Monthly Report
August 2007

News

Open House Event

On August 27th we welcomed new students, as well as returning students and faculty with Central Library Open House activities, including library tours and door prizes.  Fifteen tours were given to 122 people.  The following people contributed their time and energy to make this a successful event: Rachel Adams, Johnnie Anthony, Becky Atack, Susan Bell, Brian Boling, Yvonne Boyer, Zora Breeding, Melinda Brown, Peter Brush, Sara Byrd, David Carpenter, Denise Chavez, Molly Dahl, Sue Davis, Sue Erickson, Robyn Harris, Mary Charles Lasater, Deborah Lilton, Larry Romans, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, and Sue Widmer.  We would like to once again thank all of these staff members for their willingness to support this annual event.  Robyn Harris and Johnnie Anthony deserve special recognition--Robyn for arranging for us to have the beautiful flowers, helpful signage, beverages, candies, door prizes, and so much more; and Johnnie for all her fruitful efforts in approaching local merchants to obtain free items for us to distribute to attendees of the Open House.  Lastly, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot contributed a lot of hard work and many hours of planning and coordination to make our Open House a success, benefiting from good advice and helpful suggestions from Melinda Brown.  Amy volunteered to take on this task in addition to her regular responsibilities and did an excellent job. 

 

Milestones of Service

Congratulations to the following staff members who are celebrating a milestone of service to the library in August 2007:

Mary Beth Blalock (Central Library) 30 years

Sylvia Grant (Management Library) 20 years

Peter Brush (Central Library) 10 years

 

New Reference Desk

The Central Library’s new reference desk was installed in August.  As fall semester was fast approaching, we migrated our reference service to our new desk in its new location just before the end of the month, although some adjustments and changes to the new furniture were yet to be completed. 

 

 

Statistics

GLB Access (includes Divinity Library):
24,347 entrances at Library Lawn
11,884 entrances at Breezeway
36,234 total entrances to the GLB (18% decrease from Aug. 2006) 

Circulation
5870 charges at circulation desk (17% decrease from August 2006)
794 renewals at circulation desk
481 charges at express check-out
7103 online renewals 7103 (5% increase from August 2006)
74 laptop charges (11% decrease from August 2006)
51 reserve charges (77% decrease from August 2006)
5923 items discharged at circulation desk (17% decrease from August 2006)
3308 items received from other libraries
529 holds placed (21% increase from August 2006)
735 searches for missing books
42 bills for non-returned items created
6327 books shelved (44% decrease from August 2006)
1300 bound periodicals shelved (117% increase from August 2006)
684 unbound periodicals shelved (7% increase from August 2006)
447 newspapers shelved (.6% increase from August 2006)
204 periodical volumes sent to the bindery
104 periodicals volumes returned from the bindery and prepared for shelving
13 boxes of microfilm received from bindery for GIMS
190 rush books processed (35% decrease from August 2006)
12 book trucks sent to the Annex from stacks
29.8 hours spent shifting in stacks
12 sets of serials sent to the bindery

Reference
333 (67%) questions received at Reference desk
109 (22%) by e-mail
53 (11%) by telephone
12 e-mail questions off-desk
5 phone or in person questions off-desk
512 total reference transactions

Government Information/Media Services
406 items charged (140% increase from August 2006)
257 items discharged
81 service activities/reference questions14% decrease from 2006 (added video assistance to statistics on the last week of August)
101 video reserves processed
9 video purchase requests
 246 depository items processed
1441 non-depository items processed

Instruction
25 sessions provided for 198 participants

 

Circulation (Janet Thomason)

Stacks Maintenance
Taking advantage of the new shelving hung on the eighth and fifth floors last month, Janet Thomason shifted books and hung shelves on the eighth floor, and Scott Pierce did the same on the fifth floor.  Shahrul Ramli and Thom Dawkins both shifted books on the seventh floor--Shahrul relieving overcrowding in the PT and PS call numbers, and Thom making room for a large number of new books with call number PL by shifting in the PG call number.  Kelly Lockaby continued pulling books and periodicals to be transferred to the Annex.  At the end of the month Janet and Matt McKee attended the Work Study Job Fair, where they hired 7 new student workers for the fall semester for stack maintenance.

 

Reserves
For Print reserves, a total of 62 lists have been received and for E-Reserves a total of 63 requests received.  Ben helped in the processing of E-Reserves and Janet helped in the processing of print reserves.  Two student workers helped in pulling books for reserves. 

