Statistics
Access:
22,022 entrances
Circulation:
7,065 charges at circulation desk (8%
increase from Aug. 2005)
1,669 renewals at circulation desk
6,763 online renewals
84 laptop charges
(9%
decrease from Aug. 2005)
213 reserve charges (42%
decrease from Aug. 2005)
3,289 books received from other libraries (9%
decrease from Aug. 2005)
436 holds placed (5%
decrease from Aug. 2005)
11,260 books
shelved (13% increase from Aug. 2005)
600 bound periodicals shelved (15% increase from
Aug. 2005)
734 unbound periodicals shelved (11% decrease from Aug.
2005)
444 newspapers shelved (2% increase
from Aug. 2005)
2 booktrucks sent to Annex
24.2 hours spent shifting
11 sets of serials sent to the bindery
Reference:
316 questions at Reference
desk (58%)
141 by e-mail (26%)
90 by telephone (16%)
3 email off-desk questions
2
email search questions
2 phone off-desk questions
1 mail off-desk question
8 phone off-desk directional questions
Government
Information/Media Services:
169 items charged
(44%
decrease from Aug. 2005)
94 reference questions and service transactions
Instruction:
43 sessions for 398 participants
General
Facilities:
Improvements
continued in the lobby. We purchased a new reception desk that is now located
on the west wall near the entrance. Display cases remain in the lobby, but were
relocated to create a more open environment. Funds permitting, we will add tables
and chairs to one our the newly created entrance alcoves and permit food in
the area.
Central and Divinity agreed that we will enable access control at 7pm Monday-Friday and all day on Saturday and Sunday.
Services:
LITS
installed a VU Print color printer in the lobby.
Ben Darling, Ann Ercelawn, Bryan Kurowski, and Larry Romans volunteered to serve on an ad hoc committee to recommend improvements for our Leisure Reading Collection. They were asked to especially consider how we might integrate features such as displaying bestseller lists and soliciting patron/staff recommendations and book reviews. They submitted several recommendations to John Haar at the end of the month. Among their suggestions: create a leisure reading webpage; post bestseller lists, reviews, and recommendation on a bulletin board adjacent to the collection; improving the physical environment in the LRC reading area; and increasing the leisure reading acquisitions budget.
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
Stacks
Maintenance:
Student worker Scott Pierce was the only
worker from the summer to stay on for the fall semester. Additionally three
spring semester stacks maintenance students returned for the fall: Erin Bazar,
Stephanie Madden, and Travis Owen. Stacks Supervisor Matt McKee
attended the Job Fair on Aug. 24. He hired and trained nine stacks maintenance
student workers. Kelly Lockaby trained a student to handle periodicals
duties three days a week.
Since fewer
books are returned at the beginning of the semester, most students worked on
shifting projects, shelf-reading, and general stacks maintenance. The shifting
projects include seven students working in six specific areas on the fifth,
seventh, and eighth floors. We have identified fifth floor Old Wing and eighth
floor New Wing as high priority shifting areas. Shelf-reading assignments that
were not completed by circulation and stacks maintenance student workers this
summer were reassigned to new and returning stacks maintenance workers.
Periodicals:
We sent 137 volumes to the bindery. Several boxes
of back issues of periodicals arrived that needed binding and that took longer
than normal to process. Janie King attended Java Workflows training.
Circulation:
August was a very hectic month, primarily because of the rush of reserve activity.
All staff attended the Java workflows training. Janet taught sessions on advanced
circulation. LITS loaded the Java client on circulation workstations, and we
trained newly hired students on the client. Daisy Whitten, Ben Darling,
and Matt spent a great deal of time working with Julie Loder making the
receipt printers work properly with the client and thawing workstations and
setting properties.
In Janet's absence, Daisy attended the Job Fair and hired all the circulation students. Staff set up folders for each new and returning student and developed a new training checklist and new handouts to place in each folder. The folders are kept on file so that each time the student works we can check areas where they continue to need training. We implemented new rules for all the student circulation desk workers and made an effort to hire graduate students exclusively to staff the desk, although we retained all returning undergraduates. We lost a few students due to the new rules, but that was expected. All the staff deserve special recognition for the time and effort they spent to get the semester off to a smooth start since Janet had to be absent at such a critical time.
Circulation held a staff meeting to discuss the new hiring policies and to address access issues related to the installation of new entrance and exit controls. Debra Stephens again graciously agreed to cover the circulation desk during our meeting.
Daisy and Yolanda Campbell spent a great deal of time finishing up the carrel renewal process and assigning carrels before classes started.
LaRentina Gray recruited
Ben to help mount electronic reserves and made great progress in getting many
courses ready by the day classes started, even though some materials were turned
in after the deadline date. Training new students and returning students to
deal with both course reserves operations and circulation has gone relatively
smoothly.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Grant
Award:
Thanks to Paula Covington and her work
on a Department of Education grant proposal with the Center for Latin American
and Iberian Studies, the library will receive over $130,000 over the next four
years to enhance the Latin American collection. The Library component of the
grant focuses on developing the Andean collection and enhancing the Mesoamerican
collection. Funds will also be available to attend conferences, to travel on
book purchasing trips, and to host a conference.
