Abstract

The 70 public PCs housed in the Health Sciences Library and the Social Work Library are essential computing facilities for students throughout the 6 Health Sciences schools to access health information resources necessary for their educational programs. To maintain a high level of operations and meet student demands, we propose to replace the 4-year old workstations and peripheral equipment. We also propose to install Microsoft Office software on the Social Work Library PCs.

Background

The Health Sciences Libraries (HSL) was founded in 1949 to connect students from the six health sciences schools (Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, and Social Work) to knowledge in the health sciences. Since the late 1980s the HSL and the Social Work Library (SWL) have provided drop-in workstations to allow on-campus students, who don’t necessarily have their own computers, to access information resources essential for their studies and student life. In a parallel effort the HSL has worked in partnership with Health Sciences Administration to provide the Microlab facility as more of a lab-style computing environment.

The HSL currently houses 12 email stations and 31 research stations on its 2nd floor, and 14 email stations on its 3rd floor. The SWL currently houses 8 research stations and 5 email stations.

The HSL is open seven days a week for 81.5 hours, while the SWL is open seven days a week for 70 hours. For 100% of the two facilities’ open hours the public PCs are available for student use.

The HSL serves over 4,000 graduate and undergraduate students in the health sciences and is open to all UW students. It is centrally located in the same complex as the classrooms, teaching labs and other instructional support services for five of the six Health Sciences schools (Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Public Health), while the SWL is located within the same building as the School of Social Work. The student breakdown of each school is roughly as follows:

Dentistry 287, Medicine 1824 (plus 1114 resident physicians in training), Nursing 472, Pharmacy 331, Public Health 639, and Social Work 450.

All HSL and SWL library PCs provide access to the campus network, and to the Libraries' public databases and electronic journal subscriptions. Student use of the Libraries’ computers ranges from checking email, to using Catalyst tools for class assignments, to performing extensive literature searches for project-based work, to self-directed information discovery and retrieval.

Laser printing in the HSL and SWL is self-service and is provided on a cost-recovery basis. The current rate is $.10 per page, which is subject to change based on annual reviews of costs for printer maintenance and supplies. Print jobs are selected and paid for at self-service computer printing stations.

Benefits

The HSL and SWL are resources that are highly valued by our students. The HSL is currently working with Health Sciences Administration to renovate about half of the 3rd floor of the library—students will appreciate this more pleasant workspace, which is due to open early 2005.

Based on feedback from students at information desks at HSL and SWL we worked with the Microlab to survey student computing needs in these facilities, while the SWL also conducted a survey of its patrons. We used data from the 122 respondents to the Microlab survey and the 69 respondents to the SWL survey to shape this proposal. See the Microlab survey and survey results at: https://catalyst.washington.edu/webtools/webq/survey.cgi?owner=hsl&id=21 and http://healthlinks.washington.edu/hsl/commons/stf/2004surveyresults.htm. The SWL library survey results are linked from: http://healthlinks.washington.edu/hsl/commons/stf/

Benefits of Dell Workstations:

The computers in the HSL and SWL are heavily used by a variety of people from 7:30am to 9pm most days. This daily heavy use leads to significant wear and tear. In order to maintain high quality service old computing equipment must be upgraded on a regular basis. The Health Sciences Libraries tries to operate a 4-year hardware refresh cycle for its student research workstations.

We are requesting 70 new, 3.0 GHz Dell Optiplex GX280 Small Form Factor PCs to replace the 4-year old 900 MHz systems in the HSL and SWL. The students’ research computing experience will be significantly improved by these faster and smaller systems, in conjunction with a Library IT Services-developed Windows XP image that allows for local installation of productivity software, such as Microsoft Office, and in conjunction with current facilities renovations in HSL.

In the Microlab survey we asked students whether they would support STF funding to replace the library PCs. Of the 120 students who responded to the question, 74% indicated that they would support funding the replacement of the library PCs.

In the SWL survey we asked students whether they were interested in having Microsoft Office software available on the SWL library PCs. Of the 69 respondents to the survey, 58% indicated interest in having this software available. The SWL already has this software available, but the faster machines in conjunction with the Windows XP image would allow us to make available the latest version of Microsoft Office, which would be beneficial for our students.

