Stack Maintenance
Work continued on the Annex Transfer Project. 9 trucks were sent over to them.
We are currently working in the P section, and will start shifting in that
area as we go to relieve some pressure in that area.
New students have been hired for fall. Collection Maintenance would like to welcome: Kelly, Sarah, Steven, Anna, Alejandra, Andre, and Annika and of course our returning student worker, Melvin.
David H. has worked on Periodical shifting, pretty much as far as possible at the moment until we can possibly weed some of the material. We are looking into that at the moment.
Collection Maintenance is looking forward to the new and exciting school year and getting the new people trained and projects rolling once again.
Reserve
So far, the total number of lists processed for "Print" Reserves
is 73; and the total number of electronic reserve requests is 34. Larentina
has trained 1 of her graduate students to help in the scanning of E-Reserves
and this has helped this month to have her working many hours on this project.
Many lists have been brought in at the last minute unfortunately but Larentina
is working quickly to get the stuff ready. 2 new students were hired for Reserve
and the rest are returning students. 1 additional student who works in Circulation
is working some hours in Reserve Room as well. We've already had 1 student
quit so there is an unexpected opening currently.
Circulation
August went by in a whirlwind. The new release of Acorn was installed as well
as iLink. Several notice problems resulted from this with due today notices
not running and email notification not working but these problems were resolved
after a few days and all reports not run on time were eventually run and notices
caught up to date. Several staff took some vacation time before fall semester
began full swing. Janet, Daisy, Robert and Yolanda all took some vacation
time. Dale Poulter met with all of the CAG representatives who will be circulating
laptops to discuss the laptop renewal problem. Laptops cannot currently be
renewed online via iLink. Janet and several other CAG representatives were
given a very informative and in depth tour of the Nashville Public Library
by Elizabeth Coleman on August 8th. On August 9th and 16th, Janet participated
in a demo from Canon and Minolta of new mifilm reader/printer/scanners for
potential purchase in MFM. Janet and Robert signed up to participate in orientation.
Janet worked at the tent area for 1 shift while Robert was signed on as a
backup for building tours. 8 new workstudy students were hired for circulation.
11 students who worked last year or this summer are continuing in Circulation
this fall. There are still a few hours yet to fill. Janet and Jo both went
to the Job Fair on August 29th.
The news of the death of our building maintenance supervisor, Anthony Buchanan, on August 22nd has been very difficult for our Circulation Department. Anthony was often here nights and weekends and developed a great working relationship and friendship with all of the staff in our department. We will miss him a great deal.
Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on August 13th and 28th. Four databases--African-American
Newspapers: the 19th Century, CQ Electronic Library, Digitale
Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker, and the Tennessean (Gale)-- were
selected for trials. Trials should begin in September.
From time to time, the Committee evaluates a database but defers a decision in order for the database to enhance content and/or the search engine. These databases are usually reevaluated within a six to twelve month period. An example is the RLG Cultural Materials database that was initially reviewed last January. The database was discussed again briefly on August 13th; reevaluation is scheduled for Spring 2003.
Members of the ERC are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, David Carpenter, John Haar, and Mary Beth Blalock (chair). We welcome your suggestions of titles you think would enhance our electronic resources.
Outreach:
Susan Widmer met with the German faculty members at a departmental meeting
on August 27.
Paula Covington met individually with four faculty members in Spanish for
orientations and discussions of future collection needs relating to their
research and teaching. She also met with several faculty members to discuss
the library's role in an NEH grant proposal and prepared the library segment
of the proposal. Paula and her co-instructor met several times to plan the
LAS 290 Latin American Research Methods class. In addition, she met with the
Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies faculty and students to discuss
programs and the course.
Transfer Project:
As of August 15th, bibliographers identified 53,065 volumes for transfer to
the Annex and 671 volumes for withdrawal (mostly unnecessary duplicate copies).
Gifts:
Susan Widmer and Mary Beth Blalock traveled to Sewanee on August 8 to review
gift titles in the Whitesell Collection (German materials) at the University
of the South Library. The books selected in this initial review have arrived
and will be processed as other gift collections. The exact number of volumes
in the collection is yet to be determined.
