Office of the University Librarian
Monthly Report--November 2005
Library
Outreach and Campus Interaction
Paul, Flo and Celia attended the Launch on the Lawn for Peabody's Freshman Commons. They also attended the Blair History Gallery Talk by Dimples Kellogg, organized by the library's Special Collections.
Celia attended the Studio Arts Opening.
Library-wide
Efforts and Events
Flo began working with Janice Adlington on LibQUAL+2006. She also met with
Sharon and Jody to talk about team structures in organizations.
Personnel
Public Relations
Celia attended a lecture by the Provost on Financial Aid 101 and a discussion with John Beasley on Admissions 101. She also had the opportunity to meet with Chancellor and Mrs. Heard.
The holiday card was finalized and sent to the printer.
Staff Development
We held 4 brown bags in November:
A webcast on November 8 on utilizing new learning technologies;
A lecture on self-care on November 9 as part of the Go for the Gold Program;
A staff-organized brown bag on GIS; and
An open house on the Java Client for Workflows.
Celia worked with Jason Battles to create the Skills & Interests Survey for staff participation on project teams.
Electronic
Resources and Collection Development
Collaborative Collection Development
John Haar, Mary Beth Blalock, and Bryan Kurowski attended an Information Alliance collection development meeting in Lexington on Nov. 18. A Solinet representative trained the attendees on use of the WorldCat Collection Analysis system the three libraries recently acquired. The group discussed how we might make use of this tool to facilitate collaborative collection development. Our assignment is to thoroughly familiarize ourselves with WCAS by February 1 so we can determine how to use it most effectively.
Library Consortia
John Haar attended a Nashville Area Library Alliance Board meeting at American
Baptist College on Nov. 14. The Board heard a report from State Librarian
Jeannie Sugg.I
Annex
307 shelves of new campus transfers arrived during the month. Again, we had the situation that patrons were requesting the items before we could process the new transfers into storage shelving. In particular with Government Information items, but also with Central and Science transfers did we experience this - several times!
We noticed that a number of our New York Times on microfilm were requested by patrons. In each case, the patron needed to see each newspaper, day by day, over the course of months and could not be helped by the electronic version. We also noticed a number of volumes within our older serials and periodicals, often not yet bar-coded, were being requested by researchers. Some of this year's research topics are quite fascinating and it's a joy to help with the citation detection and searching.
Most of our newspaper microfilm collection continues to be stored in boxes, usually about 50 or so cartons to each box. Speaking of boxes, the last of the Boorman gift boxes were sent to Collections Development in November. The Collier duplicates, over 50 boxes, were sent to the GLB also.
Annex basement renovation plans continued, with a great number of representatives on site to revise their bids; or to fine-tune questionable expenses. In addition to the on-going basement work; we also had two days of site prep by the contractor hire to prepare a bid for a complete HVAC replacement.
Library Messenger Service & GLB Mailroom
In November we began the interview process for the Library Mail Assistant vacancy. This is the functional title for the Office Assistant III opening. Interviews are continuing into the month of December and a hiring decision is anticipated by mid-December.
Our Library Messenger Service had its usual busy November client activities. Service was offered during all of November, except for Thanksgiving Day, itself. In addition to the regular routines, staff helped with Kirkland Hall's boxes of newly published print dissertations; and with the Collier duplicate collection.
Technology
Projects and Activities
Television
News Archive
Meetings,
Activities and Professional Development
Paul traveled to Denison University to celebrate the founding of the Five Colleges of Ohio after which NALA is patterned. He chaired the ASERL meeting in Atlanta and attended "Knowledge and Space", a daylong meeting at the University of Chicago on their new building plans. Paul also attended a daylong meeting with other SIRSI academic library directors on GEN X and Y students.