Monthly Report
January 2008

News

LOEX Proposal Accepted

Congratulations to Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, Lee Ann Lannom and Melinda Brown, who were notified that their proposal, “Vanderbilt Visions: An Exercise in Collaboration” was accepted for the 2008 LOEX Conference--Librarian As Architect: Planning, Building & Renewing scheduled for May 2008.  Only 45 presentations out of a total of 116 presentation proposals were selected.

 

Larry Romans Receives Government Information Award

Congratulations as well to Larry Romans, who was notified that he has been named the 2008 recipient of the James Bennett Childs Award for lifetime contributions to government information librarianship.  It is the highest honor given by ALA’s Government Documents Round Table (GODORT).  A plaque (but no money) will be awarded to Larry at ALA in Anaheim in June.

 

New Electronic Resources

We are pleased to announce the availability of the following two new databases.  You will find both linked from the Heard Library “Find Articles & Databases” webpage.

 

Oxford Language Dictionaries Online (OLDO)

Description: Oxford Language Dictionaries Online (OLDO) provides searchable bilingual dictionaries, and also study materials for language learning.  Advanced search options allow users to search the full text of the dictionaries, and perform Boolean searches.  OLDO offers many language usage and language learning tools, as well as a collection of correspondence templates (for letters, emails, and CVs and résumés).

 

Papers of George Washington Digital Edition

Description: "The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition (PGWDE) contains the entire text of the fifty-two volumes of the print edition published by the University of Virginia Press through 2005, in six series: Diaries, Revolutionary War, Colonial, Confederation, Presidential, and Retirement."

 

Twenty Year Anniversary

David Carpenter completed his twentieth year of employment in the Central Library on January 13, 2008.

Statistics

GLB Access (includes Divinity Library)
45,275 entrances or exits at Library Lawn (1% decrease from January 2007)
18,888 entrances or exits at Breezeway (3% decrease from January 2007)
64,163 total entrances or exits to/from the GLB

Circulation
10,527 total charges at circulation desk (11% increase from January 2007)
8413 items circulated at circulation desk (2% increase from January 2007)
190 renewals at circulation desk
717charges at express check-out
9119 online renewals (3% decrease from January 2007)
236 laptop charges (27% increase from January 2007)
0 laptop renewals
484 reserve charges (8% increase from January 2007)
12 reserve renewals
8359 items discharged (2% increase from January 2007)
12,469 total items charged (5% increase from January 2007)
3,621 items received from other libraries (3% increase from January 2007)
821 holds placed (427 from web requests) (33% increase from January 2007)
275 searches for missing books (5% increase from January 2007)
51 bills created (31% increase from January 2007
17,399 books shelved (45% increase from January 2007)
359 bound periodicals shelved (42% decrease from January 2007)
684 unbound periodicals shelved (17% decrease from January 2007)
573 newspapers shelved (0% increase from January 2007)
17,399 total items shelved (45% increase from January 2007)
121 periodical volumes sent to the bindery
97 periodicals volumes returned from the bindery and prepared for shelving
28 boxes of microfilm received from bindery for GIMS
46 leisure reading books were transferred to the stacks
36 leisure reading books were mailed back to McNaughton
11 leisure reading books were withdrawn

354 rush books processed (10% increase from January 2007)
2 book trucks sent to the Annex from stacks
45.5 hours spent shifting in stacks
11 sets of serials sent to the bindery

Reference
585 (79%) questions received at Reference desk
100 (13%) by e-mail
61 (8%) by telephone
7 e-mail questions off-desk
2 phone or in person questions off-desk
3 consultation meetings with students doing in-depth research
760 total reference transactions

Government Information/Media Services
475 total items charged (48% increase since January 2007)
489 items discharged
264 service activities/reference questions (93 reference questions and 171 video patrons)
453 video reserves processed (128% increase from January 2007)
14 video reserve purchase requests submitted
8 personal videos processed
18 items sent to bindery
201 depository items processed
31 non-depository items processed
138 items re-shelved (44% increase since January 2007)

Instruction
25 sessions for 397 participants

 

Collection Development

69 gift items were received

 

Library Administration (David Carpenter)

Library Budget

I devoted considerable time in January to learning more about the library budget process, and focusing on the details of the 2008/2009 budget for Central Library.  Since both the Central Library and the Science and Engineering Library receive budget allocations from the College of Arts and Science, I met with Tracy Primich three times during the month to discuss budget information.  Tracy and I also met with Lisa Shipman and Flo Wilson to discuss budget related questions and/ or issues.  Flo and Lisa were patient and quite helpful in responding to our many questions about the library’s budgetary process, as were other library directors.