Student Access

Health Sciences, including Social Work, students have ready access to research computing resources at two locations that are convenient for their classes, labs, and patient care responsibilities.


The Health Sciences Libraries Systems department is currently working with Computing and Communications' Network Operations unit to limit access to these machines to those with a valid current UWNetID. The new Windows XP image that we would install on these machines will also support this type of access restriction. In this way we can guarantee that students will have the access they need to these machines. The HSL and SWL will also continue to provide basic unrestricted public access library PCs as a parallel service to the UW-restricted PCs that make up this proposal.

Available Resources

The Health Sciences Library provides funding for day-to-day operations and general administration of the library PCs. Support for daily operations includes the contributed time of a librarian and library support staff, a 1.0 FTE Senior Computing Specialist, 0.25 FTE Computer support analyst, and 1.5 FTE systems student assistants. In addition Suzallo Library’s Information Technology Services (ITS) also provides funding for a 1.0 FTE Senior Computer Specialist who provides computer imaging support for all HSL and SWL library PCs.

Beyond UW-restricted PCs the HSL and SWL continues to provide basic unrestricted public access library PCs.

In Autumn Quarter 2004 the Health Sciences Administration invested $335,000 to renovate the 3rd floor of the Health Sciences Library in the T-Wing of the Health Sciences Building. The majority of the requested PCs for HSL would be housed in this renovated space, leading to a very comfortable research computing environment for our students.

Since the Spring of 2001 the Health Sciences Libraries has spent $74,500 to upgrade wiring, power, air conditioning, and rack mounts in a server room that houses equipment, such as print servers, that service library PCs in both HSL and SWL.

Installation Timeline

If funds are awarded before the end of May 2005 the proposed equipment should be purchased, imaged, and operational by the start of Autumn Quarter 2005.

Departmental Endorsement

In addition to the departmental support described in the resources section, this proposal is supported by Dean Sidney Nelson, School of Pharmacy and Chair of the Board of Health Sciences Deans, Dean Nancy Wood, School of Nursing and other Health Sciences deans.

Student Endorsement

As part of the Microlab Survey we asked students the question, “May we use your name in our Student Technology Fee funding proposal?” In response to this question, the following students have agreed, as individuals, to support STF funding for our proposal.

David Mauchley, Medicine, mauc2387@u.washington.edu

Anthony Crest, Public Health, abcrest@u.washington.edu

Lynne Harris, Health Services, ltownsen@u.washington.edu

Laura Streichert, Health Services, lstreich@u.washington.edu

Brian Myers, Pharmacy, bemyers@u.washington.edu

Elizabeth Hom, Public Health, ehom@u.washington.edu

Carolyn Hutter, Epidemiology, chutter@u.washington.edu

LaTonya Trotter, Public Health, ltrotter@u.washington.edu

Michael Gilden, Medical Technology, mgilden@u.washington.edu

Valerie Trump, Nursing, valert@u.washington.edu

Martha LaBarr, Nursing, ladymuse@u.washington.edu

Mary Scarlett, Nursing, marugo@charter.net

Jennie Bowen, Public Health, jdbowen@u.washington.edu

Julia Coolman, Pharmacy, jcoolman@u.washington.edu

Juliane Gust, Medicine, jgust@u.washington.edu

Melinda Marsolek, Medicine, mrmarsol@u.washington.edu

Maegan Ashworth, Medicine, ashmeg@u.washington.edu

Tawnya Horsley, Nursing, tawnyah@u.washington.edu

Courtney Easley, Biology, cneasley@u.washington.edu

Monique Woo, Pharmacy, woom@u.washington.edu

Kellie Fay, Environmental Health, kellief@u.washington.edu

Brad Sainsbury, Dentistry, bsain@u.washington.edu

Nicole Campbell, Public Health, nlc2@u.washington.edu

Grant Keeney, Medicine, gkeeney@u.washington.edu

Jennifer R Gunther, Nursing, jengh@u.washington.edu

Items

Below are the items making up the current proposal. The asterisk (*) beside items signify that they were approved by the committee. This however was not implemented correctly for our database before 2005, so earlier years may not show this.

Click an item's title to view details on that item, or show all item details.