Office of the University Librarian
October 2002
Staff and Personnel
Five
candidates were interviewed for the Assistant Dean for Library and Information
Technology in the Law School. Paul
Gherman, Flo Wilson, John Haar, Lisa Shipman, and Elaine Goleski participated
in the interview process.
The
annual Staff Service Awards reception was held on October 3 at the University
Club. Elaine Goleski and Lisa Shipman
handled much of the coordination. Roses were given to all honorees, and Godiva
chocolates were distributed to the 10-year
through 30-year honorees.
Marshall Breeding received his plaque for the Library’s Innovation/Creativity
award.
A small committee of CAG was
established to develop a proposal for a student library worker recognition
program. Elaine Goleski is a member of
that group.
A
number of OUL staff attended this year’s Staff Forum, Adventures in Library Digitization, on October
8. Lisa Shipman provided assistance
with refreshments. Paul and members of
the Forum Committee entertained the two external speakers at dinner and/or
lunch. Marshall Breeding was part of
the program with a presentation on the TV News Archive. The Forum was very well received.
The
Staff Development Committee, with Lisa Shipman as Chair, discussed and planned
for upcoming brown bag gatherings.
Several
OUL staff interviewed candidates for the vacant AA I position.
The
Personnel Office, Lisa in particular, continued its typical involvement with
filling various library positions. Lisa
serves on all librarian search committees and meets with candidates during interviews
to explain university benefits; she works with hiring supervisors on other
positions; and she orients all new employees.
During the month, an Electronic
Resources Librarian position (Management Library) was filled following an
interview earlier in the month. A
Search Committee for the Management Library's Information Services Librarian
continues its work, inviting two candidates for interviews. Lisa met with three candidates for the
Library Associate (Circulation Manager) position in the Management Library to
review benefits, and she conducted orientation sessions with two new staff
members hired in Special Collections and Management.
Budget
As
usual for this time of year, a significant amount of effort was expended on
budget development for 2003/2004. No
official guidelines have been provided from the university administration as
yet, but a number of models have been worked on to address a number of
tentative directions from the Provost’s
Office. Norman Nash is being kept
busy. Chancellor Gee has announced some
belt tightening for the University, but it’s not yet at all clear what the
implications of that might be for the various parts of the University.
For the 2003/2004 fiscal
year, we will be budgeting for much of the anticipated Reassessment funding and
spending, instead of just requesting it during the year. Efforts are being made to identify
appropriate projects for inclusion for the year to come. We also expect to have some of the
Reassessment allocation close to a reserve fund at the end of the year for
future use, possibly a major storage facility project.
Norman Nash, Budget Officer,
met with representatives from the Office of Internal Audit; he introduced them
to LMC members for a Library orientation and a discussion of expectations. Susan Smith will assist Norman during the
conduct of the audit. Initial meetings
with points of contact are expected to be completed by November 15th. Subsequently, Internal Audit will begin a
phase in which supporting documentation for specific transactions will be
needed. This detailed test work will
likely begin the week of November 25th.
LibQUAL
Progress was made on sharing
the results of the LibQUAL survey and on pursuing a couple of efforts to address
issues that were identified as being important. The comments received on the survey were placed
on the web and made accessible to staff. The full report of the survey results was completed and is under
final review by the LibQUAL committee and OUL; it should be available on the
LibQUAL
website shortly (now).
A proposal to have the
Science and Engineering Library open 24 hours from Sunday noon through Friday
at 10 PM was prepared and shared with several university administrators;
funding is being considered. Early
morning staffing by a security officer and no library services in the middle of
the night would be part of the plan.
Appropriate changes in entrances, card readers and accessibility will be
pursued once the project is approved.
The other action item
arising from LMC discussions was the creation of a quality of service
improvement program across the Library.
Dennis Clark, Sherre Harrington, Brent Mai, and Sharon Weiner have been
asked to consider the possibilities and to recommend an overall improvement
effort.
