MONTHLY REPORT
JULY 2007

News

John Haar Retires

Central Library staff gave John Haar (and wife Ann Carey) their very best wishes as John and Ann prepared for their move to Athens, Georgia following John’s retirement from being Director of the Central Library and Associate University Librarian.  David Carpenter began serving as Acting Director of the Central Library on July 23rd. 

 

Audio Books Now Available on Playaway

Larry Romans and Sara Byrd convinced us to introduce a new format of audio books for the Central Library’s Leisure Reading Collection.  In July, we launched audio books on Playaway MP3 players.  We now have thirty books in MP3 format on our Leisure Reading Collection shelves and circulating to library users—earphones included. 

 

Retirement Learning

Central Library librarians were once again quite active in support of this year’s Retirement Learning sessions, with the following presentations:

“Getting Familiar with Web Navigation” – Melinda Brown

“Ready Reference Resources” – David Carpenter

“Resources for Gardening” – Sue Erickson (with Roberta Winjum)

“Government Information” – Larry Romans and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot

“Sports Information” – John Haar

“Art Museums: Selected Sites” – Yvonne Boyer

Staff volunteering to be assistants for Retirement Learning sessions included:  Sara Byrd, David Carpenter, and Ramona Romero.

 

New Central Library Webpages Being Created

Amy Stewart-Mailhiot is the chair and Larry Romans, Sara Byrd, Melinda Brown, and Peter Brush members of the Central Webpage Revision Committee—a group that is working to substantially revise and improve the Central Library webpages.  A former Government Information and Media Services student, Peter Humke, has provided a first draft of the new Central Library webpage and is working on a second draft based on the group's comments.  Sara Byrd reports that the Central Library webpage redesign effort is coming along nicely.  Sara attended at least five meetings focused on this project in July; researched other libraries' work; and mocked up some webpage designs.  The Central Webpage Revision Committee now has an "alpha stage" prototype ready for review by colleagues.

 

Statistics

GLB Access (includes Divinity Library):
19,794 entrances at Library Lawn
10,229 entrances at Breezeway
30,023 total entrances to the GLB

Circulation:
4,913 charges at circulation desk 4% decrease from July 06
590 renewals at circulation desk (20% decrease from July 06)
186 charges at express check-out
8,048 online renewals (4% increase from July 06)
102 laptop charges 52% increase from July 06
119 reserve charges
1 reserve renewal
5,518 items discharged 20% decrease from July 06
3,111 items received from other libraries 22% increase from July 06
386 (151 requested via web) holds placed 54% increase from July 06
277  searches for missing books 188% increase from July 06
22 bills created 61% decrease from July 06
7,425  books shelved 9% decrease from July 2006
510 bound periodicals shelved 33% decrease from July 2006
750 unbound periodicals shelved 6% increase from July 2006
456 newspapers shelved 69% increase from July 2006
105 periodical volumes sent to the bindery
191 periodicals volumes returned from the bindery and prepared for shelving
24 boxes of microfilm received from bindery for GIMS
312 rush books processed 225% increase from July 2006
13.5 book trucks sent to the Annex from stacks
37.3 hours spent shifting in stacks
42 sets of serials sent to the bindery

Reference:
162 (49%) questions received at Reference desk
96 (29%) by e-mail
71 (22%) by telephone
15 e-mail questions off-desk
5 phone or in person questions off-desk
6 research consultation (data)
2 reference searches
357 total reference transactions

Government Information/Media Services:
319 items charged (17% increase from July 06)
274 items discharged
141 service activities/reference questions
37 video reserves processed
9 reserve purchase requests submitted
27 items cataloged
426 depository items processed
23 non-depository items processed
56 items re-shelved

Instruction:
2 sessions for 29 participants

 

Circulation (Janet Thomason)

Stacks Maintenance:
New shelving was installed on the fifth and eighth floors.  Once the posts were installed the shelves had to be hung.  A shortage of shelf hardware led Janet Thomason, Kelly Lockaby, Matt McKee, and student worker Thom Dawkins to the Annex to retrieve over 100 shelves and shelf ends.  Thom completed a shifting project in periodicals on the sixth floor and began another project on the seventh floor in the PGs.  Shahrul Ramli continued shifting books on the seventh floor in the PTs.  Stephanie Madden returned and spend a couple of weeks shelving books and Scott Pierce continued his work, mostly shelving.  Kelly continued pulling books and periodicals to be transferred to the Annex.

 

Reserves:.
Larentina took some vacation the first 6 days of July.  After returning from vacation, she started working on E-Reserves for the fall semester trying to get a jump on it, since it's so time consuming.  The number of E-Reserve received so far is 26 and Print reserve lists is 22.  Several new faculty have also come to the Library making inquiries about reserves as well so we feel we’ve gotten a good head start. Reserve lists continue to come in each day so August will be a busy month.

