Periodicals-Microform and Media Merger:
The Periodicals and Microform-Media units merged in February. For some time both units have struggled to cover day, evening and weekend service desk hours with small staffs and student assistants. We hope to provide better public service and reduce the strain on both units by combining them. Peter Brush will supervise the newly merged unit. We will not complete the merger until the end of the semester, though even then the merger will be organizational, not physical. Sharon Wagoner and Carrie Sprouse will continue to work in their present office, and the current periodicals collection will remain in its present location. We will provide Sharon, Carrie, and David Anderson with training to offer public service to both the MMC collections and periodicals.
While we will no longer be able to offer public service in the Current Periodicals Room, we will find ways direct patrons to MMC for service and to provide signage, documentation, and web pages that can answer routine questions. Meanwhile, having more staff and student assistants in the combined unit will enable us to staff the MMC service desk with less difficulty and to provide more services at that location. The adjacent Computer Room has proven to be a major attraction for patrons, and an enlarged MMC staff will be able to offer more help with word processing and printer problems.
Ereserves
We have received an increasing number of requests from patrons to listen to Music Library audio ereserves and other Internet-based audio materials. In response we installed the cabling and headphones on all four workstations in the Reserve Room. Patrons may now borrow headphones from the Reserves service desk.
At the beginning of February, Leisure Reading books were weeded by Dale. Janet sent 91 books to the stacks and 63 were withdrawn. Janet attended a Unit Heads meeting on 2/5 and spent a great deal of time during the month finalizing the patron specified annex delivery forms for periodicals and fax request forms. These forms went into operation 2/27/02.
There has been some pretty strange weather this month resulting in staff absenteeism and delays in scheduling. Several staff were out on 2/7 due to inability to get here. Others spent 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours on the road before arriving at work on at least 3 different times during the month! Not a pleasant way to start the day. Robert and Daisy went to an LITS meeting on 2/12 in their roles as Central liaisons. Janet and Daisy attended the 2/14 CAG meeting. Janet attended the LITS presentation on 2/20 and Jo and Janet met with Mary Beth and Peggy Earheart on 2/21 to discuss the annex transfer project. Janet, Mary Kelley, Yolanda and John met with Andrew Atwood, Crime Prevention officer at Vanderbilt on 2/8/02 to discuss some security issues and when it was appropriate to involve VUPD. We appreciated his helpful advice. Janet met with Sue Davis on 2/27 to develop written procedures for handling materials being transferred to the annex that first must have book repair treatments. On 2/28/02, Janet, Jo, Rachel and Larentina attended the Staff Forum. Robert was on vacation the week of Feb. 24-March 1. Yolanda, Mary Kelley and Janet pitched in to cover his shifts during his absence. Yolanda and Mary Kelley in particular did a lot of juggling of their personal schedules to see that the Library was kept open its scheduled hours and this is very appreciated. Staff also spent time working on their self evaluations adjusting to the different form being used this year. Some staff are also rewriting their job descriptions if they have not been done in 2 years. 2 new students were hired and trained in Circulation as well.
Stack Maintenance
February ran pretty much like January.
Students sorting and shelving as their main priority and then continuing clean up in the stacks. This is a repeating job and expected to be kept up during the semester.
David H. is continuing the periodicals shifting project and other hot spots as needed/noticed. David H. also helped me with a "chair swap" as we received 35-40 chairs from Law. Chairs were replaced on the 7th floor.
Mary Kelly and Jo began pulling books designated in the annex transfer project on February 22nd, beginning with the AC's. If you wonder down in that area, you will notice a difference. As of February 28th,we have sent 2 carts to the Annex. We expect to send approx. 3 carts a week during the semester and hopefully up to 5 a week during the summer.
Reserves
As of today we have processed approximately 115 reserve lists. No new E-Reserve lists have been added but some faculty are continuing to add to their existing lists, some as many as 4-5 per week. Spring break will be a time of clean-up (deleting files from the Fall semester).
ELECTRONIC RESOURCES:
The Electronic Resource Committee met on February 13th and 27th. Current Issues
Universe (Lexis-Nexis) and Gutenberg-e (six electronic titles each year from
Columbia Press) will soon be added to our electronic resources. The Committee
decided not to purchase Grangers' World of Poetry Online (we have Poetry Finder)
and DEBKA-NET-Weekly. Database trials currently in progress include Readers'
Guide Retrospective and Biography Reference Bank (both from H. W. Wilson) and
Keesing's Worldwide Online. Trial access information for these databases is
available on the Trial Databases web page.
Martha Kallstrom worked on several projects relating to the Heard Library pages and electronic resources.
GIFTS:
Julie received seventy-nine titles this month and added 161 titles to the collection.
She also worked with Dale Manning and Peggy Earheart to clear some Robinson
gifts from shelves in the Annex that were needed for our transfer project.
"SPECIAL" PURCHASES:
Melinda Brown purchased a complete back run of the Feminist Bookstore News (1976-2000).
