Office
of the University Librarian
Monthly
Report--May 2005
Library-wide
Efforts and Events
Lisa
coordinated one web cast brown bag session and one brown bag presented by
Marshall Breeding, "Current Trends in Library Automation."
Administration
and Staff
Flo
met with Roberta Winjum, Bill Hook, Dennis Clark, John Haar and Lisa Shipman
to talk about changing the way OCLC charges are distributed. Given other budgetary
simplification and OCLC's changes in how it charges, if we were to just fund
the OCLC charges from the OUL budget without redistribution, we would experience
some staff savings. However, it will require that all budgets be adjusted
to ensure that the necessary funds are in the OUL center. Agreement in principle
was reached, and we will pursue actual budget changes for 2006/2007 while
doing just a single charge based on historical figures for 2005/2006.
Paul
held a library-wide discussion of the Organization Task Force's Report. Approximately
90 people attended the event and minutes were posted to the Staffweb for those
staff who could not attend. Phase One of the Implementation Plan of the Strategic
Planning process was completed and prepared for presentation to LMC and library
staff.
Personnel
Michael
Scott resigned from the Cataloging and Authorities team in Technical Services
to take a position with Yale University. A search committee has been formed
to fill this position. The search committee members for the Spanish Cataloger
position are Zora Breeding (Chair), Paula Covington, Pete Wilson, Angel Bruner,
and Lisa.
The
Library welcomed Karen Swoopes back as the Administrative Assistant I in the
Peabody Library. Karen previously worked in the Divinity Library and more
recently with Vanderbilt Temporary Services.
Lisa and Ava met with
the Library's new recruitment team from Human Resources: Michael Blasingim,
Recruiter, and Gabrijela Matic, Recruitment Assistant, to discuss current
and future recruitment efforts.
Public
Relations
The sun came out in time
for a truly fun Spring Staff Outing. This year, we had almost three times
the number of attendees as in years past, with over 150 staff, family and
friends in attendance. Whitt's Barbecue catered the event. Thanks go to the
volunteers who put the show on: Merry Balthrop, Mary Colosia Conn, Molly Dohrrman,
Pat Johnson and Celia Walker. Dewy James, Kurt Eger, James McCullough and
Preston Johnson also provided support. Forty-five door prizes were distributed
and a dessert competition was won by Lisa Shipman (first), Dewey James (second),
and Leonor van Cotthem (third).
Development
Celia
met with representatives of the Annual Campaign to plan for this year's telephone
solicitation. We agreed to send out renewal letters to the Friends of the
Library before beginning the calling phase of the solicitation this year.
Electronic
Resources and Collection Development
The MetaLib Implementation
Team organized a trial of MetaLib during May. We created five subject-based
sets of databases, including Acorn, and provided access through our local
MetaLib installation. Library staff participated in the trial, and we conducted
usability tests of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members.
We also hosted an open house in the electronic classroom, where many staff
consulted with team members and offered comments about the product. [Results
of the trial were generally negative. In June the Team proposed, and LMC approved,
that we not purchase MetaLib at this time.]
Annex
In
May the Annex received the new shelving purchased with Reassessment funds.
Many related projects were involved with the arrival and installation. The
'stockade' was torn down; lighting and electrical work was done; shelving
was dismantled and reinstalled temporarily in other locations. The Annex Mailroom
was kept busy and stretched for space with the arrival of many supplies and
equipment. We received everything from the annual Special Collections' direct
shipment of many pallets of Paige miracle boxes to the receipt of 3 moving
van loads of steel shelving components. Every available foot of floor space
was taken over with construction supplies. There were wooden pallets filled
with heavy steel shelving, as well as a many wooden pallets, filled with cartons
of motors, connectors, mother-boards, and a variety of mechanical parts.
On
May 23rd, the Annex was able to resume accepting normal weekly book transfers.
This most recent shelving installation gives us about 15 months of growth
until we are out of installed shelf space again. During June, Peg will begin
interviews with each library director to establish revised 12 month and 36
month growth projections.
Several
of our frequent patrons needed urgent Annex materials during May. It was a
month full of phone calls, not just Annex web requests, as several users tried
to complete publishing deadlines.
856
items were retrieved for campus requests, and several of these were urgent.
103 of these 856 items were requested by the patron to be sent to other than
the owning library. 95 volumes were sent for ILL patrons. Technical Services
staff asked us to pull 117 Inventory books. 158 pages of periodicals were
photocopied for Inter-Library Loan.
Peg
met with Marco Rivers to audit Peg's procurement card purchases.
