partnership with AMICAL (American
International Consortium of Academic Libraries) institutions, the Library has now
permanent access to Classical Studies, Literature, and History collections of the Oxford
Handbooks Online, a valuable scholarly resource.
The constantly rising prices of journals, magazines, and newspapers urged us to extend
our collaboration with the team of the Journal Donation Project (managed by New School
for Social Research, New York). Thus, we were able to subscribe to 74 periodical titles
for only $8,674.74 instead of paying their full cost of $17,319. The total number of print
periodical subscriptions is 206, of which 163 are purchased periodicals and 43 are
donated subscriptions.
The following chart shows the increase of the library collections during the last 3 years.
Services
Important progress was made towards achieving the priorities set out in the 2010-2015
Strategic Plan. Library services are user-centered and emphasize personal attention even
when interaction is not face-to-face. With the average gate count of over 300 persons
entering the Library on a daily basis during the semesters, AUBG Library is a center for
campus activity where students use Library’s physical and virtual collections to complete
course requirements, work on group assignments, and get help from librarians. The
library was visited 84 338 times throughout the academic year with highest visit counts in
October, November, March and April. There is a slight decrease compared with the previous
year, offset by the increase in the use of online services. The circulation data presented in the
chart below shows that a total of 10, 839 library materials circulated, 8,783 of them were issued
to students, 1,120 to staff members, 883 to faculty, and 53 to ELI students. The decrease in the
students’ use of monographs is balanced by the significant growth in the use of online journals
and e-books. Preferred databases were EBSCOHost, JSTOR, and ScienceDirect with more than
140,000 full-text articles used.
70
7
Circulation
2014/2015
57
1266
2303
Reserve materials
Monographs
CDs - issues
Videotapes
7136
DVD - Issues
Serials
The collections as well as the readers’ records were maintained in a good order.
Procedure for tracking lost and mis-shelved books was established by involving student
assistants into doing a regular checking of books’ shelf order.
The library student
assistants program was optimized, and students cover evenings as well as week-ends
shifts. Access policy issues were clarified and operational procedures put in place to
manage effectively the reserve and circulation materials. Assessment of the storage
collection was made, new criteria for adding materials to it were defined, and we started
reviewing and relocating the books currently stored there.
The Information Literacy (IL) Program continued to be of first priority for Panitza
Library and the University as a whole. The Library kept sustainable the collaboration
with faculty for the improvement of the program as a whole and the discipline-specific
instructions in particular to ensure that IL skills are taught as part of the curriculum and
that students exploit effectively the Library’s collections and services. New LibGuides
and video tutorials were posted on the Library’s website for the further improvement of
these skills. Last academic year AUBG Library offered the following types of IL
instruction:

Orientation Trainings – designed for freshmen, EMBA students, faculty,
staff, and non-AUBG visitors

In-Class Trainings – tailored to the purposes of the ENG102 classes

Online Trainings – tailored to support the in-class trainings of the
ENG102 classes through the use of an online platform

Discipline-Specific Library Instruction – intended to the specific needs of
the higher-level courses

