Stewart Saunders | Purdue University (original) (raw)

Papers by Stewart Saunders

Performance Measurement and Metrics, Oct 31, 2008

When the Purdue University Libraries decided in 2004 to work on a strategic plan, it was recogniz... more When the Purdue University Libraries decided in 2004 to work on a strategic plan, it was recognized that realistic planning required reliable assessment data. The assessment data needed to be reliable not only at the university level but also at the college level. The colleges reflect discipline areas. We wanted to be able to drill down into the data, i.e., to break it out into subgroups, to see differences and variation by college and library, or for that matter, any subgroup that we might choose to investigate. To support this, the sampling of students was based on a stratum for each of the 10 colleges. All faculty were included in the survey design. 1. Drilling Down. Radar charts were created for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty in each of the 10 colleges. It became apparent that certain themes were consistent across colleges and user groups, but the charts also revealed basic differences among colleges and other user groups. Use patterns, satisfaction patterns, and outcome patterns were also broken out by user groups. 2. The Strategic Plan. The LibQUAL+R data, and more specifically its detailed analysis, had an impact on the strategic planning process. This conclusion is supported by a questionnaire filled out by the 30 participants in the Strategic Planning Group. This survey asked the participants to assess the specific areas in which the LibQUAL+R data affected the planning process. The LibQUAL+R data that most influenced them were the data that surprised them. This data was not visible at the general level. It surfaced as we drilled down to lower levels. Others believed that LibQUAL+R data had a negative effect on strategic planning. I will discuss 1) how this happened, 2) how it led to the scrapping of the first draft of the plan, and 3) the birth on a second draft which folded in what was of value from the LibQUAL+R assessment.

Portuguese explorations of the African coast began in the era of Henry the Navigator (d. 1460). B... more Portuguese explorations of the African coast began in the era of Henry the Navigator (d. 1460). By the mid-1500s, Portugal's African outposts ranged from Cape Verde, a group of islands in the Atlantic 400 miles west of Dakar, to much of the coast of East Africa. Following World War II most British, French, and Belgian territories in Africa gained their independence between 1957 and 1963. In contrast Portugal clung to her colonies, which were renamed "overseas territories" in 1951, despite armed struggles. After the Portuguese revolution of 1974, first Guinea-Bissau (1974) and then Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Sao Tome e Principe (1975) finally won independence. Civil wars between rival political groups continued to devastate Angola and Mozambique, however. The five nations of lusophone Africa include 805,873 square miles (2,087,202 square kilometers), with a total population in 1988 of about 26,147,000. Literacy rates ranged from 19% in Guinea-Bissau to 33% in Mozambique in the 1980s. The first archives and libraries in Portuguese Africa were created to meet the needs of Portuguese officials. The earliest known archives in Luanda date from 1603. They were destroyed when the Dutch took possession of Luanda in 1641. After the Portuguese retook Luanda in 1648, the Governor General created an official archive in 1654 which continues to this day as the Arquive Historico de Angola. During the 18th century other archives for the customs house and the legal courts were created. The Biblioteca Municipal de Luanda was established in 1873 to serve the needs of the public. In the early 20th century a number of scientific libraries were created in the Portuguese territories as adjuncts to commercial enterprises and government sponsored research institutes. A period of ferment within the library profession began in the late 1950s and 1960s, both in Portugal and in the African provinces. The library journal, Cadernos de Biblioteconomia, Arquivistica e Documentacao, was founded in Lisbon in 1963. The editorial staff of Cadernos became a vocal protagonist for library support, library education, the status of librarians, and the improvement of libraries in the African provinces. They sought permission to create a national library association for all professionals, although there was some desire among the documentalists in scientific libraries to create their own association separate from the librarians and archivists. Librarians and archivists at the time held degrees in librarianship from either the University of Coimbra or the University of Lisbon while documentalists were nondegreed. The Portuguese Ministry of Oversees Territories established the Centro de Documentacao Cientifica Ultramarina in 1957. The principle function of this Center was to coordinate scientific documentation within all of the Ministry's libraries, including seven documentation centers in Angola, Mozambique, and Cape Verde. Its first director, Dr. Zeferion Ferreira Paulo, was vice-president of the International Federation for Documentation from 1960 to 1963. He tried to bring library practices into conformity with FID and UNESCO standards. During the 1960s the Centro de Documentacao began work on a union catalog for all 46 libraries under the Ministry; it also gave short courses in documentation, and it gave technical assistance and organized seminars for the scientific libraries in Angola and Mozambique.