Library Access
Planning is underway for a
reciprocal Fisk/VU project that would provide borrowing privileges for the
primary clientele of the other library’s services. A second meeting of the planning group (Fisk and VU) was held to
begin to detail the many issues that must be worked through. Agreement was reached that the project would
begin with spring semester and a target date of early January. Borrowing privileges will be those of
undergraduates at the other institution.
Details of card issuance or validation and financial responsibility were
discussed. Participants from Vanderbilt
included Elaine Goleski, Anne Martin, Janet Thomason, and Flo Wilson.
Several discussions were
held about the current access policy and the use of turnstiles in some of the
libraries. These resulted from
discussions about the expected changes related to the Fisk/VU project, late
night hours at Science, and potential changes to borrowing policies in the Divinity
Library. Further discussions will be
pursued.
October saw improvements in
access card system operations. Last
month's ongoing difficulties with downloads seemed to be resolved by mid-month
so Elaine spent much less time contacting the Card Office to report problems.
Mark Cabus, an OUL temporary
staff member, learned how to update records, process lists of ID number
changes, and deal with other patron database issues. He will continue to assist Elaine with these duties.
Reports from the Card Office
detailing use of access cards by NALA libraries were received for May 2002 to
date; reports will now be received monthly.
Susan Smith will make it possible to record and compile this data for
all NALA access cards, including Fisk and MTSU.
Development
Elaine Goleski devoted
substantial effort, as did office staff, in planning and preparation for the
fall Friends of the Library dinner to be held November 19 at the Stadium
Club. Invitation design and production,
meal and facility planning, and frequent consultation with the Friends’
president, program chair and the speaker kept Elaine busy. Invitations were mailed to members, and
special arrangements were made with Peabody to send additional invitations for
selected Peabody faculty, staff, and alumni.
The Peabody Dean will do the introductions.
In other Development
activities, Elaine met with the A&S Development Officer to discuss
fundraising opportunities and with the Associate Vice Chancellor concerning
budget matters.
The Library hosted a couple
of activities coinciding with the University’s Reunion celebration. The Wild Bunch, a library donor group,
gathered for a hosted brunch in Special Collections; about 30 people
attended. Elaine worked with Special Collections
staff to arrange showings of a silent film set at Vanderbilt in 1927 as part of
Reunion Open House on October 25; she and others were on hand to greet
visitors.
Elaine handles creating and
designing library-related publications and logos. During October she reviewed galley proofs for the next issue of
the Acorn Chronicle, due to be printed by mid-November, and she finalized the
design for and authorized printing of the bookplate for the Pupo-Walker
collection. She also submitted design
ideas to Creative Services for a Ruiz-Ramon bookplate.
Collection Development
We reached verbal agreement
on our ScienceDirect renewal license for 2003.
Among the basic terms are.
- We will continue to have electronic access to
all Elsevier, Academic Press (now owned by Elsevier), and Harcourt Health
Sciences titles, approximately 1,500 in all.
- Online access will extend back to 1993 for
Academic Press titles. We paid for
1993-97 backfiles when we subscribed to IDEAL several years ago, and
Elsevier will honor this purchase.
Online access will extend back to 1995 for all Elsevier
titles.
- The total cost for our current Elsevier print
subscriptions and electronic access to the additional content is
$1,296,963. This total represents
an increase of approximately 6.5% over 2002 costs IF we cancel all
our Academic Press print subscriptions.
Canceling the Academic print, though it is not required, is an
integral part of holding down the cost increase and making it financially
feasible for us to retain access to all the electronic content we now
have. The terms make it
financially uninviting for us to cancel Elsevier print subscriptions. We can save no more than 1% of our
total Elsevier print expenditures, or $9,512, by canceling Elsevier print.
- The deal runs for a term of three years. 2004 prices will increase by a total of
11%, 2005 prices by a total of 10%.
Interlibrary Loan
October was another very
busy month for ILL borrowing and lending.
