MONTHLY REPORT
MAY 2005

Statistics

Access:
13,513 total entrances
5,433 undergraduates
4,822 graduate students
1,593 faculty/staff
1,004 alumni,faculty/staff/student family members
661 Fisk, Sewanee, library use cards

Circulation:
5,913 charges/renewals at circulation desk
8,283 online renewals
89 laptop charges
3,865 items received from other libraries
14,766 books discharged
17,337 books shelved
548 bound periodicals shelved
831 unbound periodicals shelved
317 newspapers shelved
19 serial titles sent to the bindery

Reference:
487 questions
298 (61%) at Reference desk
123 (25%) by e-mail
66 (14%) by telephone

Microform Media Center:
32 reference questions

Government Information:
51 reference questions

Learning Center:
The College of Arts and Science Learning Center will move to Central at the beginning of the fall semester. The Center, currently located in Branscomb Quadrangle, offers workshops, tutored study halls, and other forms of academic counseling. The Center's initial location will be in the current Reserves Reading Room on the second floor, though it may move to another location in the building in 2006-07 if the Divinity Library proceeds with its renovation. Access to the adjacent Electronic Classroom will not be impeded, and the room will be open to library patrons when the Center is closed.

Final Exams:
We once again offered free soft drinks to students in our lobby during the first few hectic days of finals. As always, the students greatly appreciated the service. We also opened the Electronic Classroom to provide extra study space during the exam period.

Reorganization:
John Haar, Peter Brush, and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot are examining the feasibility of merging the Microform-Media Center and Government Information. We are considering which MMC collections and equipment would need to move to the Government Information area on the fourth floor (other materials would remain on six). If we find that Government Information can accommodate essential MMC collections and equipment, we plan to merge the units by the fall semester. The merger would provide a combined service point and combined staffs.

Staff Recognition:
Several retired faculty who work daily in offices and carrels in Central hosted a reception for Central and other GLB staff. The event, held for the second straight year, expresses their gratitude for the helpful and friendly environment our staff has created for these very special patrons.

Larry Romans:
Larry is on extended leave to deal with health issues, though we are happy to report that he still regularly comes to work. Amy Stewart-Mailhiot is serving as acting head of Government Information, and we all hope to have Larry back with us on a full-time basis very soon.

Circulation (Janet Thomason)

General:
The Circulation staff met on May 25. We discussed and approved a proposal to change our shelf reading procedure (see below). Janet distributed a budget for student hours allocated and used for this academic year so that staff could see how they met their staffing goals. There was quite a bit of discussion about allowing the students to use a different override code for arts, oversize, and periodical circulation, freeing up staff time. After the meeting, Janet worked with LITS to change the override policies for these items.

We submitted circulation policy changes to LITS so that Government Documents could circulate to Interlibrary Loan. At the end of May, we submitted another policy change to permit undergraduates to borrow videos and DVDs. The loan period is 3 days.

Janet attended a signage team meeting and worked on call numbers for shelf range signs.

Janie King completed her work for the semester. She will return for fall semester Aug. 8 but will fill in during July as staff take vacations.

Periodicals:
Rachel Gray sent 318 periodical volumes to the bindery. She also filled in at Microform-Media and staffed the Circulation desk during the unit meeting. Shifting continued in the reading room, and new alphabetical signs will be ordered shortly.

Stacks Maintenance:
We had a lot of new material come in to be sorted and shelved as well as returns from the end of the semester. Jo Bilyeu and Kelly Lockaby, asssited by LaRentina Gray, Ben Darling, and Janet, resumed the Annex transfer project, starting slowly with Art Oversize transfers to make use of shelving that the Annex had available in that area. We transferred 13 trucks.

Projects for June are to resume shelf reading and shifting projects and train new students to help with stacks maintenance. Shelf reading this year will be handled quite differently, with each staff member and student being assigned a section of the stacks. Giving ownership to an area to straighten and shelf read will, hopefully, produce better results.

Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)

Electronic Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on May 11 and 25. Dale Manning joined us on May 11 to discuss various vendor options for MLA. After much discussion, we selected the ProQuest version (activation in late June). Two entries will be added to the Articles and Databases page--one for direct access to MLA and another for access to MLA via Literature Online. We approved a trial for CSA's PAIS, added the New York Review of Books to our wish list (nice to have when funds available), and decided to review North American Theatre Online again in a year. On May 25, the discussion focused on resources suitable for year-end purchases if funds are available. We ranked JSTOR's Arts & Sciences collections III, IV, and Complement in importance to Central with A&S III most important, then the Complement, and last A&S IV. John will propose a shared-cost option for appropriate libraries. Other resources discussed included another segment of the U.S. Serial Set (1859-1899), Atlanta Constitution, SUR, and several Past Masters titles for Philosophy as well as English. We briefly discussed the Index to Early Southern Artists (free with our journal subscription) but quickly realized that we needed additional information about a LexisNexis product that includes the site before we could make a decision.

Outreach:
Paula Covington attended a reception at Kirkland Hall for Ambassador Bordon, U.S. Ambassador from Argentina. The visit was a part of a sister city proposal in which Vanderbilt is involved. She also met with Anthropology faculty members to discuss the new Andean Studies program in relation to curriculum and research needs. In addition, she attended grant proposal planning meetings for the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies National Resource Center and met with the Spanish Library Liaison.

Susan Widmer discussed German literature resources with a German alumnus.

Gifts:
We acquired two gift collections. Paula was instrumental in acquiring the Lusophone African and Brazilian literature collection (over 1,000 items) of Dean Russell Hamilton. Susan Widmer and Bryan Kurowski acquired the Bjarni Jonsson collection (over 100 volumes) of Icelandic sagas and Icelandic classic literature. Gifts for the month totaled 1,235.

Other Activities:
All bibliographers were busy this month selecting and ordering materials in order to meet the regular order deadline. As we get closer to the end of the fiscal year, Mary Beth will continue to review the status of funds and work with bibliographers to make sure material funds are fully encumbered.

Paula established a new approval plan for Argentine literature and changed the Bolivian and Peruvian plan.

Janice Adlington is providing feedback to Blackwell on Collection Manager for planned enhancements. So far, she has completed a web survey on development priorities.

Sue Erickson wrote a description of AnthroSource for the Articles and Databases page.

Mary Beth met with Mary Ellen Wilson, Order Services, to develop draft procedures for ordering individual ebooks. Now that our first "test case" order has been completed and access confirmed, we can finalize the procedure and distribute to bibliographers.

Melinda Brown, Paula, Sue Erickson and Mary Beth met with Larry Traynor, our new Primary Source representative.

Government Information (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)

Larry Romans continued to work with Jason Battles on the Political Science database. The database went live in early May.

Amy focused on completing end of the year orders for Political Science and Government Information. She cataloged 42 items and worked on the Marcive monthly load. Nancy Dolinger was out for part of the month taking care of her parents, who were recuperating from surgeries. When she came back she caught up on her work and her student assistant's work as Erin has gone home for the summer. She will be missed! Nancy worked on checking in incoming GPO and UN documents, gathering lost UN items for binding, plus shifting, weeding and shelving. She continues to work in Microform-Media when she is able.

Microform and Media Center (Peter Brush)

The summer slump has officially begun. Now that most students have left for the summer, we have very few patrons making use of our video and DVD collection. Our few regular patrons at present are faculty members and graduate students using our microfilm collections for research purposes. Despite the drop in service volume, we have had to hire two new students for the summer session: Steve Cook, a graduate student who also works in the Divinity Library, and Suman Seth, a graduate student in economics. We are happy to welcome them aboard.

Reference (David Carpenter)

Instruction Report (Melinda Brown):
In May, we provided one library instruction session for fourteen students and their professor:
ECON 269A - Putin's Russia (Supyan), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot and Sue Erickson.

Melinda met with College of Arts and Science Associate Dean Kate Daniels to discuss the library component of the First Year Writing Seminars (FYWS). Subsequently Dean Daniels announced seminar plans to the instructors in the program. When the faculty of the College revised the curriculum, they made changes to the writing requirement and established the seminars. Each A&S student will be required to take one FYWS within his or her first year. Guidelines for faculty teaching the seminars require the inclusion of a library research component.

