Software Collection Development Process
Software Collection Development process enhances academic software availability through a shared funding effort. To achieve this goal, there is a need to keep informed of the community’s software interests and usage as well as have open lines of communication with the entire Rutgers community.
General Process
Just as the Rutgers University Library uses information gathered from (librarian) faculty liaison relationships to develop their respective collections – we are inviting IT faculty liaisons and departmental IT staff to work with OIRT to develop a software collection well suited to our academic and research goals. As likely software contenders are identified, our goal will be to match our combined interests, potential needs, and purchasing power with vendor specific educational pricing arrangements to make those opportunities available to the Rutgers community. Since there is no budget for this effort, our role at OIRT is to identify the best approach when the combined interest is sufficient enough to get better pricing.
Gathering Information
As librarians use circulation and reserve statistics contrasted with the entire collection, all IT groups can use KACE to gather software inventories and usage statistics related to each group. KACE data will be more complete and thorough than our current download and activation statistics, and will improve the software collection development process.
Enhance Academic Software Availability in Support of Instruction
Enhancing academic software availability will target as much of the Rutgers community as possible. And in addition, when student downloads are not included in a specific arrangement, OIRT will identify other opportunities and present them with each software entry on this web site and on the software portal. In general, these options include student use in on-campus computer labs and purchase of student versions as well as access via virtual labs and use via Apps.rutgers.edu from anywhere as funding opportunities are identified.
IT Faculty Liaison Role
One key step in the communications process is to identify IT faculty liaisons for each department/unit. The role of the IT faculty liaison would be to serve as the departmental point of contact between both OIRT and the respective department. Initially, the IT faculty liaison would:
- communicate pertinent updates from the monthly OIT Academic Digest to their department
- alert OIRT to packages that they would like to have reviewed for licensing
- participate in assessing the utility of packages (within their respective department/unit) as requested by other IT faculty liaisons
Join Faculty Liaisons By…
Sending an email to OIRT
The goal is to have 100% participation across all campus departments so that the process of site-licensing is as inclusive as possible. Our combined purchasing power can bring significant benefit to the university community.
And More Lines of Communication
In addition to sending out the monthly OIT Digest to mail lists for IT faculty liaisons as well as departmental IT support staff (refer to “ucstoolkit.rutgers.edu” for more info), OIRT uses Sakai for mail lists for each user community. Aside from keeping the user community updated regarding the site license, these Sakai sites provide other opportunities for user feedback via surveys and topics for training.
In addition to these targeted approaches to inform the Rutgers community, the oirt.rutgers.edu/software and the OIT blogs are used as open approaches to communicate with the Rutgers community. Also, the software collection development process works closely with the Rutgers Software Portal staff to provide downloads and additional information for all software available through the Software Collection Development Process.
For more information or feedback, please contact OIRT by email or by phone at 848.445.1438