Statistics
Access:
17,148
total entrances
8,456 undergraduates
5,636 graduate students
1,711 faculty/staff
933 alumni,faculty/staff/student family members
412 visitors with no VU affiliation (includes NALA card entrances, Fisk entrances,
etc)
Circulation:
7,723 charges
8,299 online renewals
159 laptop charges
493 reserves charges
7,615 books discharged
3,266 books received from other VU libraries
554 recalls
7,954
books shelved
508 bound periodicals shelved
914 unbound periodicals shelved
372 newspapers shelved
Web:
213,630 hits; 32,533 visitor sessions
Reference:
899 questions
675 (75%) at Reference desk
147 (16%) by e-mail
77 (9%) by telephone
Microform
Media Center:
316
charges
63
reference questions
Government Information:
98 reference questions
General
Renovation:
Dean Richard McCarty informed us that the College does not have sufficient funds to support the $1.3 million Central fourth floor renovation project in 2005. He did, however, hold open the prospect that he may be able to develop support by the summer of 2006.
Coffee kiosk:
University Dining services decided not to staff the GLB coffee kiosk, located on the second level, for the spring semester. The kiosk failed to attract enough customers to be profitable for the vendor, Alpine Bagel. We are investigating leasing a coffee machine to provide refreshments for patrons.
OAK:
Bibliographers contacted faculty in their departments and programs to offer assistance in embedding links to library resources in their OAK courses.
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
Periodicals:
We sent 200 titles to the bindery in January. On Jan. 26 Rachel Gray and Kelly
Lockaby met with Ann Ercelawn to clarify who does what concerning periodicals.
At the same time we met with Julie Loder about handling problem titles, especially
Latin American titles.
Stacks
Maintenance:
Student workers spent
15 hours shifting materials. We sent 35 trucks to the Annex.
Reserves:
Activities dropped once the semester was in full swing. Course materials
continued to trickle in for both print and electronic reserves, so we were not
as overwhelmed at the end of the month as at the beginning. We received and
processed print reserves lists for 70 courses. We set up 55 OAK courses. At
the beginning of the semester, Ben Darling, Janet and LaRentina Gray were all
busy processing OAK ereserves. Janet and Larentina attended the ereserves meeting
on Jan. 26.
Circulation:
Janet contacted Randy Crafton about providing access statistics for the three
turnstiles in the GLB. He was able to produce a report, which we now will receive
monthly, and the figures are included in this monthly report. We hired six new
students. A couple of them are also working in Stacks Maintenance. Janet assisted
Stacks Maintenance by pulling 20 trucks of books for Annex transfer. She also
withdrew 138 items from the collection as a result of the Annex transfer project
and leisure reading weeding.
Other activities:
Staff searched for 459 items, finding 61. Many of these searches are a result of the Annex transfer project.
We processed 1,082 overdue notices.
Janet developed new wording for the laptop overdue notices. This wording was approved by CAG and implemented.
On Jan. 6 Janet attended Circulation reports training, and Daisy Whitten attended the ACTF meeting.
On Jan. 6 and 7 Janet produced two reports to assist Microform Media with weeding videos. The criteria used for the first report were less than 1 charge or in-house use prior to 2003, and the last report was to provide a list of videos with no use since Jan. 1, 2000. Media Center staff selected material to transfer to the Annex from these lists.
On Jan. 11, Robert Wright attended the Tech Support coordinators meeting.
On Jan. 13, Janet and Daisy attended the monthly CAG meeting.
On Jan. 14, Janet ran a report to weed leisure reading and gave the list to Yolanda Campbell for pulling. Dale Manning made collections decisions on these items, and the materials have been processed for either withdrawal or transfer to the stacks. Running the report also was a method of inventorying the collection, so we identified many titles as missing, which will require follow-up. Yolanda will work on this.
Collection Development decided to withdraw the LP collection from Central Microform Media. Janet began working on withdrawing this collection.
Janet spent a couple of hours on Jan. 18 training Rachel Bankes on WorkFlows circulation procedures and showing her how to transfer material to the Annex.
