Statistics
Circulation:
7,662 charges
and renewals
86 laptop checkouts
8,897 discharges
291
reserves charges
17 faculty deliveries
191
searches
5,729
books shelved
529 bound periodicals shelved
946 unbound periodicals shelved
424 newspapers shelved
Reference:
820 questions
623 (76%) at Reference desk
121 (15%) by e-mail
76 (9%) by telephone
Government Information: 87 reference questions
Microform
Media Center:
50
reference questions
Web: 24,536 visitor sessions, 169,050 hits
General
Alpine Bagel opened a coffee kiosk in the second level hallway of the GLB. The kiosk will initially be open from 9:00 until approximately 3:00 weekdays and adjust hours as traffic warrants. We will upgrade the electrical system on level two so that Alpine can offer a broader variety of refrigerated products and brew coffees on site
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
Janie King started to work in the LA II position in Circulation on August 3. We feel very fortunate to have someone with Janie's experience to fill this position.
Janet weeded the Leisure Reading collection. After Dale Manning's perusal of those weeded, we added 94 to the Central stacks and withdrew 111.
Chuck Owen from LITS worked on the front desk computers so that the wiring would be more concealed and not as unsightly. It is a vast improvement.
Janet attended several meetings this month. The Unit Heads meeting took place on August 4. On August 5 she attended the Laptop Subcommittee meeting. The subcommittee revised laptop agreement forms and changed loan periods. The new procedure for circulating laptops began on August 23. On August 6 Janet attended a meeting with the architects for the lobby remodeling. On August 10 she attended a meeting regarding GLB Housekeeping.
LITS implemented demand management for recalls on August 12. Janet served on the subcommittee within CAG that spearheaded this implementation. The transition has not been a smooth one. Unfortunately, when the recall grace period changed to seven days on August 12, the change affected all recalls already in the system. It was supposed to affect only those recalls placed on and after August 12. Many recall fines were charged in error, and staff have been busy this month working out the bugs. The most popular feature so far in the new recall policy is the ability for the patron to determine the pickup library. Another important feature currently underutilized is the ability for all the libraries within the "group" to recall each other's books. For example, if Peabody and Central owned the same book but Central's copy was due sooner and had been checked out longer, Peabody staff could recall Central's copy. On August 13 the Demand Management Subcommittee met to go over final details of the implementation and to make sure everything had been done. Since Anne Martin from LITS had done a major portion of the work on rewriting the circulation policies for the implementation of Demand Management, it was crucial that we meet again to make sure everything was working according to plan. Janet sent Peter Brush corrections to the Central circulation policies page to reflect the changes in recall policies.
On August 13 Janet took Janie, Ben Darling, Kelly Lockaby, and Rachel Gray for a tour of the Library Annex. As usual, Peggy Earheart did an outstanding job of providing the tour to staff who had not had the privilege of seeing the facility. They were very impressed.
On August 19 Circulation staff held a staff meeting to go over all of the new procedures going into affect for the new school year. Debra Stephens and Rachel Gray covered the Circulation Desk during the meeting. Janet and Daisy Whitten attended the CAG meeting on August 19.
Classes started with a bang
on August 25. Janet attended the Job Fair and hired many students for Circulation
and Stacks Maintenance and two for the Reserve Room.
Periodicals:
Janet, Rachel Gray, Mary Beth Blalock and Kelly Lockaby met on August 10 to
discuss procedures for handling the mass periodical cancellation. Rachel will
create new labels for the periodicals that have been cancelled so that patrons
will be informed and shelving staff will also know when to pull the last issue
for binding. If the periodical is to be replaced with an online subscription,
that information will also be put on the label. We sent 243 titles to the bindery
this month. Machelle Keen stopped by to report that Rachel has been doing an
excellent job with bindery preparation. Mary Beth Blalock identified several
titles for Annex transfer due to condition. We sent some volumes Book Repair
first, but most went directly to the Annex. Ben worked on this project for several
weeks and completed the transfer of all the titles just before classes started.
Reserves:
There was a definite learning curve in the implementation of Blackboard. LaRentina
Gray came back from her vacation to the full swing of electronic reserves. LaRentina
and Janet spent a great deal of time mounting electronic reserves. We mounted
the majority of courses on OAK/Blackboard, while some courses remained on ERes
at the professor's request. The demand has been greater than ever before.
