Office
of the University Librarian
Monthly
Report--May 2007
Library
Outreach and Campus Interaction
The library and the Harris D. Riley Civil War Heritage Endowment sponsored
a lecture by Pulitzer prize winning author, James McPherson. His topic, "When
Will This Cruel War Be over? The Failure of Peace Negotiations, 1864-1865,"
drew approximately 350 attendees to the Blair Ingram Hall. The lecture is
available as a videocast on the library's public web ticker.
Library-wide
Efforts and Events
Library
staff and retirees attended the annual Spring Staff Picnic on May 18. The
event was held in the Divinity Courtyard and catered by Calypso Café.
Staff were asked to complete a survey of the event before June 11. Thanks
to everyone who helped with the event: Daisy Whitten, Janet Thomason, Debra
Stephens, Laura Norris, Pat Johnson, Ann Ercelawn, Kurt Eger, Merry Balthrop,
Preston Johnson, James McCullough and Barry Bennett.
A group of staff reviewed the E-Classroom Policy and Procedure and recommended
changes to the current text.
Administrative
Services
The
Vanderbilt Television News Archive has ended its arrangement with NELINET
for marketing and billing services. We will be performing these functions
on our own, effective May 15, 2007. We have defined a new position that will
be funded through the savings from the commissions on subscriptions and on
anticipated increases in revenues. The position with the functional title
"Billing and Marketing Coordinator" was posted in late April and
we have begun to interview candidates.
The
initial round of recruiting for the Director of the Central Library resulted
in an insufficient number of qualified candidates. The search has been put
on hold. David Carpenter will serve as acting director through this coming
academic year
Flo Wilson met with the Peabody Library staff to discuss the plans for moving
forward with a search for a new Peabody Library director and to announce that
Celia Walker had agreed to serve in an acting capacity in the meantime.
Public
Relations/Communication
The
Library News Online, a blog designed to promote library resources and services
to our users, was posted to the Web ticker on the home page. In the coming
months, it will be repositioned to a more prominent location on the home page
Table tents holders were distributed to all of the libraries to use to
promote system-wide services and resources. The ability to log on to Illiad
with VUNetIDs was the first item to be promoted on the table tents.
Seventy-five articles were submitted to the StaffNews.
Development
Celia Walker, Kathy Smith and Juanita Murray picked up materials
from Ridley Wills relating to his recent book, Yours to count on : a biography
of Nashville banker extraordinaire Sam M. Fleming.
Celia met with a representative from Reunion to plan a reception
and brunch for the Wild Bunch in October.
Staff
Development
The Staff Development Committee reviewed the online training
contract with ElementK.
Electronic
Resources and Collection Development
Collection Development
John Haar completed work on a spreadsheet summarizing license information
for 38 of our subscriptions to ejournal packages. The database is intended
to provide critical information to collection managers in each library about
shared costs among VU libraries as well as archival rights, definitions of
authorized users, permitted uses, and other provisions of each license. The
database will reside on a restricted staffweb directory because it contains
confidential information.
Public Services
During May, the Library Directors Council discussed and reviewed laptop
policies and contract, student wages, fines and fine collection, and book
fund issues associated with electronic resources. The Research Services Committee
discussed the development of tutorials and the presentation of databases on
the Heard Library webpage.
Technology
Projects and Activities
We
continued beta testing of Primo-moving to the GR 1.0 on "staging"
and "production" platforms. Jody Combs consulted with Ex Libris
concerning the announcement of Primo general release 1.0.
Jody submitted an application for a SUN matching grant for hardware for
the anticipated upgrade of Unicorn to Oracle. He also completed the research
and purchased a web analytics package (Urchin 5)
Television
News Archive
Work
continues on the NEH-funded project to digitize the specials collection of
the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. This month marks the end of the first
year of the 2-year project. Marshall Breeding prepared the performance report
due to NEH for the second quarter.
Meetings,
Activities and Professional Development
Many staff members attended and enjoyed a reception held
by emeriti faculty with carrels in the Central Library.
Paul
Gherman attended the Solinet annual meeting in Atlanta and the ARL spring
meeting in St. Louis. He also attended the NALA Executive Board meeting on
the 29th.
Marshall
was away much of the month of May. He taught a series of workshops, called
"Tech Expectations" throughout the state of Minnesota. From May
8 - 22 Marshall was in Asia for a series of speaking engagements. He was the
primary presenter for the Fifth Annual Leadership Institute sponsored by the
University of Hong Kong and Xiamen University held in Xiamen China. He also
gave presentations at the Special Seminar for Library Development Program
in Chiang Mai, Thailand and for the "Web 2.0 Conference" in Singapore.
Marshall's
regular column appeared in Computers in Libraries and he wrote several short
articles for the May issues of ALA TechSource Smart
Libraries Newsletter.
14 June 2007