This collection provides a historical view of women's issues through book reviews
and information about women's and feminist presses. Feminist Bookstore News
will be held in Special Collections.
Paula Covington spent four days in Guatemala City purchasing books as part of our commitment to be a national level resource for Mesoamerican Anthropology and Archaeology in the ARL Cooperative Collection Development Project. Some materials are unavailable through catalogs or vendors and do not export. Many of the booksellers provide professional discounts if purchases are made in person. She purchased 297 items for an average cost $8.00 per title including travel/work-related expenses and shipping. The average cost per US vendor for Guatemalan publications that are available in our interest area is $25-$30 not including shipping. In addition to the books, she also purchased 154 area maps that were requested by archaeology faculty because of the archeological work they do in Guatemala.
TRANSFER PROJECT:
February was the "kick-off" month for the Transfer Project. All bibliographers
devoted time to the project initially by working with the database and reporting
search/retrieval problems. The information gained from their experiences enabled
Dale Poulter to "recreate" the database and enhance search results.
During February, we identified 6,838 volumes for transfer to the Annex and 125
unnecessary duplicates for withdrawal. Bibliographers are submitting transfer
lists to Mary Beth on a weekly basis; she gathers data, groups the lists in
call number order, and forwards a group to Circulation each week.
APPROVAL PLAN ACTIVITIES:
Sue Erickson met with Mary Beth to discuss needed revisions to the Sociology
Blackwell approval profile based on an assessment of the Collection Manager
reports she reviewed from November through February. The revisions were sent
to Blackwell and are now being added to our profile.
Dena Schoen, Harrassowitz Approval Plan Representative, met with Janice, Julie, Melinda and Mary Beth on February 8th to discuss the performance of the profile and new services now available at Harrassowitz.
OUTREACH:
Janice Adlington worked with faculty from two departments-Classics and Philosophy-who
expressed concern about the Transfer Project and requested to be directly involved
in the selection of transfer titles in their subject areas. She also has been
talking with faculty in the Psychology Department regarding the availability
of PsycArticles, which provides access to 42 important journals from the American
Psychological Association. The Psychology subject page has been updated to highlight
this new electronic resource.
In collaboration with Special Collections, Melinda Brown offered a Women's Studies Research Resources Update and Reception for Faculty and Teaching Assistants. Those who attended were enthusiastic about the presentation and suggested that the same approach for introducing resources would be useful to graduate students. Special Collections did an outstanding job in getting a special presentation of women related collections together.
COMMITTEE AND OTHER ACTIVITIES:
Julie Loder attended meetings of the Central Homepage Committee, Technology
Support Coordinators and Training Coordinators. She also attended the Imaging
Class presented by Suellen Stringer-Hye and the Technology Update session.
Mary Beth Blalock attended meetings of the Staff Development Coordinating Committee, a planning meeting of the Nashville Library Club Executive Committee, Imaging class, and the Technology Update session.
Gretchen Dodge and Larry Romans revised the handout for the Community Health Assessment class to account for the 2000 census and provided the Bibliographic Instruction session on February 8.
Larry is participating in the major transfer project and has identified more than 1,000 books to be transferred to the annex. He spent about seven hours identifying candidates for transfer and about an hour with student assistants checking for duplicates, serials, and condition of monographs.
The big news at the Media Center was the merger with Periodicals. Cross-training of Periodical and Media Center staff began this past week. By the end of the semester we should all know each others' business pretty well.
Patron service business was fairly moderate this month. We continue to have an unusually high demand for audio cassettes on reserve here for Blair classes. Demand for paper in the Computer Room remains high. Interlibrary Loan requests for microforms have been coming on an almost daily basis. The Media Center received 16 new videos in February.
Promotion for Ask a Librarian LIVE Service
David Carpenter approached the Vanderbilt Hustler editor
to suggest an article about the Heard Library's Ask a Librarian LIVE (AaLL)
virtual reference service. He and Kitty Porter were subsequently interviewed
by the Hustler's Michelle Carpenter (no relation). Ms. Carpenter also asked
Rick Stringer-Hye questions about AaLL during a virtual reference session, as
he showed her how the virtual service worked. The Hustler article "New
Online Reference Aid at Heard: Librarian LIVE Answers Questions with Real-Time
Chat Option" appeared on page 1 of the February 15th issue of the student
newspaper. Here is the URL for the Hustler article:
http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/02/15/3c6c2dc674674?in_archive=1
David and Martha Kallstrom worked together to compose an announcement about Ask a Librarian LIVE for the INNERVU newsletter, a print publication of The Office of Housing & Residential Education. This newsletter is distributed to all Vanderbilt students who live in residence halls. The Ask a Librarian LIVE announcement appeared in the February 10th issue of INNERVU.
Collection Management
Janice Adlington selected approximately 25 titles for transfer out of the B-BJ section of the reference collection and into the stacks, to create some much needed space for new reference acquisitions.