Janet and LaRentina were greatly assisted by Anne Martin in learning Blackboard. She also showed us how to do archiving when semester's end approaches. Janet and LaRentina both attended the Electronic Reserves Subcommittee meeting on August 18. A student worker from shelving who had worked last year in the Reserve Room did all the processing of print reserves, while LaRentina and Janet concentrated on electronic reserves. Total number of print reserves received and processed thus far is 80. Total number of e-reserves courses mounted on Blackboard thus far is 59; total number for ERes is 10. We purchased another scanner and placed it in the Circulation office, and Ben has been authorized in Blackboard. At this point, he has done some scanning but no linking to courses. I imagine that the workload and timetable will be so short for spring semester's mounting of electronic reserves that he will be kept busy assisting in this process. On August 31 Janet sent Peter the revisions to the Central web page for course reserves so that faculty would have all the necessary information about OAK and ERes.
Stacks
Maintenance:
August started off slowly but in anticipation of the upcoming semester. We have
a really good work crew this year. They seem to have caught on very well, and
Kelly and Jo Bilyeu are working on fine tuning and getting them started on projects
and regular duties. Regular
staff have continued on the Annex transfer project and shifting where possible.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic
Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on August 11 and 25. The committee approved
two databases--CORBIS Images for Education and Gallup Brain--for
trials. Of the four databases under consideration as additions to our collection,
the committee approved Oral History Online and the U.S. Serial Set
for purchase when funds are available. ProQuest Newsstand Complete will
be added to our National Newspaper package at no additional charge, and
the committee approved Dyabola for a VLEF funding request. NISC recently
announced a new database, Gender Studies, which merges Women's
Studies International, Sexual
Diversity Studies, and Men's Studies databases. Since Central
currently has subscriptions to two of the three databases, NISC offered a special
upgrade price for Gender Studies. The upgrade will be activated on Nov.
1, 2004.
We decided not to share the cost of a campus-wide subscription for Business Source Premier. Although we are interested in the SourceOECD database, the pricing structure for Vanderbilt alone (as opposed to a consortial price) is not known, and the interface has major problems. Discussion about this resource will resume when more information is available.
We discussed several free resources and approved for the Articles & Databases page, including World Bank Group Documents & Reports, International Monetary Fund Publications, and Getty Images. Members of the ERC are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, David Carpenter, John Haar, and Mary Beth Blalock (chair). The ERC meets on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month and welcomes your suggestions of titles you think will enhance our electronic resources.
Film
Studies Program:
Dale Manning assumed bibliographer responsibilities for Film Studies this month.
He met with Penny Peirce, Director of the the Learning Resource Center, and
Paul Young, Director of the Film Studies program, on Aug. 17 to discuss the
needs and expectations of the program regarding the ordering of films in various
formats as well as books. Although Penny ordered many of the films needed this
semester, Dale has already ordered more than $300 worth of orders for videos
and DVDs. Responsibility for ordering similar materials for other disciplines
is also being centered in the Central Library after having been divided between
the LRC and the library.
Outreach:
Melinda Brown attended the reception for Monica Casper, the new Director of
the Women's Studies program.
Paula Covington wrote an article on book buying trips for the Acorn Chronicle.
Janice Adlington, Peter Brush, Paula Covington, Sue Erickson , Dale Manning, and Susan Widmer met with new faculty and graduate students to provide orientations to library resources and to learn more about their resource needs.
Oversize
Transfer Project:
Peter Brush completed his assigned call number ranges.
Gifts:
Paula Covington viewed a potential gift collection and reviewed some titles
in the Collier Collection.
Committee and Other Activities:
In addition to attending the Job Fair, Julie Loder attended meetings of the
Technology Support Coordinators, Technology Training Coordinators, one of the
Strategic planning feedback meetings and assisted on Orientation Day. She also
presented Mulberry and Library Network training sessions for Janie King and
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot and Corporate Time training sessions for Yvonne Boyer and
Larry Romans.
Sue Erickson met with Mary Beth Blalock to discuss serial cancellation issues for Anthropology and Sociology.
Mary Beth Blalock attended
the ARTstor demonstration and attended meetings to discuss periodical
signage and Film Studies issues.