 

Circulation
Daisy and Yolanda finished the Carrel renewal project.  Janet ran a report for weeding the leisure reading collection--71 leisure reading books were selected by Larry for transfer to the stacks.  An additional 72 books were withdrawn from the collection, and 53 books were returned to McNaughton/Brodart.

 

On Aug. 23, Janet gave a luncheon for the circulation staff and the students who had worked during the summer.  3

Three graduate students and 1 undergraduate work study student were hired prior to the job fair and training was done before the semester began.  Janet and Matt attended the job fair and 3 more graduate students and 2 undergraduates were hired at the job fair.  All staff members have been subsequently involved in the training process for the new students.  Yolanda, Daisy, Janet, and Robert all took a few days vacation prior to school beginning.

 

Periodicals

Shelf reading in the periodical stacks for call numbers BC1 .J6 - BF5 .R43

56 issues of periodicals on the duplicate shelves were searched to see if they could be sent to Absolute.

 

Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)

 

Electronic Resources

The Electronic Resources Committee met on August 8th and 22nd in the Bandy Center.  Several trials were approved for the fall semester including Psychoanalytic Publishing Archive, Index Islamicus (another vendor’s product), CQ Almanac Online, CQ Global Researcher, Congress Collection (download feature), Serials Analysis product, and CenTradeX (if the Management Library is also interested.)  One free resource, Women Artists Archive Online was approved for the Articles & Databases page.  We also discussed a trial of Credo Reference, formerly XRefer, and decided the resource should be considered by the Collections Committee given the subject scope of the database.

 

Outreach

Yvonne Boyer met with the new Chair of the Art Department, Professor Mel Ziegler, to provide an orientation session and library tour.  She also met with French Professors regarding the French 115 classes and new French graduate students for a library orientation and tour. 

 

Peter Brush met with Law School Professor Daniel Sharfstein to discuss his research needs in the Central Library.  He also met with new history graduate students and gave them a library tour.

 

Paula Covington met with Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies about the NRC grant and LAS activities planned for this year.  A display will be created for the visit of the former President of Brazil in October in honor of the Center’s 60th anniversary.  In February, the Center will also host a LASER regional meeting of southeastern librarians responsible for Latin American library collections (in conjunction with the Guayasamin exhibit and the visit of Rigoberta Menchu.  Paula also held graduate orientations with anthropology students (with Ramona) and Spanish students.

 

Deborah Lilton met with an English doctoral student to show her how to use EndNote.  In addition, she held an annual new graduate student orientation to the Library and taught a library session for a summer English 100 course.  She also worked with faculty on a case-by-case basis and met with the administrative assistants in the English Department to open lines of communication.

 

Susan Widmer gave a library orientation session and tour for Economics graduate students.  She also gave an orientation session and tour for a new Russian faculty member.  She served as a Tour Guide during Central’s Open House.

 

Gifts

Bryan Kurowski met with Tom Stark to donate Arts books that were not needed at Vanderbilt to Watkins College of Art and Design.  He received 27 gift items in August.

 

Projects

Susan revised and updated the Russian Subject Guide.  She fixed broken links, added a new section called “Library Collections” with links to special Russian collections in the U.S., U.K., and Canada.  Eleven new links including the Library’s Media Services Film Collection page for Russian films were added to the page.

 

Bryan continued work on compiling accurate lists of subscriptions for each of our subject areas.  The work is very labor intensive and requires working closely with Order Services to resolve numerous problem and questions that arise.

 

Paula reviewed shipments of books she purchased on her trip to Peru in May and worked on a potential acquisition for a special collection.

 

Deborah and Mary Beth reviewed and made decisions regarding some older CD-ROM titles loaded on the Media Services Stand-alone workstation. 

 

Mary Beth identified additional titles for transfer to the Annex in order to make space for new Chinese Literature titles.  She continued work on the review of electronic journals and funding allocations for both electronic and print subscriptions.

 

Committee and Other Activities

Yvonne continued working on planning for the ARLIS/SE Conference.

 

Peter attended several development sessions including Vanderbilt Visions, Turning Technologies’ Clicker, and an Oral Presentation Skills Workshop.  He also attended a meeting of the Vanderbilt Web Spiders group and assisted with Central’s Open House activities.

