General News
Reorganization:
This month we made several organizational changes and reassigned responsibilities
to prepare for reductions in our 2003-04 budget. One of two positions to be
eliminated in July is that of Periodicals Assistant, held by Sharon Chilton.
Sharon moved to David Hughett's former position in Reference and Stacks Maintenance.
David worked temporarily in Interlibrary Loan. Because we no longer have a full-time
staff member assigned to work with periodicals, we have assigned periodicals-related
duties to other units. The Periodicals unit no longer exists. Shelving periodical
issues is now the responsibility of Circulation Stacks Maintenance under Jo
Bilyeu. Stacks Maintenance will also identify issues to be claimed and pull
issues ready for binding. The Microform-Media unit is now responsible for final
preparation of items for binding. Carrie Sprouse will perform this duty.
Access
Control:
Central staff considered changes in our access procedures at meetings in April
and May. In the May meeting we decided to introduce a new access procedure on
a trial basis to see if less restrictive access control negatively impacts public
service or security. We will first develop a security policy describing unacceptable
visitor behaviors so that staff members will know when to respond with corrective
actions. When it is in place, we will allow non-VU-affiliated patrons to enter
the library on weekdays. We will ask them to show identification and to sign
in. The turnstiles will remain in operation, so VU-affiliated patrons will continue
to use their identification cards. We will continue to limit access to VU-affiliated
patrons and access card holders on nights and weekends.
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
Circulation
Services:
Janet returned to work on May 5 after an extended absence due to illness. Her
first week back she worked half days but resumed a full schedule the following
week. Although classes ended on May 1, circulation activity remained brisk as
graduating students as well as many other students still on campus came by to
settle up their accounts, return books etc. Additionally May term began on May
1, and there were students taking classes and graduate students preparing for
prelims. For most of the month, book trucks emptied by Stacks Maintenance were
filled back up in Circulation, and most of the shelves in the receiving area
and adjacent areas were full of books. Circulation statistics indicate almost
18,000 books were returned in the month of April which does not top last year's
figures of 18,529 books but certainly explains much of the condition of the
receiving area in light of the staffing shortage. All staff attended the Mulberry
introduction session. Several staff took some much deserved vacation days after
a very hectic end of the semester rush. On May 12, Janet and Sharon along with
Mary Beth and Julie met with Mary Ellen Wilson and Chris Waldrop to discuss
problematic periodical claiming issues and how we can deal with this in light
of the fact that the periodicals department would cease to exist by the end
of the month. Janet and Daisy attended the CAG meeting on Thursday, May 15.
Yolanda began her summer project of clearing carrels of those not renewed and
swapping those requesting changes and renewing those requesting renewals. The
procedure was handled by email this year. Yolanda was also asked to serve on
Service Quality Improvement Team and has attended several meetings as well as
the LMC retreat. Robert and Daisy attended the meeting of TS coordinators on
May 13. Daisy has also attended weekly meetings in her role as a member of the
Acorn WebCat task force. Mary Kelley, Janet, Daisy, Yolanda and Rachel attended
the Staff Forum on 5/22/03.
Periodicals:
This is the final report for this unit. Effective May 27, the work of this unit
has been divided up between Collection Maintenance and Microform Media staff,
and this service point for patrons will cease to exist. Sharon moved to her
new office in Room 401A of the GLB on May 27. This office is right off the Reference
workroom, and her new telephone number is 2-2418. She is now working for Stacks
Maintenance and Reference and will, in that role, continue to be involved in
periodicals and newspaper processing as it relates to collection maintenance.
Sharon attended the Mullberry overview session. Janet , Mary Beth and Sharon
meet with Mary Ellen Wilson and Chris Waldrop at Baker to rewrite claiming procedures.
Sharon prepared 201 titles for the bindery before May 26. Since May 27, she
has been in training for the duties of her new position by Jo, Janet, and David
Carpenter as well as doing some training herself to other staff and students
in Stacks Maintenance who will be helping with periodicals and newspapers. The
transition period as the periodicals workflow is being dispersed is expected
to be bumpy as all of the kinks are worked out, but it is hoped that eventually
it will be a productive and workable solution to deal with the budget cuts dealt
to Central Library.