 

Tracy and I met with A&S Associate Dean for Finance George Sweeney on January 29th, to discuss the library budget and also in preparation for a meeting with Dean McCarty in February.  Special thanks to Tracy for all her hard work and determined focus on compiling and summarizing helpful data supporting and increasing our common understanding of the intricacies of the budgetary process, and in turn preparing us to offer a concise summary of budget related information to the A&S Dean’s Office in February.

Circulation (Janet Thomason)

Stacks Maintenance
We completed the project of transferring JSTOR periodicals (bound periodicals whose content is provided electronically via JSTOR) to the Annex in January.  Ben Darling, LaRentina Gray, Kelly Lockaby, Matt McKee, and Janet Thomason all participated to finish this project by pulling volumes and creating item records in WorkFlows.  Additionally student workers Briannah Green, Stephanie Madden, and Moriah Scarbrough also helped on occasion by barcoding volumes to be transferred.  Shifting continued on the fifth floor, with students Ryan Cook and Shahrul Ramli making excellent progress.  Student workers Briannah Green and Meagan Wood were trained by Kelly Lockaby and began regular tasks in periodicals and reference.  Two book trucks were sent to the Annex and 45.5 hours spent shifting.

 

Reserves

Reserves were hopping in January as classes began and there was very little time between semesters to process incoming reserves.  After two weeks of non-stop processing, materials are now just trickling in on a day to day basis--sometimes it is new materials coming in or materials being added to an existing list.  We received an overall total of 65 print reserves.  So far this semester, 37 courses have been updated with Electronic Reserves.

 

Circulation

Spring semester hours began on Jan. 7th.  Four new students were interviewed, hired, and trained for circulation. 

 

Periodicals

The following tasks were completed in periodicals for January: seven replacement labels were made for the periodical reading room; one box of duplicates was sent to Absolute; shelf reading was done in the periodical reading room for titles beginning with W–Z, completing this particular project; periodicals were weeded in the staff lounge; and current periodicals and newspapers were stripped and shelved.

 

Meetings/Conferences/Training Activities

Janet prepared handouts for staff members who use group mailboxes to show them how to do the switch to Outlook.  There have been some problems with staff having the ability to send mail from the Central Circulation account but hopefully those problems will be resolved soon.

 

Collection Development

 

Mary Beth Blalock returned to work on selected days in January.  Taking advantage of this opportunity, Collections Development staff members took Mary Beth out to lunch at Nick & Rudy’s Restaurant on January 4th in a further celebration of Mary Beth’s retirement.  Thanks to Melinda for organizing this luncheon. 

 

Larry Romans and Sue Widmer agreed to share responsibility with (with librarians from Management and Peabody Libraries) in serving as Managerial Studies Bibliographers. 

 

Paula Covington completed annual surveys on the library’s Latin American collection for SALALM.  She spent time planning the possible purchase of a collection from Latin America.  Paula also prepared Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala reports for her upcoming Guatemala book purchase trip in February (made arrangements for trip, a driver, etc.) 

 

Ramona met with Amy Stewart-Mailhiot on January 16th to plan for the transfer of the psychology subject area responsibilities from Ramona to Amy.

 

Bryan Kurowski met with Bill Hook, Roberta Winjum, Chris Waldrop, and Mary Ellen Wilson to discuss renewal invoices involving “big ticket” electronic resources.

 

Yvonne continued to work remotely from Los Angeles in January.  She is also working on a volunteer special project for the Getty Research Library.

 

Outreach

Peter Brush provided tours and information about the Central Library resources for four history faculty candidates, with emphasis on our resources for Islamic and Middle Eastern history.

 

Paula Covington devoted considerable time to planning for the February LASER (Latin American Southeast Region) conference at Vanderbilt.  She completed the program, panelist arrangements, publicity, and most of the logistics for the conference. 