Government Information
In August we welcomed Amy Stewart-Mailhiot. Nancy Dolinger helped train Amy on a variety of office tasks. At the end of the month Nancy has been training new student workers.
Jean Wright, Amy and Nancy met with Peg Earheart at the Annex for a tour and to get a better idea of what Government Information materials are housed at the Annex. They discussed space problems and focused on items that we may offer to other libraries. Amy met with Linda Tesar to go over a clean up project of more than 3,500 Marcive records.
Amy met with Larry Romans and began learning the structure and functionality of the Government Information website/database, including updating records, fixing broken links, and 'gathering' new sites for inclusion.
Larry and Amy participated in two library instruction classes. One was for new Political Science graduate students; the other--with Susan Widmer and Sue Erickson--for Economic Development students. This included devoting time to Amy's learning the economic development databases (International Financial Statistics, World Development Indicators, and Economist Intelligence Unit).
Larry attended the job fair. We welcome back returning student workers Mark Kirkland and Rob Taylor, new student workers Regan Philips, Melani Trexler, Linda Guan, Erin Mutispaugh, and Greg Todd, as well as Mike Granillo, who worked last year in Collection Development.
Microform and Media Center (Peter Brush)
The Media Center had a very eventful month. Early in August an unidentified thief stole three DVD players. There was also evidence of attempts to steal a video monitor and CD players. Media Center staff had to spend much of the month working with campus police and finding ways to secure the remaining equipment and other recently ordered equipment.
The Learning Resource Center brought in a very large quantity of new videos this month, mainly for use in Vanderbilt's expanding Film Studies program. Due to the security problems mentioned above, and to the work of hiring and training new students and beginning the new semester, cataloging of this influx of videos has so far gone more slowly than anticipated. We added a total of 42 new videos to the collection in August. At last count, there were 102 remaining to be cataloged. Now that security and staffing issues have mostly been settled, the cataloging work should go more quickly.
Reference (David Carpenter)
Instruction Report (Melinda Brown, Instruction Coordinator):
Our new student orientation activities continue to be the most important August
instructional happening. This year's "Information Fair" targeted to
freshmen happened on Monday, August 23. We offered a total of 14 library tours
to 107 students. We also offered three Introduction to the Library sessions
to 38 students. Thanks the following people for their most appreciated contributions
to this event: Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, Peter Brush, David Carpenter,
Paula Covington, Sue Erickson, John Haar, Julie Loder, Dale Manning, Larry Romans,
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, and Susan Widmer.
Melinda provided information about library resources at the New Graduate Student Orientation. She and Leslie Boyd (Peabody Library) provided information about the libraries to new students attending the Student Resource Fair sponsored by the Office of New Student Orientation.
Central librarians provided orientations to 60 College of Arts and Science graduate students, and we have also been providing library orientations to new A&S faculty (see additional information below).
Peter Brush offered a research library overview to a group of high school students from the University School of Nashville. The area of interest was Asian history. In addition, Peter provided a library orientation session for ten new graduate students from the Department of History.
Central Reference librarians were glad to join with their Central Library colleagues in wearing the attractive Welcome to the Library, How May I Help You? badges during the first few days of the semester.
Sue Erickson revised the script for the Introduction to the Library sessions for our library orientation sessions. Sue also co-taught two of the three sessions on August 23 with Melinda and Janice Adlington. Sue conducted orientations for the Anthropology (with Paula Covington) and the Sociology graduate students on August 24.
Janice Adlington (along with Larry Romans and Sue Erickson) presented sections of two Introduction to Library Research orientation sessions in the electronic classroom on August 23. Janice also met with the new graduate students in Philosophy (6) and Classics (4) for their orientations and tour. She also sent an information packet to the department along with a survey, which she hopes will elicit more of a response from the Department of Psychology in taking advantage of library services.
Dale Manning met with the new graduate students in English on Aug. 24 and gave them a tour of the building, oriented them to library resources (especially electronic resources), discussed their backgrounds and specific literary curricular interests, and clarified his role as liaison. Dale and the students finished the library orientation session in Special Collections, where Teresa Gray gave them an introduction to that collection with emphasis on literary materials.
Susan Widmer provided a library tour and orientation session for fourteen Department of Economics graduate students on August 24. Susan also provided a library orientation session for a new German professor on August 31.