 

Janet and Larentina both attended reserves training as well this month.

 

Circulation:
Yolanda, Daisy, Ben, and Janet took some vacation during the month of July.  On July 11th, Janet met with Matt Trotter and Nancy Dolinger in Divinity Library to discuss their assuming responsibility for emptying the 21stAvenue book return.  They officially started on July 12th which has been a tremendous help for Circulation.

 

Daisy and Janet finished compiling the 2006/07 annual statistics and turned them in to the Director’s office.  Janet also compiled a spreadsheet for 1998/99-2006/07 which included circulation/renewals, bills for non-returned items, overdue notices and the number of withdrawals as a result of billed books not being returned during that time period and gave that report to David.  Janet compiled the access schedule for fall semester for the General Library Building and sent that schedule to the Card office at the end of July.  She also completed the Library Hours notification form for Acorn for this coming academic year and sent that to LITS for input.

 

Yolanda made great progress on carrel renewals and the list of in transits were reduced to a manageable number!  The Play-a-ways were rolled out in Leisure reading, as the locks had arrived so the items could be labeled by circulation and prepared for shelving.

 

Periodicals:

Janie was on vacation the first 2 weeks in July returning July 17th.  Statistics for July accomplishments are included above.

 

 

Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)

 

Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on July 11 in the Bandy Center.  Several trials were approved including trials for the Civil War Era and North American Congress on Latin America Archive.  CJH (Center for Jewish History in New York) Digital Archive and Historical Newspapers from LC, both free resources, were approved for the Articles & Databases page.  The July 25th meeting was cancelled.

 

Members of the Committee are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, David Carpenter, Sue Erickson, Susan Widmer, Bill Hook, and Mary Beth Blalock (Chair).  We welcome your suggestions of electronic resources that you think would be appropriate for the Central Library and/or of system-wide interest.

 

Collaborative Collection Development:
Susan Widmer participated in an Information Alliance conference call with Linda Phillips, Molly Royse, and John Haar to discuss collaborative collection development and our German Contemporary Authors Approval profiles.

 

Outreach:
Yvonne continued planning for the ARLIS/SE Conference.  She also met with Professor Andrea Mirabile and Elsa Filosa, two new faculty members of the French & Italian Department.

 

Deborah Lilton met with Destiny O’Shay, a doctoral student in the English program, to get an idea of the types of services doctoral students expect the library to provide.  This meeting led to the scheduling of the Graduate Student Orientation session as well as a meeting with the Director of Graduate Studies, Kathryn Schwarz, to assess strategies for meeting the graduate students’ instructional and resource needs.  Deborah also provided special assistance to Professor Ifeoma Nwankwo, a new English professor, in order to get her e-reserves ready for her fall courses.

 

Bryan Kurowski participated in a conference call with Glenn Jaeger and Sandy Belskis of Absolute Backorder Service to discuss ideas on creating regional repositories for archiving of print serials.

 

Gifts:
Bryan arranged for and picked up the George Graham Collection (75 boxes yet to be counted).  The collection is currently in storage and will be counted as time permits.  In addition to this collection, 15 other gift items were received during the month.

 

All bibliographers are making a special effort to review as many gift books as possible during July and August in an attempt to reduce the backlog of gift titles and clear some working space in the grill area.

 

Projects:
Susan completed the review of titles classed in PG5631-9999 for transfer to the Annex.  As a result of the review, 149 Russian titles will be transferred to the Annex.  Susan also revised and updated the German subject guide.  She added two new sections to the guide as well as 23 new links to German resources.  These included a link to a free online periodical, a link to a free online index of German journals, links to selected single author pages, and a link to the library’s Media Services Film Collection page for films in German.  Susan is also working on compiling and reviewing titles and prices for a special purchase request from the German Department.

 

Mary Beth Blalock reviewed titles classed in PL for transfer to the Annex.  She also continued the review of journal subscriptions in order to allocate funds for the new e-journal material funds.  Data regarding titles and fund changes is being sent to Order Services so that changes can be made in the order records. 

 

At Mary Beth Blalock’s request, David Carpenter identified several older editions of encyclopedias formerly housed in the reference collection, but now housed in the stacks on the third level, for transfer to the Library Annex.  The additional shelf space created by this transfer was to accommodate a significant number of new Chinese literature volumes ordered to support the research and teaching needs of new faculty.

 

Committee and Other Activities:
Several collection development staff attended the open presentation sessions of Melinda Brown and Sue Erickson, candidates for the Director of System-Wide Public Services position as well as the “Update on the Library” meeting.

 

Sara Byrd assisted with collection development for Film Studies and Theatre while the bibliographer position was vacant.  With Deborah now on board as the bibliographer, Sara met with her this month to “transfer” responsibilities for these subject areas.