portal - Libraries and the Academy, 2008

Should academic libraries seek to improve general satisfaction with their services, or are some s... more Should academic libraries seek to improve general satisfaction with their services, or are some services more important than others? This article asserts that faculty and students mainly want information resources. The research analyzes LibQual+TM data to determine which other library resources contribute to information satisfaction among users. The conclusion is that access mechanisms are very important predictors of information resource satisfaction, but library facilities and library staff are negligible predictors. This is true across different groups of users.

portal - Libraries and the Academy, 2003

Reference and User Services Quarterly, Sep 1, 2007

For my second column as the editor of the new Management column, I decided to focus on library se... more For my second column as the editor of the new Management column, I decided to focus on library service assessment. It is certainly one of the most important activities we need to do; however, often we, as librarians, have little training on or knowledge of how to evaluate and assess our service. We are better at collection evaluation than service evaluation. LibQUAL+, one of the most important assessment tool libraries are using right now, was the first assessment method that came to mind. My long-term colleague, Stewart Saunders, is the Purdue Libraries statistics expert. He analyzed the LibQUAL+ data for us, and so was the logical choice to write this article. What next for the column? I am on the lookout for ideas and writers on the broad range of topics that relate to running a reference or public service department. I encourage you to suggest column topics and to become an author and write on any successful reference programs or services.-Editor

French Historical Studies, 1978

I wish to thank M. Pierre Berthon, archivist of the Academie des Sciences, for information on the... more I wish to thank M. Pierre Berthon, archivist of the Academie des Sciences, for information on the history of the Archives.

Collection Management, Dec 1, 1982

portal - Libraries and the Academy, 2004

Purdue University Press eBooks, Dec 15, 2015

Print books pose inherent difficulties for researchers who want to observe users' natural in-book... more Print books pose inherent difficulties for researchers who want to observe users' natural in-book reading patterns. With e-books and logs of their use, it is now possible to track several aspects of users' interactions inside e-books, including the number and duration of their sessions with an e-book and the order in which pages are viewed. This chapter reports on a study of one year of EBL user log data from Purdue University to identify different reading patterns or ways in which users navigate within different types of e-books-authored monographs vs. edited collections-and in e-books in different subject areas. The results of the analysis revealed a few differences in the reading patterns used for e-books of different types and subject areas, but more striking was the similarity in reading patterns across the e-books. Greater differences occurred between individual users, and these differences are best explained by differences in individuals' personal reading objectives. The analysis of reading logs for e-books is still very much a new venture. From this perspective, the findings are exploratory and descriptive rather than conclusive, and as much about the evolution of workable methodologies as they are about the results of the analysis. Log analysis reveals nothing about users' circumstances or intentions; however, if used in tandem with usability studies, and studies based on surveys, diaries, and interviews, it could contribute to a more objective understanding of users' interactions with e-books. 14 224 | Academic E-Books bAckground And IntroductIon In the ancient world, reading was usually done out loud. In A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel (1996) recounts a story from the Confessions of St. Augustine in which Augustine tells of the time he paid a visit to Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. Augustine observed Ambrose reading: "his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent, and his tongue was still" (Confessions, 6, 3, as cited by Manguel, 1996, p. 42). This was remarkable to Augustine because reading silently was something out of the ordinary. Like Augustine's observation, most objective descriptions of silent reading have focused on its physiognomic aspects (i.e., reading posture, facial expression, and movements of the hands, fingers, tongue, lips, and eyes). In the 19 th and 20 th centuries, many scientific studies of reading concentrated on readers' visual behavior or eye movements. Methods of tracking eye movements included the corneal reflection and the scleral observation methods, both of which required holding the subject's head in a fixed position. Other methods involved attaching monitors to the subject's eye while the subject scanned a page or read lines of text. Another study placed the reader in a darkened room with a text and a flashlight. "The use of a light is clearly somewhat unnatural for the reader," the educational psychologist A. K. Pugh (1977) noted, "but the restrictions on the subject are less than in most of the eye-movement recording methods" (p. 42). Pugh discussed a fundamental discovery resulting from Louis-Émile Javal's early eye-movement studies; when reading or scanning, human eyes do not move smoothly, but rather make jerky movements (saccades) and stop several times, moving very quickly between each stop (fixation). The movements measured in these experiments are very small, and the subjects read only relatively short texts (Pugh, 1978, p. 14). Marshall (2009) notes that, although eye tracking "provides important data about some aspects of reading-word and letter recognition, most importantly-it has not shed as much light on how people read in the wild," that is, read naturally (p. 101). Other controlled reading studies give test subjects identical reading material with instructions, observe and record subjects' actions (e.g., through video recording), and, in some studies, ask them all the same series of questions. User studies often are conducted to inform improvements in the design of products, including printed and digital documents

