Statistics
Access*:
9,214 total entrances
3,256 undergraduates
3,357 graduate students
1,463 faculty/staff
720 alumni,faculty/staff/student family members
418 visitors (incl. Fisk, Sewanee, NALA)
*Reported
entrances are lower than last year at this time because we no longer have a
turnstile in the Reserves area
Gates were left open for several days due to problems with the turnstiles; no
data was recorded for those days
Circulation:
6,875 charges at circulation desk (25% increase from May 05)
170 renewals at circulation desk
9,413 online renewals
114 laptop charges
(28% increase from May 05)
22 reserve charges
450 holds placed (13% increase from
May 05)
15,237 items discharged
(5% increase from May 05)
4,093 items received from other libraries (6% increase
from May 05)
16,391 books shelved
(5% decrease from May 05)
638 bound periodicals shelved
(16% increase from May 05)
821 unbound periodicals shelved
273 newspapers shelved
4 booktrucks sent to Annex
Reference:
325 questions at Reference
desk (62%)
123 by e-mail (24%)
74 by telephone (14%)
10 in-person off-desk questions
13 email off-desk questions
10
phone off-desk questions
1 research consultation
Government
Information/Media Services:
349 items charged
88 reference questions and service transactions
Instruction:
2 sessions for 11 participants
General
Facilities:
The College
of Arts and Science Learning Center as currently configured has ceased
operation. The College will form a committee to propose a new approach to academic
counseling for A&S or possibly the entire campus. For the next academic
year and possibly longer, A&S will fund a "bridge service" to
be located in the former Microform-Media Center on the 6th floor of the Central
Library. This service will be staffed by one half-time person, who will occupy
the former MMC office. He or she will coordinate the tutoring programs that
will continue to operate. Some tutoring sessions will take place in academic
departments, while others will take place in Central. Therefore the LC will
occupy about one third of the old MMC. They will create at least two cubicles
for tutoring and arrange other furniture in the area so that it can be used
by all library patrons. We moved microfilm and microfiche readers to carrels
near the microfilm cabinets, and we will probably need to dismantle the carrels
in the area to be used by the LC. Unfortunately these carrels were built in
this area, are not modular, and therefore cannot be moved.
We had Central's computers and printers removed from the 2d floor in preparation for the Divinity Library's expansion. The computers have been relocated to staff offices, the Computer Room (our public computer lab), and to a room that we plan to remodel into a group study room.
Orion Construction, contractors for the Divinity Library expansion, built a ramp to allow handicap access to Central from the breezeway on nights and weekends. The ramp is located on the north side of the Goldberg Room. We also had a telephone installed in the breezeway so that patrons who need assistance in entering can call the Circulation desk for help.
Signage:
We began deploying signs
throughout the library identifying zones for quiet study, group study, cell
phone use, and wireless availability. Hilary Rudsenske completed the
project. As areas become redefined signs can added or changed.
Priorities:
At Central's June Staff Forum we discussed recent suggestions from graduate
students and agreed on several service priorities for the library. Among them:
Personnel:
The growth
of library instruction, primarily in the form of First Year Writing Seminars,
has combined with other duties to cause a significant increase in Central librarians'
workloads. The librarians met with John Haar, Flo Wilson, and David
Carpenter to examine options for workload reduction. Discussion centered
on reference duties and the possibility of reducing reference desk hours or
hiring graduate students or temporary staff to provide desk service, enabling
librarians to work fewer hours on the desk while serving in an "on-call"
capacity at other times. We also touched on possibilities for streamlining work
in collection development (through increasing book receipts on approval plan
profiles) and instruction (by eliminating team teaching). We reached no decisions
and will hold another meeting to further consider options.
Thanks:
Central Library staff members
express our gratitude for two events. Several retired faculty who work in the
building hosted their annual reception for library staff on May 25 to thank
us for assisting them in their research. And the Divinity Library hosted two
coffee breaks for GLB staff to offer us a respite from the occasional noise
of their construction project.
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
Stacks
Maintenance:
We selected Matt McKee as our new Stacks
Supervisor, and he began work on June 5. We also hired several temporary summer
workers: Vanesa Miseres and Judson Wallace (Periodicals, Stacks
Maintenance and Circulation) and Jesse Tidyman and Kit Buckley
(Stacks Maintenance and Arts). Zelalem Addis, who worked in Circulation,
served in Stacks Maintenance for a couple of weeks to help with the onslaught
of end-of-semester returned books. Janet sent 23 serials to the bindery.
Periodicals:
Evelin Sanchez's term appointment ended
on May 12. Janie King moved to Periodicals for her entire 20-hours-per-week
schedule on May 8 (she formerly split her time between Circulation and Periodicals).
This enabled us to catch up with the bindery backlog. We trained our two Periodicals
students to shelve newspapers and strip current journals so that Janie would
have more time to devote to bindery and periodical maintenance.
Kelly
Lockaby is shelving current journals this summer and devoting time to periodical
claiming. Janet continued a project Evelin started to replace shelf labels in
the reading room. Ben Darling began transferring bound periodicals to
the Annex using a list provided by Mary Beth Blalock. We sent 345 periodicals
to the bindery.
Reserves:
LaRentina
Gray dismantled the Reserves office in time to evacuate the 2d floor by
the May 12 deadline to make way for Divinity Library renovation. Her furniture
was moved into her new office adjacent to Circulation.
Circulation
Janet hired David Ellison and Amanda Hagood to work in Circulation
for the May term. We also have three returning students from spring semester.
End-of-semester returned books came in at a rapid rate for almost the entire
month. Janet completed her project of withdrawing all Central LP recordings.