Reserve Room:
The Reserve Room closed on May 1 when spring semester classes ended. LaRentina
spent a couple of weeks dismantling spring reserves and mounting summer reserves
and then left on vacation for the rest of the month. Since she has been gone,
one electronic reserves request has been submitted which has been mounted by
Janet and two additional reserve lists have been turned in for books and articles
to be put on reserve for the first summer session. Those have also been processed
by Janet. There are only two courses on electronic reserves for the summer now.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
CONGRATULATIONS!! to Julie Loder who received her MSIS degree from UTK in May. The Collection Development "group" surprised Julie with a celebration on May 7.
Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on May 14; May 28 meeting was cancelled.
The Committee approved subscriptions to CQ
Public Affairs Collection, CQ
Supreme Court Collection, and International Financial Statistics
Online as well as the purchase of The Nation Digital Archive. Trials
were approved for Alternative Press Index, Opposing Viewpoints Resource
Center and Empire On-Line.
The Committee usually meets at 9:30 on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month. If you would like the ERC to consider an electronic resource, please contact any member of the Committee. Members are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, David Carpenter, John Haar, and Mary Beth Blalock (chair).
Outreach:
Susan Widmer is serving as a member of the Service Quality Improvement Team
which is charged with the task of identifying barriers to providing high-quality
public services at the Vanderbilt libraries and recommending ways to remove
these barriers. The Team attended the LMC Retreat which was led by Susan Williams,
Professor of Management at Belmont University, and focused on creating a culture
of high-quality service. The team met for its second meeting on May 30.
Peter Brush reviewed a Vietnam War Memoir for the University of Alabama Press. He also met with Professor Qing Wei, a new East Asian Studies faculty, to orient him to the Library and our resources. He also met with Professor Thomas Schwartz' History 281-1 class to discuss a soon-to-be published article he wrote on the Vietnam War.
Yvonne Boyer (W. T. Bandy Center) assisted a visiting scholar from the University of Manitoba.
Dale Manning is currently working with Will Akers, a Theatre faculty member, regarding requested journals to support the Film Studies program.
Paula Covington met with Professor Lang concerning the Kenan grant and incorporating database instruction into his courses.
Dale Manning and Paula Covington are acknowledged on the Long Riders' Guild webpage for the research assistance they provided in locating information about Frank Hopkins. A television documentary about Frank Hopkins will be shown on the History Channel later this year.
Transfer Project:
Work slowed somewhat during May as bibliographers focused on selecting and ordering
materials before the year-end deadline for regular orders. Much has been accomplished
however. As of May 20, over 101,000 volumes have been identified for transfer
(100,016) or withdrawal (1,034). Five bibliographers, Peter Brush, Sue Erickson,
David Carpenter, Susan Widmer, and Yvonne Boyer, have completed their assigned
areas. The selection phase of the project should be completed by the end of
August.
Gifts:
Dale Manning and Mary Beth visited Stella Smock, former Heard Library cataloger,
to examine books she wished to donate to the Library.
Committee and Other
Activities:
Yvonne Boyer attended "Mural Painting and Conservation in the Americas"
symposium held at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, CA.
Paula Covington attended the conference of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) in Cartagena, Colombia on May 23-27. She also attended a VU Center for Teaching faculty workshop on the Internet and Higher Education.
Julie Loder attended Technology Support Coordinators and Technology Training Coordinators meetings. As members of these groups, she migrated to Mulberry early in preparation for the library-wide transition to a new e-mail system. She taught a Sirsi Fund Wizards class and assisted Lisa Shipman with e-password sessions.
Several bibliographers-Janice, Sue, Melinda, Peter, Mary Beth, and Amy (Divinity)-met with Dale Poulter to discuss enhancements to the interface for the Witchcraft database. Our goal is to have the database ready for users by the fall semester.
Susan Widmer, Janice Adlington,
and Mary Beth Blalock met with three ProQuest representatives on May 5 for a
demonstration of their databases of German Literature. The possibility of an
extended trial to collect feedback from departments and especially graduate
students and consortium purchases with UTK and UK were also discussed.
Government Information (Larry Romans)
This month Gretchen processed United Nations documents and non-depository documents from the Labor Department.
On May 16 four librarians from MTSU visited our library. Gretchen Dodge served as group coordinator and hostess. Their tour included Government Information, the Map Room in the Science Library, and Special Collections.