Peg
provided an Annex tour and orientation to Rich Germano and three of his new
staff from Information Technology Services.
Peg
meet with VU Estimating's Stan Thompson and a local electrical lighting contractor
to get a facilities estimate for improving the lighting in the 1st Floor Archives
area and the Oversize LC collection area. Peg met with VU Work Management
staff regarding preservation quality lighting for the Annex. This was the
result of the Preservation Lighting meeting with Flo and Sue Davis, hi-lighted
in last month's report. Roger Crawford brought us new lighting supplies to
experiment with for our 2nd floor.
Leonor
concentrated on Inter-Library Loan requests, Cataloger requests, the periodical
bar coding projects, the TV News project, and folio conversions to Storage
shelving edits. Clint worked on patron circulation, Annex transfers, oversize
and folio conversions to storage shelving, shelf customizations, and host
of internal moving venues. Joe filled his days with transfers, equipment and
supply re-distributions, afternoon patron circulation, all of our reshelving,
the ILL overflow, and gazillion facilities concerns.
Technology
Projects and Activities
This
month, much of Marshall's technical work involved final preparations to move
the TV News web servers. Marshall also continues to manage the transfer of
MPEG files to the Library of Congress and the allocation of space on the MPEG
file servers.
Television
News Archive
Much
needed renovations have begun in the TV News suite in the Baker Building. The
project will include adding a new wall to enclose the off-air recording facility,
installation of new dedicated air conditioning equipment for the off-air facility
and the server cabinet room, new carpet and paint throughout the suite. A new
entryway to the Archive will be created with a new door and glass sidelight.
John Lynch worked diligently to prepare the off-air room for the move. In order
to allow for the installation of the new carpet, all the equipment needed to
be moved to a temporary location across the wall in the reception / viewing
room. Delivery of the carpet has been delayed, causing the completion of the
project to be delayed until late July.
NEH
Project
The
NEH-funded digitizing project continues, but this month at a somewhat slower
pace than previous months. Vacations of staff and the disruptions caused by
the rennovation of the TV News suite made a considerable impact on productivity.
At the end of February, the collection had been digitized from 1968 - July
1997.
This
month marks the end of the first year of the NEH-funded project to digitize
the Archive's evening news collection. Marshall prepared the semi-annual performance
report required by the NEH. With 50% of the time elapsed, we have digitized
81% of the material and spent only 42% of the funds. By all measures, the
project is advancing ahead of schedule. We currently expect to finish the
evening news collection by about August. At that time, we will commence digitizing
the specials collection, as we stipulated we would do should we complete the
evening news collection early. By our current projections, we will not be
able to finish the specials with the remaining funds, so we plan to prepare
a new proposal to the NEH to fund a project to complete that collection.
Subscriptions
In
May 2005 The University of Connecticut and California State University at
San Bernardino became new subscribers.
Meetings,
Activities and Professional Development
Flo and
Paul attended the SOLINET Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Flo was nominated for
the SOLINET Board but lost the election to Carol Diederichs, Dean of Libraries
at the University of Kentucky. She accompanied Paul to the presentation that
Paul and John Burger gave on the ASERL Virtual Storage Project. She prepared
statistics from the overlap study and explained the context for the numbers.
Flo
completed her service as chair of the LITA Scholarships Committee; two scholarship
winners were selected and notified by the Committee.
Paul attended
the OCLC Members Council and the ARL Meeting.
Joe
Collins attended the SOLINET workshop on Disaster Preparedness.
Lisa
attended the May meeting of the Associate Deans where she heard a presentation
by Tony Grayson, Manager, Financial Systems Planning in the Accounting office
demonstrated the E-Procurement system. Additional 2005/2006 budget information
was also discussed with the group.
Lisa also
attended the Business Administrator's Forum for Leadership in Education (BAFFLE)
where presenters spoke about the College Halls at Vanderbilt (the official
name of the residential colleges), year-end close schedule and journal entry
process, updates on flexible reimbursement accounts and short term disability,
and the limited interruptible power agreement between VU and TVA.
Marshall
gave a presentation for the Massachussetts Library Association annual conference
in Cape Cod, MA, on "Multimedia Digital Projects at Vanderbilt University."
He also represented the Vanderbilt Television News Archive at the SOLINET
Annual Conference in Atlanta on May 5th.
Marshall's
publications this month include his Systems Librarian column in Computers
in Libraries magazine on "Looking Toward the Future of Library Technology",
and contributions to ALA's Smart Libraries Newsletter.
13 June 2005