 

Paula attended a Communications Committee meeting as well as several other development sessions including Visions and OAK training and a Presentation Skills workshop.

 

Bryan attended two Electronic Resources Management System Project Team meetings and a meeting of the Technology and Training Support Coordinators as well as the AlphaSearch Preview session held at the Law Library and the LibStats session given by Hilary Rudsenske and Rachel Vacek.  He also spent a day at the Federal Work Study Job Fair interviewing and hiring student employees for Collection Development.  Before the Job Fair, he interviewed a graduate student for a position in Collection Development and possibly Reference.

 

Susan attended two ERC meetings as well as meetings of the Web Maintenance Team, the University Staff Advisory Council, and the Reference & Instruction Forum.  In addition, she attended several development sessions including The Act of Teaching Video: Theatre Techniques for Classroom Presentations, Vanderbilt Visions training sessions, a Presentation Skills Workshop, and Keeping Current with an Aggregator, a hands-on workshop.

 

Sue Erickson continued subject collection development sessions with Amy Stewart-Mailhiot (Sociology) and Larry Romans (Communication Studies).

 

Mary Beth attended meetings of the Electronic Resources Management Systems Project Team and the Collections Committee as well as the LibStats and Keeping Current with an Aggregator sessions.

Government Information and Media Services (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)

We interviewed candidates for our Graduate and Night Supervisor student assistant positions.  We hired Sarah Klaassen, Eric Krieger, Malik Saafir, and Ben West.  Returning grad students are Cara Doige and Beth Sundberg.  Teri Bante coordinated orientation for new graduate students, which will involve presentations by Brian, Larry, and Amy.

 

Returning undergraduates are Greg Todd (four years with us) and Chenise Upshur, Graham Black, and Tinesha Allen (all two years).  Our new students are Kofi Gyasi and Merlyssa Prince.

 

Larry Romans took over responsibility for Communications Studies; Amy Stewart-Mailhiot took over interim responsibility for Sociology.  They each met with Sue Erickson to cover issues related to collection development, attended the graduate student orientation, and prepared for upcoming BI sessions.

 

Larry gave a half-hour introduction to the library to the new Political Science graduate students as part of their day-long orientation.  He will give them another session during a meeting of the "PSCI 355 - Research Design" class.  Larry also gave a library session to PSCI 115F - American Foreign Policy.  He also gave three tours of the library (to much applause).

 

Amy worked with Melinda Brown and Robyn Harris on the coordination of the Central Open House.  Amy coordinated the printing and stuffing of the information packets for new faculty and graduate students.

 

Larry Romans met with Jody Combs and Jodie Gambill to talk about making major changes in the Govt Info/ Pol Sci database, which generates subject guides in those two areas.  We're looking to see the changes by the end of the year.

 

Amy worked with Jim Please from LITS on the GIMS CD Standalone station and on the Kurzweil adaptive work station.  Larry Romans met with Jody Combs and Jodie Gambill from LITS to talk about making major changes in the Government Information / Political Science database, which generates subject guides in those two areas.  We're looking to see the changes by the end of the year.

 

Teri Bante made additions to the student manual on AV equipment (and added this to the blog) and on Playaways, and created an index.  She revised instructions for the Canon 300 scanner for new PDF software.

 

Teri checked two State Department series offered from Law against our holdings, added missing volumes, and updated records.  She prepared some LC serials for binding and transfer to annex.  She also sent out offers and cleared expired offers from 6th floor & office; copy cataloged 13 items; and processed UN materials.

 

When not working on reserves or reserve-related communication, Brian Boling worked on putting the ScanPro instructions into an online format.  He also finished a microfilm shadowing project and helped find some rather obscure titles sought by faculty.

 

Larry turned in recommendation letters for colleagues in Arkansas and Pennsylvania--one for ALA Emerging Leaders; the other for tenure and promotion.

Instruction (Melinda Brown)

During August, the following new graduate student orientations for a total of 55 students were held:

§       Anthropology (6 grads) – Ramona Romero & Paula Covington

§       Economics (6 grads) – Sue Widmer

§       English (9 grads) – Deborah Lilton

§       French/Italian (4 grad) – Yvonne Boyer

§       History (10 grads) – Peter Brush

§       Political Science (8 grads) – Larry Romans

§       Sociology (7 grads) – Sue Erickson

§       Spanish/Portuguese (5 grads) – Paula Covington

 

Central Librarians also met with new faculty during the month of August.

