june08b.indd


Nancy Courtney 

Paying
faculty
to
use
library
resources


Course enhancement grants at Ohio State University Libraries 

At the suggestion of the assistant director for collections, instruction, and public 
service, the Ohio State University Libraries 
in fall 2005 initiated a program to provide 
grants to faculty members to enhance their 
courses with the library’s electronic resources. 
The purpose of this program was twofold: 
to maximize use of electronic resources for 
which the library was already paying and to 
encourage collaboration between faculty and 
librarians in course development. 

The libraries initially set aside $50,000 to 
implement the program, deciding that for each 
accepted proposal the faculty member would 
get $2,000 to teach the course and another 
$2,000 if the course was taught a second time. 
In addition, the librarian associated with the 
project would get $1,000. The grants were 
considered incentives; there was no require­
ment that the money to be used to implement 
the activities set forth in the proposals. 

Implementation 
The coordinator for outreach and learning 
was asked to implement the project and 
began by forming a task force of librarians 
that represented a diversity of academic 
subject areas. The librarians chosen were 
the subject specialists in history/philosophy/ 
political science, French/African studies, 
physics/astronomy, journalism, pharmacy, 
and user education. 

The task force’s charge was to create 
criteria for evaluating the proposals and 
to evaluate and recommend proposals for 
funding. The criteria selected were: 

• evidence of collaboration with a li­
brarian, 

• evidence that course objectives and 
activities were suited to inclusion of library 
content, 

• clear course objectives, 
• familiarity with or willingness to use 

the university course management system 
(CMS), 

• evidence that the introduction of library 
resources would change or enhance the 
course, and 

• innovative use of library resources or a 
variety of formats. 

Once the criteria were decided upon, a 
request for proposals (RFP) was written and 
advertised to faculty via a link on the library 
Web site, an ad in the campus faculty/staff 
newspaper, and personal e­mail from library 
subject specialists. The deadline for the initial 
round of grant proposals was January 30, 
2006, for courses to be taught spring 2006 
(starting mid­March.) 

In addition to the already stated purposes 
of encouraging faculty to incorporate the 
library’s digital assets into existing courses 
and to foster collaboration between faculty 
and librarians in developing courses using 
the full range of resources available, the grant 
program had a third objective: to develop 
procedures and human resources to scale 
the program for OSU, including areas such as 
electronic reserves, digitizing print content on 
demand, copyright and rights management, 
integrating chat reference functionality, inte­
grating library resources with the CMS, and 

Nancy Courtney is coordinator of outreach and learning 
at Ohio State University, e-mail: courtney.24@osu.edu 
© 2008 Nancy Courtney 

310C&RL News June 2008

mailto:courtney.24@osu.edu


integrating digital media content available 
through OhioLINK. 

The RFP outlined the responsibilities of 
both the faculty members and librarians. The 
faculty member agreed to provide a course 
syllabus suitable for incorporating library digi­
tal assets, to review additional assets identifi ed 
by the librarians for adoption into the syllabus, 
and to teach the course including continuous 
development, as needed. The librarian agreed 
to analyze the course syllabus and identify ex­
isting digital assets or arrange for the library to 
acquire new assets (as appropriate) to enhance 
the course and to provide chat and in­person 
office hours to students in the course for ref­
erence assistance. Both faculty members and 
librarians agreed to use the CMS as a vehicle 
for delivering course content. 

Faculty members were required only to 
submit a course syllabus for application to 
the program, although some included a cover 
letter. We received 26 proposals from a wide 
variety of subject areas, including history, so­
cial work, medieval and Renaissance studies, 
education, geology, welding, mathematics, hu­
man development, physical education, music, 
city and regional planning, theater, English, 
pharmacy, and international studies. 

Each member of the task force evaluated 
the proposals against the criteria that had 
been determined in our initial meetings and 
filled out a ratings sheet assigning a numerical 
value to each criterion. It is important to note 
that the criteria were developed for internal 
evaluation purposes only; we did not include 
them in the RFP in order not to limit the kinds 
of proposals we would get. 

Each member’s total score for each pro­
posal was sent to the task force chairperson 
who combined them in a single spreadsheet 
and sorted them in rank order. The task force 
then met to discuss the proposals and chose 
eight to recommend to the director of libraries 
for funding. 

Once the spring quarter had begun, the 
grant money was added to the paychecks of 
the faculty members and librarians as taxable 
income. In the case of more than one faculty 
member teaching the course or more than one 

librarian attached to the course, the grant was 
split between them. 

