Statistics
Access:
7,175 entrances (1% decrease from July 2005)
Circulation:
5,094 charges at circulation desk
819 renewals at circulation desk
7,754 online renewals
67 laptop charges
18 reserve charges
6,863 discharges
2,540 books received from other libraries
251 recalls placed
8,175 books
shelved (20% increase from July 2005)
763 bound periodicals shelved (20% increase from
July 2005)
705 unbound periodicals shelved (22% decrease from July
2005)
270 newspapers shelved (17% decrease
from July 2005)
14 booktrucks sent to Annex
59.7 hours spent shifting
19 sets of serials sent to the bindery
Reference:
201 questions at Reference
desk (48%)
148 by e-mail (35%)
68 by telephone (16%)
3 email off-desk questions
1 phone off-desk question
1 mail off-desk question
Government
Information/Media Services:
292 items charged
118 reference questions and service transactions
Instruction:
2 sessions for 24 participants
General
Transitions:
Jill Hollingsworth accepted our bibliographer/reference
librarian position and will join the staff on Oct. 1. Jill will assume collection
development responsibilities for English, Film Studies, and Theatre as well
as reference and instruction duties. Jill brings with her eight years of reference
and collection development experience as Humanities Reference Librarian at Georgetown
University. We look forward to her arrival and hope you will join us in welcoming
her to the Library. Until Jill arrives, Mary Beth Blalock is responsible
for these subject areas.
Janice Adlington accepted the system-wide Electronic Resources Librarian position. We wish Janice well in her new position and are fortunate that we will continue to work with her on issues regarding electronic resources. We have formed a search committee to review candidates for the Bibliographer/Reference Librarian position responsible for Classics, Philosophy, and Psychology. David Carpenter chairs the committee, and members include Peter Brush, Zora Breeding, Lisa Shipman, and Kathy Gaca (Associate Professor of Classics). During the interim, David is responsible for Psychology selection and John Haar for Classics and Philosophy. Melinda Brown is coordinating instructional sessions for the subject areas covered by both positions.
Facilities:
Work continued on renovation of the Library Lawn
entrance and Central lobby. Contractors removed the turnstiles and railing,
and 3M installed a new exit gate. We selected a new carpet pattern for the lobby,
and the new carpeting will be installed during semester break in October.
Personnel:
Reference librarians approved a reduced schedule for the reference desk beginning
in the fall semester. Our new regular hours will be:
10:00am-7:00pm Monday-Thursday
10:00am-5:00pm Friday
1:00pm-5:00pm Saturday
1:00pm-7:00pm Sunday
We
also agreed to eliminate evening (after 5pm) staffing the first week and a half
of each semester, eliminate staffing the first weekend of each semester, and
eliminate evening (after 5pm) staffing during exam week. During intersession
periods, regular hours will be Mon.-Fri. 10am-noon and 1-4pm.
Sara
Byrd interviewed for our term librarian position to staff the reference
desk for up to 20 hours per week so that librarians can be freed to devote more
of their time to individual reference consultations, instruction, and collection
development. [Sara accepted the position in August and begins work on Aug. 21.]
Services:
John asked GLB staff for volunteers to consider changes
in how we organize the Leisure Reading collection. Among changes they will evaluate
are offering staff, faculty or patron recommendations and posting bestseller
lists.
Training:
Central unit heads have developed
a training program for public service student assistants to begin in the fall
semester. One step in the program is to show all students two service quality
training videos, Give
'Em the Pickle and What
Do You Say?, followed by a discussion of service issues. Central staff
members previewed the videos at our July Staff Forum.
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
Stacks
Maintenance:
Students Kit
Buckley and Jesse Tidyman were assigned shifting projects involving
the newly created shelving on the 5th and 7th floors. Scott Pierce and
Judson Wallace again split their work time between stacks maintenance
and periodicals, and also worked in circulation.
Periodicals:
We sent 141 periodical volumes to the bindery.
Janie King made 33 replacement shelf labels. We also requested four replacement
journal issues.
Circulation
All staff were given shelf reading assignments and began work on them. Yolanda
Campbell and Daisy Whitten worked on carrel renewals for the coming
academic year. Ben Darling, Matt McKee, LaRentina Gray,
and Kelly Lockaby worked on transferring periodicals to the Annex.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic
Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on Jul.
12 and 26. We approved five new subscriptions, including African American
Experience, Bibliography of Native North Americans, Oxford African-American
Studies Center, Political Reference
Suite, and WestLaw Campus Research. We also approved British
Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service, a free
resource, for addition to the Articles & Databases page. We scheduled two
databases--UN Common and International Monetary Fund Statistical Data
Package--for trials in October.
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot joined us on Jul. 12 to participate in the discussion of two LexisNexis databases: Congressional Research Digital Collection and the American Statistics Digital Collection. After much discussion, we determined that the Prospective CRDC (2004-) would be more beneficial to us than the archival collection. There was also interest in subscribing to the American Statistics Index package, but we had a few questions about both databases. Since Scott Eller, our LexisNexis representative, was scheduled to demonstrate the CRDC the last week in July, we deferred decisions on these resources until the Aug. 9 meeting.