 

Paula met with Joseph Mella, Curator of VU Fine Arts Gallery to plan an exhibit on Guayasamin in the Central Library.  In addition, Paula wrote a brief article on the evolution of the Latin American collection and our future goals for a publication of the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies.

 

Paula and Ramona offered an introduction to the library to a faculty chair candidate for the Dept. of Anthropology, and attended the candidate’s presentation later the same afternoon.  They also offered a library resources introduction for an anthropology research associate.  Ramona and Paula attended a second Dept. of Anthropology faculty candidate’s presentation, and provided an introduction to the library for the same faculty candidate.

 

Ramona attended an AIA lecture given by Kathy Gaca (Classical Studies Department) on January 22nd.  Ramona also attended a Dept. of Philosophy colloquium on January 18th. 

 

Deborah Lilton met with Dahlia Porter, a new English faculty member, to learn more about her research interests in the area of literature and science.  She also met with Visiting English professor Michael Neill to ensure the drama collection was meeting his instructional needs.  In addition, she has been communicating with other new faculty on a case by case basis—Houston A. Baker, Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Hortense Spillers, and Alice Randall. 

 

In addition, Deborah created a newsletter and distributed it to the English faculty in an effort to keep the lines of communication open.  In an effort to better communicate with the Film Studies faculty and ascertain film studies’ collection needs she observed Will Akers’ Introduction to Filmmaking Course. 

 

Sue Widmer met with a Russian professor to discuss collection development on January 28th.

 

Gifts

Paula met with Professor Mitch Seligson (Department of Political Science) concerning the donation of his Costa Rican collection to the Central Library.  Bryan Kurowski visited Prof. Seligson’s office in Calhoun 323 to view this collection that will be donated to the library sometime in February.

 

Training

Mary Beth Blalock met with David Carpenter on January 22nd to review important collection development procedures and information with him. 

 

Bryan met with Paula Covington to provide an overview of the OCLC WorldCat Collection Analysis tool.

 

Mary Beth Blalock provided training in the use of the Transfer (Weeding) Database for Ramona Romero, Deborah Lilton, and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot on January 28th.

Committees and Other Activities
Deborah Lilton attended ALA Annual and participated in the Literatures in English section discussion groups as well as attended the MLA bibliography discussion group.

 

Yvonne was reappointed to the WESS Research & Planning Committee. 

Government Information and Media Services
(Larry Romans and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)

January, already a traditionally busy time for video reserves, became even busier when Brian advertised the service with an email message to faculty.  In fact, Brian had to take time off from reserves to find a better arrangement for additional supplies once held on the reserve shelf, lest the reserves overflow their previous boundaries.  He also had to email several faculty members with concurrent film needs in order to facilitate the sharing of resources.

 

Brian trained a new student worker, Juliao Matsinhe, on circulation procedures, reserve procedures, and microform equipment.  He also communicated with students about our checkout exception for alumni educators and various other slight tweaks to procedure.  He made updates to the student manual to reflect these changes.

 

Brian and Larry met with Sue Widmer for an update on issues related to film requests by Russian faculty.  He also wrote accounts of his work with these issues, to give David Carpenter and Mary Beth Blalock a better grasp of the situation.

 

Brian updated the Genre and Language lists on the Media Services web page to include films added during the fall semester.

 

In January, Teri finished weeding another Annex cart, finding Sudocs numbers for items, sending out offers lists to various institutions, and clearing out items that could be discarded.  Teri did training with Juliao, our new graduate student hire, and trained two other students on processing UPA microfiche.  Teri updated holdings for United Nations serials and prepared items to be sent to the bindery.  Teri met with Amy and Sarah to talk about issues related to Amy’s move, such as statistics, UN documents, our depository profile, and Marcive.

 

Amy Stewart-Mailhiot and Larry Romans attended the ALA Mid-Winter meeting.  Larry is a member of the ALA Executive Board and is chair of the Committee on Membership Meetings.  Amy serves on GODORT’s Membership Committee.

 

Sara Byrd, who has been working Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, will be working additional hours in GIMS after Amy moves on to her new position in the library.

