Circulation/Stack Maintenance
Several staff took vacation time this month. Rachel took vacation on June
3-5. LaRentina was on vacation June 7-14. Yolanda was on vacation June 17-21
and Janet was on vacation June 17-28. Janet attended a Central signage meeting
and a Unit Heads Meeting on June 4. On June 6-7, Rachel attended a HR sponsored
workshop on "Dealing with Difficult People". Janet, Jo, Rachel and
Daisy attended the Staff picnic on June 6. On June 13th, Daisy, Janet and
Yolanda attended the CAG meeting. Daisy has been attending weekly meetings
of the iLink task force. Shelf reading is progressing on all floors. The annex
transfer project is also moving along well with several trucks a week being
sent to the annex. Mary Kelley, Jo, Rachel and LaRentina are all working on
this project. Several staff have completed checking of e-Journal lists as
well to make sure links are working. Yolanda has begun working on the summer
carrel renewal project. Jo and Johnnie finished the locker renewal project.
Several new students have been hired to work for stack maintenance this summer
to help with various projects.
Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on June 12th and 26th. Declassified
Documents Reference System-United States was approved for subscription
and is now available via Heard Databases Page. The Committee also approved
converting our current subscription to the New York Times Archives to
take advantage of a change in pricing structure. Instead of continuing our
subscription to the entire database for $14,000 a year (with significant
increase after three years), we are purchasing (one-time purchase) the data
for the "out-of-copyright" years (1851-1924) and subscribing to
the in-copyright years for $4,500 a year. Although L'Annee Philologique
was approved for subscription in April, the order remains "on hold"
due to problematic clauses in the license agreement. Academic Access,
American Humanities Index, Black Drama, and Serials MasterFile
were discussed but were not approved for purchase. Members of the Committee
are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, David Carpenter, John Haar, and Mary
Beth Blalock (chair).
Transfer Project:
Work slowed somewhat on the Transfer Project during June because of the ALA
Conference and other activities. As of June 17th, bibliographers had identified
45,665 volumes for transfer to the Annex and 607 volumes for withdrawal. Melinda
Brown and Janice Adlington are "testing" the portable SIRSI scanner
to see if it can be used effectively to capture data on volumes selected for
transfer.
CD-ROM Procedures:
The draft of processing procedures for Central's CD-ROM titles was distributed
and discussed briefly at the Bibliographer' meeting on June 19th. Copies were
also distributed to other staff involved in ordering, receiving, loading,
or managing the CDs. Comments and suggestions were requested by July 1. Peter
Brush, David Carpenter, and Mary Beth Blalock will meet in July to consider
suggestions and revise the draft accordingly.
Collections:
While traveling in Paris and London, Yvonne Boyer met with representatives
of our French book vendor, Touzot Librairie Internationale, to discuss our
approval plan and research London book dealers as sources of materials for
the Goldberg Collection of Norwich Art books.
Committee and Other Activities:
Yvonne Boyer attended ALA and was elected Chair of the Romance Language Discussion
Group of WESS. She also participated in the WESS European Conference (Paris,
2004) Planning sessions.
Several bibliographers took advantage of the opportunity to learn more about the online tutorials from New Horizon that are now available for staff. Julie Loder, Central's Training Coordinator, presented one of the sessions.
Dale Manning is serving on Central's Signage Committee.
Julie Loder attended meetings of the Central Homepage Committee, Staff Forum, and Training Coordinators. She also assisted LITS and Order Services by testing the fund wizard in the UNICORN 2002 upgrade.
In addition to his work on CD-ROM procedures, Peter Brush attended ALA, an Introduction to Imaging Seminar, and the ProQuest Sitebuilder class.
Martha Kallstrom assisted with collection development activities by reviewing e-book web pages, checking the Harrassowitz subscription list against our e-journal pages, and beginning the review Z classed titles being withdrawn from Education that should be considered for Central's collection.
Mary Beth Blalock attended meetings of the Staff Development Coordinating Committee, Imaging session, New Horizon Tutorial session, ProQuest Sitebuilder class as well as other standing meetings.
Work continues on collection decisions for Dewey classed non-Acorn
titles. (Jean Wright is leading this project.)
Larry Romans attended the American Library Association Annual Conference in Atlanta. He is a member of the ALA Council. He chaired the ALA Special Presidential Task Force on the Membership Meeting Quorum (SPTFMMQ) and presented its report to the Council, which approved the Task’s Force’s recommendation that the quorum for Membership Meetings be cut in half.
Larry was the lead writer of “A History of the Government Documents Round Table,” which was published by Lexis-Nexis and distributed at the reception for the 30th anniversary of the Round Table (GODORT). He attended meetings of the ALA Council and of GODORT.
We hired four new student assistants this month: Kendra Murray, Michael O'Malley, Lu Zhang, and Yong Zhang. Nancy Dolinger trained Kendra and Lu to help with the depository shipments.
Gretchen Dodge continued to enter records in the electronic shelflist and work with nondepository documents.
Both Gretchen and Nancy attended the online tutorials training sessions.