We
discussed The Gilded Age and Social Theory, new databases from
Alexander Street Press, but we did not approve them for trials because of limited
content. We will review these databases again in twelve months. We did not approve
ArchiveGrid, a Research Libraries Group database, for a subscription
due to the high annual fee and the expected low use of the resource.
WorkFlows Java Client Training:
Bryan Kurowski and Mary Beth, along with
others on the Heard Library Committee on Collections, wrote documentation and
planned basic and advanced training sessions for bibliographers and others who
use and manage material funds. Three basic and two advanced collection development
sessions were planned for July and August. Bryan, John Haar, Bill Hook,
Carlin Sappenfield and Mary Ellen Wilson presented the basic sessions;
Lee Ann Lannom and Mary Beth presented the advanced sessions.
Monthly Meeting:
Bibliographers met on Jul. 19. Discussion focused
on the funding of monographs for Comparative Literature and Linguistics as well
as other interdisciplinary programs that do not have "home" departments.
Outreach:
Yvonne
Boyer met with the Acorn Chronicle editor regarding an article about
the Bandy Center and the addition of a copy of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du
Mal (illustrated and signed by Henri Matisse) to the Center's collection.
She also hosted a Bastille Day party at the Center to celebrate the acquisition
and to give others a chance to view the book. Additional outreach included meetings
with Susan Edwards, a new faculty member and Director of the Frist Center, and
Jochen Wierich, Curator at Cheekwood.
Peter
Brush and Yvonne participated in the annual Retirement Learning sessions.
Yvonne presented a session on art museums and was a "floater" for
one day of sessions.
Collections:
Yvonne
met with Professor Anthere Nzabatsinda, French Department Library Representative,
regarding French approval books and faculty requests. She also prepared the
Italian approval plan.
Projects:
Yvonne continued work on the Baudelaire web exhibition.
She worked with Henry Shipman and prepared documentation for the exhibition.
Gifts:
Bryan received 345 gift titles.
Committee and Other Activities:
Several bibliographers
attended the LexisNexis Congressional Research Digital Collection demonstration.
Government Information/Media Services (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)
The staff and students began a new project to create a 'genre list' of titles to accompany the alphabetic title catalog that we have. We hope that this will increase the patron ability to 'browse' the collection.
The staff worked to ready the Payne Room (6th floor) for the arrival of A&S Tutoring Services (formerly the Student Learning Center) this fall. This included shifting the microfiche collection and machines. We also undertook the preservation steps of taking fiche out of vinyl binders and placing them in envelopes and labeling sections of the collection. Sue Davis and Dewey James were both helpful in consulting on this project.
Teri Bante continued her training with Rachael Bankes in preparation for Rachael's departure in August.
Amy took part in the Retirement Learning program, teaching a section on government information.
Amy conducted
a BI session for John Sloop's CMST 100 class and met with Tommy Womack of the
Political Science department to discuss ways to increase communication between
the library and the department.
Instruction (Melinda Brown)
In July, Central librarians presented a total of 2 course related sessions to 22 students and 2 instructors.
CMST 100 - Public Policy (Sloop), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 12 students and the professor.
ENGL 100 - Basic Composition (Hearn), Melinda Brown, 10 students and the professor.
Additional
Instruction Activities:
The following Central
librarians presented during the Retirement Learning sessions: Yvonne Boyer,
Melinda Brown, John Haar, and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot.
Melinda met with Jennifer Holt, the new Acting Director, and Emily Hooper, the new Assistant Director at the Writing Studio and Roger Moore, the new A&S Acting Director for Undergraduate Studies. She also met with Patricia Armstrong at the Center for Teaching.
Melinda and John met with
Associate Dean Martin Rapisarda to discuss a library orientation for students
in the Master of Liberal Arts and Science program.
Reference (Sue Erickson)
Activities:
Sue, Amy, and Rick Stringer-Hye will attempt to handle any GIS questions
that arise in the interim between Brian Christens' departure and the
hiring of the new GIS Coordinator. Sue attended a search committee meeting for
the latter on Jul. 17.
As chair, Sue convened three meetings of the GLB Signage Committee and met with Robyn Harris twice regarding Central Library sign revisions that are still pending.
Hilary Rudsenske weeded the travel collection and created a list of gaps in the collection, suggesting specific titles for purchase. She also submitted "Wild Bunch" restricted fund requests for Anthropology and Sociology, and updated the Style Guides sign in the Reference Room. Sue and Hilary met to discuss some issues related to the Anthropology and Sociology approval profiles.
Sue organized a meeting with Roberta Bell, Director of the Vanderbilt Institutional Research Group (VIRG) and selected library staff who may provide some support for a faculty information database VIRG is developing.
Sue assisted with the Retirement
Learning program.
Meetings, Conferences, Training
Many Central staff members attended WorkFlows Java client training sessions.
Yvonne Boyer: Faculty News Project Team meeting.
Peter Brush: Reference Forum; Web Spiders meeting.
Sue Erickson: GIS training session; Research Services Committee meeting; Primo Normalization Team meetings; popcorn and sodas session; GLB Signage Committee meetings; LexisNexis Congressional Research Center demo.
Bryan Kurowski: Technology Support and Training Coordinators meeting; popcorn and sodas session.
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot: Reference Forum, GIS training session.
Susan Widmer: Heard Web Site Update Team meetings.