Periodicals:
The Periodical unit has completed adding new labels to inform patrons about
online access to the 60+ journals that are switching to online conversion only.
During this process, several holdings errors were found on Acorn and have been
corrected. Lots of items pulled for binding as well now that we know that no
more issues are expected. Sharon has worked hard keeping the unit running smoothly
since the students worked only the first 2.5 weeks of Dec. MFM staff have helped
by stamping & stripping incoming journals. Only one shipment went out for
bindery & 88 titles were sent.
Circulation:
December is traditionally a very busy month for the Circulation Department.
Lots of books being returned. On Saturday, Dec. 22, Mary got 9 boxes from the
Carmichael Book Return, so books were being returned all the way to the bitter
end of the semester.
Extended hours began on Dec. 2 and lasted until Friday, Dec. 21. This was almost an additional 2 weeks longer than normal. A security service was hired to provide additional security 4 nights a week each week during this period. On Dec. 3, Janet met with the Flo Wilson, Elaine Goleski and Anne Martin to finalize the Fisk borrowing arrangement, which is scheduled to begin Spring semester. She met again on Dec. 17 with Anne Martin. On Dec. 6, 13 and 16, Janet met with a new committee charged with identifying changes in both policy and physical facilities we need to make to improve security and possibly staff access to the GLB when the Library is not open.
Several staff attended the
Winter Festival on 12/9. Daisy attended the Technology Support Coordinator's
meeting on 12/10. Janet and Daisy attended the CAG meeting on 12/6. Rachel and
Janet attended the Videoconference on Safeguarding Patron Privacy on 12/13.
Several staff also took some time off during the holidays and also have become
new homeowners! Rachel and Yolanda are proud new homeowners this month! Janet,
Jo, Mary Kelley, Sharon and Yolanda all took some additional time off during
the holidays. At least 3, possibly 4 students have graduated or will otherwise
not be returning to work for us in Circulation for spring semester. 2 new students
have been hired and were trained during the break period. Another student will
be leaving in February, so we have a little time to find his replacement.
Reserve Room:
Reserve activity has primarily focused on receiving new reserve lists for spring
and dismantling fall reserves. It is a lot of work to do in a very short period
of time. It gets shorter and shorter now that the fall break has been added
into the academic calendar schedule. LaRentina has had 1 student worker for
a few hours but has primarily been working on this project by herself.
Stack Maintenance:
Books are pouring in and lots remain to be shelved. With the holidays rolling
in at the end of November and December, so were cart after cart after cart of
books to sort and shelve. The annex transfer project was put on hold so that
every available worker could spend their time on sorting and shelving books.
The stacks are in pretty bad shape and will take a while before order is restored. We had more shelvers stay through exam period than we have had in many years. 2 shelvers have also worked at least 20 hours per week during the break period trying to help us get caught up with the shelving but there is still lots to do as spring semester students return.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic
Resources:
The Electronic Resource Committee met on December 11th; December 25th meeting
was cancelled. The committee approved the purchase of Niles'
Register Cumulative Index, 1811-1849 and trials of Marquis Who's
Who Online as well series IV and V of the Nineteenth Century Masterfile.
Discussion of the Past Masters databases continued. Committee members
are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, David Carpenter, John Haar and Mary Beth
Blalock (Chair). We welcome your suggestions and comments.
Outreach:
Yvonne Boyer participated in the Baudelaire/Hugo Seminar that was held in November
and met with the Residential College Programming Subcommittee. She shared her
"Dolls of the World" collection by agreeing to display the dolls at
the Green Hills Public Library. She also met with Susan Shockley, Parthenon
Representative.
Peter Brush gave tours of the Library for two faculty candidates-History and East Asian Studies.
Paula Covington conducted three meetings with faculty members in Latin American Studies. She also assisted LAS students by answering numerous e-mail questions relating semester projects as well as responding to several in-depth faculty research questions. The graduate student assistants also worked on several faculty research projects.
Susan Widmer met with Professor
Kustanovich, current faculty library liaison for the Russian program, to discuss
the Russian collection, vendors, approval plan, and current subscriptions to
Russian serials and periodicals. Future plans and direction of the Russian program
were also discussed. Susan also met with John and Mary Beth to discuss some
processing issues relating to the Russian materials.
"Special"
Events:
Representatives from Coutts/Nijhoff gave a presentation on December 17 updating
recent changes at the company, reviewing services, and introducing a new approval
plan that is still in production. They were very interested in our feedback
and suggestions regarding functions and ways to improve the approval plan. Attendees
included Janice Adlington, Mary Beth Blalock, Melinda Brown, David Carpenter,
Paula Covington, Sue Erickson, Julie Loder, John Haar, and Dale Manning (all
from Central); Sylvia Graham (Management); Lee Ann Lannom (Peabody); Roberta
Winjum, Mary Ellen Wilson, and Monica Sanchez from Technical Services. We should
have additional information about the plan sometime this spring.
Sue Erickson, Julie Loder, Dale Manning, and Susan Widmer attended the Patriot Act Video Conference that was sponsored by the SDDC.
Many of us took advantage
of the opportunity to attend "Breakfast with the Chancellor" on December
12.
Projects:
Work continued on the Transfer and Reduction Inventory Projects.
Gifts:
Yvonne arranged for the DeBeaufort Saunders gift materials to be sent to the
W. T. Bandy Center.
Paula reviewed part of the Pupo-Walker gifts and received a second gift of Venezuelan materials from Rayfield that included 378 books and 78 microfilms.
Julie received 469 gifts
and sent 251 titles to Technical Services for processing. She also met with
Kathy Smith regarding the disposition of rejected gifts that have been accumulating
in Special Collections for several years. Once checked by student assistants,
bibliographers will make collection decisions for these titles.