Janet ran a maintenance report to catch long overdue items that had not been billed. Robert is working through them and trying to get billing up to date. We prepared 30 bills for non-returned items this month.
On Jan. 19, 21 and 24, Janet and Martha Young met with the candidates for the Collection Development position to explain how our positions interacted with Collection Development.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on January 12 and 26. Since the number of new electronic resources continues to increase, the committee spent time this month reviewing and editing subjects and material types assigned to these new titles. We also discussed the best location for three new web pages—Journal Cost page, FirstSearch Periodical Title Finder page, and a Google Scholar page. The FirstSearch Periodical Finder page will be added to Central's Collection Development page. John will take our recommendations for the other two pages to the Heard Webpage Task Force for discussion.
Ovid/SilverPlatter will not be able to distribute the MLA Database after June, but it will be available via four vendors—CSA, OCLC (FirstSearch), Gale, and ProQuest. As an initial step in selecting a new vendor, trials were approved for the CSA and ProQuest versions. Although several bibliographers had expressed an interest in RefWorks, acquiring a site license for RefWorks was not approved because of the lack of campus-wide support. We will review Oxford Scholarship Online again in one year.
Library Associate Position:
Julie Loder resigned her position effective February 1 in order to accept a librarian position at LITS. We held a reception in her honor on Jan. 28 in the Bandy Center to show our appreciation for all of her contributions to the library and to wish her success in her new position. A special “thank you” to Yvonne Boyer and Dale Manning for their assistance in planning the reception.
The availability of the position was announced just before the Christmas holidays, and we were very fortunate to have a number of internal candidates interested in the position. We interviewed three candidates between Jan. 19 and 24. Bryan Kurowski accepted the position and will join our staff on Feb. 10.
Outreach:
Peter Brush conducted an orientation class for a history transfer student as well as a tour of Heard Library for three history faculty candidates. He also created a display on Black History Month for the lobby display cases.
Paula Covington met with several Spanish faculty and graduate students to discuss writers, research interests, and teaching needs for her book-purchasing trip to Cuba. Preparing for the trip also involved creating and updating reports of our holdings in Guatemala, Cuba, and Honduras resources. She also met with faculty to discuss OAK, linking handouts to course syllabi, and individual research projects.
Susan Widmer met with an Economics Ph.D. student to discuss his research and to help him with a statistical database.
Yvonne Boyer met with Professor Annabeth Headrick, welcomed a scholar to the Bandy Center, and prepared for the Pascal Pia exhibition.
Dale continues to receive film requests from faculty. In January, he ordered nine films for three Film Studies professors.
Departmental Meeting:
The January meeting was devoted to a demonstration of RefWorks, a CSA bibliographical management program. Some bibliographers were interested in this software as a potential service the entire campus might provide, but campus-wide interest was extremely low.
Committee and Other Activities:
Dale, Julie, Paula, Peter, Susan, Yvonne, and Mary Beth attended the OAK training session presented by Melinda Brown.
Paula, Peter, Susan, Melinda, and Mary Beth attended the Information Literacy brown bag session. Mary Beth also attended the Library and Digital Mapping Telecast.
Susan attended a meeting of the CAAG.
Julie met with Rachel Gray and Kelly Lockaby to discuss periodicals claims issues. She also spent two days training Bryan Kurowski to assume the responsibilities of the Collection Development Library Associate.
Paula attended a Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies faculty meeting.
Mary Beth, along with John and Rick Stringer-Hye, met with Jessica Troeschel, our CSA representative, to discuss Illumina (new interface) as well as available electronic resources.
Government Information (Larry Romans)
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot attended the Electronic Resources Committee meeting to discuss the new Geographic Information System (GIS) group that has been formed. She also attended the ARL/ERSI GIS webcast. Following the webcast, Amy convened the meeting of the GIS task force to further discuss the use of GIS on the Vanderbilt campus.
Amy met with David Carpenter to begin her initial Reference training. She then met with Paula, Peter, and Susan to get a more subject specific overview of the collection .
