(Unila): The university library is committed to have the number of collections improved to facilitate lecturers and students to access the updated collections particularly in the form of the e-resource collections, both journals and books from distinguished publishers.
Unila public relations reporter had the opportunity to conduct a short interview about digital library material services (e-resources) with the Chair of the Unila Library UPT, Khairudin, Ph.D., some time ago in his office. According to Khairudin, the Unila library presently has e-book access from a number of reputable publishers and subscribes to online periodicals.
Unila lecturers and students who are in need of international journals and other scientific works to support their research can access and download the e-resource collections, such as, ScienceDirect and Westlaw for journals, while e-books include Talyor and Francis Ebooks, Kubuku, and others.
The ScienceDirect journals from the publisher Elsavier is prioritized for the fields of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, and Social Science and Humanities, while Westlaw published by Thomson Reuters is particularly intended to meet the need of the legal field.
Providing lecturers and students with e-resources is necessary to support their research activities. E-resource services are regarded as being cheaper and more practical than those of written journals the price of which are expensive. Thus it spends minimum budget to purchase e-resources, instead of buying written references.
E-resources also provide references that are always up to date and this is relevant to scientific developments, and meets Dikti standards regarding the journal publication year limit, a maximum of five years back.
Need-based e-resource services
Khairudin described his efforts to search data and information of journals and e-books lecturers and students are mostly needed to support their research.
The e-resource collections that meet the needs of lecturers’ research interest are selected on the basis of the data and information from publishers.
“I made a survey, I contacted several publishers, including Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, and Springer. Then I also asked the publishers the data of the journals the lectures most frequently accessed but they failed to access them, and the data showed that Elsevier products were found to have been the most common products the lecturers and students accessed,” said Khairudin.
With reference to the data and information, it was also found that the collections to which lecturers and students most frequently accessed or searched include the fields of engineering, social science, and agriculture. The data are the bases for the Unila library to subscribe to ScienceDirect.
Other sorts of collections regarding law studies are also featured, especially the Westlaw journal which are mostly recommended by law faculty lecturers especially foreign alumni, UI and UGM as the primary reference. By opening access to this journal, lecturers and students of law are facilitated to improve the quality of research.
Socialization of promoting e-resource services, especially access to ScinceDirect and Westlaw was carried out through roadshows to all faculties, inviting publisher representatives and Unila lecturers and students to to access it properly.
For e-book needs, the provision is collected from publishers, and a survey in the forms of filling out forms, discussion forums with deans, communication via WhatsApp and visiting faculty leaders in person.
Apart from that, approaches were also made to a number of universities, such as Universitas Brawijaya (UB) and Universitas Negeri Semarang (Unnes) for the sake of comparing and exploring lists of the lecturers’ needs of references.
University Heart Library
Khairudin points out that a library constitutes the heart of the university. The presence of a library in a campus indicates the pulse of life. A library refers to the spirit of the tree pillars of higher education in terms of education, research, and community service activities. The library is also regarded as a knowledge or learning center that provides important reading resources.
In attempting to be the heart of the university, Khairudin has signed in the performance contract to develop in various aspects, such as providing a collection of library references relevant to the lecturers’ and students’ needs. The library is also attempting to transform services, and to improve facilities, infrastructure.
Apart from providing quality journals for the academic community, Khairudin is also concerned with upgrading the quality of human resources (HR) which in turn will improve better quality of teaching, research, and community service activities.
For him, librarians have shifted their paradigm from simply processing and arranging physical books to selecting credible journals so she or he is able to provide lecturers and students with specific services. Librarians can identify and verify reference sources for students’ scientific papers and prevent plagiarism.
“We are slowly leaving that behind. I wish they could at least provide turnitin services. We have carried out the training and encouraged lecturers and students to join it,” he said.
With these competencies, according to him, librarians are required to carry out service and research as lecturers are used to doing. E-resource services are expected to enable lecturers to improve Unila lecturers’ and students’ better research.
The effort to facilitate lecturers and students to access credible reference sources and to prevent them from making use of illegal sources has also been made so that both Unila lecturers and students are expected to produce high quality of scientific papers. [PR Team]