Larry has been working with Kay Pothisiri and Marshall Breeding
to create a database for Larry’s web pages.
The Media Center had an extremely slow month in June. On most days there was only a trickle of patron service business. During the month we took delivery of 2 new DVD players and 2 new microfilm storage cabinets. The arrival of the cabinets made it possible to shift a number of drawers of microfilm to make room for collections that needed it. Seventeen new videos were added to the collection. We also had to train a new student worker, to fill in for a worker who left at the end of June.
Summer Academic Orientation Program - Melinda Brown coordinated the libraries' participation in the Summer Academic Orientation Program (SAOP) Information Fair held for incoming freshmen and their parents. Additional persons who helped were: Martha Kallstrom (who took on a lion's share of the sessions), Janet Thomason, Leslie Boyd, Lee Ann Lannom, John Haar, Sue Erickson, Mary Charles Lasater and Yvonne Boyer. Library participants held drawings for library caps at the six sessions and also recruited students for our student positions in the library.
New Reference Subject Guides Created -- Martha Kallstrom completed four new Web-based subject guides which should be much appreciated by both library users and librarians offering reference assistance on these subjects. These new guides are: "Leisure Reading/Popular Fiction," "Finding Images on the Web," "Finding Primary Documents," and "Finding Texts of Speeches." Although not yet linked to our library Web pages, these new guides will be made available soon.
ASERL Virtual Reference Meeting at SOLINET Headquarters - David Carpenter represented the Heard Library at a one-day meeting in Atlanta on June 17th that focused on discussions of virtual reference issues. ASERL Virtual Reference Working Groups considered issues from three broad categories: 1) Technology (including software, vendors, potentially sharing reference assets across the consortium); 2) Publicity and Marketing (how to best promote virtual reference services); and, 3) Best Practices (notable virtual reference initiatives involving consortiums, quality standards for virtual reference, implementation issues, etc.)
New Horizons Online Training - Most Reference staff members attended one of the New Horizons overview sessions offered by the Technology Training Coordinators to introduce library staff to this exciting new opportunity for professional development via more than 400 online courses.
ProQuest SiteBuilder Training Session - Melinda Brown, Larry Romans, David Carpenter, Janice Adlington, Peter Brush and Sue Erickson attended a SiteBuilder software demonstration on June 20th presented by Sherry Hondros from ProQuest. SiteBuilder allows librarians and selected other users to insert "durable links" in webpages to periodical articles provided via the ProQuest database.
Retirement Learning Sessions Planning - David Carpenter attended this meeting on June 26th to help plan for the July Retirement Learning Sessions. He agreed to once again present a session on "Ready Reference Sources." Other Reference colleagues contacted Elaine Goleski to volunteer to serve as "floaters," assisting the Retirement Learning attendees during the sessions.
WebSPIRS 5.0 Work Group -- Janice Adlington agreed to chair this new work group (spawned from ISAG). David Carpenter is also a member, as well as representatives from other library units and LITS. The group will examine the new WebSPIRS 5.0 software and consider how its search interface and default settings might best be modified or set to serve our local needs. The group must also consider how our planned transition from access to the SilverPlatter databases via a local ERL server to Internet access will affect the desired modifications or settings to the WebSPIRS 5.0 software interface. The WebSPIRS 5.0 Work Group will present its recommendations to ISAG, hopefully before the end of July.
ALA Conference in Atlanta - Janice Adlington, Sue Erickson, Melinda Brown and Peter Brush attended the recent ALA meeting in Atlanta.
Janice Adlington also attended a one-day ALA preconference: "From Expectations to Results: Library/Faculty Partnerships for Assessing Student Learning Outcomes." The booklet which accompanied this presentation includes tests used by 23 institutions to assess the information literacy levels of their students and/or the effectiveness of instruction. (Janice will be glad to share with booklet with anyone who is interested in seeing it.)
Melinda Brown attended an ALA preconference entitled "Instruction for First-Year Undergraduates," where she learned that our incoming freshmen were born the same year as the Mac and the PC! Melinda notes that this fact, along with some other interesting, amusing and thought-provoking facts, can be found on the "Class of 2005 Mindset List" prepared by Beloit College and located at: http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/2005.html
At the Atlanta ALA conference, Sue Erickson attended meetings of the Anthropology & Sociology Section of ACRL, including the Review & Planning Committee (member), the Executive Committee, the General Membership meeting and program (on Shamanism), and the Sociology Librarian's Discussion Group, where she was named a co-convener. Sue also attended the RUSA-sponsored program on the Future of Reference Services and an iLink presentation by SIRSI.
Other Activities and Noteworthy Items - Sue Erickson accepted an appointment to the ACRL Membership Committee. Sue had served as an intern on this same committee during the past year.
Janice Adlington participated in a focus group on the Vanderbilt University Web page. This group was looking for feedback on the look and navigation of this Web page, with a view to a January 2003 revision of it.
Sue Erickson met with Kathy Smith (Special Collections) to discuss the
possible transfer of some rare items (most on secret societies) to Special
Collections. These items were selected when they were discovered during
the transfer project.