New Employee in Media

Bailey/Howe is pleased to announce that Anne Dixon has been hired in media services as a library support generalist. She worked at the library in Champlain Valley Union High School for 7 years before taking this position. Anne lives at Shelburne Farms where her husband Sam is the dairy farm manager. They have two children, John, a junior at CVU and Georgia, a seventh grader at Shelburne Community School. Anne enjoys taking long walks, cross-country skiing and cooking. Welcome, Anne!

New Employee in the Dean's Office

We are happy to welcome Lisa Beaulieu to the libraries today, as a new part-time employee in the Dean's Office. She will be here from 8:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and will be responsible for much of Mara's scheduling, as well as work orders for building maintenance and housekeeping, among other things. Lisa comes to us from UVM's Development and Alumni Relations Office, where she was a programmer/analyst. She is a graduate of Florida State University.

Thank you Darcelene!

Special thanks goes out to Darcelene and her husband today for delivering 251 pounds of food and supplies to the Chittenden emergency food shelf. And thanks also to libraries-wide generosity, which generated $303 for these efforts. Darcelene did all the shopping, and spent $226.55 on the Thanksgiving haul, which leaves a balance for of Christmas $76.45.
And what's the value of Darclene's time and effort? PRICELESS!

Progress Report from the D & D Council

When we began our work, we all assumed that our first order of business would be the OPAC, given its capacity to turn some of the best metadata in the book industry into the most boring and inadequate representations of our collections possible. The information that the current OPAC provides our patrons is only slightly better than instructions from IKEA.

We discussed the OPAC's good and bad points at our first meeting, which included these observations: The current Voyager OPAC is unforgiving about spelling. It doesn't come back with, "Did you mean..." or even place you in a list of similarly spelled words so you can browse its indexing (though it does do so for correctly entered author searches.) Nope, it tells you, "Your search retrieved no records!" (The exclamation point provides a note of lightness, of "Hey, too bad you can't spell, but we're still excited!")

It does not provide facets, or breakdowns of the subjects your search generates so you can explore broader or more narrow aspects of your search. It's brutal about author names, and still requires us to type in last name first, first name last, etc. even as most web search engines return results regardless how the name is typed in. It does not make suggestions ("If you're looking for books about X subject, you might take a look at ...")

It doesn't allow patrons to write reviews or notes about titles they read. Searches fail if an article is typed in a title search (entering "The sun also rises" gets you back to that excited declaration that "Your search retrieved no records!" while Mr. Hemingway's book hides stealthily in the database. On the plus side, if you spell correctly, leave off definite and indefinite articles, follow last name rules, etc. you can determine whether our library owns a book.

These problems will be a major focus of the D&D Council. However, another issue seized our attention at the start, and we're making good progress toward solving it: namely, improving the performance of our link resolver (Linksource), providing meaningful and consistent icons and/or language within our multiple databases to inform patrons when full-text is available, or directing them to alternate search possibilities, and generally doing our best to rein in the nonconformity of our databases to any standards.

Our goal is to, as much as possible, create an environment where patrons will be able to instantly recognize a uniform set of icons leading people to full text articles or to other services the library can provide to obtain an article. We also realized that we lack a form on our web site that links directly to Linksource so that people can immediately determine if the libraries offer the full text of an article they have a citation for.

Another of our goals is to lead patrons to print (hard copy) journals via Linksource, if we can make that work, so patrons can easily see their choices of print or online access. These tasks will involve working closely with members of Information and Instruction who oversee the administrative functioning of our databases. Members of the D&D Council have to first complete their research before taking that step, but you should start to see some changes happening relatively soon when you're searching for articles.

--by Peter Spitzform, for the D&D Council

Dean's Council Minutes, Nov. 6

DEAN’S COUNCIL MINUTES

A meeting of the Dean’s Council was held on Tuesday, Nov. 6, from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in the Dean’s Conference Room.

MEMBERS PRESENT: Mara Saule, Selene Colburn, Jeffrey Marshall, Paul Philbin, Birdie MacLennan, Keith Gresham, Peter Blackmer and Nancy Bercaw

ABSENT: Marianne Burke

General Updates and Announcements

Mara announced that the next meeting for “Re-visioning Bailey/Howe” will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 13. She also recently met with the SGA president and vice president, who expressed their interest in being part of the process. Mara further mentioned that the Provost envisions locating the new “Writing in the Disciplines” director and department in B/H as well, which would further foster an “information commons” environment. Mara also reported on a study called “Studying Students” in which librarians and an anthropologist studied the undergraduate research process at the University of Rochester. Their fascinating findings can be found at (http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/downloadables/Foster-Gibbons_cmpd.pdf).

The CDI Grant has come to an end. Jeff is working on the narrative report and Winona has been transferred to library funds until we hear about the renewal of the grant.

Billings planning is moving forward. The project will proceed in two phases: one, renovating the main and lower floors; and then, two, renovating Cook Commons. Phase one features two projects – renovating historic Billings by fall 2009 and the bottom floors for special collections. Environmental controls for the building are an important consideration.

Selene reported that the Communications Team received the first round of logo designs and sent them back with comments. The designer is working on redesigns. The Com Team hopes to roll out new logo/templates in January and will proceed with the signage project in January.

Paul explained that the web redesign is almost ready to be implemented and will probably be public by the summer. There will be a prototype by the beginning of January for student testing.

Birdie announced that the “Order on Demand” launch was moving forward. The process can help BH make more strategic decisions about collections.

Peter announced that Lisa Beaulieu will begin working in the Dean’s Office as an assistant on November 26. She will work daily from 8:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

Keith announced that the search committee for the head of CMS is moving forward.

Birdie's Article in "Libraries & the Cultural Record"

"The Library and Its Place in Cultural Memory: The Grande Bibliothèque du Québec in the Construction of Social and Cultural Identity" - a peer-reviewed feature article by Birdie MacLennan - has just been published, in the latest issue of Libraries & the Cultural Record 42, no. 4 (2007): 349-386. It can be viewed through the Project Muse web site: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/libraries_and_culture/toc/lac42.4.html

Highlights from the Middlebury Trip

Click on photos to see larger versions.

The UVM Libraries' Staff and Faculty Professional Development committee sponsored a trip to Middlebury College Library on Friday, Nov. 2. In addition to an excellent and informative tour of their new library led by Library Director Barbara Doyle-Wilch, we also had the opportunity to meet with several librarians to discuss challenges that face all academic libraries. The discussions ranged from the staffing of the Information desk, where questions are triaged and at which all staff members can serve, to the diminished traffic at the Reference desk, to ERMs, and Print on Demand. Middlebury staff expressed much interest in what we do here and were pleased with the opportunity to share what we know and any potential collaborations. Other than myself, UVM librarians did not attend; however, library departments and projects were well-represented by staff members.

Thanks to all who were able to come on this interesting trip.

-- Angie Chapple-Sokol