Paula’s LAS 290 course started meeting for the semester.

 

Getting an early start, two library sessions were given to 21 participants:

ENGL 100 – Composition (Robinson), Deborah Lilton (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot observed), 5 students and the professor.

PSCI 115 – American Foreign Policy (Ray), Larry Romans, 15 students.

 

Additional instruction related activities

Deborah Lilton completed recording a podcast tour of the 4th floor of Central Library.  The recording is now on the three MP3 players made available in GIMS.  Deborah continues to work with Molly Dahl (Cataloging) to create a professional-sounding recording using equipment in Vanderbilt's radio station.

 

Central’s bibliographers/reference librarians attended Vanderbilt Visions training sessions and also a session on understanding and using Turning Technologies clickers, in preparation for conducting or assisting with the upcoming Vanderbilt Visions sessions.

 

Peter Brush, Sara Byrd and other librarians attended a Presentation Skills Workshop entitled "The Act of Teaching" on August 6th.  The workshop was set up by Melinda Brown.

 

Sara Byrd received training on techniques of bibliographic instruction on 08/01 and 08/06.

Reference (David Carpenter)

Increased Reference Hours at Beginning of Semester

In our Central Library Unit Heads meeting on 08/07, Janet Thomason asked if our reference service could open earlier during the first week and a half of fall semester, as many new students and faculty are entering the library for the first time, with questions and needing assistance or directions.  Reference staff readily agreed to open the reference service at 9:00 A.M. for the first two weeks of the semester, from Monday August 27th through Friday September 7th, to address this need. 

 

Training and Professional Development Activities

Sue Erickson met with Sara Byrd (08/01, 08/03 & 08/07) to orient Sara to the sociology subject area, noting important reference resources and subject areas of focus of the Department of Sociology in addition to other information.  Sara Byrd practiced offering tours of Central Library with Amy and Susan (08/24).

 

Special Projects

Sara Byrd had a busy month, in working on the following projects:  After receiving training from David Carpenter, Sara Byrd assumed regular scheduling duties for the reference desk, including organizing and conducting the weekends reference duty scheduling meeting on August 29th.  She also collaborated with Deborah Lilton to create a script for our Central Library Tour podcast; she made good progress on creating a new CenRef webpage for use by reference librarians; and she worked with Dale Poulter to set up a CenRef blog, to allow for easier and improved communication amongst the Central Library reference librarians.

Additional Meetings, Conferences, and Training Activities

Central Library Web Group (08/01, 08/06) – Sara Byrd, Peter Brush, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, and Larry Romans

ARLIS Planning Meeting Bandy Center (08/02) – David Carpenter and Yvonne Boyer

Preview of AlphaSearch (08/03) – Sara, David, and other colleagues

Central Library Unit Heads (08/07) – David Carpenter, Janet Thomason, Larry Romans, Mary Beth Blalock, and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot

RSS Feeds Webinar (08/07) – David Carpenter

Electronic Resources Committee (08/08, 08/22) – Sue Erickson, Sue Widmer, Mary Beth Blalock, Yvonne Boyer, and David Carpenter

Central Reference Meetings (08/08 & 08/22)

Central Reference meetings (08/08, 08/22) –Sara Byrd

Reference-Instruction Forum (08/08) – Sara Byrd and David Carpenter

Meeting about new reference desk with customer representative of Alfred Williams, Inc. (08/10) – David Carpenter

BBC Audio books America vendor meeting (with Larry) (08/14) – Sara Byrd

OUL Library Retreat (08/14) David Carpenter

LibStats demonstration (08/15) – Sara Byrd, Bryan Kurowski, and David Carpenter

Kurzweil Adaptive Equipment Meeting (08/20) – Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, Sara Byrd, and David Carpenter

Central Library Staff Forum (08/23)

Central Library Tours for Open House (08/27) – Sara Byrd

Digital Library Steering Committee (08/28) – David Carpenter

Central Reference Weekends Scheduling Meeting for All Central Reference Librarians (08/29) – Sara Byrd, convener

Public Speaking class (08/30) – Sara Byrd

Sony Display Screen Software Training by George Anglin (08/31) – David Carpenter, Robyn Harris, and Celia Walker

Vanderbilt Web Spiders group – Peter Brush