Collection Management, Jul 15, 1996

College & Research Libraries, Sep 1, 1983

Collection Management, Jul 1, 2010

The Purdue University Libraries was an early implementer of purchasing books requested through in... more The Purdue University Libraries was an early implementer of purchasing books requested through interlibrary loan rather than borrowing the requested books. The service, called Books on Demand, began in January 2000. An analysis of the requests at the end of the first two years of service indicated that these patron-selected books were more likely to have repeat circulations than the books acquired through normal collection development processes. When the program reached its tenth year, the authors analyzed and compared the books purchased through Books on Demand with all other purchased books during the same period. Findings indicate that books acquired through this user-initiated program have higher circulation rates than books acquired through the normal selection channels. The difference is quite large, a mean of 4.1 compared to a mean of 2.4, when the first ILL use is included as a circulation. Therefore the authors recommend libraries investigate a service of purchasing books requested via interlibrary loan as a complement to other collection development efforts.

The Abbe Gaultier was an agent or spy for the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Mar... more The Abbe Gaultier was an agent or spy for the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Torcy. Through much of the War of the Spanish Succession he lived in England and communicated with Torcy in coded letters. He assumed several roles in the settlement of Utrecht. His most prominent role was to provide a channel of communication which allowed the Earl of Oxford and the Duke of Shrewsbury, leaders in the new Tory ministry of 1710, to negotiate secretly with Torcy and to avoid the scrutiny of the Dutch, the Austrians, and members of their own cabinet. During the negotiations at Utrecht he served the French Plenipotentiaries and acted as a courier for Torcy. He corresponded on behalf of Oxford and Viscount Bolingbroke with the Stuart Pretender in France. Francois Gaultier came to London in 1698 as chaplain to the Marechal de Tallard, the French Ambassador to London. When Tallard returned to Paris, Gaultier remained in order to collect information for Torcy. For a short period he was in the service of Count Gallas, and then he attached himself to the Earl of Jersey whose wife was a Catholic. When Torcy heard that the Godolphin ministry might fall, he wrote to Gaultier in July 1710 instructing him to contact the new favorites, Shrewsbury and Mrs. Masham, to find their sentiments for a negotiated peace. Only a few weeks passed before the Earl of Jersey asked Gaultier to enquire as to whether he could negotiate for Torcy. While Jersey was not a member of the new ministry, he was in contact with Shrewsbury and Oxford. Between the fall of 1710 and April of 1711 Jersey made known to Gaultier the conditions under which England might agree to a peace between France and the Allies. These secret negotiations have become known as the "Jersey" period on the negotiations of the Peace of Utrecht. Oxford and Shrewsbury stayed in the background, no doubt concerned that any direct contact with Torcy would be construed by the Dutch and Austrians as a betrayal of the alliance. Bolingbroke and the rest of the Tory Cabinet were unaware that negotiations were in process. The conditions set forth by Jersey were in fact a betrayal of the Allies and an attempt to benefit English commerce. Queen Anne and the Tory ministry, however, very much wanted an end to the war and realized that the demands put forth by the Allies in 1709 could never be accepted by France. As the war in Spain seesawed back and forth during the fall of 1710, the Tories hesitated to make any concrete proposals to Torcy via Gaultier. At one point Torcy offered to send someone of a higher level to negotiate, but the English insisted on mediation through Gaultier. Once it became apparent, however, that Philip would be victorious, Gaultier wrote to Torcy in December 1710 that the English would not insist on restoring the House of Austria to the Spanish throne if English commercial interests could be secured. Jersey had also communicated to Gaultier that the new Tory ministry would welcome a Jacobite restoration. A Jacobite restoration reflected Jersey's personal hopes more than it did the sentiment of the Tories, who were divided between Jacobites and Hanovarians. For Gaultier, however, the possibility of seeing the Pretender on the throne as James III was as important as the peace itself. With James on the English throne, France could look to England as an ally in its future dealings with the continent. Gaultier therefore proposed to Torcy that Jersey be pensioned.

College & Research Libraries, Nov 1, 1981