Statistics
Circulation:
11,853 charges and renewals
12,460 online renewals
302 laptop checkouts
617 reserves charges and renewals
608 holds placed
13,141 books received
10,635 books shelved
1,072 bound periodicals shelved
1,001 unbound periodicals shelved
425 newspapers shelved
Reference:
1,214 questions
991 (82%) at Reference desk
124 (10%) by e-mail
99 (8%) by telephone
Microform
Media Center:
312
charges
239 in-house uses of microform materials
121
reference questions
Government Information:
204 reference questions
General
Renovation:
Work continues on plans to renovate the Central Library lobby and adjacent areas.
Dennis Clark agreed to serve as project manager for the renovation because John
Haar's time is now split between the Central and Science and Engineering Libraries.
Dennis will work with John and the Central Renovation Committee to deal with
the many details that will arise as we hopefully move toward construction (which
could take place over the summer of 2005). One of the key elements of the renovation
is building a single service desk that will combine the functions of the present
reference, circulation, reserves, and reception desks. Dennis, who has experience
in both renovation and merging service points in the Music Library, will also
work closely with the affected units to plan the transition to the new service
model.
OAK:
Central librarians met to develop a strategy for encouraging faculty to link
to library resources in their OAK courses. Melinda Brown will create a webpage
explaining how faculty can create links. John will contact all humanities and
social sciences faculty to publicize this information and let them know that
they can consult with their bibliographers for assistance in linking to articles,
ebooks, and databases. Bibliographers will follow up with faculty in the departments
for which they are responsible.
Circulation (Janet Thomason)
There have been several discussions about the proposed remodeling for our unit. We are all, of course, curious as to how this is going to affect each of our current job-related activities as well as our student workers. LaRentina Gray, Jo Bilyeu, and Janet met with Julie Covington of Johnson Johnson Crabtree to draft a “final” floor plan, which will hopefully include sufficient space for the circulation/reserve/stacks maintenance staff as well as all the functions each of these units perform.
Reserve
Room:
Demand was steady in November. Professors continue to add documents to their
existing print and e-reserves lists. Only three new reserve lists came in during
the month, which brings the semester total to 108. Some professors have been
depositing materials to be placed on Blackboard for the spring semester. We
emailed letters to all faculty who had reserves in the fall and last spring
soliciting spring 2005 course reserve lists and providing deadline information
for processing by the start of classes.
Stacks
Maintenance:
Stacks Maintenance focused on sorting and shelving before the Thanksgiving break
so that we would not have trouble catching up before the Christmas break. Student
workers continued to shift on various floors as well as shelf-read and straighten.
We have hired at least one person to help over the Christmas break with sorting
and shelving while our regular students are off for the holidays. Jo and Kelly
Lockaby plan on being at work to keep control of the expected influx of returned
books. Janet, Jo, and Ben Darling have continued pulling Annex Transfer titles,
while LaRentina and Janie King help out with updating the records. This will
probably slow as the sorting area is bombarded with books during the December
scramble. We sent 24 trucks to the Annex.
Periodicals:
We sent only 61 titles to the bindery in November because there was only one
shipment due to the change in binderies. November also brought lots of preparation
for the Periodicals Room remodeling. On Nov. 18 Plant Ops removed the long tables
and chairs from the room. On Nov. 22 the furniture arrived. We purchased eight
wicker baskets to replace the blue bins that hold periodicals to be re-shelved.
We also made signage to let patrons know where to place periodicals after viewing
them. Rachel continued replacing shelf labels of soon-to-be-cancelled periodicals
to indicate their status.
Circulation
Desk:
Several staff attended the Staff Forum on Nov. 4. Janet also attended the Central
Library renovation meeting on Nov. 4. Robert Wright and Daisy Whitten attended
the LITS Service Coordinator's meeting on Nov. 9. On Nov. 11, Janet met with
Marie Swearingen to conduct training on billing. On Nov. 22, Janet met with
Bill Hook and John Haar about developing procedures to accommodate Divinity's
policy of not stamping books at checkout. Several staff took time off the week
of Thanksgiving break, however activity remained brisk all week. Lots of students
and faculty used the facility. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Jo opened and
Janie worked. Ben came in at 1:00 and worked until closing. Ben reported that
activity was very brisk, particularly at closing time.
Collection Development (Mary Beth Blalock)
Electronic
Resources:
The Electronic Resources Committee met on November 10; the November 24 meeting
was rescheduled for December 1. The committee approved the acquisition of the
Readex version of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set with the provision
that Readex address printing problems and enhance the “Help” menu. The committee
also approved a subscription to the Index
of the World Biographical Information System. Discussion continued
regarding RefWorks, a CSA bibliographical management program. The CSA
representative has been invited to present another demonstration of the software
in mid January. We approved Shakespeare
in Quarto, a free resource, for the Articles & Databases page.
