Two years ago, the Student Assembly initiated a project to eradicate one of the quintessential Dartmouth experiences: waiting frantically in line and fighting to check out a coveted reading in the Reserve Corridor of Baker Library.
Now, legal, technical and other barriers have stopped the Assembly in its quest to enable students to obtain reserve readings on their computer screens from the comfort of their rooms.
According to Circulation Services Librarian Pamela Ploeger, a fully functioning on-line database of reserve readings is not a strong possibility in the near future.
"All the issues make me believe that it is not a good time to put many library resources towards this project," she said. "Unfortunately, these prototype projects are costly in terms of time."
But student leaders and library officials say there still is a good possibility that reserve readings will eventually be put on-line.
"Sometime it will happen, but not in a time frame where students presently in the College can take advantage of it," Ploeger said.
Jeff Bell '96 and Hosea Harvey '95 launched the Assembly's plan two years ago. Their plan called for reserve reading to be put electronically on Dartmouth's computer network through the Online Library program.
The project's goals were to cut down on student copying costs, make library access more convenient and increase efficiency for large classes that have reserve readings, Harvey said.
"Ideally, an electronic reserve system would eliminate the frantic, arbitrary and often stressful two-hour time block that usually ends up with wait-lists during finals and midterms," Harvey said.
Harvey and Bell presented their ideas to then-Director of Library Automation Kathy Klemperer and Ploeger, who were receptive to the idea.
Klemperer and Ploeger began working on the project, and the experimental database was up and running by the spring of 1993.
Initial plans called for 20 readings to be put on-line by November 1993. But the last time the database was updated, only five readings fit the criteria: all important information had to be translatable into text files and they had to be non-copyrighted..
The project ran into varied problems and eventually stopped when Klemperer left Dartmouth in March 1994.
Ploeger said most of the photocopied reserve readings in Baker are copyrighted, which poses a problem.
She said the "fair use" doctrine allows an individual to make copies of a copyrighted document for personal use in an educational context, but the implications of this principle for electronically transmitted texts are still unclear.
"We are waiting while legal and technical issues are hammered out ... We just don't want to get involved in illegal activity," Ploeger said.
But Harvey said, "Other colleges and universities have been able to secure on-line reserves with little problem, such as Northwestern."
Northwestern University's Electronic Reserve System Pilot Project includes exams, lecture notes, student papers and government publications.
But Dartmouth faced additional difficulties.
For instance, Ploeger said the technology and time constraints posed a problem. Initially, readings were scanned and turned into text files. After that, each reserve reading took about an hour or two to proofread.
"The technology is fairly complex to do it right ... Scanning isn't as simple as it seems," she said. "All the blips and smudges are read in as characters, and you have to spend a certain amount of time proofing."
Charts and illustrations could not be included in the text files, which presented another problem. The library is now considering taking digitized pictures of each page of the readings.
In addition, no one has replaced Klemperer as Director of Library Automation, which is now called Head of Library Systems.
"The library has not had an increase in staff positions in at least 15 years and we're all stretched very thin," Ploeger said. "It's just isn't something we're really able to jump into at this point."
"Once the new systems person comes and gets organized, we're going to pick this up again," she said.
Assembly President Rukmini Sichitiu '95 and Harvey said both the Assembly and the Coalition of Class Officers will examine the issue in an attempt to jump-start the project sometime this term.