Paula
met several times with Ted Fischer, Director of the Center, planning for the
implementation of the grant. John Haar, Mary Beth, and Paula met with Prof.
Fischer to discuss details regarding the materials funds.
Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on Aug.
9. We approved a subscription to the Prospective Collection of the Congressional
Research Digital Library and approved adding the Homeland
Security Digital Library, a free resource, to the Articles
& Databases page. We approved an October trial for Cambridge Companion
Series Online. The Committee also discussed the LexisNexis American Statistics
Digital Collection but deferred a decision until we have answers to questions
that were raised during the discussion.
Outreach:
Paula met
with Prof. Marshall Eakin regarding the Brazilian Studies Association conference,
which will be held here in October. She met with Prof. Jane Landers about the
Cuban Slave Societies digital library collection. She participated in an orientation
session and luncheon at the Center for new graduate students in Latin American
Studies. She also wrote an article on our recent acquisition of a Federico Garcia
Lorca illustrated book for the Acorn
Chronicle.
Susan
Widmer met with Prof. Christoph Zeller, German Department, to discuss collection
issues. She also attended Kaffeestunde (coffee hour) with faculty and students
in the department.
Gifts:
Although the official count
of gifts for August was 19, Bryan Kurowski spent time acquiring two large
gift collections--Samuel Emmons Brown and Gaby Hoffman--which will be counted
as soon as time permits.
Paula picked up the last boxes of the Arbena Collection and reviewed other gifts.
Yvonne
Boyer met with Prof. Robert Cohn regarding the donation of his Mallarme
Collection to the Bandy Center.
Committee
and Other Activities:
Bryan was busy this month hiring and training
new student assistants. He also gave Mulberry, Novell, and Corporate Time training
sessions for Sara Byrd and was involved with Java WorkFlows training
sessions.
Mary
Beth presented an advanced collection development Java client session. She also
met with Peter Brush and Yuh-Fen Benda to discuss funding and
cataloging of East Asian materials.
Government Information/Media Services (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)
Teri Bante and Amy toured the Law Library with Linda Tesar to learn more about available resources.
Teri worked with Rachael Bankes on rewriting the manuals for Media Services. Upon Rachael's departure from the department, Teri assumed the majority of responsibility for the video collection and reserves. The department joined with Interlibrary Loan for a farewell potluck for Rachael.
Teri and Amy completed Workflows
Java client training.
Amy attended a GIS meeting with Flo Wilson, Sue Erickson, and
Brian Christens at Peabody Library. It was determined that until the
new GIS Coordinator is hired, Amy, Sue, and Rick Stringer-Hye will serve
as the CIC team.
Teri and Larry Romans attended the Work Study Job Fair.
Teri worked with our new student assistants, getting them up to speed on the fine points of Sudocs, etc.
We were pleased to finally launch our online video reserve form, thanks to the efforts of Dale Poulter. We are equally happy to report that the form is being used.
Amy began auditing Don Hancock's PSCI 102, Comparative Politics class. On the first day of classes, Prof. Hancock presented her with a signed copy of his updated edition of Politics in America, which contained an acknowledgment of Amy's assistance.
Instruction (Melinda Brown)
This year the
Central Library offered incoming students an open house with library tours and
door prizes. The following people contributed their time and energy to make
this a successful event: Becky Atack, Susan Bell, Yuh-Fen Benda,
Yvonne Boyer, Zora Breeding, Melinda Brown, Peter Brush,
David Carpenter, Paula Covington, Molly Dahl, Sue Davis,
Ann Ercelawn, Sue Erickson, Robyn Harris, Bryan Kurowski,
Charlotte Lew, Larry Romans, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, and
Susan Widmer. Twenty tours were given to 107 people.
Door prizes
included an iPod iHome, two $10 Starbucks cards, five $5 Starbucks cards, book
bags, t-shirts and water bottles. There was also a "guess the number"
candy jar contest. The door prize entry also asked the optional question, "For
the last research paper that you wrote, which of the following did you use to
find your sources?" A number of Internet and basic article databases (InfoTrac,
ProQuest and Ebsco) were listed, along with a space to show other resources.
Of the 130 people who entered the door prize drawing, 110 of them answered the
question. While this was not a scientific survey, it does give us some information
about student research habits.
We held the
following new graduate student orientations for a total of 67 students:
Anthropology (4 grads) - Sue Erickson andPaula Covington
Classics (5 grads) - Melinda Brown
Economics (8 grads) - Susan Widmer
English (6 grads) - Melinda Brown
French/Italian (1 grad) - Yvonne Boyer
German (8 grads) - Susan Widmer
History (8 grads) - Peter Brush
Latin American Studies (7 grads) - Paula Covington
Political Science (11 grads) - Amy Stewart-Mailhiot and Larry Romans
Sociology (4 grads) - Sue Erickson
Spanish/Portuguese (5 grads) - Paula Covington
Central Librarians also met with new faculty during the month.
