The Computer Room, where patrons can use word processing and spreadsheet applications as well as electronic library resources, has become a very successful and heavily used service. We had been locking the room at midnight on most nights and unlocking it at 9 AM. Circulation staff reported that they frequently receive requests from patrons for access to the room before 9:00. Therefore we now keep the room unlocked at all times. On weekdays David Hughett turns on the computers at 7:30, and the Microform-Media staff turns them off at midnight.
Martha Young and Paul Murphy created a display of 104 flags representing the home countries of Vanderbilt's 988 international students. The display, located in the second floor exhibit cases in the General Library Building, was featured in a story in the Vanderbilt Register.
Circulation
All staff completed self evaluations and many completed revisions of their
job descriptions if they had not done so last year. All evaluations were completed
and turned in on 3/27/02. Several staff also took some time off. 2 students
quit this month and replacements have been hired and training is ongoing.
Janet attended the Unit heads meeting on 3/5. Janet and Larentina attended
the monthly CAG meeting on 3/14. Janet also attended a meeting of the Laptop
Circulation Subcommittee. Robert attended the LITS liaison meeting on 3/12.
Arts, oversize materials began to circulate for 3 days to undergraduates,
graduates and staff on 3/20. We have seen quite an increase in the circulation
of this material as a result of the liberalization of this policy. Travel
books began circulating for 2 weeks instead of 3 days at the beginning of
the month. Yolanda, Jo and Janet attended the Central Staff Forum on 3/28.
Circulation activity has been brisk for the month with patrons checking out
lots of books preparing for the final weeks' crunch of papers due.
Reserve
The activities in the Reserve Room have been very slow. The number of new
reserve lists received for the month of March was (2) which brings the overall
total to 117. As for ERES, no new lists, just a few items to be scanned or
linked to existing lists. Larentina is composing the letter(s) she sends out
requesting Fall reserves.
Stack Maintenance
After students came back from Spring break, which was the week of March 1
- March 9, everyone got back into the swing of sorting and shelving. There
have been a steady flow of books through the sorting area for the month of
March.
We have started keeping a separate column for Oversize Arts shelved. Yvonne is hoping to see if there is a big jump in the use of those materials since they are now circulating to select profiles. Also, Jo has put small signs on the end of Arts, Oversize stacks, on the call range label noting that these do circulate and to ask at the Circulation desk about the circulation policy.
Work on the Annex Transfer Project has continued. 10 carts were sent to the Annex this month, resulting in the end of the A's and beginning on the B call numbers. Mary Kelly and Jo have together spent about 10 hours on this project. They will be able to devote more time to this project in the summer months. We received yet more chairs from Law to replace plastic orange/blue/black stacks chairs but this time it was only 4 or 5 chairs that we could use. They sent a couple of wooden ones that were broken and we discarded those immediately.
Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resource Committee met on March 13th. Two databases-AccuNET/AP
Multimedia Archive (Associated Press) and Early Encounters in North
America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment-were approved for purchase.
International Political Science Abstracts was discussed but the Committee
decided not to purchase this database since we recently added Worldwide
Political Science Abstracts to our resources. The March 27th meeting was
cancelled due to scheduling problems but the Committee considered two other
databases via e-mail in order to take advantage of a substantial discount
offer by H. W. Wilson. We will soon be adding Readers' Guide Retrospective,
1890-1982 (one-time purchase with small annual access fee) to the collection;
Biography Reference Bank will not be purchased at this time. The Committee
will meet again on April 10 to discuss several databases including Keesing's
Worldwide Online, World of Learning, and Universal Database
of Russian Publications as well as a few other databases.
In our November report, I described a joint project to digitize five issues of Quaderno, a history journal published by the Milan Group in Early United States History. Peter Brush, manager of the project, worked with Professor Doyle (History Department) and LITS to successfully complete the project. Scholars and researchers are now able to read this important journal online. Click here to learn more about the Milan Group and to view the journal.
Transfer Project:
All bibliographers continued to devote time and energy to the Transfer Project.
During March an additional 8,802 volumes (179 of these for withdrawal), were
identified bringing our total to 15,765. As we worked in some areas of the
stacks, bibliographers encountered large backfiles of annual series; usually
only the most recent years are of interest to users. Melinda Brown and Larry
Romans posed the question and suggested keeping the last five years in the
stacks and sending the older volumes to the Annex. We are following this as
a "general guideline". However, bibliographers are free to make
different decisions based on the use of annual series in their specific subject
responsibilities.
