Office of the University Librarian
Monthly Report--May 2006
Library-wide
Efforts and Events
A donuts & coffee session was held in the GLB Staff Lounge on May 16.
Administration
and Staff
Two candidates were interviewed for the position of Electronic Resources Librarian. Several OUL staff participated in these interviews.
Gregory Collins accepted our offer for to become our permanent Library Messenger.
His first day in this new role was May 15th.
Public Relations/Communication
With the help of Central reference staff and the Library Directors Council,
the Guide to Libraries was revised and submitted to Creative Services for
redesign.
Professor and Mrs. Joseph Arbena donated a portion of his collection of Colombian sports materials to the Library.
Celia interviewed Louise LeQuire for an upcoming article in the Acorn Chronicle.
Staff Development
Staff attended a Web cast on Mentoring, followed by a brown bag on DPubS on May 18.
Tracy Primich gave a brown bag to 22 staff members on the subject of the Ford Motor Company and its library on May 24.
Electronic
Resources and Collection Development
Collection Development
We ordered the fifth Solinet netLibrary collection of ebooks. The collection, when complete, will include 5,000-6,000 titles. Our cost, based on FTE student enrollment, will be $2-$3 per book. We have acquired all four previous Solinet collections, and this collection, like the others, includes MARC records.
We arranged for a brief trial of Campus, the new version of Westlaw Campus. Several libraries are considering whether to share the cost of a subscription (the Law Library cancelled its subscription at the end of May). The cost of the new database is more than twice the cost of the older version, however. Central librarians found the Campus user interface superior to that of LexisNexis Academic, and we will arrange a longer trial in June for a more thorough comparison of Campus and Academic.
Several members of the Committee on Collections agreed to train other staff in the use of the new WorkFlows Java client for collection development. We have asked LITS to load client versions 3.0 (production) and 3.1 (test) on their workstations so they can familiarize themselves with the clients' features.
We hosted a presentation by YBP (formerly Yankee Book peddler) of its approval plan services.
Public Services
Flo participated in the Central Library Reference discussions about workload balancing.
Further planning got underway for planning library-wide GIS services beginning in August. It seems likely that Brian Christens will be able to continue working for us through July; he will do training for others who are interested in learning more about the services we've been providing. Several public services staff will also be planning to attend hands-on classroom-based training on ArcInfo, the software most used for GIS applications.
Annex
Maureen Conklin resigned from her term appointment with us on May 12th, in order to return to her home state of Michigan. Leonor van Cotthem's temporary appointment with us will end on June 30th.
Likewise, most of the newly received Management Library items from Cataloging, Marking, and Binding will be stored here for the Summer. David, Amia, Brent, Deborah, Laura, and Rahn were all instrumental in on site Annex visits during May and early June. At least a couple (or more) Management staff will be working here each week during this Summer.
132 shelves of new campus transfers arrived during the month from Central, Divinity, Government Information, Law, Music, Science, and Special Collections.
The Arbena Gift Collection began to trickle in during the month of May. At this writing, nine boxes of gifts have been received.
795 items were retrieved for patrons, 24% of which were from storage shelving. More than double, the amount of photocopies in an entire month, were requested. A record 651 photocopies were made for Inter-Library Loan patrons. This was an all-time Annex historical record! 85 faxed copies were sent to VU offices. Re-shelving of end of the semester returns continued.
Library Messenger Service & GLB Mailroom
Although the Nashville Public Library's book drive for the New Orleans Public Library closed on May 15th, we spent four additional occasions during the month assisting with additional community gifts for this worthy cause. Diane Neighbors was of particular assistance to Peg as we resolved three large, late-breaking gift transports throughout the rest of the month.
Messenger staff picked up the latest installments from Kirkland Hall of the 2006 paper copies of theses and dissertations.
Technology
Projects and Activities
Meetings,
Activities and Professional Development
Paul gave a talk at the ASERL (Association of Southeastern Research Libraries) workshop for Non-MLS staff. He attended a day long meeting of ETANA (Electronic Tools and Near Eastern Archives) to plan a fall meeting here of dig directors. And he attended the annual Solinet meeting. He also attended a meeting at American University in DC to discuss the repurposing rights for broadcast media.