Abstract

Over twenty percent of the Law Library's collection is in microfiche/film format. At present, the only way to access this material is with ten year-old equipment - two microfiche/film reader/printers which have exceeded their intended lifespan. Current reader/printer technology greatly improves and simplifies the use of microfiche materials. A new reader and computer workstation would make it easier for students to access and utilize this material through streamlined printing, improved display resolution, and the ability to export information into commonly used electronic formats.

Background

The Law Library has two microfiche/film readers/printers available to duplicate these respective materials which make up over 20% of its entire collection. Much of the material in this format is unique, and pertains to Washington state-specific subjects; as such, students can only find these items at a local institution like the UW.

The Law Library's current microfiche/film equipment has been in use for over ten years, and its age shows. Although it can still perform the basic functions of viewing and printing microfiche materials, today's reader/printers feature many technological improvements which allow them to be incorporated into a modern, networked environment.

While access to the majority of the Law Library's collection has benefitted from modern technology, access to the microfiche/film portion of the collection is directly limited by the aged equipment used to view these materials. Law School students have expressed a desire for the Library to update this tool, so that they can easily access and work with the microfiche/film collection, just as they do with the print collection.

Benefits

- Improved access to the Law Library's unique microfilm and microfiche materials for all UW students and Law Library patrons.

- Improved printing capability, allowing viewed materials to be printed directly from the microfiche reader to a local printer

- Via the computer workstation, materials viewed with the reader/printer could be emailed or copied to disk in common file formats

- ADA-compliant design

Student Access

The microfiche/film reader/printer and computer workstation would be accessible to all patrons of the Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, which include UW students, faculty, staff, as well as the general public. It is generally open for a total of 89 hours a week over seven days.

Available Resources

The Law Library receives funding for technology-related purchases through the Law School Computing Services departmental budget.
Since a considerable majority of the
department's annual budget is earmarked for cyclical hardware replacements,
license/warranty renewals, and routine faculty/staff support needs, it would be
difficult to fully fund equipment of this type solely through the departmental
budget.

Additionally, the Law Library receives a small allocation to fund the purchase of audiovisual equipment. However, the cost of the item(s) requested in this proposal exceed this small allocation by almost 900%.

Installation Timeline

If approved, the new reader and computer workstation would be immediately ordered on a purchase order, and installed as soon as possible. To prevent a disruption in access to microfiche/film materials, the current reader would not be retired until the new one is fully functioning.

Departmental Endorsement

This equipment will greatly benefit the students and other members of the UW community by making a wide array of materials relevant to law students, political science students, and others accessible in a far more convenient form than our current reader printers. Our current machines are at the end of their lifecycles and require the user to print each page, wait for it to come out, and move on to the next one. When printing more than a few pages, it becomes a substantial obstacle.

With new printing technologies and our network, we would use the equipment requested to simplify printing while improving the visual quality. In addition, this equipment would permit us to digitize public domain material we have in microfiche and microfilm and post it to a class website for the students to review, rather than having each student come view the same content.

This technology has been proven to be successful at the Suzzallo Library's Microform and Newspapers Collection. We hope to be able to offer this technology to students using our collection as well.

Student Endorsement

Legal research is a major skill law students must learn and develop in order to become effective practitioners. As a result, legal research is an important part of the curriculum at the law school. It is important that students have access to a variety of resources, including microfiche materials. A new microfiche reader and computer workstation will not only improve student access to these important materials, but will also allow for more effective research, with students having the option to save, print, or e-mail documents.

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.