 

Amy Stewart-Mailhiot’s last official day was January 31.  As one going-away present, she received a charming photo of the people she is leaving behind.  She was also treated to a wonderful potluck lunch attended by current and former students and the fabulous staff from GIMS.

Instruction (Melinda Brown)

In January, Central librarians presented a total of 25 course related sessions to 380 students and 17 professors, as noted below:

CLAS 115 – Politics of Gladiator (Krauss), Ramona Romero (Deborah Lilton observed), 11 students, and the professor.

CMST 100 – Public Speaking (English), Larry Romans & Sara Byrd, 15 students.

CMST 100 – Introduction to Public Speaking (Keltner), Larry Romans & Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 17 students, and the professor.

CMST 100 – Introduction to Public Speaking (Keltner) 2nd section, Larry Romans & Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 17 students, and the professor.

CMST 100 – Introduction to Public Speaking (Sisko), Larry Romans & Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 18 students, and the professor.

CMST 100 – Introduction to Public Speaking (Sandoz), Larry Romans, 18 students and the professor.

CMST 101 – Interpersonal Relations (Kenner), Larry Romans and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 19 students and the professor.

CMST 101 – Interpersonal Relations (Kenner) 2nd section, Larry Romans and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 16 students and the professor.

CMST 101 – Interpersonal Relations (Kenner) 3rd section, Larry Romans and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 18 students and the professor.

ECON 226 – Economic History of the U.S. (Atack), Sue Widmer, and Larry Romans, 40 students.

HIST 200 – History Workshop (Figal), Peter Brush, 16 students and the professor.

HIST 200 – History Workshop (Messier), Peter Brush, 5 students and the professor.

HIST 263 – History of Gender of Women in Colonial Latin America (Landers), Paula Covington, 2 students.

HIST 295 – Medieval City (Messier), Peter Brush, 11 students and the professor.

HIST 359 – The Atlantic World 1541-19th century (Landers), Paula Covington, 17 students.

MATH 115 – Mathematics and Games (Rafter), Melinda Brown, 15 students and the professor.

MGRL 195 – Entrepreneurial Challenge (Furse), Larry Romans, 7 students.

MGRL 195 – Entrepreneurial Challenge (Furse) second section, Sue Widmer, 7 students.

PPS 295 – Senior Seminar on Public Policy (Zissimos), Larry Romans, 4 students and the professor.

PSCI 113 – The Supreme Court (Corley), Larry Romans & Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 16 students and the professor.

PSY 115 – Psychology of Eating Disorders (Schlundt), Ramona Romero, & Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 15 students.

SOC 101 – Introduction to Sociology (Karpos), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 41 students and the professor.

SOC 212 – Social Research (Karpos), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 19 students and the professor.

SOC 212 – Social Research (Karpos) 2nd session with same class, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 20 students and the professor.

THTR 220 – Acting II (Hallquist), Deborah Lilton, 15 students and the professor.

History Atlantic World History (Landers), Paula Covington

Women and Gender in Colonial Latin America (Landers), Paula Covington

Additional Instruction Activities

Amy, Melinda, and Lee Ann Lannom met to discuss their upcoming presentation at the LOEX conference.

 

Ramona Romero and Deborah Lilton discussed film resources in preparation for CLAS 115 Politics of Gladiator.

 

Larry Romans met with a group of students from Managerial Studies (MGRL 195) and will continue to work with that group for the rest of the semester--with the help of Rahn Huber.

 

Paula met with Professor Landers to review LAS 290.

Reference (Melinda Brown)

Staff Changes

Melinda Brown began serving as Acting Head of Reference in January.

 

Amy Dumouchel joined us in January as a term librarian, and then accepted the permanent position of Electronic Resources Librarian at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, starting in February.

 

Training and Professional Development Activities

At the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association, Sara Byrd served as an Intern to the Committee on Membership Meetings.  Sara also attended the ACRL New Member Discussion Group: “What I Wish I Had Learned In Library School;” the Elsevier Digital Libraries Symposium; and ASCLA LSSPS LSPVPDF (Library Services to People with Visual or Physical Disabilities) Forum. 

Melinda Brown attended an ACRL pre-conference at the Midwinter meeting entitled “Using Organization Development to Create a “Work Place of Choice.”