Julie Loder received 367 gifts excluding the Whitesell (German) collection;
198 titles were sent to Resources Services to be processed for Central Library.
Committee and Other Activities:
Julie Loder attended a Technology Support Coordinators meeting and assisted
with student orientation activities at the Information Tent on August 26.
Susan Widmer visited Order Services and Cataloging to meet subject liaisons and other members of the teams. Later in the month, she met with Keith Curd to discuss German material orders. She also attended a New Staff Orientation session on August 28.
Mary Beth Blalock attended a Staff Development Coordinating
Committee meeting on August 13 and along with John Haar met with our new Ovid/SilverPlatter
representative, Jeff Murphrey.
Gretchen Dodge attended the LITS Support Coordinators meeting.
Nancy Dolinger succeeded in completing a huge backlog of bindery problems.
Larry Romans is recovering from minor surgery.
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, from the Ben West Library, visited to view our Census collection and pick up a set of Davidson County Census Block Maps. We now have a complete set of block maps for all Tennessee counties stored in our new map cabinet.
We hired four new students at the FWS Job Fair.
Periodicals
343 titles were sent to bindery for the month of August. Apple Igrek from
the Microrform and Media Center has been helping out in Periodicals. Hopefully
soon the daytime student position will be filled.
Microform and Media Center
Patron business remained slow in August, but it was a busy month nonetheless.
Large numbers of new videos, cds, and cdroms arrived at the Media Center.
The cd and cdrom collections both required shifting to accomodate the new
material. Unavoidable staff absences during the month slowed the process of
cataloging new videos. As it was, 32 new video items were added to the collection.
Also this month, Carrie Sprouse completed the Media Center's first-ever complete inventory of the microfilm collection. She identified a number of items that had been mis-shelved or which needed to be relabeled. This will be one of our next big projects.
David Anderson took a thorough inventory of the 6th floor storage closet, identifying a number of broken and surplus items that needed to be removed. The closet is now much roomier and better organized.
We were all busy preparing for the beginning of fall semester in late August and looking forward to the start of another academic year. With Susan Widmer joining us in July, we are pleased to enter fall semester fully staffed once again.
During August, David Carpenter worked toward the launch of a new virtual reference service. Melinda Brown was especially busy in making preparations for our Central Library fall semester welcoming events for new and returning students and faculty. Sue Erickson and Janice Adlington prepared for, and later offered, library information sessions to support that effort. Other Central Library staff members refreshed their knowledge of library facts and service in preparation for our library tours or welcoming events.
Library Instruction (Melinda Brown) - On August 26th, Central Library held its traditional fall "welcome back to students" events. We offered library tours and information sessions to about 100 students, and we continued to offer library tours through the rest of the week. We also tried a new tactic-we had a tent located beside Buttrick Hall, near Rand, where we answered questions about the libraries, gave directions and offered coupons redeemable in the library where students had the possibility of winning a gift certificate for local eateries or a Central Library pen. Martin Cerjan and some of his friends came by to play music for us, and Linda Williamson brought her dog, Xena, by for all the dog lovers. Approximately 200 people stopped by the library tent.
A big thanks to the following people for making this day a success: Janice Adlington, Johnnie Anthony, Susan Bell, Mary Beth Blalock, Yvonne Boyer, Zora Breeding, Peter Brush, David Carpenter, Paula Covington, Gretchen Dodge, Ann Ercelawn, Sue Erickson, Elaine Goleski, Paul Gherman, John Haar, Don Jones, Julie Loder, Dale Manning, Michael Scott, Janet Thomason, Susan Widmer, Flo Wilson, Robert Wright, Martha Young and a special thanks to Martin Cerjan and Linda Williamson and of course, Xena.
?Ask Us Reference Service Launched - Last year we conducted a pilot test of a chat-based reference service, named Ask a Librarian LIVE. Unfortunately, Ask a Librarian LIVE received a low level of use by the Vanderbilt community. On August 22nd, a new expedited e-mail based reference service, ?Ask Us was introduced along with the newest edition of the Heard Library webpage. You can see the bright green ?Ask Us button in the upper right corner of Heard Library and Acorn webpages.