Departmental Meeting:
The monthly Bibliographers' meeting was held on March 20 in the Goldberg Room.
Discussion centered on the Blackwell Approval Plan (profile reviews, new report
possibilities, problems), an update of the Transfer Project, and year-end
material fund deadlines.
Outreach:
The W. T. Bandy Center hosted a class and presentation for the professor and
students of French Literary Traditions (French 270). Cecile Guillard and Yvonne
Boyer were involved in the presentation. Yvonne also met with six Art and
Art History faculty candidates.
Sue Erickson met with Walt Gove of the Sociology Department to provide brief instruction in using databases and e-journals. She also consulted with the Anthropology library representative about the possibility of canceling some of the low-use (1999 use study data) journals in order to purchase new journals. The discussions resulted in a decision to retain all of the existing subscriptions.
Gifts:
Julie received ten titles this month and added 60 titles to the collection.
Yvonne Boyer reviewed the art titles that were included in the Sol Biderman
gift collection.
Committee and Other Activities:
Yvonne Boyer attended the Honors Recruitment Scholarship dinner and the Alumni
Association Award dinner.
Peter Brush attended the American Association for History and Computing Conference that was held in Nashville March 7-9.
Julie Loder participated in meetings of the Training Coordinators, the Technology Support Coordinators and attended the TLA Conference. She also worked on assigned projects for Central's Homepage Committee.
Mary Beth Blalock attended meetings of the Staff Development
Coordinating Committee and the TLA Conference on March 27.
Public service hours were curtailed this month due to the unexpected resignation of one of our Graduate Student Assistants. The new hours in effect through the end of the semester are: Monday - Friday 9:00 AM -Noon; 1:00 - 5:00 PM Sunday - Wednesday 6:00 - 9:00 PM
Nancy Dolinger processed incoming GPO documents, continued training student workers, updated locations on LC materials, prepared items for binding, kept the tax forms flowing, and assisted Chris Benda with updating Acorn records for documents at Education. She worked on Technical Supplement updates, worked with Jean Wright on tricky documents records, updated and replaced outdated shelf labels and retrieved a "fugitive" book truck- cleaning the abductor's name off of it, re-labeling it and bringing it back to safe pasture.
Larry Romans has been working with Sandy Peterson of Yale University on a 35-page history of the last ten years of ALA's Government Documents Round Table to be published by Lexis-Nexis. Gretchen Dodge, Dale Manning, our student Matt Levay, and others have been proofreading the manuscript.
Gretchen, Larry, and Nancy attended the TLA Spring Conference at the Nashville Convention Center. Gretchen, who is this year's chair of the Tennessee Government Documents Round Table, presided over the group's business meeting and introduced the group's program, "Census 2000: Finding and Using Data for Your Community," given by Debi Tate, from the Census Information Center at VIPPS. Larry was one of the speakers at "ALA: Is It 'My' Professional Organization?"
The Media Center saw moderate patron traffic for most of the semester, with the usual spikes in use of reserve items before exams. Reserve materials for one class saw more use in the last eight business hours before class than in the previous two weeks!
Printer activity in the computer room continues to grow heavier. Patrons there ran through 50 reams of paper in March, even though March included a week of Spring Break. Ten new videos were added to the collection.
Both Sharon and Carrie attended a training workshop in MMC. This training will help with the merger that is going to take place this summer.
Regret to say that one of the daytime Periodicals students, Kamal, has had to quit. If any staff know of someone who would like part-time summer employment in Periodicals please see Sharon (#22858).
269 periodicals were sent for the month of March. Another very busy month. Sharon constructed a Periodical manual & FAQ. There is now voice mail on the Periodicals telephone. Lastly, Sharon was married Friday, March 15th. Her new name is Sharon Chilton. This name change will take place soon in the system but campus mail can be addressed to Sharon Chilton now.
Performance Evaluations and Self-Evaluations
As with other Central Library employees, Reference staff devoted careful thought
and considerable time in March to composing self-evaluations. David Carpenter
wrote evaluations for all the Reference staff plus reference-only evaluations
of the three bibliographers who report to Mary Beth Blalock in Collection
Development as their primary supervisor, and later met with each person to
discuss their evaluation and self-evaluation. The yearly performance evaluation
process prompted us all to reflect on our activities, job responsibilities
and work performance over the past year and to discuss goals for the coming
year.