Melinda provided information about library resources at the Undeclared Major Advisors orientation. She also conducted a session for new writing TAs and co-presented in a workshop for faculty teaching writing courses.
Paula's LAS 290 course started
meeting for the semester.
Getting an early start, we provided 12 library sessions to 224 participants:
CMST 101 (2 sections) - Interpersonal Communications (Kenner), Sue Erickson, 42 students and the professor.
CMST 115 - Lessons from Lost (Sloop), Sue Erickson, 15 students and the professor.
ECON 226 - Economic History of the United States (Atack), Susan Widmer andAmy Stewart-Mailhiot, 15 students.
ECON 226 (2nd session) - Economic History of the United States (Atack), Susan Widmer andAmy Stewart-Mailhiot, 20 students.
GER 314 - Bibliography and Method (McCarthy), Susan Widmer, 8 students.
PHIL 115 - Classical Concepts (Schoenbohm), Melinda Brown, 15 students and the professor.
PHIL 301 - Teaching and Research Methods (Stuhr), Melinda Brown, 13 students and the professor.
PSCI 210 - Western European Politics (Faucher-King), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 11 students.
PSCI 284 - Political Activism (Faucher-King), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 3 students.
PSCI 355 - Research Design (Tate), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot andLarry Romans, 11 students.
SOC 101 - Introduction to Sociology (Kelner), Sue Erickson, 50 students and the professor.
SOC 115 - Gangs and Gang Behavior (Ezell), Sue Erickson, 15 students and the professor.
Reference (Sue Erickson)
Activities:
Hilary Rudsenske prepared FY 2007 budget spreadsheets for Anthropology
and Sociology and transferred budgets back to Sue Erickson, who resumes responsibility
for these subjects in September. Sue is grateful to be receiving the budget
information in such an organized and useful manner. It will make the transition
much smoother.
Hilary finished up one last project for Reference: a web guide for the Social Sciences Citation Index Journal Citation Reports/Impact Factor. The guide will soon be linked from the Heard list of subject guides.
Paula joined Sue to give a library orientation to Katharine Donato, a new Sociology faculty member whose research interests are primarily focused on Latin America. They also gave an orientation to Sergio Romero, the new linguist in the department. Sue also provided an orientation for Bonnie Dow, a new faculty member in Communication Studies.
Sue and David Carpenter met a couple of times to discuss the new reference schedule and Sara Byrd's training. Sue and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot met to discuss reference issues related to the training of the graduate students in Government Information & Media Services. Amy, Larry Romans and Sue met to plan for the six sections of Communication Studies 100: Fundamentals of Public Speaking classes being taught this fall.
Sue and Hilary taught a library session for Shaul Kelner's Sociology 101 class. The class of 50 students met in the Reference Room, where Professor Kelner interviewed Sue about the impact of technology on research and libraries and the changes she has experienced in her 19 years working in libraries. The students had great questions and were clearly applying what they had been reading and discussing in class. After the interview, Sue and Hilary each took half the class for a more traditional instruction session for the remainder of the class period.
Sue visited two sections of Carole Kenner's CMST 101: Interpersonal Communication class.
Paula met with two graduate
students regarding their research projects and worked with a professor and research
assistant on a Spanish literary bibliography being prepared for publication.
Sara began working in the Reference Department on Aug. 21 and began shadowing on the reference desk the following week. She was off to a busy start, with her training and orientation activities including: VU orientations; Mulberry and Corporate Time (Bryan Kurowski); Acorn and QuestionPoint (Sue); bibliographers (Peter Brush, Yvonne Boyer, Melinda Brown, David Carpenter, Paula Covington, Susan Widmer); Government Information/Media (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot); Preservation (Sue Davis); Cataloging (Zora Breeding); Peabody Library (Leslie Foutch); Special Collections (Kathy Smith). Many thanks to everyone involved!
Meetings, Conferences, Training
Many staff attended the welcome/farewell reception at the Music Library for Holling Smith-Borne and Catherine Gick. Reference/collection development staff also attended a farewell luncheon for Hilary Rudsenske to wish her well in her return to the Management Library. Several staff members attended the Primo Open House.
Mary Beth Blalock: Committee on Collections meeting.
Sue Erickson: Primo Normalization Team meetings; GLB Signage Committee meeting; Census Information Center Overview with Brian Christens; GIS Librarian Search Committee; Farewell Lunch for Brian Christens.
Bryan Kurowski: Technology Support and Training Coordinators meeting; Leisure Reading Committee meetings.
Susan Widmer: University Staff council meeting; Heard Web Site Update Team meeting.