Amy continued her cleanup of the monthly Marcive tape loads. Of the 329 records loaded, 140 required further examination. 22 of these required changes prior to reload . She also cataloged 15 titles. She continued working with the Annex staff to determine the status for Government Information items in the oversized area.
Nancy Dolinger worked on checking in incoming documents, including GPO and UN documents. She also corrected records for Defense Department titles and gathered items for binding.
Nancy weeded duplicates and continued to train student workers on new procedures. She processed gift books to send to Technical Services for cataloging and ordered various titles from the Government Printing Office for other libraries on campus. Nancy continued to serve on the PERC committee and assist Larry Romans with the Ingram staff purchase.
Larry, Amy, and Sue Erickson conducted five instruction courses for CMST students. Three were 100 classes; the other two were 201 and 204.
Amy attended the ALA Midwinter meeting in Boston. While there she attended a number of GODORT meetings, including Cataloging, Legislation, and the Federal Documents Task Force. She also attended a meeting of Nashville area depository librarians at Nashville Public Library. The purpose of the meeting was to plan a public program highlighting government documents/information available through the Federal Depository Library Program.
Amy attended the brown bag discussion on information literacy and the RefWorks demonstration.
Nancy is now helping out in the Microform Media Department in the afternoons. This has been a challenge in balancing her regular work with learning a variety of new rules and tasks. Nancy enjoys having more contact with the patrons.
Microform and Media Center (Peter Brush)
The new year got off to a slow start, but things picked up once Vanderbilt faculty and students returned to school for the new semester. Professors have been making good use of the video reserve system and the Media Center classroom, while students have been filling the Media Center and the Computer Room with activity. The microform equipment has also been receiving a fair amount of use.
2005 has already seen a lot of change. In the past month, three new employees have joined the MMC team: Malik Saafir, a new student worker; Nancy Dolinger, who has been kind enough to sacrifice some of her time in Government Information to help us out in the afternoons; and Rachael Bankes, who assumed David Anderson's position as Media Center Assistant. We have also recently completed a major video shifting project, sending nearly 450 videos from our collection to the Annex. This shift will hopefully allow us enough room to accommodate new videos for years to come. We also hope to be able to remove the LP collection from the MMC in the near future, as it is very seldom used.
Reference (David Carpenter)
Instruction Report (Melinda Brown, Instruction Coordinator):
January found Central librarians with many requests for course-related instruction. A total of twelve sessions were given to 358 participants:
CMST 100 - Fundamentals of Public Speaking (English – 2 sessions), Larry Romans, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot and Sue Erickson
MST 100 - Fundamentals of Public Speaking (Morris), Larry Romans and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot
CMST 101 - Interpersonal Communication (Kenner - 3 sessions), Dale Manning
CMST 201 - Persuasion (English), Larry Romans, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot and Sue Erickson
CMST 204 - Organizational and Managerial Communication (English), Larry Romans and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot
HIS 115W - Jesus in the Quran (Messier), Peter Brush
HIS 200 - History Workshop (Messier), Peter Brush
HUM 115W - Women Writers in the French Speaking World (Kevra), Yvonne Boyer and Melinda Brown
JS 294 - Power & Diplomacy in the Modern Middle East (Schwartz), Peter Brush
PSY 208 - Experimental Methods (Seiffert - 2 sessions), Janice Adlington and Melinda Brown
SOC 212 - Sociology Research Practicum (Smith), Sue Erickson
SPAN 202 - Spanish for Oral Communication (Olazagasti-Segovia), Paula Covington.
Additional Instruction Related Activities:
Melinda and Janice Adlington co-presented a session entitled "Scholarship in the Digital Age" (Google Scholar, its pros and cons, and also open access issues) at the Center for Teaching's GRADStep (Graduate Student Teaching Event for Professional Development): Technology in Teaching and Learning program. Approximately thirty graduate students attended.
Sue Erickson provided an overview of Acorn searching techniques, strategies and tips to five staff members at the Management Library on Jan. 6. The Management Library staff members appreciated Sue's willingness to share her in-depth knowledge of Acorn searching techniques and tips with them. If fact, they gave Sue an Acorn Note to express their appreciation and thanks. (Kudos to Sue!)
