The 24 hour study room is scheduled to be available for use by January 31, 2005. This area contains six rooms each of which can accommodate four persons. There are data connections in each room and wireless internet access is also available. The room is monitored at all times on a television monitor in the UCHC Public Safety Department. There is also a house phone in this study. During Library business hours, the 24 hour study will be accessible from a door inside the Library. When the Library is closed, this interior door will be locked and this study can be entered through an outside door equipped with a swipe card and keypad lock for which UCHC students will have access codes.

Completion of this renovation program is expected in February, 2005, a year after this project began. Planning for a rededication of the Library and reception is now underway.

Library Budget
Library journals in general are in transition from print to electronic formats. This is especially true in the life sciences where rapid access to research results and clinical studies is a significant consideration. The transition to electronic formats raises the cost for a journal subscription. The New England Journal of Medicine, for example, cost approximately $400 a year for an institutional print subscription. The electronic equivalent is $5,400.

Also, a large percentage of health sciences journals are obtained through publishers located in Europe. Sixty percent of the UCHC Library journals are obtained through commercial companies with headquarters in European Union countries. Because of the strength of the euro compared to the dollar, it is a sufficient challenge to simply retain the number of journals for which subscriptions are already in place, much less add new titles.

The Library budget proposal for FY 2005/2006 will request additional funding for new journal titles to respond to faculty requests as well as for increased capacity for certain commercial databases which receive such extensive use that our licensed maximum number of users is reached on a regular basis.

Indirect Cost Study
Library staff cooperated in a study to determine the amount of usage the library receives by those engaged in research sponsored by the Federal government. The results of this study provide data that assist in determining the indirect cost rate that UCHC can charge the Federal government based on the use of institutional resources, like the Library, by Federally supported grant programs. However, an added outcome of this study is a determination of Library usage by board categories of users.

Questionnaires, both print and electronic, were used over a series of survey days, to determine who was using the library and for what purpose. The results are noted below:
User Category Percentage of usage
School of Medicine 48%
School of Dental Medicine 24%
Graduate School, Basic Sciences 9%
Graduate School, Public Health 5%
John Dempsey Hospital 5%
Other 9%
Total 100%

This survey documents the Library as a service provider to a wide range of institutional functions.

RDA
20 January 2005