Gretchen took the minutes of the Central Staff Forum this month. She also attended the LITS Support Coordinators meeting and two Mulberry training sessions.
Nancy Dolinger checked in incoming documents, trained a new student worker, and worked on updating records and labels for our LC collections. She also prepared items for binding and helped with the Ingram order.
Larry Romans trained a new student, Neil Kutty, to work with the database. This month almost 15,000 visitors accessed pages on the Romans directory for more than 100,000 hits.
Microform and Media Center (Peter Brush)
Patron activity at the Media Center and the 6th Floor Computer Room was very slow in May. Patrons in the computer room used 36 reams of paper, about the same as this time last year. Fifteen new videos were added to the collection.
Carrie transferred the materials from over a hundred decaying and smelly microprint boxes into safe archival quality boxes. Several long-unused CD-ROM and laserdisc items were withdrawn. The equipment on which they were used was surplused.
The Media Center has begun
taking responsibility for much of the receiving, processing, and shelving of
periodicals. Carrie will now be spending most of her time at this work, while
David will be cross-trained to handle it in the event of her absence. Media
Center student workers will do much of the stamping and stripping of new periodicals.
Carrie has been working in cooperation with Janet Thomason and other staff to
see whether there are any ways to revise and streamline periodical
handling procedures.
Reference (David Carpenter)
Ask Us
Service Moves to QuestionPoint Software:
On May 15th, we successfully moved the Ask Us virtual reference service from
the former software developed by Marshall Breeding, which served us very well,
to QuestionPoint software, developed and supported by OCLC and the Library of
Congress. David Carpenter and Sue Erickson worked together to create additional
QuestionPoint documentation and to provide training for library staff who will
use the new QuestionPoint software. Sue and David devoted considerable time
in May toward this QuestionPoint training. Many thanks to the library staff
members from Central, Divinity, Law, Science and Engineering, Biomedical, Peabody,
Music, and Management libraries, as well as Special Collections, who attended
QuestionPoint training opportunities and will continue to cooperatively support
the Ask Us service.
Library Instruction
(Melinda Brown):
We had requests for two class sessions during Maymester: A history class, US
& the Vietnam War, and an economics class, Putin's Russia. A total of 38
students attended.
Additionally, the Central instruction librarians began a discussion about summer and fall orientation activities. As a result, we are investigating ways to reach more of the incoming A&S freshmen.
David Hughett Leaves
Reference:
On May 27th, David Hughett left his position in Reference and Stacks Maintenance
for training in ILL services. We will really miss David's many contributions
to Reference, his excellent sense of humor and his tireless efforts to maintain
order in the reference collection.
Sharon Chilton Joins
Reference:
Sharon Chilton moved from her prior position in Periodicals into David Hughett's
former position on May 27th. Her responsibilities will support both Reference
and Stacks Maintenance. Reference staff members welcome Sharon, as she gets
familiar with her new job.
Other Activities,
Meetings or Accomplishments:
Melinda Brown attended the LOEX 2003 conference, Reflective Teaching: A Bridge
to Learning, in Madison, WI.
Sue Erickson attended: a Staff Picnic planning meeting on May 8; a Center for Teaching program on "The Internet and Higher Education" on May 7; and on May 14th met with sociology professor Jim Lang to discuss his Venture Fund project in which he hopes to gain familiarity with many of the databases relevant to his teaching.
At the request of Paul Gherman and LMC, David Carpenter convened a special meeting of the ISAG Cooperative and Virtual Reference Services Subcommittee on May 20th to discuss and offer a recommendation concerning the Heard Library's participation in a new Ask ASERL virtual reference initiative.
Janice Adlington served on this year's Merit Awards Committee, and attended two meetings in May where the committee tallied rankings.
During the first week of May, Reference and Collection Development staff members responded to help sort and shelve some of the massive number of returned library books waiting to be reshelved. David cancelled the Reference meeting on May 1st so that Reference and Collection Development staff could join in a mass sorting and reshelving effort that afternoon. Afterwards David treated interested reshelving volunteers to Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
Reference staff attended Mulberry Information sessions presented by LITS in preparation for the upcoming migration to this new e-mail software.
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, Acorn and Virtual Catalog Task Force, Central Library Instruction Meeting, Electronic Resources Committee, Tech Support Coordinators, Central Library Bibliographers' Meeting, Central Library Unit Heads and a Reference meeting.