 

Bryan attended several meetings of the Primo Usability Testing Project Team to discuss the final report to be submitted to Jody Combs as well as a Camtasia troubleshooting session with Judy Carter (LITS) and Eli Moody (Peabody) to discuss persistent problems (isolated to the General Library Building) using Camtasia software.  Work will continue to resolve the problems with Camtasia.

 

Deborah worked with Sue Erickson on the Central Library Tour podcast for the August 27 Library Open House and met with Amy Stewart-Mailhiot and Brian Boling to discuss the protocol for ordering and processing films.  Deborah also attended the 6th National Conference for African American Librarians which gave her opportunities for networking and attending informative workshops.

 

In preparation for assuming the responsibilities of our Anthropology bibliographer, Ramona Romero met with Sue Erickson to review instruction needs for faculty and students in that department.  She also consulted with Janice Adlington regarding the graduate student orientation sessions for Classics, Philosophy, and Psychology.

 

Mary Beth met with Yuh-Fen Benda and Charlotte Lew to discuss binding of Chinese language publications, Lisa Shipman to discuss the recruitment of a Reference Librarian/Bibliographer for Sociology and Psychology, and attended a Collections Committee meeting.  She also met with Steve Strother, our EBSCO Sales Manager, and met with Roger Schonfeld, Manager of Research at Ithaka Research, to discuss the impact of digitization on print acquisitions and space management at the Central Library.  (He also talked with others in the Heard Library).  He and other members of the Ithaka research staff will be talking with librarians at 15-20 academic libraries collecting information on these issues.  The results of the study, funded by JSTOR, should be available in a report this fall.

 

Government Information and Media Services (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)

Larry Romans met with Jodie Gambill, who is working on his requests for improvements in the Government Information web pages.  Jodie and Larry will meet with Jody Combs in the near future.

 

Larry is a member of the Tennessee Electronic Library (TEL) Database Selection Committee.  They met to determine priorities for which databases to purchase for the newly state-funded $1 million.

 

Beginning Sept. 1, Larry will be the new bibliographer for Communication Studies.

 

Teri Bante was busy with binding this month, sending 187 items to be bound, with a focus on completing the United Nations Economic & Social Council items.  Part of this task involved locating and supplementing missing issues when available online from the Official Document System (ODS).  Teri also continued working on Annex projects, including preparing series for transfer to the Annex and offering titles being withdrawn from the Dewey Not on Acorn shelves at the Annex.  Teri was both a trainer and a trainee in July-–training new student workers on the processing of our BPP microfiche, as well as receiving training from Amy on processing the Marcive monthly load.  In addition to all of this, Teri spent time correcting numerous records and holding statements. 

 

During July, Brian Boling wrote instructions for using the new microfilm scanner as well as filling in other gaps in our employee manuals.  He assisted with projects such as listing our collection of presidential papers and their respective indexes and confirming which microfilm newspapers were also available through SFX.  Brian also began working with faculty members who had submitted Fall reserves, which included searching for a couple of obscure titles.  In addition, he has developed a procedure to allow those faculty members who wish to do so to schedule a removal date for their media reserves.  He hopes that this option will allow for greater circulation of those media items which might be on the reserve shelf for months in order to accommodate a weeklong period of heavy use.

 

The entire staff worked to complete a photocopy project of the Nashville Public Library index to the Tennessean & Banner for the years 1967-1974.  The copies are being bound and will be housed in the GIMS department.

 

Amy continued her involvement in the Reference department by conducting a brief overview of the changes to the LexisNexis interface for Reference staff.  Amy also met with Melinda Brown to discuss expanding her involvement in library instruction. 

 

Amy worked with Suellen Stringer-Hye on the details for the newspaper database project. 

 

Amy contributed to the GODORT State and Local Documents Roundtable State Agency Database project http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases

 

Instruction (Melinda Brown)

Central librarians presented a total of two course related sessions to 27 students and two instructors:

CMST 100 – Public Policy (Sloop), Larry Romans and Sue Erickson (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot observed), 19 students and the professor.

ENGL 100 – Basic Composition (Hearn), Melinda Brown (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, Deborah Lilton & Ramona Romero observed), eight students and the professor.

 

Additional instruction activities:

The following Central librarians presented during the Retirement Learning sessions: Yvonne Boyer, David Carpenter, Melinda Brown, John Haar, Larry Romans, Sue Erickson, and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot.

 

Melinda Brown, Ramona Romero, Lee Ann Lannom and Jen Holt, Director of the Writing Studio, continued working on the Vanderbilt Visions presentation.