We received 333 requests from other libraries on October 21st, a new
record for a single day. ILL began to refer
requests from Vanderbilt Nursing and Medical patrons to the Eskind Biomedical
Library Document Delivery Service, which, beginning October 1st, is
not charging its primary users for items obtained from non-Vanderbilt sources
(see <http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vumcpub/index.html?articleID=110> for more
information). ILL announced and
implemented new rates for photocopies supplied to those libraries which we
charge in mid-October. (Our fees are
posted in the OCLC Name Address Directory, and also on the Web at
<http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/request/loanpolicy.shtml>.) A second Ariel workstation was put into
production, the office photocopier removed, and for lending, staff are now
scanning most articles held in Central and Divinity directly from the volumes. Jim continued to work with LITS to revise
our Web ILL request forms so that request information can carry through to the
transaction record online in OCLC (to cut down on re-keying); all except the
"Cut & Paste" form are now in production.
Copyright Clearance
Jim Webb continued to work
primarily with permissions for electronic reserves in October; the volume of
new permissions requests appeared to be finally winding down towards the end of
the month. Jim Webb, Jim Toplon, John
Haar, Paul Gherman, Norman Nash, and Susan Smith met with several deans and
dean’s representatives to discuss the costs of electronic reserves
permissions. Jim Webb has been working
with LITS to test moving the Permissions database to a library server, with the
goal of improving its accessibility and security for the library and Printing
Services staff who use it. Jim
announced to faculty that the Spring 2003 Class Pak deadline is Friday,
November 22nd.
Homepage Development
The Web Task Force, chaired
by John Haar, completed a round of usability testing for the new homepage. We tested both undergraduate and graduate
students. We are now in the process of
reviewing the results and considering improvements in the page to respond to
problems we identified. We also
reviewed LibQUAL+ results in the “personal control” dimension. Faculty appear to have particular difficulty
in using online resources and services, and we will attempt to learn from them
the exact causes of their dissatisfaction.
The Task Force is developing
several new pages and revisions to current pages; Marshall Breeding is working
on building the processes underlying the new pages and services.
- A “Tell Us” button, to be situated below the Ask
Us button. This button will invite
users to submit comments and suggestions.
- A new e-dissertation page that will link to
Vanderbilt’s Electronic Thesis and Dissertation page, Dissertation
Abstracts, the ILL form for borrowing dissertations, and possibly an
option to run an Acorn search for dissertations only.
- A page that links to the library’s various
digital initiatives.
- A revised E-Book Collections page that will link
to an Acorn search restricted to e-books only.
Resource Services
The
Resource Services Management Team approved and distributed the Building Access
and Work Hours Policy statement for RS that was developed with input and
recommendations from the RS Building Access Task Force.
Flo Wilson, Roberta Winjum
and Lisa Shipman discussed a telecommuting request for a Resource Services
staff member.
Television News Archive
Paul spoke about the
Vanderbilt Television News Archive at a NINCH Town Meeting in Atlanta on
Copyright in the Media, and traveled to NYC to begin discussions with ABC News
about an agreement to allow the TVNA to stream video of their content via the
Internet. He participated in a conference call with the Library of Congress
concerning their participation with the TVNA.
John Lynch and Marshall
were both interviewed by Jessica Howard for an article she authored for the
October 28, 2002 online edition Daily Register about the Archive titled " TV News Archive preserves network news
broadcasts dating back to '60s.." Marshall produced a clip
of digital video that was included as part of the article. John Lynch, Paul Gherman, and Marshall
Breeding were interviewed by Amber McDowell, a reporter from the Associated
Press, for a possible future news story about the Archive.
109 evening news programs
and 23 special broadcasts were recorded and added to the collection; 139 programs were cataloged into the database. 2,333 new records were added to the TV
NewsSearch database; the database now contains 705,123 records. Substantial clean-up and modification of
existing records is being pursued; a major project completed by Archive
staff--especially Skip Pfeiffer-was the clean up of the reporters index to
remove inconsistent spellings and other problems. Archive staff--especially John Lynch and the student
assistants--worked on database cleanup tasks related to the implementation of
the browse-by-date calendars.
