Office of the University Librarian
Monthly Report--September 2003
Library Outreach and Campus Interaction
Paul Gherman attended a
Vanderbilt University Press Board meeting.
The
Library continued to work on establishing a trial of an institutional
repository for Vanderbilt scholarship. Dennis
Hall, Associate Provost for Research, is working on appointing a faculty
advisory committee; Paul attended the September Faculty Senate meeting and
learned that the Academic Services Committee will be inviting him to talk about
the project.
Paul conducted a tour of the
library for Kevin Myatt, Associate Vice Chancellor, Human Resources, and
discussed benefits and pay issues as they relate to library staff with him.
Paul and John Haar met with
George Sweeney to explore media support in the College of Arts and Science and
whether or not the library might assist in this by designating space in the
library in the future for an expanded Media Center to include digital
services..
Flo Wilson met with Barbara Clarke in the Women's Center to assess how being part of ACORN was working out for the Center. The Women's Center also supports the Center for Teaching in its additions to ACORN. In 2002/2003, these two centers circulated more than 500 items. As new collections/centers are established around campus, policies need to be developed for the addition of centers to ACORN.
Administration and Staff
The Community Giving campaign
got underway with Mary Conn, Jo Bilyeu, and Kitty Porter being asked to lead
the effort for the library.
The University Service Awards
ceremony recognized a number of library staff who have been with the university
for 20 years or more. Many from OUL
attended to lend our congratulations along with the rest of the community's.
Lisa Shipman worked with Celia Walker to plan the 2003 Service Award Reception to be held in October. Lisa coordinated the plaques to go to the Innovation/Creativity honoree and ordered the boxes of Godiva chocolates for the 10 – 35 year service award honorees.
Librarian
searches are underway in Management (2) and Science & Engineering. Two interviews for the Management Electronic
Resources Librarian were held in September. Interviews for the Information
Services/Instruction Librarian are being planned for October; three interviews
for the Term Librarian position in Science & Engineering are planned for
October. Lisa is involved in each of
these searches as an ex officio member.
Lisa attended the “Effective Employee Relations for 2003 and Beyond” workshop sponsored by Human Resources.
Ben Miller officially joined the
library staff working in the mailroom and messenger service. Lisa conducted New Employee Library
Orientations with Rita Hall, Term Librarian in the Management Library, and
Kelly Lockaby, LA III in the Central Library.
With quick turnaround, all
library staff completed the required conflict of interest forms; the new forms
will be on file in the library's personnel office, and officials outside the
library will review any potential conflicts.
Budget work for this year and
next was well underway. A request for
use of Reassessment funds was submitted to the Provost's Office, to allow
purchase of computer hardware, purchase of other equipment including funding
the new photocopiers, supporting miscellaneous building upgrades in the GLB,
and funding library services such as the 24-hour facility in Science and
Engineering. Flo and Norman Nash
attended the quarterly university business officers meeting and the monthly
Associate Deans meeting; the budget for next year was only briefly touched on,
and we do not yet have a firm idea of the university's budget plans for next
year.
The GLB Security Group
recommended changes to the building entrance for staff, and these changes were
implemented. Staff who arrive before
the building opens to the public at 7:30 AM now enter through the
breezeway. Previously those who
sometimes arrived before the Central Circulation staff member unlocked the
building felt unsafe waiting in the loading dock area. After 7:30, staff may enter through the
double loading dock doors and use their staff elevator key to access the
adjacent hallway and staff lounge. This
process provides more security for the lounge and nearby storage areas. We encouraged staff to avoid the loading
dock entrance when possible to reduce congestion in the area. Another safety concern has been parking
arrangements for GLB staff who must work until the library/building
closes. Paul and John met with Francis
Kovac, Director of Traffic and Parking, about parking for staff in the loading
dock area.
The annual compilation of
library statistics occurs August through October. Access, circulation, and catalog use statistics were distributed
to divisions. ARL statistics gathering
began.
Paul, John, Roberta Winjum and
Flo met with representatives from SOLINET and OCLC to discuss products and
services from those organizations.
Flo worked on the timeline and
process for conducting the Staff Time Allocation study in the library this
year. For one week in November, many
library staff will keep track of the time spent in various functional areas and
tasks. The week will serve to test the
current centers and tasks definitions, and aggregate data will be useful in
understanding how the library staff time is allocated in a functional rather
than organizational manner.
Library Access
The performance of the card access system appears to be much improved with the fixes applied by the Card Office. OUL finally received all of the entrance statistics for 2002/2003. OUL staff addressed wrinkles in how we update ACORN and the Card Office for changes in access; these continue to be worked on. Flo attended a meeting at the Card Office that was called to discuss door closures and locking issues.
Development
In her role as Development Officer for the Library, Celia Walker attends Development Office staff meetings and development officers' meetings. The automated system used by the Development Office is Advance, and Celia attended training classes in using the system.
Celia, Kurt and Paul worked on the fall Friends of the Library membership and program meeting scheduled for November 18. At a Friends Board meeting, arrangements were make to have Michael Sims (former library employee, well-reviewed published author) be the speaker.
Paul and Celia worked with Dr. Leon Helguera on the Helguera Colombiana Fund; contacts with other potential donors of Colombian material are proceeding. Paul talked further with Alice Randall about the donation of her papers to the Library.
Inter-Library Loan
The volume of borrowing and
lending requests continued to increase, and appears to have been substantially
higher than past September's.
