Office of the University Librarian

Monthly Report--January 2007

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Library Outreach and Campus Interaction

The Committee on Undergraduate Information Literacy met in January to develop goals, identify tasks, and plan for next steps and assignments. A proposal will be created for the Vanderbilt Visions programming for 2007/2008. Groups were formed to pursue proposed outcomes, and assessment. Melinda Brown is chairing the group, Flo Wilson is a member of the committee; and representatives from the Center for Teaching, the Writing Center, and A&S dean's office are included. Jen Holt, Writing Center, and Flo met to develop an assessment statement for future planning.

Library-wide Efforts and Events

A Donuts and Coffee open staff discussion was held in the GLB Staff Lounge on Wednesday, January 31. Topics included: involving new staff in strategic work; policy for new MLS degree current staff members; and a discussion of new types of positions we will need going forward in the library.

Administration and Staff

Paul and Flo met with Holling Smith-Borne and Mark Wait to discuss the 2007/2008 budget proposal.

Public Relations/Communication

68 articles were posted to the Staffnews, of which 24% were committee minutes/agenda; 19% were events; 13% were news about staff accomplishments and the balance were general information or monthly reports.

Staff Development

A brown bag was conducted on January 10, "Training Opportunities on the Staffweb Page" with 17 attendees. After the session, we had 10 requests for keys to ElementK classes. On January 31 we held "Webinar: eSerials Holdings."

Electronic Resources and Collection Development

Collection Development

The Committee on Collections awarded approximately $42,000 for special acquisitions proposed by the libraries. Funding comes from the Vanderbilt Library Excellence Fund, supplemented by gift accounts. The committee funded thirteen proposals from the Central, Divinity, Management, Music, and Peabody Libraries at an average cost of over $3,200.

A subcommittee of the Collections Committee reorganized and enlarged the Central Library collection development staffweb page to convert it into a system-wide resource. The subcommittee sent the proposed revision to committee members to share with selectors in their libraries for comment.

Public Services

Updates have begun to the Heard Library GIS page including a news section and a full explanation of the GIS and Census services on the index page. Jacob Thornton did a presentation on the basics of GIS for the library staff Reference and Instruction Forum.

Technology Projects and Activities

In support of the project funded by the Kress Foundation to digitize the photographs from the Contini-Volterra collection, Marshall created a new version of the image management system. This version of the interface was significantly different than previous versions in that it uses MySql as the relational database instead of DB/TextWorks. This will be the first of the library projects to use this version of the infrastructure we use for digital projects.

Marshall participated in the site meetings with Ex Libris staff on Jan 15-16.

Holling Smith-Borne gathered staff previously involved with development of the Global Music Archive together to get the project off the ground again. Flo, Jody, Marshall, and Jason Battles participated. A usable, demonstration database is planned for late spring 2007.

Television News Archive

In January 2007 the Archive set an all-time record in the number of videotape loan requests fulfilled and in the income received for loan service fees.

Meetings, Activities and Professional Development

Paul attended ALA and lead a meeting concerning the North American Storage Trust. He also had an ASERL board conference call, and worked on a grant proposal for ETANA to IMLS.

Celia attended a web spiders session on new web resources, a brown bag by Creative Services on working with photographs, and a webinar on Facebook.

Marshall attended the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Seattle, WA. Conference activities included participation on the LITA Top Technology Trends panel, convening the SirsiDynix Large Sites Users Meeting and many individual meetings with executives from library automation companies.

Flo attended the ALA Midwinter Conference.

Marshall's regular column appeared in Computers in Libraries and he wrote several short articles for the October and November issues of ALA TechSource Smart Libraries Newsletter.

20 February 2007