Paula met with several new faculty members for orientations and to discuss their teaching and research interests. She offered an orientation for Department of Anthropology; attended a Center for Latin American Studies meeting for new LAS graduate students; offered freshman tours; and had various meetings with her co-teacher for a LAS 290 course. She scheduled a number of instruction sessions for Spanish and Comparative Literature for September. Paula began teaching LAS 290 on August 26. The class will meet twice weekly this fall, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Julie Loder assisted with library orientation day activities by leading tours and serving as a web coach in one of the informational sessions.
Professional
Development:
Two of our colleagues
are revisiting life as a student, as they audit Vanderbilt courses to further
their professional development and in support of their subject area responsibilities.
Sue Erickson began attending Sociology 211: Introduction to Social Research (taught by Professor Karen Campbell). This is a required course for undergraduate Sociology majors that is a prerequisite for the required Research Practicum. Sue hopes to gain insight into what the students are learning in the classroom about social science research. She is also enjoying the opportunity to observe teaching and learning in the undergraduate classroom.
Janice Adlington started auditing an Italian class and says: "don't be surprised if ciao! instead of hi slips out!"
Other
Activities, Meetings, Training Opportunities or Accomplishments:
David Carpenter attended a demonstration of the new ARTstor
database on August 5. John Haar, Mary Beth Blalock, Paul Gherman and Fine
Arts faculty and other individuals also attended the meeting and participated
in a discussion with ARTstor representatives after the database demonstration.
All attendees agreed that ARTstor is a wonderful new reference and collection
development resource. Unfortunately, a subscription to the database is very
expensive.
David, Sue Erickson and Susan Widmer attended a demonstration of the EBSCO Business Source Premier database at the Owen School of Management on August 6.
David Carpenter and Sue Erickson joined other Central Library colleagues, Paul Gherman, George Sweeney (Assoc. Dean for Finance of the College of Arts and Science) and Edward Belbusti (Vanderbilt's campus architect) on August 6 to meet with architects from Johnson Johnson Crabtree Architects P.C. This architectural firm was awarded the contract to propose plans for a renovation of the Central Library. Dale Manning (another member of the Central Library Renovation Group) joined David and Sue and most of the former group at a second meeting with the architects on August 31 to look over their initial renovation proposals.
Sue Erickson attended all three Strategic Planning staff meetings (in Sherre Harrington's stead) to answer any questions from staff about the recommendations from the Services to Undergraduates group.
David and Janice participated in one of the Strategic Planning/SWOT meetings to discuss the recommendations of the Strategic Planning groups and to rank recommendations by priorities.
Paula provided two reference subject area orientations for Julie Loder, providing overviews of important reference publications and databases for Paula's three subject areas of responsibility.
Julie continued and completed her meetings with bibliographers so they could show her important reference resources in their respective subject areas. She "shadowed" reference librarians on the reference desk during the month of August. On August 30, Julie began staffing the reference desk on a regular basis on her own.
Sue Erickson created a new PowerPoint slideshow for the Central Library lobby, announcing new library services and other information of interest to users of the library.
Sue Erickson conducted one data consultation on August 25 and another census-related data consultation with Amy Stewart-Mailhiot on August 27.
Paula worked on new webpage links for her Spanish and Portuguese subject resource webpages.
As of August 24, all Central Library reference librarians (as well as Yvonne Boyer) are now using Vanderbilt's Corporate Time scheduling software--making their work schedules and scheduling conflicts available online. David Carpenter, scheduler of the Central Reference service shifts, is very happy about this development! Thanks to Paula, Dale, and Yvonne for joining our group of Corporate Time software users.
On August 25 Central Library reference librarians met to select weekend reference service shifts for fall semester 2004.
Committee
or Other Regularly Scheduled Meetings Attended:
Central Reference
librarians attended various other regular departmental, staff, and task force
meetings during June. These included meetings of the following groups: Central
Library Reference, Central Library Bibliographers, Heard Web Task Force, Heard
Staffweb Focus Group, Acorn and Virtual Catalog Task Force, Information Services
Advisory Group, Electronic Resources Committee, ISAG Web-based Instructional
Support Subcommittee, Technology Support Coordinators, Central Library Staff
Forum, SFX Implementation Group, ERL Migration Group and Central Library Unit
Heads.