The ISAG Cooperative and Virtual Reference Subcommittee helped to design and plan for the new digital reference service. Marshall Breeding designed the ?Ask Us webpage screens and provided the programming necessary to set the system up and have it function smoothly prior to the beginning of fall semester. Marshall used the same software which underlies the LITS Netfix service. The Heard Library began a subscription to the QuestionPoint virtual reference software, jointly support by OCLC and the Library of Congress, which may be used with ?Ask Us later in the fall semester.
Once again this virtual reference service is a Heard Library cooperative effort. At this point, all but one of the Heard divisional libraries is participating in providing the ?Ask Us service by promptly responding to any ?Ask Us questions referred to them using that service's sofware. During all the hours that Central Reference is staffed, Central Reference librarians initially screen the incoming ?Ask Us questions and answer most of them. Any questions which seem best answered by a librarian in one of the other Heard Library divisions, due to subject focus or other factors, is forwarded to that Heard divisional library.
We have had an excellent response to ?Ask Us, receiving and answering reference questions on a variety of topics. We expect this newest reference initiative to be successful and appreciated by the Vanderbilt community for both its convenience and ease of use.
How Do I? Online Assistance Updated - The ISAG Web-based Instructional Support Group (chaired by Melinda Brown and including Central Reference librarian Janice Adlington) created a new series of helpful online assistance tips and instructions for selected topics.
Graduate Orientation Sessions - Many bibliographers held library orientation sessions during the last week of August for new graduate students in the academic departments corresponding to their areas of subject responsibility. Library tours were usually also included. The August graduate student orientations sessions included: Janice-Philosophy; Sue-Sociology, Dale-English and Paula and Sue--Anthropology
New Data Services Librarian - Sue Erickson has assumed the primary responsibility for assisting library users seeking to identify ICPSR or other datafiles to support their research and/or class assignments. David Carpenter had formerly filled this role. Sue will work with Mary Dietrich at ITS/ACIS to coordinate the data services we offer to our library's users. She will also be responsible for maintaining and updating the Data Archives and Related Resources webpage created by David.
Faculty and students from the Department of Sociology are probably our largest users of data from ICPSR--at least from the College of Arts and Science. This new responsibility is a good fit with Sue's collection development areas of sociology and anthropology and her professional development interests. Sue has also had experience in using statistical software when doing research for her library school thesis. The library purchased a copy of SPSS statistical software for Sue so that she can better understand how faculty and students make use of ICPSR and other data.
David Carpenter had been the "Datafiles Librarian" for over a decade, taking on this responsibility when we ordered the datafiles via Telnet, received them six weeks later on large tape spools and then sent them to the Computer Center for processing and mounting for use. Access to ICPSR data is much more "user-friendly" these days, but identifying other sources of data can be as challenging as ever. With this transfer of responsibility, we will also update the title from Datafiles Librarian to Data Services Librarian. The former title is rarely used in recent years and may be confusing to some individuals. Sue went to Ann Arbor, Michigan on August 11-17 to attend a week-long workshop entitled "Providing Social Science Data Services: Strategies for Design and Operation."
Other Activities:
Central Reference librarians met on August 22nd to select their weekend service
days for Fall Semester. The librarians also agreed with David's proposal to
schedule and provide back-up reference desk support for Linda Williamson duing
the very busy 2:00-4:00 P.M. afternoon hours.
David Carpenter met with Sue Erickson to explain and discuss her new Data Services responsibilities.
Melinda Brown and Sue met to discuss their Plagiarism website and how it might be updated or improved.
Sue also spent quite a bit of time in August testing the new Acorn interface, fielding questions and comments about it from Central Reference staff, and relaying any problems to LITS.
David finished up initial reference training and orientation for Susan Widmer prior to the beginning of fall semester. Susan "soloed" on the reference desk on August 29th.
David wrote an article for the next issue of the Acorn Chronicle
describing the Heard Library's pilot testing of the chat-based Ask a Librarian
LIVE virtual reference service last year.