Outcomes and evaluation 
The eight proposals selected were in the 
areas of city and regional planning, medieval 
and Renaissance studies, theater, education, 
geology, mathematics, pharmacy, and social 
work. Each course varied in its use of library 
resources. For example, the city planning 
course made use of the Sanborn Fire Insur­
ance Maps and LANDSAT 7 Satellite Images 
databases, as well as digitized zoning maps 
and videos from the OhioLINK Digital Media 
Center. The students also took photographs, 
recorded interviews, and created thorough 
planning reports that are archived in the 
university’s institutional repository. The course 
on 19th­century theater digitized playbills, 
costume and scenic design drawings, letters, 
and pamphlets from the noncirculating theater 
research collection and made them available 
within the CMS, as well as provided links to 
various databases, such as American Peri­
odical Series, 1740–1900 and Early American 
Newspapers. 

Before the quarter ended, the task force 
met to develop evaluation surveys for the 
program. Faculty and librarians received 
separate e­mail questionnaires, and the fac­
ulty members were asked to use the CMS to 
allow students to answer a survey. Some of 
the librarians in the project were asked to 
demonstrate the changes to the courses at 
a meeting of the public services staff of the 
library at the end of the quarter. 

We received evaluations from six librarians, 
four faculty members, and aggregated student 
survey results from only two of the courses. 
Generally, the evaluations were positive. The 
librarians reported taking a signifi cant amount 
of time to prepare for the courses (from 24 to 
40 hours before the course began) and having 
a sharp learning curve regarding the CMS. 
Most librarians had not been exposed to the 
CMS previously and, in some cases, neither 
had the faculty member with whom they were 
partnered. However, they all reported that the 
project was worthwhile for the contact with 

June 2008  311 C&RL News 



the faculty and interaction with the students. 
Most suggested the need for more assistance 
with the clerical work of adding links to library 
materials into the CMS. 

Faculty members were similarly enthusias­
tic about the collaborations and librarian as­
sistance and reported learning about resources 
and access of which they were previously 
unaware. Some expressed a preference for 
receiving the money in a research account 
rather than as taxable income. 

As the initial round of grants was deemed 
a success, the library administration decided 
to continue offering the program. The task 
force met in the fall of 2006 to discuss the 
evaluations, recommend changes to the RFP, 
and open a competition for courses in the 
winter and spring of 2007. This was done to 
give as much time as possible for the prepa­
ration of proposals and time for the selected 
teams to work on the courses before the start 
of classes. 

The task force did recommend several 
changes to the process that were implemented. 
The application process asked for a cover letter 
in addition to the syllabus that would outline 
the proposed enhancements to the course, and 
the applicants were asked to show evidence 
of prior discussion with a librarian. The RFP 
directed them to a list of subject specialists. 

We were concerned that the program ap­
pealed mainly to upper­division courses that 
had fewer students, although it was noted 
that these were also the courses most likely to 
make use of a variety of library resources. The 
task force looked for ways to encourage lower­
division courses to participate, but decided not 
to express a preference for these in the RFP. 
Grant winners are now offered the option of 
receiving the money in their paychecks or 
research accounts, and the offer of another 
$2,000 for teaching the course a second time 
was dropped. 

Some changes were made to the library 
organization as a result of the grant program. 
Responsibility for electronic reserves was 
moved to the Serials, Electronic Resources, 
and Rights Management department under 
technical services in order to promote a more 

The most important change that the 
task force has made for the winter/ 
spring 2008 grant cycle is to open the 
program to all instructors, not just 
faculty members, in order to attract a 
wider variety of proposals and to reach 
more lower-division courses. 

efficient process of accepting requests, digitiz­
ing material, obtaining copyright clearance, 
and making the material available. Electronic 
reserves staff now have the ability to add 
electronic reserve links directly into the CMS, 
alleviating the burden of adding links for the 
librarians involved in the grant program. 

After three complete cycles of grants, an 
enlarged task force met in the summer of 2007 
to review the entire program. For the fi rst time, 
two members from outside the libraries were 
included: a representative from the faculty 
and teaching assistant development program 
and one from the Technology Enhanced 
Learning and Research program. The Law and 
Health Sciences libraries have also agreed to 
promote the course enhancement grants to 
its constituents. 

The most important change that the task 
force has made for the winter/spring 2008 
grant cycle is to open the program to all in­
structors, not just faculty members, in order 
to attract a wider variety of proposals and to 
reach more lower­division courses. 

Conclusion 
We have been very pleased with the reception 
and outcomes of the course enhancement 
grant program and are considering ways in 
which we might use grants to further other 
library objectives, such as encouraging faculty 
to partner with librarians in service­learning 
courses and outreach activities. Although 
some librarians were initially startled by the 
idea of “bribing” the faculty to use the library, 
others have come to view the grant program 
as a valuable incentive for bringing together 
faculty and librarians and maximizing the use 
of our resources. 

312C&RL News June 2008