She split much of her time in supervising Stacks Maintenance activity and in
hiring and training the students there. She compiled the student schedules for
Stacks Maintenance and Circulation. Yolanda Campbell worked on carrel
renewals for next academic year and in training the new desk students.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic
Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on May
10. The committee approved a subscription to International Medieval Bibliography
Online and a trial of Bibliography of Native North Americans. We
did not approve a trial for ResearchNow. After much discussion about
ARTstor, we decided to give the database time to develop newly planned
initiatives and to work toward resolving some remaining issues identified by
the Art and Art History faculty. We will review the database again in a year.
Members of the ERC are Janice Adlington, Yvonne Boyer, Sue
Erickson, Susan Widmer, John Haar and Mary Beth Blalock.
Search
Committee:
The Central Library appointed a Search Committee
to recommend a candidate to fill the Bibliographer/Reference Librarian position
that became available upon Dale Manning's retirement at the end of June.
The chosen candidate will assume subject responsibilities for English, Film
Studies, and Theatre as well as provide reference service and instructional
sessions. The Committee met twice in May to review the applicants and identify
candidates for reference checks. Members of the Committee are Susan Bell
(Cataloging), Melinda Brown, Susan Widmer, Mark Schoenfield
(English Faculty), Lisa Shipman, and Mary Beth Blalock, Chair.
Outreach:
Peter Brush's
review of "Vietnam
War Bibliography" appeared in the May 2006 issue of Choice.
Yvonne met with Professor Tracy Sharpely-Whiting, Director of the W.T. Bandy Center and Lisa Weiss, Associate Director of the Center.
Susan
Widmer met with an Econ 222 student.
Projects:
Janice was involved in two projects this month.
First, the LibQual survey closed in mid-May, and the LibQual group received
the initial results Notebook and Excel data on May 19. The group is currently
processing the nearly 750 comments received and separating the numerical data
by library. Of the 1,893 respondents, 679 selected the Central Library as the
library they use most frequently.
As members of the Series Processing Project Team, Janice and Carlin Sappenfield provided the public services view on series cataloging and authorities in light of LC's decision to discontinue the tracing of series. The team met once and drafted interim recommendations for local processing. The impacts are expected to become clearer over the coming months as these issues are discussed at the national level.
Hilary
Rudsenske tried and tested GOBI 2, YBP's selection and approval plan database.
Gifts:
Bryan Kurowski received
91 gift titles.
Committee
and Other Activities:
All bibliographers
were busy this month selecting and submitting orders prior to the year-end order
deadline.
Yvonne attended the ARLIS/NA Conference in Banff, Canada. ARTstor was among the many topics discussed during the conference.
Janice
interviewed for the Electronic Resources Librarian position [and later accepted
the position!].
Government Information/Media Services (Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)
Teri Bante
met with Chris Waldrop to go over procedures for serials and periodicals. Teri
also received training on bindery procedures from Machelle Keen.
Rachael Bankes and Amy continued to work with Yuh-Fen Benda on
a project to fully catalog the DVDs that currently have only brief records.
We cleared
the slide room, which is no longer needed for slide viewing, and considered
how the room will be used in the future.
Instruction (Melinda Brown)
Central librarians presented a total of 2 course-related sessions to 10 students and 1 instructor.
ECON 224 - Russia in Transition (Supyan), Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, 8 students and the professor.
ECON 355 - Seminar in Research on Economic Development (Andrade), Susan Widmer, 2 students.
Additional
Instruction Activities:
Melinda attended the LOEX Conference 2006: "Moving Targets: Understanding
Our Changing Landscape".
Reference (Sue Erickson)
At our May 4 meeting we agreed to leave the Reference meeting schedule as is, with two planned meetings per month, canceling whenever there aren't enough agenda items. We will move a corner computer desk from the Divinity Library castoffs into the Reference consultation room and swap chairs for some from the 6th floor classroom. The small table that was previously in the room will be reinstalled. This should provide more room for consultations and small meetings. The bibliography section will be outfitted with furniture from the former reserve room sometime this summer.
At the May 18 meeting we discussed the new office reference form and agreed to add a phone/search category. We also agreed to use the in-person/search category for research consultations. We discussed comments from the graduate students and brainstormed about ways to try to make the current reference desk more visible and welcoming. We continued our discussion of workload issues related to reference.
Sue gave Teri Bante an orientation to Reference.
Sue attended the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST) conference for the first time on May 22-26. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with other data librarians, data archive staff, and others with an interest in providing services related to social science data. She attended two workshops, "Introduction to Data Librarianship" and "Using ATLAS.ti to Explore Archived Qualitative Data". She also attended the following sessions:
Hilary moved her office to GLB 400 FC on the 4th floor, so that David Carpenter could return to his Central office during the renovation of the Management Library. She also created a new webpage of resources for "Debate, Controversial Topics and Position Papers" (url to be announced).
Meetings, Conferences, Training
Janice Adlington: Primo workgroup meeting; Digital Library Steering Committee meetings.
Teri Bante: Preservation workshop.
Mary Beth Blalock: Electronic Resources Librarian Search Committee meeting and candidate interviews; YBP presentation.
Peter Brush: Faculty Delivery Project Team meetings; LibQual meeting; YBP presentation.
Sue Erickson: Research Services Committee meeting; Reference Forum Planning Group meeting; GIS Librarian Search Committee meeting.
Bryan Kurowski: YBP presentation; Electronic Resources Librarian candidate presentation.
Hilary Rudsenski: Preservation workshop.
Janet Thomason: Circulation and Access Committee meeting; Java client training; mentoring webinar.
Daisy Whitten: Staff Development Committee meeting; mentoring webinar.
Susan Widmer: Heard Web Site Update Team meetings; University Staff Advisory Council meeting.