Statistics
Access:
17,925
total entrances
11,590 undergraduates
3,882 graduate students
1,350 faculty/staff
577 alumni,faculty/staff/student family members
526 visitors
Circulation:
7,707
charges at circulation desk
269 renewals at circulation desk
11,548 online renewals
338 laptop charges
160 reserve charges
17,848 items discharged
2,967
items received from other libraries
15,714 books shelved
391 bound periodicals shelved
696 unbound periodicals shelved
316 newspapers shelved
Reference:
757 questions
577 (76%) at Reference desk
130 (17%) by e-mail
50 (7%) by telephone
Microform
Media Center:
285
items charged
441 service transactions
Government
Information:
98 reference questions
General
Transitions:
Martha Young, our
administrative officer, retired after 24 years of service to the Central Library.
We hosted a celebration in the Special Collections lobby to express our gratitude
for all that she did to make Central a pleasant and efficient working environment.
Thanks to Yvonne Boyer, Paula Covington, Janet Thomason, and Johnnie Anthony
for planning and organizing the party, which many GLB staff attended and Martha
thoroughly enjoyed. Daisy Whitten and Ben Darling also contributed their time
to make the affair a success.
Susan Grider, Administrative Assistant in the Science and Engineering Library, began working part-time in Central while we recruited candidates for Martha's former position, now titled Administrative Services Coordinator.
Holiday
Party:
We arranged an informal reception for staff in the Bandy Center to celebrate
the holidays.
Facilities:
The Vanderbilt Hustler listed the Central Periodicals Room among their
five top places to study for exams:"'Undergrads should come here; it's
spacious, quiet, and the New York Times is handy if you need a break,'
said Divinity student Ryan Fasani."
The Divinity Library's planned renovation and expansion, scheduled for this summer, includes closing the dual stairwells running from the 4th floor campus entrance to the 2d floor. Divinity's service desk will be situated at what is now the foot of the stairwell. The stairs on the north and south ends of the GLB will become the main transit points between the floors. As part of the renovation, the dual stairwells will be leveled off and made into small foyers that we will probably use for vending machines.
Collection
Management:
We reached a
milestone in December by sending the last volumes in our massive transfer project
to the Annex. The project began in 2002, and we ultimately transferred over
120,000 volumes to make room for new acquisitions in the stacks. Of course,
now that they're all gone, the stacks seem almost as full as when we began.
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
Stacks
Maintenance:
It was such
a heavy month in terms of return volume that there was little time for anything
besides sorting and shelving. Cindy Barrett finished reading the bibliography
section. Maria Tamborski worked on converting the faint periodical labels. Obinna
Ubabukoh finished shifting in the arts oversize section, and Stephanie Dillard
created and posted new range labels. Stephanie also posted new range labels
on the 8th floor in the section David Guy shifted.
Stephanie met separately with Janie King and Yolanda Campbell to discuss how to process student applications and conduct interviews for spring semester. She designed and posted job flyers on campus and prepared evaluations for the Stacks Maintenance student workers. She met with them individually to discuss the semester and gave them their Starbucks gift cards. She interviewed multiple students and hired five new workers for spring semester to replace those who have decided not to return.
Many library staff made very positive comments on how well the sorting area stayed caught up during this incredibly busy time. Stephanie, Kelly Lockaby, and student staff stayed on top of the crunch situation and deserve a lot of praise for their efforts!
Reserves:
Activity in the Reserve Room was steady during the exam period. Because it was
open for study, the Electronic Classroom was full of cups, cans, bottles, etc.
each morning, and it took a few minutes to make it presentable.
LaRentina Gray, with Janet
and Julie Loder's assistance, used the hand-held scanner to dismantle reserves.
It really makes things a lot easier. LaRentina tried to get a head start on
scanning for ereserves. NamHang from periodicals, who has worked in Reserves
previously, worked extra hours during the holiday break to pull and process
books for spring reserves. Ben also helped with scanning.
Periodicals:
We sent 97 journals to the bindery. During the periods of peak returns in Stacks
Maintenance, NamHang shelved all of the current journals and newspapers and
prepared binding so that Stacks Maintenance staff could concentrate their efforts
elsewhere. This helped immensely. Rachel Gray resigned her position in Periodicals/Central
Library Administration in order to care for her new baby. NamHang has agreed
to continue the periodical duties until we hire a replacement, which is wonderful
news!
Circulation:
In preparation for
the upcoming four-day holiday closing of the library, Yolanda sent emails to
all students with carrels reminding them of the closing. Stephanie placed letters
prepared by John Haar in all faculty carrels reminding them of the closing and
urging them to talk to John if they had concerns.
Yolanda sent messages to
all students soliciting help for the break and to establish a spring schedule.
Nine students on the fall schedule will not return, so there are potentially
several positions to fill.
Janet began working on LP
withdrawals again. She withdrew 178 LPs, but there is still quite a bit to do.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic
Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on Dec.
14; Dec. 28 meeting was canceled. The Committee approved subscriptions to International
Index to Black Periodicals Full Text as well as changing the vendor
for Philosopher's
Index to CSA. We deferred a decision on the ScienceDirect Psychology
backfile until closer to the end of this fiscal year. We hope other libraries
will have year-end money and will be able to share the cost of the backfile.
