NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 23 number 2 - Winter 2003

By Lois Fischer Black, Special Collections

In 2000 the NCSU Libraries received funding from an anonymous donor to establish the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive in the library's Special Collections Department. The library is using this funding to organize, preserve, and provide access to the collection, which consists of Regan's personal papers and books documenting his key role in the animal rights movement as well as material from other people and organizations active in the movement. In addition, Special Collections has fostered the creation of the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive Online Research Site (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/arights/), also funded by this gift. This site, using a tiger and paw prints in its design, publicizes the library's holdings in the field of animal rights and serves as a clearinghouse of information for this discipline through links to other relevant sites. Senior Design Center students Brenda Loehfelm, Sherry Pitz, Alan Seales, Matthew Senter, and P. Shane Smith created the site for the library in 2002. The students worked in collaboration with the Senior Design Center, part of NC State's Department of Computer Science, and with the library's Special Collections, Digital Libraries Initiatives, and Systems departments.

The Senior Design Center provides student teams with "real-world" problems and settings, usually in the private sector. Through their work to create a viable product for a customer, students develop technical writing and public-speaking abilities, build teamwork and collaboration skills, and gain experience with software engineering. The fee for a sponsor to participate in the program is a donation or an unrestricted gift to the Excellence in Undergraduate Computer Science Fund. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, the NCSU Libraries secured funding for a student team.

Participation in the fifteen-week program, which is described as a "link between education and practical business," included a Senior Design Center Sponsor Workshop, where prospective sponsors met with Senior Design Center staff and past sponsors to learn about the program. Projects, once approved, have three phases. The first phase of the library's project began with a feasibility study that addressed the project's goals and identified application requirements. In the second phase, the students designed a Web site that met sponsor-defined requirements. Finally, in phase three, the project team delivered and installed the application.

Students documented their work throughout each phase of the project to facilitate the compilation of a user manual and prepared a presentation for each phase of the project, which allowed library staff to review the students' progress and facilitated communication among project participants. For instance, the library considered not only the latest technologies, but also whether the Web site was visually interesting. In return for its investment, the NCSU Libraries expected an end product that would offer a world-class animal rights online research site showcasing the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive and facilitating research in this discipline. Student participants took these ideas as well as their own to mold a comprehensive project for the library. Center staff also monitored the work and evaluated the completed Web site.

Special Collections supplied the students with the initial content for the Web site. Working in consultation with Tom Regan and others, manuscripts curator Lois Black assembled a list of Web sites and other electronic resources for inclusion in the project. The content committee also identified a list of categories-including animal experimentation, animal rights, animal rights law, animals in entertainment, clothing, culture and animals, diet ethics, exhibitions, farmed animals, organizations, veterinarians, and wildlife-as subjects that researchers can search. Each category contains a focused series of subcategories. The site allows users to explore manuscript collections relating to animal rights; offers links to guides to these collections, including the Tom Regan Collection; provides a link to the Special Collections Department home page, and indicates how those wishing to contribute animal rights collections to the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive can do so. Another component of the site is its search engine, which allows visitors to explore resources by entering keywords into a box on each page of the site.

The student team incorporated link-checking software into the structure of the online research site that ensures that visitors to the site will not encounter inactive links. The site administrator continues to receive regular reports from the logging system notifying her if the status of a link has changed. She then has the opportunity to pursue the "dead links" and determine whether the site was discontinued or whether the URL simply needs to be updated.

Testing of the site occurred before it went live. Members of the project team conducted usability studies with library staff and potential researchers in the field to learn about the effectiveness and value of the final product. The Digital Library Initiatives Department ensured that the project met the technical and systems requirements of the NCSU Libraries.

Brenda Loehfelm continued work on the project for several months beyond completion of the Senior Design Center's commitment, expanding the content and fine-tuning the work that had been done earlier in the year. With her assistance, the library established relationships with several animal rights groups that will be important as the library continues to build its collection. The library plans to microfilm in 2003 the five most significant journal titles in the literature of animal rights.

The Senior Design Center's program provided an effective method for augmenting the NCSU Libraries' resources while furthering the education and training of the university's students. The Libraries found many advantages in collaborating with the students, who designed a Web site that met the library's needs and allowed the library to benefit from their technical skills and marketing experience.