Departmental
Meetings:
The monthly bibliographers' meeting took place on November 17. Discussion focused
on reassigning funds for some approval books, gift journals and serials, and
critical new journal needs.
Outreach:
Peter Brush met with two history classes to discuss his participation in the
Vietnam War and the articles he has written on the war. The article are listed
on his homepage.
Yvonne Boyer met with Professor Christopher Johns about library resources and services in relation to a new graduate art history program. She also assisted scholars from Washington University ( St. Louis ) who were visiting the Bandy Center .
Paula Covington and Sue Erickson met with Tom Dillehay, a new professor in Latin American Anthropology. Paula also met with a new Latin American history faculty member, Edward Wright-Rios, consulted with four Andean archaeologists about their projected research and teaching needs, and attended several functions at the Center for the Americas.
Paula continues to write articles for the ACORN Chronicle. Her article, “Tropical Book Fever! Tales of a Book Hunter”, shares her experiences on some of her book purchasing trips to Cuba and Latin America countries. The article appeared in the fall 2004 issue.
Committee
and Other Activities:
Julie Loder attended Technical Support Coordinators meeting.
Susan Widmer attended a CAAG meeting and met with Mary Beth to discuss faculty interests and the economics forms Profile.
Janice Adlington joined the Career Resources group that is working to create a virtual career library.
Julie and Mary Beth worked with Amy Stewart-Mailhiot to provide training for collection development activities. Amy is currently working closely with Larry Romans to select resources that support the Political Science programs and the research interest of faculty.
Mary Beth
attended three meetings of the Performance Evaluation and Review Committee and
the Career Search II demonstration. She also met with John Laraway, our Blackwell
approval plan representative.
Government Information (Larry Romans)
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot received training on collection development from Mary Beth Blalock, Julie Loder, and Larry Romans. The training included budgeting and fund availability, scope of the Political Science collection, use of Workflows and Collection Manager, gift books, and the various tools available for placing orders. Amy and Mary Beth also visited the Order Services department and met with Alice Cunningham, Chris Waldrop, Monica Sanchez and Mary Ellen Wilson. Amy continued her training with Larry by going through Blackwell slips and a selection of gift books.
Larry and Amy provided instruction for two sessions of ENG 100W. Amy attended the Reference department meeting to learn how to use the new appointment software.
Amy attended a GIS meeting with Paul Gherman, Rahn Huber, Rick Stringer-Hye, Sue Erickson, Rachel Vacek, and Leigh Gostowski. The group discussed possible ways the Library could offer and facilitate GIS use to students and faculty, as well as the need for training among staff.
Amy met with Linda Tesar to begin a clean up of the monthly load of Marcive GPO records. This monthly project will allow Government Information to have cleaner bibliographic control of the items we receive. Amy's ongoing projects included working with the Annex staff in cleaning up records and overseeing offers of withdrawn items to other depositories. Amy cataloged 39 items.
Nancy Dolinger prepared items for binding, weeded duplicates, and continued to train student workers on new procedures. She worked on correcting a large number of USGS records. Nancy also processed gift books to send to Technical Services for cataloging. She worked with Amy, Peg Earheart, and Jean Wright on finding missing documents and correcting records for found items. Nancy believes we have truly been blessed with great student workers and cannot believe all the work we have accomplished this semester thanks to all their help. Nancy continued to serve on the PERC committee in November.
Larry worked
with Dale Poulter and Suellen Stringer-Hye on the Government Information Database.
This included changing footers for the Government Information, FDTF, and Political
Science pages so that the recommendations and comments are included in a form
rather than sent directly to his email address. This should help Larry deal
with spam overload.
Microform and Media Center (Peter Brush)
The Media Center had a busy November. Service volume was up significantly--about 60%--over this time last year. Video business was especially strong, at least in part due to recent the change that allows graduate students to check out videos.
In the latter part of the
month David Anderson accepted a position as director of the Public Library of
Crossett, Arkansas. November was his last full month.
Reference (David Carpenter)
Instruction
Report (Melinda Brown, Instruction Coordinator):
It was a typical November instruction month. There were four course-related
sessions offered:
ENGL 100w – Composition / Prof. Huddleston (Dale Manning)
ENGL 100w – Composition (two sessions) / Prof. Barr (Dale Manning, Larry Romans,
and Amy Stewart-Mailhiot)
SOC 115 w – Social Construction of Hip-Hop / Prof. Lena (Sue Erickson)
Additionally, Melinda presented an overview of online library resources for the Career Counseling Center.
Two courses that were left off of the October report were: PSCI 217 -- Latin American Politics and LAS 290 -- Research Methods.