An OpenURL link was installed
between WorldCat and other FirstSearch databases and ILLiad, replacing the old
fill-in forms and allowing patrons to request items by simply entering their
Acorn ID and PIN. The resulting
requests go straight into the ILL record.
Similar OpenURL functionality for the Kudzu and Athena catalogs and for
other research databases is expected in the relatively near future.
A link from "My
Account" in Acorn directly to the user's ILL/DDS (ILLiad) account was
activated in September. Patrons now may
go straight from Acorn to their ILL account without having to log in
separately. Special thanks to Dale
Poulter for his work on this and the OpenURL feature.
Jim Toplon was invited to give
an overview of the new ILL online system at a Central Reference staff meeting.
Copyright Clearance
Jim Webb concentrated almost
entirely on permissions for the flood of electronic reserves for fall. The
volume of electronic reserves requiring copyright clearance appears to have
increased substantially over the beginning of last year.
Jim also updated the Copyright
Web pages with information and deadlines for the Spring semester.
Web Page Development
The three groups charged with
reviewing vendor proposals for broadcast searching and linking services decided
to invite ExLibris and Endeavor for onsite demonstrations. (The demos took place on Oct. 1 and 2.) The Web Task Force, ISAG, and the Electronic
Resources Task Force determined these vendors to be superior because they each
offered both types of services, increasing the prospect that metasearching and
linking could work interactively in our online service environment. The groups expect to make a purchase
recommendation to LMC by mid-October.
The StaffWeb committee--Celia
Walker, Lisa Shipman, Suellen Stringer-Hye--met to discuss and review the
responses from library staff to the
online questionnaire that requested staff desires, needs and comments on the
StaffWeb as a library staff tool and communication vehicle.
Electronic Resources and Collection Development
The Collection Development
Advisory Group considered pricing information for our core databases from
Ebsco, FirstSearch, and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. Our current vendor, Ovid-SilverPlatter,
submitted a proposal significantly reducing its current prices. CDAG decided to accept the new
Ovid-SilverPlatter offer because of the substantial discounts. The review process was highly worthwhile in
light of the savings we should realize.
Annex
Library Annex staff completed their portion of the Dyer Astronomy
transfer project, which included creating and updating the item records for
their new location. (Science
Bibliographers had selected certain Astronomy materials to be transferred from
the Dyer Observatory Library to the Library Annex).
All Annex staff have now migrated to VUmail and Mulberry.
Annex staff sent the last of the Ruiz-Ramon Collection gifts to Central
Collections Development. Work has now
begun with the Simon Collier gift collection.
Phase II: Member Copy Reduction in Inventory retrievals for the
Technical Services staff is in full swing.
The Divinity LC COPY Reduction in Inventory project concluded; and we
went immediately into Phase II for Divinity in late September. The Robinson Gift collection work with the
Music Library remains steady.
A slight increase in the number of on-site researchers occurred in
September. Visits from University
storage tenants surged. The 1st
quarter 2003/2004 tenant charges were sent to Accounting.
Statistics: 391 linear feet of
stacks transfers were received. 866
items were retrieved for circulation to campus, 62 which were sent to other
than the owning “home library”. 231
pages were sent for ILL requests; and 59 pages scanned/faxed to campus users.
Technology Projects and Activities
The Printing Task Force completed its work and prepared a summary of the undertaking. The outcome is that several of the schools have strong views about not implementing an automated system to charge for printing. Given this view and the probable willingness of the schools to support the increased expense of supplies, the Library will not be purchasing a system either. LITS is exploring inexpensive, workstation-based methods of alerting users to the size of their print jobs before the printing actually begins. Several staff have expressed willingness to work on an educational campaign to encourage users to be frugal in their printing.
The Digital Collections Committee is working on a revised 'Unique Collections' web page that will highlight those collections we do have in digital/electronic form. Committee members in divisions which have digital projects underway are preparing planning document responses to describe what we're currently doing and to test the questions we would have people consider for future digital collection development.
Paul and Marshall Breeding
participated in a day-long meeting of ETANA participants, focusing on the NSF
Grant awarded to ETANA through Case Western Reserve University and Virginia
Tech. ABZU, the ETANA web site, and
organizational issues were covered as well.
Marshall implemented an enhancement to the ABZU search engine to
accommodate searching of notes fields. He also created a report of ABZU use
statistics for the last 12 months.
Television News Archive
The use of the TV News Archive's
Web site and database increased significantly with the beginning of the fall
semester. Conversion efforts continued
with 239 hours of material being digitized.
Three work-study students were hired to help in the digitizing
operation.
Marshall worked on a programming
project to enhance TV-NewsSearch service through limiting access to
subscribers, improvements in the online ordering system, and additional usage
statistics gathering capabilities.
In January, the TV-NewsSearch
service will be available only by subscription. Paul worked with NELINET concerning marketing for the TVNA.
Paul
met with Michael Perik, Achievement Technologies, a key donor to the TVNA.
External meetings, activities and professional
development
Celia spoke at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia,
in conjunction with the exhibition, A Century of Progress: Twentieth Century
Painting in Tennessee.
Paul interviewed candidates for
the Director of the main library of the Nashville Public Library.
Marshall's regular "Systems
Librarian" column was published in Computers in Libraries and he
authored contributions to the November 2003 issue of Smart Libraries
Newsletter published by the American Library Association.
Marshall's more detailed monthly report is available at:
http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding/reports/2003-09-September-report.html
10/15/03