Office of the University Librarian

Monthly Report--June 2007

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Library Outreach and Campus Interaction

Paul attended a meeting of the Vanderbilt Editorial Board of the Press.

Jody Combs met with MIS, Blackboard reps, and OAK manager to discuss the potential acquisition of the Community and Content Systems and issues related to potential implementation.

Library-wide Efforts and Events

Jody hosted a Primo version 1.0 celebration for library staff.

Flo Wilson and Julie Blagojevich met with Janice Adlington to review the additional comparisons developed from last year's LibQUAL survey. This data compares our results with those of other ARL institutions. Janice will get the project team back together to plan the Brown Bag for staff covering all aspects of the LibQUAL survey.

Marshall met with Mike Schoenfeld about TV News issues and meti with Kathy Conkwright, a faculty member in Film Studies, on video archiving issues.

We held a farewell reception for John Haar on June 27. The Not Ready for Retirement Players stole the show with their performance of "There is no one like John Haar" set to the tune of "There is nothing like a dame".

Administration and Staff

Celia Walker met with Peabody staff and attended a pizza welcome party. She will work at Peabody Library in the afternoons until a new director is hired. Work began on job descriptions for vacant positions at Peabody.

Administrative Services

A New Employee Welcome Session was held on June 29. Attending were Kenneth Jackson (Divinity), Steven Nordstrom (Music), Deborah Lilton (Central), Nancy Dolinger (Divinity), and Jim Kelly (Law).

Public Relations/Communication

Plans for a marketing campaign for the library were presented to the Strategy & Planning Council. The Council approved plans for a library brand and message platform. The Communications Committee will work with Creative Services to prepare the full campaign and will organize a brown bag to present the campaign to the library staff.

The Guide to Libraries corrections were submitted to Creative Services. We plan to have the publication in hand on July 31.

Sixty-eight articles were submitted to the Staffnews (an 11 percent increase over June 2006).

Development

Celia met with Yvonne Boyer, Kathy Smith and Juanita Murray to discuss plans to write a policy for art donations offered to the library.

Staff Development

We offered six webcasts and one brown bag in June:

* A Futures Approach to Organizational and Faculty Development -- June 5, 2007
* What's New in Podcasting?-- June 5, 2007
* Designing Effective Asynchronous Learning in the Virtual 3D Environment --June 5, 2007
* "What IS English?" Media Networks and Disciplinary Values in English Education -- June 6, 2007
* For Digital Immigrants Only: Creating Your Core Communication Network-- June 6, 2007
* e-Portfolios: New Opportunities for a Timeless Instructional Strategy? -- June 6, 2007
* Brown Bag: Asia: People, Places and Libraries --June 8, 2007

Electronic Resources and Collection Development

Resource Sharing:

NALA renewed its contract with Crosstown Courier for Athena delivery service. Prices increased as the result of a fuel surcharge. We also added a liability limitation at Crosstown's request.

Public Services

Flo completed the description and posting of the new position Director of System-wide Public Services which will be treated as an internal promotional opportunity initially. This person will oversee ILL and GIS, and will participate actively in and sometimes lead other public services activities throughout the system.

The search for a new director for the Peabody Library got underway with the drafting of a vacancy announcement by the search committee-Flo Wilson, chair, Celia Walker, Lisa Shipman, Karen Swoopes, Leslie Foutch, Ann Neely (faculty), and Joe Cunningham (faculty).

The Library Directors Council approved the elimination of contracts for laptop checkout, began discussion of library fines policies, and discussed the new Director of System-wide Public Services position.

Interlibrary Loan Service

The "Delivery Request" button in Acorn (for faculty delivery) was migrated to the new ILLiad interface on June 13, and we have been filling a steadily growing number of requests from faculty and library staff for delivery of Vanderbilt books and articles. This "testing" phase of the new service progressed well, and participating staff received hands-on training, so we expect to be able officially to launch the service soon.

Meanwhile, interlibrary loan borrowing and lending activity remained high. Preliminary figures indicate that borrowing volume for the 2006/2007 year stayed roughly even with the previous fiscal year, while the volume of lending declined slightly.

Copyright Clearing Service

Marymae Jansson dealt with her first billing cycle for ClassPaks and electronic reserves in June. Attention to clearance requests was fairly split between printed and electronic course materials for the coming Fall.

Technology Projects and Activities

Jody Combs attended Ex Libris Users North America (ELUNA) conference in Spearfish, South Dakota. Presented three sessions related to the Primo development project with Dale Poulter and UMN development partners.

Television News Archive

We created a new staff position for the TV News Archive with the title "Coordinator for Billing and Marketing." This individual will be responsible for many of the responsibilities that were formerly conducted by NELINET to promote the subscription product to colleges and universities and to manage the process of collecting funds for those subscriptions. In addition to these activities, the person in this position will help with the font desk of the Archive.

We interviewed four candidates for this position and eventually selected Ron Zolkower for the position. Ron graduated with a BA from University of Central Florida with a major in Advertising and Public relations and a will receive Masters of Sport Administration from Belmont University in August 20007. Ron will start July 5, 2007.

The Vanderbilt Television News Archive finished the fiscal year with a positive balance.

Meetings, Activities and Professional Development

Paul Gherman spoke twice on the North American Storage Trust, once to the New England Chapter of ACRL at Brandeis, and at ALA to the Preservation Administrator's Discussion list. Paul also attended a meeting of RLG in DC.

Flo Wilson attended ALA. She presented a paper at the LAMA session on "The Best of LA&M", reprising the article written by Dilys Morris, Notre Dame librarians and Flo entitled "Where Does the Time Go? The Staff Allocations Project".

Marshall attended the American Library Association Annual Conference held in Washington, DC. At the conference he convened a meeting of the Sirsi Large Sites Interest Group, participated on the LITA Top Technology Trends panel, co-moderated with Andrew Pace the new Speaking Technically panel of chief technology officers from each of the major library automation companies, and spoke at an Ex Libris Primo Seminar.

Marshall and Zora gave a presentation on their recent trip to Asia for a Library Brown Bag event on June 8th.

Marshall wrote several short articles for the June issues of ALA TechSource Smart Libraries Newsletter.

Jim Toplon attended a meeting of the TENN-SHARE Board on June 10-11 as an Academic Libraries representative and member of the Strategic Planning Committee.

Celia and Beth Boord attend the DORAL (Development Officers of Research and Academic Libraries) conference in Charlottesville, VA. This will be Celia's last DORAL conference as Beth has taken over as Director of Development for the library.

18 July 2007