Committee and Other
Activities:
Peter Brush completed a New Horizons training tutorial on Excel spreadsheets.
Paula Covington completed Residential College Subcommittee meetings and the final report.
Julie Loder attended meetings of the Technical Support Coordinators and the Training Coordinators.
Susan Widmer met with John Haar to discuss and review the collection development, reference, and BI training period.
Several bibliographers attended
the Central Library Staff Forum.
Government Information (Larry Romans)
Gretchen Dodge attended a LITS Support Coordinators meeting on Dec. 10 and the Central Library Forum on the 12th.
Larry Romans, Nancy Dolinger, and Gretchen attended the USA Patriot Act video showing.
Jean Wright finished comparing our records with the Monthly Catalog Serials Supplement to get a count of our serial titles. Gretchen helped with correcting holdings and locations on those records that needed editing.
Larry Romans continued working with Kay Pothisiri and Suellen Stringer-Hye on the Government Information database - both about the form for entering information and the format for display of the information on the Internet. Larry and the students have entered more than 1,000 web sites for this database.
Use of reserve slides at the Media Center set new records in December. We were also predictably busy with reserve videos, and with reference questions and Computer room issues. The computer room printers used 69 reams of paper, up from 42 last December. Twenty-one videos were added to the collection this month.
Carrie Sprouse is preparing to put her craft skills to work making archival box covers for our hundreds of open microfiche boxes. This will protect our fiche from fading due to exposure to light. Carrie's work will save us the considerable expense of buying all new fiche boxes.
Reference (David Carpenter)
As usual, reference service activity started out very busy in December and ended very quietly. Central Library reference librarians either answered or referred 107 inquiries from the ?Ask Us virtual reference service, while also answering or referring messages received via the !Tell Us online suggestion and comments service and maintaining our other services. This was just ten fewer ?Ask Us inquires than in November, even with the end of the fall semester and the December holidays.
David Carpenter, John Haar and Mary Beth Blalock met with Celia Walker on December 4th to plan for Celia's library school practicum with the Central Library. Celia is pursuing an M.S. degree in Information Sciences by distance education from the University of Tennessee's School of Information Sciences, while also continuing to serve as Senior Curator at the Cheekwood Museum of Art. We look forward to Celia joining us in Reference and, after training, at the reference desk during the spring semester. Celia will also work on some special projects involving collection development and support of reference and instruction.
Paula Covington responded to many e-mail questions submitted by Latin American Studies students regarding their end of semester projects. She also offered assistance and answers to several in-depth faculty research questions. Paula's graduate student assistants worked on many faculty research projects in December.
Library Instruction:
Melinda Brown is responsible for beginning a new series of regular Central Library
instruction meetings. Central Bibliographers met on December 9th to begin this
new series of regular monthly meetings focusing on instruction issues.
Melinda also met with Paul Gherman, Sharon Weiner and Sherre Harrington on December 10th to discuss the role of the libraries in supporting undergraduate instruction at Vanderbilt.
Sue Erickson met with Professor Walt Gove in early December to plan an instruction session for his Sociological Inquiry graduate course and to discuss some of his own research questions. Sue provided an instruction session for the Prof. Gove's class on December 10th.
Sue also provided research consultations for a Divinity graduate student who was working on a project involving data for her first social science research methods class.
Melinda Brown taught an instruction session for Humanities 115W--Death, Madness, Art: Conrad, James and Mann.
Paula Covington finished teaching her semester-long Latin American Studies 290 course, graded final projects and turned in semester grades.
Sue Erickson and Melinda Brown met with Leslie Boyd (Peabody Library) to discuss collaboration on a website to complement forthcoming plagiarism workshops. Sue met again with Leslie Boyd to show her our instruction podiums in the sixth floor classroom and electronic classroom.
Peter Brush provided an introduction to our library for both a history faculty candidate and an East Asian Studies faculty candidate in December.
Other Activities,
Meetings or Accomplishments:
Sue Erickson worked with a second ACRL Anthropology and Sociology Section member
to create guidelines for archiving ANSS section materials. As a member of the
ACRL Membership Committee, Sue contacted chairs of the membership committees
of ACRL sections to encourage them to volunteer at the ACRL booth at the ALA
Midwinter Meeting.
Janice Adlington is a member of a new sub-group of the Web Task Force that will evaluate the search engine (currently htdig) used to search the library Web pages. Suellen Stringer-Hye convened the Search Engine Review Group, which consists of Suellen, Marshall Breeding, Dale Poulter, and Janice. The group will consider different Heard Webpage search engine configuration options and will compare them with other potential search engine products (e.g. Google).
David Carpenter convened a meeting of the ISAG Cooperative and Virtual Reference Services Subcommittee on December 16th to review use of the ?Ask Us digital reference service during fall semester. The group's members were pleased with the initial success of the ?Ask Us service during its first semester of availability. The Subcommittee also considered the implementation of QuestionPoint software to support the ?Ask Us service. It decided that the ?Ask Us service should be migrated to the QuestionPoint software early in the spring semester.
Melinda, Dale and other colleagues attended a showing of the USA Patriot Act videoconference on December 18th.
Paula and Melinda attended Residential College Subcommittee meetings.
Paula Covington participated in three meetings with faculty members in Latin American studies.
Reference staff members enjoyed having the opportunity to attend the breakfast and subsequent meeting with Chancellor Gee on December 12th.
Reference staff members
were also involved either as a group or individually in attending the following
meetings in December: Heard Web Task Force, ISAG Web-based Instructional Support,
Central Library Instruction Meeting, Central Library Reference, Electronic Resources
Committee, Central Library Staff Forum and a staff photo shoot on December 18th.