Personnel:
Last month we regretfully reported the elimination of two full-time positions
and one part-time position to accommodate university-imposed budget reductions.
The news this month is somewhat brighter in that one of these positions, Library
Assistant in Government Information, was restored. We are happy that Nancy Dolinger
will continue to serve in this position.
E-Classroom:
Toward the end of last semester, the Computer Room was full on a regular basis.
We are trying an experiment for the last few weeks of this semester that we
hope will provide additional options for patrons who want to use Word or Excel.
We have reserved the electronic classroom from April 7 through April 25 for
the use of patrons. LITS has ghosted the computers in the classroom so that
they will have the same interface as those in the Computer Room. Thus patrons
will not be able to use DreamWeaver, Passport, WorkFlows, or other staff applications
normally on the classroom computers. After April 25 these applications will
return.
[The Circulation report is abbreviated this month because we are without the services of Janet Thomason, who is on sick leave. Thanks to Daisy Whitten, Sharon Chilton, Jo Bilyeu, and LaRentina Gray for the following account.]
All staff turned in their self evaluations before the deadline date, March 11. All staff received their evaluations from Janet and met with her for discussion concerning their evaluation and goals for next year. Daisy and Robert attended the Technology Support Coordinators meeting on March 11. Daisy and Yolanda attended the Circulation Advisory Group meeting on March 13 (Janet is Chair). The Circulation staff meeting scheduled for March 19 was cancelled due to the return of students from Spring break and the deadline for staff evaluations. Daisy and Yolanda attended the Staff Forum meeting on March 27. Daisy attended the Acorn Virtual Catalog Task Force meeting on March 26.
Periodicals:
291 periodicals were sent to bindery. Sharon Chilton attended the video conference,
"Standard of Conduct".
Stacks Maintenance:
Stack Maintenance workers continued sorting and shelving and doing daily clean
up in the stacks. 7 trucks were sent to the Annex as part of the Annex transfer
project. Shifting projects will begin soon as a result of the transferring of
material.
Reserves:
March activity was relatively slow, but reserves and ereserves are still trickling
in. More faculty are beginning to use electronic reserves, and they seem to
be pleased with it. LaRentina is still removing some Fall reserve materials.
She is also working on the letters for faculty requesting Fall reserve materials
and expects to send them before faculty leave the campus for the summer.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic
Resources:
The Electronic Resource Committee met on March 12; March 26 meeting was rescheduled
for April 2. Sue Erickson and David Carpenter led a discussion about a new edition
of the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences which
is also available in electronic format. Sue shared information on a special
"contributor's discount" given to the Library by a Sociology faculty
member. We are requesting a trial so we will be able to review the online version
before making a purchasing decision.
CQ Public Affairs Collection and CQ Supreme Court Collection were also discussed. We are gathering additional comparative information on these databases before making a decision. A trial of Anthropology Plus was approved. Although the African Resource Center was an interesting database, we decided not to subscribe to this resource because the content was too focused on one or two African countries. Other items of discussion included e-journals without subject codes (approximately 3,000) and free websites on the Research Databases page.
In earlier reports, I mentioned the selection and purchase of the Current Population Survey Utilities CD-ROM by Sue Erickson. This month Sue investigated licensing for the utilities and made arrangements for copies of the CD to be made for circulating from the Microform Media Center. Because the CD requires that statistical software (SAS, SPSS) be loaded on the same machine, the CD will be removed from the network. For a period of time, the title and explanatory information will remain on the Research Databases page.
Outreach:
Susan Widmer, John Haar, and Mary Beth Blalock met with Professors Sevin and
Kustanovich to discuss resources and services to support the Russian program.
Gifts:
Dale Manning and Mary Beth visited Stella Smock to discuss titles she is offering
to the Library. Dale also reviewed books in the Poggenburg gift collection.
March proved another active "gift" month for Paula Covington. Checking and listing of Professor Helguera's 2003 gift of Colombian materials were completed. A substantial amount of time this month was spent arranging for the transfer of the collection of the late Professor Simon Collier who left his entire collection of books, journals, music and personal papers to the Library. The collection is particularly strong in Chilean and Latin American history and the history of the tango (books, records, CDs, tapes, personal interviews, and personal papers). Many of the tapes and CDs are being sorted and processed by the Music Library. To date, over 100 boxes have been transferred to the annex and approximately 100 more remain to be sorted, boxed and transferred.
Yvonne Boyer completed checking the Pascal Pia duplicates; the duplicates were sold to Anthony Garnett.
Julie received 20 titles and sent 200 titles to Technical Services for processing for the collection.
Committee and Other
Activities:
Sue Erickson, Larry Romans, and Susan Widmer met with John Haar on March 21
to discuss resources for students in the Economic Development program.
Peter Brush attended the Instructional Design for Librarians Workshop, the Standards of Conduct Video presentation, and the QuestionPoint Virtual Reference Training session.
Julie Loder attended the Instructional Design Workshop and Technology Support Coordinators meetings.
Yvonne Boyer attended the Instructional Design for Librarians workshop and ERC meeting.
Government Information (Larry Romans)
Gretchen Dodge presented the documents portion of a bibliographic instruction session for the History 200 class. She attended the LITS Support Coordinators meeting and the compliance video. Together with Jean Wright, she processed 475 congressional hearings we received as gifts from the Memphis Public Library. They are part of the regional depository holdings.