New Office for Janice Adlington
Janice Adlington moved into a new office (901) on level nine of the Central
Library this past month. She joins Dale Manning and David Carpenter as the
third librarian with a ninth level office. The entrance to Janice's new office
(and soon Sue Erickson's and Melinda's new offices) can be found in the southeast
corner of the Arts Collection on level eight. Janice reports that she is very
happy with her new office, with its good natural lighting and ample space.
Janice's telephone number remains the same: 3-4236
Instruction
As the semester began to wind down, we received far fewer requests for instruction
sessions. Peter Brush taught an instruction session for History 115w, The
Witch Craze in Britain and America, for Professor Margo Todd. Sue Erickson
met with Professor Walt Gove of the Sociology Department to provide brief
instruction in using databases and e-journals.
David Carpenter and Melinda Brown met with Robert Wright, Circulation Evening Supervisor, and Mary Kelly Stapleton, Circulation Weekend Supervisor, to offer tips and advice to assist Robert and Mary Kelly in providing basic reference assistance to library patrons during the hours when reference service is not available. This information included showing patrons how to display databases grouped by subject area, use of the "How Do I" online instruction guides and other helpful information.
Sue Erickson accepted an invitation from the Sociology Department to attend a retirement party for Prof. Pete Peterson. Sue was introduced to the faculty and graduate students in attendance at the party and later received a request for a research consultation as a result of attending this event.
Martha Kallstrom completed and installed the third version of PowerPoint slideshow in the Central Library lobby. For this latest version of the slideshow, Martha used two scanned images (with the assistance of Hosanna Banks) to help promote the Special Collections Department's "Vanderbilts at Vanderbilt" exhibit.
Martha continued her work on creating new Web based subject guides. She completed a guide entitled: "Finding Online Images and Print Reproductions of Artworks." Martha began work on a new "How to Find Literary Criticism" Web page that is based on a print handout developed by Dale Manning. Martha is developing a Web based version of this guide in consultation with Dale.
Further Promotion of Ask a Librarian LIVE
After Spring Break for the Vanderbilt students, David and Martha Kallstrom
distributed small posters promoting the Ask a Librarian LIVE virtual reference
service to all the Vanderbilt residence halls. This is in addition to other
promotion efforts earlier in the semester.
New Committee Appointment
Janice Adlington joined the ISAG Web-based Instructional Support subcommittee
in March. She will help with the communications between this group and the
Heard Web Group.
Meetings and Presentations
Janice Adlington and Sue Erickson attended the Nashville Library Club's March
meeting which provided a tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Janice reports
that attendees got a "fascinating look behind the scenes" at the
Hall of Fame.
On March 6, Sue Erickson attended an all-day SOLINET workshop on library signage at the Nashville Public Library (main branch). Sue gave a brief overview of this workshop at the March meeting of the Central Library Staff Forum.
On March 3rd Martha Kallstrom joined Michael Jackson (Law Library, Circulation) in a presentation on historical mysteries as part of the University School class series. Martha spoke on the issue of history vs. fiction as it applies to mysteries set in historical time periods. Martha also prepared the handouts for this class, which listed favorite authors and selected web sites. Money paid for the class benefited the University School's Scholarship Fund.
Other Activities or Projects
In a continuing project focused on making our Ready Reference collection easier
to use, Martha Kallstrom created a list of availability for the Contemporary
World Issues series, as well as a brief index of topics and a how to access
netLibrary books page; a brief index of topics in the CQ Researcher
"Best of" series; a list of other books in that section; and a list
of titles of recent additions to the Opposing Viewpoints series.
Martha also worked to put into place two other Ready Reference changes that Reference librarians agreed would be useful. All the writing style guides are now shelved together in Ready Reference at the beginning of the collection. Secondly, following a suggestion from Martha, the selected foreign language dictionaries were removed from Ready Reference and integrated into the main reference collection with similar volumes.
The printer use data collected from all our public printers in Reference on a monthly basis had not recently been compiled. At David's request, Martha Kallstrom merged printer use data from many past months into an Excel spreadsheet previously set up by Bill Hook to collect and present public printer use statistics for Central Reference.