Individual Trainings
The goal of the IL program is to make patrons aware of the Library’s resources in
different formats and how to locate, evaluate, and use information ethically to become
information literate and life-long learning members of the society. In addition to the inclass trainings and to keep up with the newest trends in teaching, we continued to
incorporate the online platform for blended learning called Imagine Easy Academy. The
platform is embedded in the Blackboard Learn module of the ENG102 classes so that
students can use it anytime anywhere. With well-designed content that is frequently
updated, the platform effectively teaches students all the steps of the research process.
Using it, we are able to develop and strengthen students’ analytical critical thinking skills
with standards-aligned, subject-specific content and practice.
Pre-test and post-test surveys were implemented to assess student’s learning outcomes,
which showed considerable improvement of IL skills in specific areas. A total of over 66
training sessions were conducted with the participation of over 1068 students. All Library
educational programs give students a solid foundation for improvement of their IL skills
as well as good reading habits.
The Library’s reference service provided professional help to library patrons in locating
and retrieving information in various ways – individual consultation, instant messaging,
e-mails, etc. The working hours of the reference desk were extended. The reference
librarians usually answered to email questions even during the weekends so that students
and faculty could get help whenever they needed it. More productive and efficient
communication with library patrons was achieved by the use of an instant messaging
virtual reference tool. Panitza Library understands its important role in developing a
culture of respecting authors’ copyrights and strictly applies and instructs the users on the
requirements of the Bulgarian and US Copyright Laws.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service was an essential element in the Library’s strategy to
provide additional resources not held in the Library in order to support the research needs
of AUBG faculty and senior students. During the 2014/2015 academic year, the ILL
service was promoted mainly among the faculty members, which resulted in an increased
number of ILL requests. All requests were successfully fulfilled in due time. Some of the
loans were provided free of charge through our partners from AMICAL institutions.
Panitza Library shares resources and expertise within AMICAL and BIC Consortiums,
which has been extremely valuable for all members.
Initiatives
The major accomplishment throughout the year was the organization of the Twelfth
AMICAL conference “Clearing Thresholds: Information Literacy and Librarian-FacultyTechnologist cooperation”, held on May 27th-30th, 2015 at the AUBG campus. During the
conference planning and preparation process we worked as a team, with great devotion
and enthusiasm and managed to create something professionally and socially rewarding.
Being the conference local organizers, we received positive feedback from the attendees,
rating our efforts and performance very highly. Our colleague Krasimir Spasov together
with Prof. Dannie Chalk presented “On the threshold of a new era: Information literacy
and Generation Z” to share our experience in integrating Imagine Easy Academy into
our Freshman Writing program, thus providing our students an interactive learning
platform for mastering IL skills outside of the traditional classroom experience.
One of the main objectives in 2014/2015 was to increase the visibility of the Library and
to strengthen its role as a social place and University community center. Panitza Library
staff continued to organize presentations of new books by AUBG professors, poetry
readings, and exhibitions to highlight the research work of AUBG faculty in the
publication of scholarly books and articles. The events were visited by students, faculty,
and staff proving to be a successful collaboration in an informal way. The great success
came with attracting various clubs and happenings to use our space. The Literary Society
club, the Business club, the Freakonomics club, the Political club, and the Distinguished
Poets & Writer’s series – they all performed their events at Panitza library. Totally we
had 21 presentations with a different scope of interests and participation – academic, nonacademic, ambassadors’ visits, poets and writers’ readings, workshops, etc. Our use of
social media channels continues to grow and offers fast and direct opportunities to deliver
important messages, share stories, and engage in interactive communication with our
patrons.
Another important initiative was the redesign of the library’s webpage to be visually
appealing and easily navigated, as well as to be in line with the new university website.
The content of the site was updated and revised, the navigation and functionality was
improved. Special attention was given to new information resources, library guides, and
video-tutorials. Through the website our patrons were regularly informed about working
time changes, new acquisitions, and library events. The webpage was visited 53, 984
times during the year, while 152, 620 OPAC searches were performed.
Updated Library promotional brochure was published to serve as an important marketing
tool to prospective users. Promotional flyers to highlight our electronic resources and
specific services were designed and distributed among the students. We started “Book of
the week” initiative, whose purpose is to focus the patrons’ attention on new titles that are
expected to be of great interest to them. New materials were promoted by sending a list
of new acquisitions to AUBG community, as well as by shelving them on a special