Melinda met with A&S Associate Dean Kate Daniels to discuss library involvement with the proposed Writing Center and freshman writing courses. Assoc. Dean Daniels agreed to include a library research component for all freshman level writing courses. There will be different levels for faculty to choose between, from a basic library orientation through a subject specific session.
At another November meeting, Melinda and Mark Dalhouse continued a discussion on the role of library research in the Global Citizenship freshman seminar program.
Paula provided a library orientation session for a new graduate student in the Department of Anthropology. She found November to be a very busy month, and scheduled individual meetings with several students doing research papers. She also received and answered 15 online subject related reference questions from students and faculty.
Sue provided individual research consultations on Nov. 11 and 12.
On Nov. 8 David provided a tour of the Central Library for Paul Mwanzilo, a visitor from a library in Njoro, Kenya.
Information
Commons Working Group:
David Carpenter continued working in collaboration with Jeff Johnston (Assistant
Director, Center for Teaching ),
Jonathan Blake (Office of Innovation
through Technology ), and Leslie Boyd (Peabody Library) in this group. David
and Leslie are currently examining and collecting information about models for
collaborative service centers at other institutions.
David attended two Information Commons working group meetings (Nov. 1 and 12). The second meeting included a tour of the Peabody Library's Information Commons. David also met separately with Leslie Boyd on Nov. 18 to discuss the project. On the following day he met with John Haar and Paul Gherman to brief them on the progress of this group's efforts.
Additional
Activities, Meetings, Training Opportunities or Accomplishments:
Melinda participated as a member of a panel of university librarians at the
Tennessee Association of Independent Schools Conference held at Ensworth High
School, Nashville. The panel's topic was "Preparing Students for Using
the College Library".
David helped set up for a web based presentation and training session for the Career Search database on Nov. 11 and “keyboarded” for much of this presentation. Deb Sommer scheduled and coordinated the session, which was attended by individuals from the libraries, the Vanderbilt Career Center and others. Janice Adlington and Sue Erickson also attended the Career Search database demonstration.
David represented the Central Library at two lengthy demonstrations of pay-for-print systems—Diebold on Nov. 4 and Uniprint on Nov. 16.
At the request of Linda Phillips (Head of Collection Development and Management, UTK) David created and shared drafts of two web pages as examples of how holdings information for the Information Alliance Collaborative Reference Serial Backfiles Project could be presented locally. His reference counterparts at the University of Tennessee and the University of Kentucky were asked to provide similar pages for their libraries.
Sue Erickson and David met on Nov. 11 to develop a final design, using colorful graphics, for new public workstation labels designating which computers had access to MS Office software and which did not.
Sue Erickson met with other librarians involved and interested in GIS (geographic information systems) and Paul Gherman on Nov. 15. From this meeting a new GIS Group will likely be formed. Other librarians attending the meeting included: Amy Stewart-Mailhiot, Rahn Huber and Rachel Vacek (Management), Leigh Gostowski (Peabody) and Rick Stringer-Hye (Science and Engineering Library).
David and Janice Adlington attended a Career Resources meeting on Nov. 16. Janice agreed to become a member of this group. She began work right away on a draft of a Virtual Career Resources webpage, using information and entries contributed by David and the other members of the group.
John Haar attended our Reference meeting on Nov. 4 in order to respond to questions concerning the proposed renovation plans for the fourth level of the Central Library and to join in a discussion of how a combined service desk would be organized and function. Melinda conducted the Reference meeting on Nov. 18, leading a discussion of how library resources could be presented via OAK.
David helped HealthPlus staff members get set up to do a Hold the Stuffing weigh-in in the Central Library lobby on Nov. 19.
Sue Erickson coordinated completion of the revision of directional signage on the 6th floor of the Central Library.
Amy Stewart-Mailhiot begins training for service on the Central Reference desk in early December. David met with Amy on Nov. 19 to talk in general about the scope of the reference training and to learn more about Amy's educational background and prior public service experience.
Sue Erickson met as a member of the Law Library Reference Librarian search committee on Nov. 18 and 30.
Janice attended a Center for Teaching lecture entitled “ Lectures that Motivate Learning”.
Committee
or Other Regularly Scheduled Meetings Attended:
Dale Manning, Sue Erickson and David Carpenter, as Central Reference members
of the Building Renovation Group, met on November 4 with the other members of
this group to review the latest version of the renovation plans for the fourth
level of the Central Library.
Central Reference librarians attended various other regular departmental, staff, and task force meetings during the past month. These included meetings of the following groups: Central Library Reference, Central Library Bibliographers, Heard Web Group, Heard Staffweb Focus Group, Acorn and Virtual Catalog Task Force, Information Services Advisory Group, Electronic Resources Committee, ISAG Web-based Instructional Support Subcommittee, Technology Support Coordinators, Central Library Staff Forum, SFX Implementation Group, ERL Migration Group and Central Library Unit Heads.