Database Training:
On May 17 ProQuest's Kimberly Bastian provided training for Heard Library reference staff on advanced searching and special features in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, and Ethnic Newswatch. She also provided information about upcoming ProQuest database enhancements. The attendees agreed that this was one of the best database training sessions they had attended because it focused on advanced techniques rather than basic elements.

Most Central Reference librarians attended LexisNexis training sessions sponsored by the Law Library on May 10. Beth Bigman provided training on LexisNexis Congressional and LexisNexis Statistical.

MetaLib Usability Testing:
Ex Libris provided us with 30-day trial access to their MetaLib federated search product. Janice Adlington coordinated usability testing of the software during May, scheduling subjects and observers. Our call for testers produced a very good response; Janice received email from almost 60 students volunteering to participate.

Janice observed five students herself (including one student who piloted our test). Members of the MetaLib Implementation Group, with help from Central Reference librarians (David Carpenter, Melinda Brown, and Sue Erickson) tested MetaLib with fourteen students and faculty. Reference librarians also took the opportunity to test MetaLib. They later contributed their observations, experiences, and conclusions about the software to members of the Implementation Team.

Readex Archive of Americana ETC (Enhancements, Training, Content) Symposium & Workshop:
Sue Erickson reported at a Reference meeting on a Readex symposium and workshop held in Chester, Vermont, focusing on the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Early American Imprints, and Early American Newspapers. Highlights: a presentation by UC-Irvine faculty (who are incorporating digital collections in their course pages); a tour of Readex facilities; a close examination of the Serial Set (searching the archive, its content, research value, planned future developments, bibliographic control, and product building); a preview of Readex cross-product searching (that will allow Readex customers with at least three archives to search across databases); ideas and practices for bibliographic instruction using Readex archives; and information on the content parameters and future development of Early American Imprints and Early American Newspapers. She ended the session with a video demonstrating how the impressive Kirtas automatic book scanner (used by Readex) works.

Additional Activities:
Sue Erickson provided research/data consultations for: a graduate student from Kazakhstan; a faculty member at the Owen School (with Rahn Huber); the new Data Services Librarian at NCSU (regarding ICPSR); and a senior professor in the Department of Anthropology, who was seeking a hard-to-locate map.

David Carpenter joined Kitty Porter to participate in a Chat Reference Study Survey sponsored by ALA RUSA, responding to questions about our trial of chat reference in 2001-2002.

Along with John Haar and other selected Vanderbilt staff and faculty, David attended a conversation with Prof. Roy Rosenzweig, vice president of the American Historical Association's Research Division and director of the Center for History and New Media and professor of History at George Mason University. The topic was open access publishing.

David trained Jim Toplon on QuestionPoint so that Jim can respond directly to Ask Us questions regarding interlibrary loan.

Sue Erickson met for dinner with a candidate for the Music Library reference position.

David attended a meeting of the Learning Commons Group. The group discussed final changes and additions to their report, which they subsequently presented to Paul Gherman, John Haar, Allison Pingree (Director of the Center for Teaching) and Andy Stricker (Associate Provost for Innovative Technology) in early June.

All the Central Reference staff enjoyed the Library Spring Outing! Thanks to the library staff who worked to make the event possible.

Meetings, Conferences, Training

Many staff members attended the Strategic Plan Organizational Task Force report discussion and the Central Staff Forum.

Janice Adlington: Business Source Premier demo at Management; MetaLib open house; MetaLib Implementation Team.
Melinda Brown: LOEX conference in Louisville; MetaLib open house.
Peter Brush: MetaLib open house.
David Carpenter: MetaLib usability test training; "Current Trends in Library Automation" brown bag; MetaLib open house.
Sue Erickson: Business Source Premier demo; "Current Trends in Library Automation" brown bag; farewell for Michael Scott; MetaLib open house; Central Library Signage Committee; GIS Task Force.
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot: CAAG, GIS Task Force, Central Bibliographer meeting. Training sessions for LexisNexis and ProQuest products.
Janet Thomason: CAG; CAG training meeting; Music Library candidate interview; Central Bibliographer meeting.
Daisy Whitten: CAG; Acorn and Virtual Catalog Development Subcommittee.
Robert Wright: Tech Force.