Most Central Reference librarians met with Amy Dumouchel throughout the month to orient her to subject resources, and to provide reference training.

 

Special Projects & Activities

The Seating Sweep project team met this month and Sara had meetings with Julie Blagojevich (1/24) and David Carpenter (1/30) to plan for the 2008 sweep.

 

Sara planned and led the Spring 2008 Central Reference Weekend Scheduling (Spittoon) Meeting on January 8th.  She also had individual discussions with all the reference librarians to make sure that they are happy with the way she currently schedules them.  So far, so good.

 

C-SET (Commons Service Exploration Team)

Some Central Reference librarians were quite busy with their membership in C-SET (Commons Service Exploration Team).  Two full C-SET committee meetings were held.  Sara Byrd convened two sub-committee meetings (Houses) and did two telephone interviews.  Ramona Romero (Commons Center) held one sub-committee meeting.  Melinda Brown attended three sub-committee meetings (Student feedback/Library as Place).

 

Additional Activities

Amy Dumouchel worked on updating existing pages and creating new pages for “Central’s Using Library Resources in OAK or Course Web-Pages” page for faculty and instructors.

 

Paula Covington scheduled several individual meetings with graduate students regarding their theses; she spent a great deal of time preparing individual resource suggestions for the 16 graduate students in Atlantic world history (as did Peter Brush); she helped a Spanish faculty member with developing the background for a new book project; and she met with two new anthropology faculty members to orient them to our resources.

 

Amy Stewart-Mailhiot had three reference consultation sessions with students and one with a faculty member.

 

Sue Widmer offered research consultations to both an economics student and a German student.

 

Ramona demonstrated the use of the L’Annee Philologique database during a reference consultation.  She also assisted student research assistant with tracking down German language texts of selected works of Kant and Hegel works for a professor.  Ramona consulted with Chris Benda about using an EndNote CWYW function in order to answer a faculty member’s question. 

 

Janet Thomason reviewed library access policies for Central reference librarians at their meeting on 01/09

 

Additional Meetings and Other Activities

Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies Steering Committee (Paula)

Central Library Staff Forum 01/24

Central Reference Meetings 01/09 & 01/23

Collections Committee (David) 01/22

Digital Library Steering Committee (David) 01/08 & 01/22

DiscoverLibrary Review (Ramona Romero and Melinda Brown) 01/25

Electronic Resources Committee (Sue Widmer, Mary Beth Blalock, Melinda Brown, and David Carpenter) 01/09

Electronic Resources Librarian Presentation – Julie Loder (Sara Byrd, Melinda Brown, David Carpenter, and Ramona Romero) 01/23

ERMS Project Team Meeting (Bryan) 01/07 & 01/28

ERMS/SFX Team Meeting with ERL candidate Julie Loder (Bryan)

GIMS potluck farewell for Amy Stewart-Mailhiot (Sara Byrd) 01/31

Instruction Meeting about Vanderbilt Visions and CUIL (David, Flo Wilson, and Sue Erickson) 01/09

Joint meeting of the Research Services Committee, the Primo TestIt Team, and the Web Maintenance Team to review the DiscoverLibrary search interface (Sue Widmer, as a member of the Web Maintenance Team) 01/25

Library Directors’ Council (weekly) (David)

Open House for University of Tennessee, Knoxville School of Information Science Distance Education Students (David) 01/04

Reception for Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies (60th anniversary celebration) (Paula)

Staff News Blog Training (David) 01/24

Strategy & Planning Council (David) 01/22

Systems Candidate Presentation – Fareed Nawaz (Sara Byrd, David Carpenter, and Ramona Romero) 01/03

Technology & Training Support Coordinators (Bryan)

Technology Support Coordinator’s Meeting (Daisy Whitten) 01/09 

Tour of Circulation for Amy Doumouchel (Janet) 01/15

Traffic & Parking Committee (Sue Widmer, representing USAC) 01/30

Unit Heads Meeting (David, Melinda, Larry, Amy, and Janet) 01/08

USAC: University Staff Advisory Council (Sue Widmer) 01/08

Vanderbilt Web Spiders meeting (Peter)

Zotero Webcast (Ramona Romero, Paula Covington, David Carpenter, Paula Covington, and Melinda Brown) 01/23