Dale Manning reviewed areas of the Ready Reference collection within his areas of subject responsibility and selected 51 volumes that could be removed from Ready Reference. Many of these were bibliographies of literary criticism, for which references can now be found more conveniently online by searching electronic databases. Thirty of Dale's selections were transferred to the general stacks. Twenty-one volumes were transferred to the Reference stacks. This latter set of volumes were reclassified from their Z classification call numbers into alternative P classification call numbers, and relabeled, so that they would shelve adjacent to other literary criticism resources in the reference stacks. Thanks to Zora Breeding for doing this reclassification work.
David Hughett is involved in all of our collection management changes involving the reference collection, and some collection management changes can make a significant difference in David's workload during a particular week. We truly appreciate David's cheerful willingness to "make it so" after we reach decisions on changes within the reference collection.
Further Changes for Ready Reference Collection
In consultation with David Carpenter, Martha Kallstrom worked on some other needed changes in our Ready Reference collection. The first 100 volumes of the Opposing Viewpoints series were transferred to the stacks, since the information in them is now very dated. The rest of the Opposing Viewpoint series, the Contemporary World Issues series and the most recent CQ Researcher volumes were then moved to a single section within Ready Reference, as they all offer good sources of information for students working on papers focused on current, opposing or controversial issues. Martha affixed special "dots" on these titles to mark them as a shelved-together, separate unit of that collection.
Martha also gathered volumes from the rest of the Contemporary World Issues series and some other CQ (Congressional Quarterly) titles from the stacks for inclusion in this newly-defined section of Ready Reference. David Hughett took care of the Acorn records editing and other processing needed to accommodate these changes. Martha compiled a list of all the Contemporary World Issues series (including the many e-book versions now available via netLibrary), as well as a brief "index" to the other volumes in that series that we have in Ready Reference. She also compiled a similar list for the CQ series. These three lists, along with Larry's newly updated index for the Opposing Viewpoints series, are all now combined into a guide which is available on top of the Ready Reference counter. Martha's work on this project is much appreciated by her Reference colleagues and will be a big help to students who need to identify topics of interest within these frequently used resources.
Library Instruction (Melinda Brown)
As is typical for the spring semester at Central, instruction remains light. This month Peter Brush offered three sessions: Roots of Southern Poverty, the U.S. and Vietnam, and a Junior Honors Seminar. With the assistance of Martha Kallstrom, Yvonne Boyer coordinated joint sessions for a class on 19th Century European Art. The class was split up due to its size, with Yvonne and Sue Erickson each taking a portion of the students. Larry Romans and Gretchen Dodge offered a U.S. Census session for Nursing students in a class on Community Health Assessment.
In collaboration with Special Collections, I offered a Women's Studies Research Resources Update and Reception for faculty and teaching assistants. While it wasn't heavily attended, the participants were quite enthusiastic about what was presented. Special Collections did a wonderful job of getting a special presentation of woman related collections together. One faculty member suggested that I might want to offer this type of introduction to resources to graduate students.
I met with John Haar, Jody Combs and Flo Wilson to discuss the Electronic Classroom. More groups outside the library have discovered the electronic classroom as a meeting space and this brought up some issues that need clarification such as who will provide orientations to using the equipment in the classroom and who will deal with technical problems as they occur in the classroom. The need for policies and a user's guide were discussed. I will be creating a user's guide and drafting some use policies for the room based upon the discussion.
Martha Kallstrom compiled two bibliographic aids: Comparison of the Three Major Art Databases and How to Find Biographical Material for Artists. She converted both guides into HTML, so that after Yvonne Boyer finishes reviewing these handy guides, they will be linked to the Fine Arts subject guide page. Martha is now beginning work on a third art related guide which will focus on How to Find Digital Images of Art Works.
Update to PowerPoint Presentation on Lobby Monitor
Martha Kallstrom updated the PowerPoint based presentation continuously playing in the Central Library lobby. She included a segment on new exhibits in Special Collections, information on Spring Break hours for the library and reference service and other changes.
Committee Work
Melinda Brown continued her work chairing the ISAG Web-based Instructional Support sub-committee. In February, this group met with the Web Task Force to discuss the new "Find Articles" page, discuss general instructional goals for the Heard web pages, and to determine ways in which our committees could work together without duplication of efforts. It was decided that Janice Adlington, a member of the Web Task Force, would be added to the ISAG Web-based Instructional Support ISAG sub-committee to better facilitate communication between the two groups. This is in addition to Melinda being added to the Web Task Force Pegasus distribution list to foster cross-communication between the two groups.
Presentations Attended
Janice Adlington and Sue Erickson attended an Introduction
to Imaging class offered by Suellen Stringer-Hye for LITS on February 15th.
David and Janice attended the LITS Technology Update on February 20th. Janice
attended the morning portion of the February 1st ETANA meeting, during which
a plan for digitized monographs was discussed.