Nancy Dolinger has been checking in documents, correcting labels on materials in our LC collection, shelving, filing microfiche and updating the Government Documents Procedures Notebook.
Larry Romans met with Jody Combs, Suellen Stringer-Hye, and Kay Pothisiri to set a time table for switching from our HTML Government Information web pages to a database and for making changes and expanding scope. Larry worked with Peter Humke and Mark Kirkland to make final improvements to the GI database before it went “live,” which happened March 31.
Larry prepared for a presentation, “Swords into Plowshares?: The Top Foreign Affairs Web Sites,” with Kevin Reynolds of the University of the South for the Tennessee Library Association Meeting in Chattanooga on April 3. He attended the bibliographic instruction workshop, "Take a Ride on the Design Cycle: Instructional Design for Librarians," on March 13. He met with Sue Erickson, Susan Widmer, and John Haar on March 21 to discuss data resources for students in the Economic Development program.
Microform and Media Center (Peter Brush)
The Media Center saw the busiest traffic in reserve videos in several semesters. On two or three occasions it was necessary to turn patrons away because there were not enough VCRs for everybody. We also had a number of patrons using microforms, and a good deal of reference activity. Computer room usage was very heavy, with patrons running through 78 reams of paper there.
Carrie now has the box top
making project for the open microfiche boxes about 3/4 complete. It should be
possible to finish this work in April. Only 3 new videos were added to the collection.
Reference (David Carpenter)
Central Reference staff members all participated in the annual performance evaluation process in March, submitting self-evaluations and receiving evaluations from supervisors (both for Reference and Collection Development for all but one Central Library bibliographer). David Carpenter devoted considerable time to writing annual evaluations for Reference staff members up through March 25th. He also met individually with each Reference staff member to discuss his or her evaluation and self-evaluation.
Library Instruction
(Melinda Brown):
As is typical in the 3rd month of the semester, instruction requests dropped
dramatically. Peter Brush taught two history sessions with a total of 30 undergraduate
students (History 200: The History Workshop and History 115: Library Resources
on the Vietnam War).
Melinda Brown and Larry Romans presented an orientation session for 20 students from Hunters Lane Comprehensive High School. These students will be participating in an International Baccalaureate Diploma Program that requires them to write a 4,000 word research essay, and they may be visiting to use our resources for that project.
Paula Covington devoted time to help graduate students with their final research for Latin American theses, which were due in March. The graduate students asked Paula for help with research queries, citation style questions, etc.
Instructional Design
Workshop (Melinda Brown):
A total of 22 Heard librarians attended the workshop, "Take a Ride on the
Design Cycle: Instructional Design for Librarians", held at Peabody Library
on March 13 & 14. Jerilyn Veldof, Director of Undergraduate Initiatives
at the University of Minnesota Library, presented the workshop.
Those who attended included: Janice Adlington, Leslie Boyd, Yvonne Boyer, Melinda Brown, Peter Brush, David Carpenter, Dennis Clark, Paula Covington, Sue Erickson, Teresa Gray, Martha Kallstrom, Lee Ann Lannom, Amy Limpitlaw, Julie Loder, Kitty Porter, Leslie Reynolds, Larry Romans, Rick Stringer-Hye, Sharon Weiner, John Whelan and Susan Widmer.
Additionally, Jerilyn facilitated a lunch time discussion between librarians and faculty about undergraduate instruction and information literacy. Attending the lunch were: Paul Gherman, John Haar, Dennis Clark, Leslie Boyd, Melinda Brown, Carlin Sappenfield, John Rakestraw (Center for Teaching), Susan Barge (Assistant Vice Chancellor), and Ann Neely (Peabody College).
Ask Us Service and
QuestionPoint:
David Carpenter convened the ISAG Cooperative and Virtual Reference Services
(CVRS) subcommittee on March 25th to discuss plans for the migration of the
Ask Us virtual reference service to QuestionPoint software. CVRS group members
reviewed a prototype of the new Ask Us "patron form" and made decisions
on required data fields as well as other elements of the form. David coordinated
a second ISAG/CVRS meeting on March 28th. This second meeting included interested
librarians (including Peter Brush) from outside the subcommittee as well, and
focused on demonstrating the QuestionPoint software; reviewing the procedures
of responding to a reference question; and collecting questions about using
the features of the software. David will report back to the group with answers
to these QuestionPoint questions. Further QuestionPoint training sessions will
be scheduled after the questions about the software are answered and local procedures
are established and documented.
Other Activities,
Meetings or Accomplishments:
Melinda Brown attended
an informal lunch and focus group for faculty with John Haar and Paul Gherman.
David Carpenter, Sue Erickson, Janice Adlington and other Reference colleagues attended a SIRSI "Rooms" software demonstration on March 11th.
Sue and Susan Widmer met with John Haar and Larry Romans to discuss resources for students in the Economic Development program on March 21st.
Janice Adlington, with John Haar and Mary Beth Blalock, met with a netLibrary representative.
Sue Erickson attended Nashville Library Club meeting on March 13th
All Reference staff that had not previously viewed the Code of Conduct video attended such a session in March.
Reference staff attended various other regular departmental, staff, and task force meetings, including: Central Library Staff Forum, Heard Web Group, ISAG Web-based Instructional Support group, Central Library Instruction Meeting, Electronic Resources Committee, Tech Support Coordinators, Central Library Unit Heads and a Reference meeting.