display. Twenty-two book displays, featuring hot topics or popular authors were arranged
on the Ground floor to showcase the library’s collections and attract students’ interest.
Following the tradition, “Friends of the library” campaign was organized in April 2015 to
collect contributions by offering unnecessary donations and discarded library materials.
AUBG Bookstore kindly gave us a huge number of textbooks to support the campaign.
The collected amount was used to purchase new resources.
Panitza Library cooperated with the Writing center in organizing “The Long Night
against Procrastination”, when the students were able to spend all night at the Library to
work on their writing projects and/or assignments with the assistance of librarians and
writing tutors.
Projects
The Library fostered and maintained its consortium relationships with AMICAL
institutions for provision of not only free exchange of resources but also sharing of ideas
and expertise for mutual benefit. Panitza Library continued to participate in the
RESPOND Project (Resource Sharing Project for Network Discovery), whose aim is to
facilitate resource sharing, management and efficiency of interlibrary loan requests
among AMICAL institutions and libraries worldwide. RESPOND Project allowed us to
expand the access of the AUBG community to educational and research resources
providing fast, cheap, and high quality document delivery of materials not available in
our Library. WorldShare, the OCLC’s ILL management system is running smoothly, and
in 2016 it will convert to WorldCat Discovery. AUBG benefited through consortium
agreements for significant discounts on purchasing electronic resources and by
participating in professional development activities.
Panitza Library, together with the Central Library of Sofia University “St. Kliment
Ohridski” and the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, sustained the
NALIS (National Academic Library Information System) Project supported by the
America for Bulgaria Foundation. In 2015 our partnership with NALIS was extremely
beneficial for the launching of the digital collections project. The digital assets
management tool DigiTool, as well as the training on how to implement it, enabled the
Library to create a digital collection of students’ senior theses. Another major NALIS
benefit is the application called PRIMO – a state–of–the-art Google-like search of
aggregated content with highly-desirable relevancy ranking of search results.
Professional development
The complexities in the technology changes have made professional development and
cross-training a high priority. The comprehensive and systematic professional
development program ensured that Library staff skills are enhanced so that they are able
to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment, better assist in the achievement of the
Library’s strategic goals, and enable individual staff members to enjoy more satisfying
careers. Each Library staff member had the chance to participate in conferences,
workshops, and seminars organized by the Bulgarian Library Association, AMICAL or
BIC (Bulgarian Information Consortium). Extremely beneficial was the opportunity for
attending the Twelfth AMICAL conference, as well as the AMICAL Currents webinars
“Setting up playgrounds for the digital humanities” and “Threshold concepts & the
ACRL Information Literacy Framework”.
Panitza Library participated in organizing a popular professional development event for
Bulgarian librarians, the “BiblioWorld Science & Technology” international conference,
which took place in May at the Technical University in Sofia. The main goals of this
professional forum were to introduce emerging new library technologies to the Bulgarian
professional community, to increase awareness and understanding of all the changes that
affect higher education and university libraries, as well as to offer practical approaches
for catching up with rapid changes. Another important event was the NALIS international
forum “The challenge to collaborate in the digital era”. The lecturers were representatives
of leading libraries and library networks from Europe and the US. The library staff took
advantage of the Business Writing Skills workshop as well as the 2-day Marketing
training organized in June to enhance our performance.
The Library software VIRTUA was constantly upgraded to the latest version. Two staff
members participated in the VTLS User Group annual meeting in Bern, Switzerland,
attended training workshops from VTLS qualified personnel and got acquainted with
their new products.
Conclusion
As a whole the academic year 2014/2015 was very productive for Panitza Library.
Continued enhancement of services and collections has been a strong focus throughout
the year together with the ongoing pursuit of best practices across both the Library’s
physical and virtual presence. For the upcoming years significant emphasis should be
placed on increasing the visibility of the Library to ensure that students are aware of
physical and electronic resources and are served well by them. To foster extensive
collaboration and communication among librarians, faculty, and students, we will need to
introduce a Library liaison program. Thanks to it, we will be able to improve our
collection development in view of the specific needs of the academic programs offered at
AUBG, to satisfy in-depth research needs, as well as master IL skills among students.
AUBG senior students’ survey positioned their satisfaction from Library’s services and
resources in the top three out of all departments surveyed. This result is a reflection of
our ongoing efforts to create a fair, stimulating and satisfying work environment that in
turn enables the Library to play a meaningful role in supporting and advancing the
University’s goals.