 

Ramona Romero met with Janice Adlington to consult with her about instruction and graduate student orientation for the departments of Classics, Philosophy, and Psychology.  Ramona also observed the Instruction Planning Session for English 100; observed the English 100 instruction session; and met with Sue Erickson to review instruction information for Anthropology

 

Melinda Brown, Patricia Armstrong, and Eli Moody continued working on the Vanderbilt Visions film.

 

Sue Erickson met with Melinda Brown regarding instruction and with Deborah Lilton regarding the Central Library audio tour.

 

Reference (David Carpenter)

Head of Reference Position

Although David Carpenter assumed his new role as Acting Director of the Central Library on July 23, he will continue as Head of Reference for at least the near future.

 

New Reference Desk Arrives

Our new reference desk was delivered in many boxes on July 10th.  After putting the desk together, the installers found that some pieces were missing and would need to be ordered.  We also decided that one side of the reference desk was much too high, and arranged with the furniture company to order other parts to allow them to lower the high side of the desk.  We will post pictures of the new, reconfigured reference desk in next month’s report.

 

Increased Reference Hours at Beginning of Semester

Responding to a request from the Circulation Department, reference staff agreed to open the reference service at 9:00 A.M. for the first two weeks of the semester to better serve the influx of new students, faculty, and staff members entering the library for the first time with questions about its services and resources.

 

Training and Professional Development Activities

Library Director Orientation and Training (07/12, 07/18, 07/19) -- David Carpenter met with John Haar to continue his training and orientation to the duties and responsibilities of the Central Library Director.

P-Card Training (07/11) – Ramona Romero)

Lexis-Nexis online seminar (07/19) -- Sara Byrd

Workflows reports training with Julie Loder (07/24) -- Sara Byrd

Reference Schedule training (07/27) -- In late July, Sara Byrd agreed to take over the responsibility of creating reference service schedules for Central Reference at David’s request.  David and Sara met to go over the details and procedures for reference desk scheduling.

Anthropology Reference/Collection Development/Instruction Training (07/31) – Sue Erickson met with Ramona Romero to begin transferring instruction responsibilities for Anthropology to her and to orient Ramona to the Department of Anthropology’s most important research and instructional emphases.

 

Special Projects

Sara Byrd noted that the Primo Usability Testing group met several times the first week of July.  The group submitted its final report to Jody Combs on July 6. 

 

Sara Byrd updated Central Library’s webpage entitled Software and Equipment for Visually Impaired Library Users.  We will have an important new addition for this webpage in August, after we receive new Kurzweil software and related hardware. 

 

David Carpenter and Kelly Lockaby compiled and submitted reference statistics needed for the library’s annual ARL statistics.

 

Additional Meetings, Conferences, and Training Activities

Sara Byrd convened the Reference and Instruction Forum conference roundup on 07/18.  At the Forum, Ramona Romero and Deborah Lilton gave a brief presentation on writing and using objectives to improve library instruction in addition to the other topics covered.

 

David Carpenter and Sue Erickson met with Assistance Dean of A&S John Sloop on July 25th to discuss workspace for the Tutoring Center.  Asst. Dean Sloop agreed that the office for the coordinator of the Tutoring Center could move to a new location in a corner of the Payne Room, so that a new office could be created for Sue Erickson in GLB 612B (the former Microfilm Media Center office).  Sue will begin her new position as Director of System-wide Public Services on Sept. 1st. 

 

Central Library Unit Heads (07/03) – David Carpenter, Janet Thomason, Larry Romans, Mary Beth Blalock, and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot

Vanderbilt Visions meetings (07/02, 07/13, 07/16, 07/18, 07/20, 07/23 & 07/20) – Ramona Romero

Primo Test It Local Team meeting (07/03) – Ramona Romero

Digital Library Steering Committee (07/03, 07/10, 07/24, 07/31) – David

Review of Position Responsibilities for Fall Semester (07/10) – Sara Byrd and David Carpenter

Electronic Resources Committee (07/10) – Sue Erickson, Sue Widmer, Mary Beth Blalock, Yvonne Boyer, and David Carpenter

Library Planning Update Meeting (07/11) – David Carpenter, Sue Erickson, Ramona Romero, and Sara Byrd

Interviews for Director of System-wide Public Services (07/11 & 07/12)

Staff Development Committee Meeting (07/12) Daisy Whitten

Reference and Instruction Forum (07/18) – David, Peter, Sara Byrd, Ramona Romero

Central Reference Meetings (07/11 & 07/25) – Most CenRef librarians

Central Library Webpage Revision Committee meeting (07/26) – Peter Brush, Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, and Sarah Byrd

Vanderbilt Web Spiders (07/27) – Peter Brush

Emerging Leaders Brown Bag Session (07/27) – Ramona Romero

Web Maintenance Team meeting – Susan Widmer