1,356 new customers were
registered on the website, and over 6500 searches were executed. Four
non-Vanderbilt researchers and 15 Vanderbilt students visited the Archive. 65 orders for tape for a total of 120 hours
of content were fulfilled.
Two
candidates have been interviewed for the position that will be working with
Marshall on digitizing prototypes and processes. Marshall continues to work assessing videotape digitizing
options. Fred Bidel will be working
with Marshall on projects related to the Archive for about a month. This project is part of the NSF Grant.
A new system for browsing
the collection by date is being developed.
It will likely go into production in early November.
Marshall drafted a three-year
budget projection for the archive that demonstrates the impact of different
income possibilities.
Technology Projects
The Image Management Software
Committee, chaired by Marshall Breeding, submitted an Interim Report of the committee's progress to
date, which has been reviewed by the Committee, revised accordingly, and
submitted to Paul Gherman.
Marshall worked on several
improvements to the Abzu database that is part of the ETANA project. These included the implementation of
browsing by title, limiting to ETANA project entries, and cosmetic changes
requested by Chuck Jones of the Oriental Institute of the University of
Chicago. A new canned search was added to the ETANA Core Texts page that
produces a listing of titles sorted by Author; there are now 83 ETANA Core Text
titles available. The process of moving
ABZU to a new server, acquired as part of the Mellon Foundation grant, was
completed.
Marshall made changes to
the Religious Iconography Image Database at Anne Womack's Request.
Other OUL
Gordon
Gee visited the Library; he and Paul talked; John Haar provided a brief tour of
the building, spending some time in Special Collections.
Additional
thought was given to the preparation of an annual report for the Library. A decision was made to make use of some of
the essays submitted earlier by division directors, but to recast this document
as a ‘state of the library’ report.
Each division director will be given an assignment, with essays due the
end of November for an intended March publication.
Flo
Wilson met with Dennis Clark and Catherine Gick from Music about the allocation
of OCLC charges for cataloging. She and
Roberta Winjum, as well as the Cataloging and Authorities Team, had discussions
with Special Collections about current and future cataloging projects; a
decision was made that Special Collections would hire Norma Riddick for a
short-term project to recon books from the Rand collection of fine
binding.
Paul,
Flo and Jody met with Andy Stricker, Associate Provost for Innovation through
Technology, and Betty Stricker to learn more about an information portal
project identifying innovative uses of technology in teaching.
Elaine met with Creative
Services for preliminary design work on the 2002 Library holiday greeting card.
Other University-Related Staff Activities
David Anderson and Jim Webb
attended the Central Library Staff Forum on October 24th.
As a member of the
Leadership Vanderbilt 2002 professional development group, Marshall Breeding
participated in small group meetings related to his group’s assigned project
related to the role of university presidents and chancellors. As part of the
research for this project, the group conducted a short interview with
Chancellor Gee.
External Activities
Paul prepared a document for
the ARL Preservation Committee proposing that a number of ARL libraries join in
a project to preserve monographs held in our various storage facilities. He also attended the OCLC Members Council
and chaired their Digital Libraries Interest Group.
Flo
Wilson attended the LITA National Forum in Houston, Texas, Oct. 11 – 13, and
the LITA Executive Committee meeting as Past President and Chair of the Budget
Review Committee in Chicago, Oct. 24-26.
Lisa attended
"Strategies and Innovations in Academic Library Recruitment
Processes," a symposium sponsored by the ARL Office of Leadership and
Management Services and held in Washington, D.C. on October 14-15.
Marshall Breeding’s regular
Systems Librarian column was published in the November 2002 issue of Information
Today, Volume 19, No. 10: "Using the lib-web-cats directory to spot trends
in library automation". LinuxToday mentioned Marshall’s article "An
Update on Open Source ILS" as a news story for their October 9th edition.