Melinda taught a session for Central Library bibliographers on how to incorporate library resources in OAK. The following individuals attended: Janice Adlington, Mary Beth Blalock, Yvonne Boyer, Peter Brush, Paula Covington, Julie Loder, Dale Manning, and Susan Widmer.
Peter provided an orientation and overview of reference resources in history for Amy Stewart-Mailhiot as part of her on-going reference training.
At his request, Melinda met with David to give him a brief introduction to linking documents and Web pages in OAK, so that he could post documents and links to other information to an OAK course used by the Information Commons Group to share information.
David and Melinda decided it was important for them to begin regular monthly meetings to discuss instruction related issues. They will meet on “first Wednesdays” at 10:00 A.M.
Janice Adlington assisted a faculty member with linking to a database in OAK.
Consideration of Participation in the ASERL ask-a-library Cooperative Chat Reference Service:
David convened and chaired a meeting of the ISAG Cooperative and Virtual Reference Services Subcommittee of ISAG on January 21st. After a lengthy discussion, the group members present reached a unanimous decision to recommend that the Heard Library not join the ASERL ask-a-library cooperative chat reference service . Further information about the group's discussion and links to periodical articles, other documents, Web pages, and notes from conversations with librarians at other institutions about their library's participation in the ASERL service can be found at the ISAG Cooperative and Virtual Reference Services Subcommittee webpage, maintained by David.
David and Marshall Breeding met with Paul Gherman on Jan. 26 to describe the group's work and offer its recommendation to him. Marshall will report this recommendation to LMC, and David will report it to ISAG on Feb. 2.
A Fond Farewell to Julie Loder:
We certainly appreciate Julie Loder's many contributions to Central Library's reference service over the last few months. Although we are sorry to lose Julie as a reference colleague, we congratulate Julie on her new position in LITS, and hope she drops by to see us from time to time.
ALA Midwinter Activities:
Melinda attended the ACRL pre-conference, Getting Teacher/Faculty Attention for Information Literacy , in addition to her attendance at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Boston in mid-January.
Sue Erickson's ALA Midwinter activities (Jan. 13-17) began with her attending an ACRL pre-conference on Statistics for Librarians . She also attended the following meetings: ACRL Anthropology and Sociology Section ( ANSS) Executive Committee meetings I and II; ANSS Membership Committee (co-chair); and ACRL Membership Committee (representing ANSS). Sue participated in the Sociology Librarian's Discussion Group--where a CSA representative demonstrated Sociological Abstracts on the new Illumina interface--and the ANSS Social, which Sue had organized (in her role as ANSS Membership Committee co-chair). Sue attended an Alexander Street breakfast presentation on the forthcoming Black Panther Party newspaper database.
Additional Activities, Meetings, Training Opportunities or Accomplishments:
David hosted a meeting of the Information Commons group in the Central Library on Jan. 20 . Since this proposed new facility would be located within the Central Library, David gave the other group members a detailed tour of the Central Library, so that they could see the dimensions and characteristics of the spaces in consideration for locating the information commons.
David and Sue Erickson attended a demonstration of RefWorks Web based bibliographic management software.
Sue Erickson and David attended an ARL/ESRI GIS Webcast Libraries and Digital Mapping in the 21st Century.
David met with John Haar and Mary Beth Blalock to discuss the possibility of hosting a practicum experience for another School of Information Sciences student at University of Tennessee, Knoxville in the Central Library.
David served as facilitator for the interview sessions with the Central Library bibliographers for each of the three candidates for the Collection Development Library Associate position.
Janice Adlington attended a “Journal Club” discussion at the Peabody Library.
Committee or Other Regularly Scheduled Meetings Attended:
Central Reference librarians attended various other regular departmental, staff, and task force meetings during the past month. These included meetings of the following groups: Central Library Reference, Central Library Bibliographers, Heard Web Group, Information Commons Working Group, Information Services Advisory Group, Electronic Resources Committee, Technology Support Coordinators, Central Library Staff Forum, MetaLib Implementation Group, and Central Library Unit Heads.