Office of the University Librarian
Monthly Report--July 2004
Library Outreach and Campus Interaction
Flo joined Celia, Anne Martin and Bill Hook in a visit to Sewanee, University of the South, to further discuss the reciprocal borrowing privileges that were initiated last spring. Many details were worked out, and information will be shared with CAG to identify any potential problems.
Paul attended a University Press Board meeting.
Flo and Jody met with Lydia Norfleet in the Registrar's Office to discuss the Library's current use of the Social Security Number in our operations. She is leading the consideration of how to phase out the SSN as they design the new student information system. As we've indicated in the past, the Library is interested in moving away from the SSN but must do so in conjunction with other campus operations, especially the Card Office which uses the number for ID cards.
Flo met with Matt Hall and Terrie Spetalnick in ITS to discuss ITS willingness to support a pay for printing system as included in our dormant proposal from summer 2003. She also met with Kay Keaton in the Card Office to discuss possibilities of using the Card as an alternative to the VUnet ID approach, in order to be consistent with the way in which the photocopiers will work. An updated proposal is being prepared for the deans' consideration. We expect that the library will move ahead with implementation of such a system in the coming year.
Library-wide Efforts and Events
Administration and Staff
In addition to building maintenance activities, Dewey James began the task of providing card reader capability to network copiers.
After much hard work, the Library's annual report, MOSAIC: The Many Facets of the Library, was published online. Thanks go to all of the writers for their patience and hard work: Paul Gherman, Marshall Breeding, Flo Wilson, Roberta Winjum, John Haar, Bill Hook, Martin Cerjan, Deb Sommer, Dennis Clark, Sharon Gray Weiner, Sherre Harrington and Juanita Murray. Suellen Stringer-Hye did an excellent job as designer of the publication; her design makes the most of the electronic format, providing hyperlinks to Websites, data and to musical excerpts.
The fifth annual retirement learning program, "Mining the Web," was a huge success, thanks to the excellent presentations and the wonderful support of staff who served as Web coaches throughout the program. Presenters included Paul Gherman, John Haar, Lisa Shipman and Marshall Breeding. Roberta Winjum worked as a Web coach. This year, we added "Election 2004" and "Music" as new categories. For more on the program, visit the Website at http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/rl/.
Development
In July, work began on the Friends of the Library fall dinner, scheduled for October 28 at the University Club. Our speaker will be Richard Powers, author of 8 novels, among them The Gold Bug Variations and his most recent book, The Time of Our Singing.
A book was purchased to honor John Seigenthaler for his talk at the Spring Friends of the Library meeting. Celia attended classes on Development's new prospect tracking program, on Endowments, and on travel with the Chancellor.
Electronic Resources and Collection Development
VUFinder Implementation
We rolled out VUFinder, our local version of SFX, during the week of July
19. Problems were relatively few; the system is working very well and appears
to be ready for the fall semester. The implementation team has discussed publicity,
and we are working with Celia Walker to promote VUFinder by a variety of means
when classes begin.
Collection Development
Several of our libraries provide career information to both undergraduates and graduate students, and they feel that their efforts have sometimes been fragmented and uncoordinated. Representatives of Central, Management, Peabody, and Science and Engineering met to discuss how to better collaborate in offering career resources. After an organizational meeting, we invited the Undergraduate Career Center to join us, and the Center appointed two representatives. We began by assessing print and electronic materials currently in the collections of the libraries and Career Center.
Our consensus was that building a virtual career library is the best means of serving students throughout campus. The virtual library will consist of electronic databases paid by the libraries and the Career Center as well as a variety of free Internet resources on job hunting, resume creation, researching industries and companies, and graduate school information (including financial aid and internships). Members of the group are now identifying candidates for inclusion in the center. The next step will be organizing and editing the information.
Our discussion also offered the opportunity to consider relevant databases and payment models for each of them. The Career Center has agreed to pay part of the cost of CareerSearch (Management pays the remainder). We are also discussing a campus-wide subscription to Business Source Premier, now available only in the Owen School, that would be paid by multiple VU libraries.
Interlibrary Loan Service
Preliminary figures indicate that ILL borrowing for VU patrons in fiscal
year 2003/2004 increased by more than 14% over last year's record high volume.
During this period we were able to obtain items about a day faster than last
year. At the same time, we loaned roughly 6% fewer items to other libraries
(although we received nearly 7% more ILL requests from other institutions).
As VUFinder (SFX) was enabled in more databases, ILL received more requests from patrons through the service. An upgrade to ILLiad, installed at the end of the month, will improve the functionality of the VUFinder link to ILL once implemented in the next few weeks.
Copyright Clearance Services
Jimmy Webb was primarily occupied with processing permissions for Fall 2004
ClassPaks, and with refining the new version he created this summer of the
database we use to track copyright clearance requests and royalty payments.
Annex
July 7th we had water damage on our Main Floor. Unfortunately this flooding was not localized to a mechanical equipment room. Two boxes of Special Collection materials, temporarily located on the floor, were damaged and some duplicate copies of volumes inside these boxes had to be withdrawn. The flooring inside of the Horn Room, outside of University Archives Annex shelving, and the Annex LC oversize stacks were affected. A special thanks to the many people who immediately helped us, including Joe Collins, Clint Grantham, Flo Wilson, Juanita Murray, Kathy Smith, Sue Davis, Jodie Gambill, Norman Nash, Dewey James, Mr. Charles Woods & many of his cleaning crew. Measures have been implemented to rectify the original flooding problem.
Patrons requested 547 items and 313 pages of photocopies.
Clint continued to work with the Demand Management task
force, the Item types
Committee, and the regular meetings of the Circulation Advisory Group. Flo
and Peg met with Doug Kreager from Interior Elements.
Technology Projects and Activities
Television News Archive
Meetings, activities and professional
development
Marshall gave the keynote presentation for the South Carolina SOLINET Annual User's Group on "Current Trends in Library Automation" and gave a presentation on the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. While in Columbia, he was given a tour of USC NewsPlex.
16 August 2004