We approved Eurostat,
a free resource, for the Articles & Databases page. We approved a retrial
for Pro & Con Online. We decided not to approve several databases
for subscriptions including Art Museum Image Gallery, Essential Science
Indicators, Sage Full-Text Journal Collections and Testaments
to the Holocaust. One suggested free resource, Paper Currency & Banknotes
was also not approved. Committee members are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer,
Sue Erickson, John Haar, Susan Widmer and Mary Beth Blalock (Chair). We welcome
your suggestions and comments.
Outreach:
Paula Covington met with
Professor Tiffiny Tung regarding Andean collection needs. She also provided
research assistance for a Brazilian student here on a grant and helped with
background research for scholars from England and Cuba.
Janice Adlington met with Diane Perpich, the Philosophy liaison, regarding several collection issues.
Departmental
Meeting:
Bibliographers meet on Dec. 15. Susan Widmer shared her experiences in testing
Blackwell's E-Notes function as a means of selecting titles for purchase from
title information that would normally come to us on Blackwell slips. Since Blackwell
will begin discussions this spring about charging for paper slips, we will further
explore the E-Notes function to see if it is feasible for us to make a change
from paper to E-Notes. The paper slips work well for our review process and
the utilization of student employees to do much of the checking work. We will
not make a final decision until we know the details of Blackwell's decision
and the additional cost of continuing the paper slip service. We also discussed
the need to create position descriptions before our performance evaluation peview
process this spring, a faculty request to keep all collected works in the library,
and the order for the 18th
Century Collection.
Gifts:
Bryan Kurowski received 283 gifts this month.
Paula worked with the Davis Colombian Collection and worked with a donor of a Latin American collection. We sent exchange lists to all Latin American exchange partners in an effort to fill gaps in their collections and reduce the number of titles held in the grill for the exchange program.
Projects:
Susan Widmer revised and updated the German
and Russian
Subject Guide pages. In addition, she added three new major links for each subject
area.
Paula continued work on the Latin American Periodicals Table of Contents (LAPTOC) project; our contributions are now up to date.
Committee
and Other Activities:
Janice's review of New
Keywords: a Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society appeared in the
December issue of Choice.
Bryan met with two representatives from Better World Books concerning possible
future participation in their program for collecting library discards.
Yvonne Boyer attended a web session on DataStar.
Janice attended the Business
Resources session presented by Amia Baker.
Mary Beth attended the DataStar webcast and met with representatives from Better World Books.
Government Information/Microform-Media (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)
December was a very busy month. The end of the semester meant a flurry of activity in the Media Center, as students came in to view slides and videos in preparation for final exams. In addition to the regular, end of the term rush, the physical merger of the two units was completed. Nancy Dolinger, Rachael Bankes, and student assistant, Kenita Barrow, put in countless hours on this project. Their efforts were greatly appreciated. The new, combined unit opened for business on Dec. 27. The staff is still busy working out the finer details of the new arrangement.
Instruction (Melinda Brown)
There were no course related classes reported for December. In the fall semester, Central librarians taught a total of 77 course-based sessions (a number were co-taught with Science & Engineering, Divinity and Music librarians) for 1,227 students and 41 professors.
Melinda met with Patricia Armstrong from the Center For Teaching (CFT) to discuss the possibility of co-teaching a session for faculty on how to create effective assignments.
Melinda and Jody Combs met with the CFT to continue our conversation about possible library/CFT collaboration.
Reference (Sue Erickson)
Activities:
Amia Baker
presented basic business resources to the reference staff on Dec. 8. David Carpenter
and Deborah Brooks attended the session as well.
At our Dec. 15 Reference Department meeting, we selected weekend shifts for spring semester. We also had a brief discussion about possible projects for the two students who work at the desk.
The reference staff (along with special guests John Haar and Larry Romans) bid farewell to Genny Carter with tea and cookies in her honor on Dec. 16. Genny, a UTK SLIS student, completed her practicum in Reference this month and had completed one in Government Information during the summer. In addition to working several hours at the reference desk each week, Genny updated our subject guide to Book Reviews. We wish Genny well as she completes her studies and begins her job search.
In the reference collection, we continue selecting items for transfer to the stacks, as needed, in order to make room for new titles. This month, Peter Brush and Paula Covington selected titles for transfer from their areas. Work continues on the bibliography section project.
Sue and Hilary provided an orientation for new Sociology and Jewish Studies faculty member Shaul Kelner.
Sue and Jason Battles met to explore adding links to AskUs from databases per the Research Services Committee. The RSC agreed to try adding a link to the AskUs service from ProQuest as a first step. The link appears in the upper right corner of the database screens. Unfortunately, it was not possible to use the AskUs button, so what appears is a text link.
Meetings:
Sue met with Mary Dietrich to discuss International Consortium for Political
and Social Research
data.
Meetings, Conferences, Training
Several staff attended the presentation of candidates for the Director position in the Science and Engineering Library.
Janice Adlington: Digital Library Steering Committee meetings, Technology Support Coordinators meeting.
Paula Covington: Communications Committee meeting, University Librarian coffee & donuts session.
Sue Erickson: Research Services Committee meeting, GIS Project Team, University Librarian coffee & donuts session.
Bryan Kurowski: Technology Support Coordinators meeting.
Hilary Rudsenske: ebrary webinar.
Janet Thomason: CAC training subcommittee meeting.
Daisy Whitten: Staff Development Committee meeting, Technology Support Coordinators meeting.
Susan Widmer: University Staff Advisory Council meeting.
Robert Wright: Technology Support Coordinators meeting.